Chapter 1 #2
The veteran and the rookie were right behind me, so I leaped into the air—and kept rising like a helium balloon escaping the grip of a toddler on a sugar high.
The veteran halted in the café doorway, glaring up at me furiously. He snapped a question in Arabic.
In response, the rookie at his elbow—and still in possession of an anti-Psychica artifact—pointed at me. His eyes were so wide I could see the whites from twenty feet above street level.
That’s right, gentlemen. Kit Morris, the psycho warper, can float, no hallucinations needed.
Before any of them could react, the electramage at the back of the ambush trio flopped to the ground for no apparent reason, unconscious.
I made a grabbing motion with my hand and tore the anti-Psychica artifact off the remaining mage’s neck.
While he whirled around, trying simultaneously to stop his runaway pendant and figure out what the hell had knocked his buddy out, the sorcerer beside him raised a mini crossbow set to fire some kind of colorful horror at my face.
From my other side, the veteran and the rookie in the doorway behind him both took aim with their respective artifacts.
I targeted their minds and slammed a warp into their craniums.
Surprised exclamations erupted from three mouths.
The mage tumbled to the ground, and the third sorcerer staggered into the wall of the opposite building, while the veteran pitched sideways into the café’s doorframe.
The rookie—the only bounty hunter unaffected by my warp thanks to his still-intact anti-Psychica artifact—grabbed the veteran’s arm to steady him before he fell.
I drifted downward. As my feet touched the ground, a tiny dark projectile hurtled out of the darkness and pinged against the fallen mage’s cheekbone.
He stiffened like he’d been shocked, then went limp.
Another projectile whipped into view, bopping the sorcerer leaning against the other wall.
I used a telekinetic touch to catch his shoulders and ease him to the ground so he didn’t smack his face into the road.
The rookie, still supporting the team leader, stared at the new mythic striding out of the night with all the glorious badassery of an action hero.
Lienna zeroed in on the young bounty hunter and his older teammate, stun marbles at the ready. “Just these two left?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
Lienna started an incantation, but I held up my hand.
“Hold off for a sec,” I told her as I walked toward the rookie.
The kid’s panicked eyes shot from me to Lienna to the man he was holding upright—his grandfather, if I had to guess—and back to me.
“What are you doing to him?” The question was hoarse but emphatic.
Sympathy clogged my veins. I knew what it was like to be scared shitless but still put on a brave face.
“I call it a Diet Blackout,” I told him, keeping my voice neutral. “It’s unpleasant but not traumatizing or anything, I promise.”
The rookie clutched his anti-Psychica artifact with his free hand. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned traumatizing people.
Truth be told, I couldn’t have plunged the elder sorcerer into the hellish sensory void of my OG Blackout even if I’d wanted to.
Ever since I’d started acquiring new Psychica skills—which, by my count, were over half a dozen now—my most powerful and taxing warp had grown increasingly difficult to use.
It’d been an unexpected tradeoff: bolster my collection of clair- and tele-prefixed abilities but lose the Blackout warp. Even my nutritionally sensible Diet Blackout, which dampened my target’s senses instead of erasing them from existence, strained the limits of my psychic energy.
“I don’t want to hurt you or him or anyone else,” I continued. “I want to talk.”
Confusion peeked through the fear that dominated his expression. “Why?”
“We’ll get there,” I told him. “What’s your name?”
He hesitated. “Arif.”
I nodded at the veteran still swaying under my Diet Blackout, totally unaware of our conversation. “And his?”
“Daoud.”
My heartstrings twanged again. His anti-Psychica artifact was keeping me out of his cerebrum, but my empath lens showed his distress clear as day.
“Arif,” I said quietly. “Let’s get Daoud up so we can all talk, shall we?”
I dropped the Diet Blackout warp from the veteran’s mind. The moment his eyes regained focus, they locked on me with fear and fury. He shifted into a defensive stance, pushing his grandson behind him with one arm, shielding the young man from the horrible Morris Monster.
