Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Kit
I sank deeper into the cushiness of my leather seat, my bones aching with exhaustion.
Lienna was beside me, and on the other side of a polished tabletop was a second pair of seats.
Robin sat next to the ubiquitous oval window shared by all airplanes, nothing but darkness beyond the glass, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she watched her GM.
Darius was stretched out on what was normally a sideboard for mile-high charcuterie spreads or whatever the ultra-rich ate on private flights around the globe. A crystal vase of fresh flowers had sat on it before the healer cleared it off to serve as a makeshift surgical table.
The healer, a woman in her forties with steel-gray hair and glasses, checked his vitals, then cut his bloody shirt away with quick efficiency.
In the jet’s cramped quarters—infinitely better than if I was sharing it with a flock of transatlantic travelers, don’t get me wrong—I was close enough to catch an elbow in the face if she turned around too quickly.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
She side-eyed me, pointing at the blood smeared all over Darius’s abdomen.
“Well, he’s not dead yet, so count your blessings.
” Her latex-gloved finger swung up to aim at Darius’s nose.
“And before you tell me you used vasoconstriction potions and blood-loss stabilizers, yes, I can tell, but those do not actually fix the holes in your body.”
“I’m aware,” Darius replied dryly.
Grumbling, she wadded up his ruined shirt and tossed it into the metal garbage can beside her, then pulled out a pulse oximeter and clipped it onto Darius’s finger.
Letting my head loll back, I turned my gaze to Lienna. The healer had checked her over and confirmed that her arm was broken but could wait until Darius was patched up