I swallowed the tightness in my chest and offered a smile. Beside me, Lienna neither smiled nor scowled, her attention locked on the two mythics, ready to stun-marble them if they tried anything.
“He wants to talk,” Arif muttered to his grandfather, using English for my benefit, I assumed.
Daoud’s dark eyes broke away from my face long enough to scan for his teammates. Seeing them all on the ground, his jaw clenched.
“No one is hurt.” I stuffed my hands into my pockets to further illustrate my peaceful intentions. “They’ll all wake up within the hour.”
Daoud’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because I don’t hurt people if I can avoid it. Like I tried to tell you before, I’m not some cold-hearted psychopath.”
I paused to see if he’d fire off any questions about my involvement in Jayce Tyrian’s murder or some of my other reported misconduct from the past three months, but he remained silent, waiting for me to say whatever I wanted to say.
“The MPD has been compromised, Daoud.” I’d given a variation of this speech a dozen times now, but the weight of it still dragged at my words. “You’ve seen the signs, haven’t you? In your own community or maybe the international departments?”
“Compromised?” He was listening—actually listening. “How?”
“A powerful group of mythics has been consolidating their control over the upper ranks of the MPD for decades,” I went on, rushing my words as though getting them out faster would convince Daoud to believe me.
“Look at Internal Affairs, Obscura Influentia, and Special Investigations. I didn’t kill the Dissimulation Department’s director.
They did. The man I killed was the stooge they were installing to take over the DD. ”
Daoud processed that for a moment. “Why should I trust what you say is true, Mr. Morris?”
“You shouldn’t. Not about something this important.
Find it yourself—right here, in your own city, in your own country.
Look for corruption, for suppression, for those in positions of authority—especially in the MPD—abusing their power.
But do it carefully.” I grimaced. “You don’t want to end up on the wrong end of a bounty like me. ”
“Then what?” Arif asked, stepping around his grandfather’s protective arm. “What do you expect us to do?”
I exhaled, long and slow. Fantastic question, kid. “I want people to know the truth. The more mythics who see the corruption, the more we can resist it, and the less power it has.”
I saw it in their eyes—the moment they both decided to act on what I’d suggested. Finally, someone was listening.
“We should get moving, Kit,” Lienna urged.
“Yeah.” I gave the multigenerational pair a smile. “Thanks for the talk. Apologize to your friends for me. Her evil little marbles cause one hell of a hangover. The first time I—”
“Kit.”
“Right, yeah. Ma’a as-salama, guys.”
Accompanying my poorly pronounced farewell with a wave, I turned away, and Lienna and I started down the street.
“Mr. Morris?”
I glanced back.
Arif was staring at me, holding his anti-Psychica artifact. His grandfather had left the doorway to kneel beside the third sorcerer, ensuring he was unhurt as I’d claimed.
“We were warned about your illusions,” Arif said. “But what you did—that was real. No mythic can do all that. It’s impossible.”
I gave him a noncommittal shrug. “You don’t know the half of it.”
The kid hesitated, his mouth opening and closing as he debated what to say. Finally, he offered a small smile. “Ma’a as-salama.”
Go with safety.
I smiled. “Yeah, you too.”
Lienna hooked her hand over my elbow and pulled me into a fast walk away from Arif and his gramps. Her head was on a swivel as she scanned the dark street and narrow gaps between brick and stone buildings.
“We’ve been here less than a day,” she murmured bleakly. “This is the fastest that bounty hunters have ever identified us in a new location.”
My happiness over my successful chat with Daoud and Arif dimmed to a spark. My psychic senses stretched out, searching for danger.
“That’s not a good sign,” she added.
“Nope,” I agreed, grim determination burning away everything else. “But we stick to the plan.”
Unsurprised, she nodded.
Arms linked, my co-star and I hastened down the lonely street to disappear into the depths of the beautiful desert city.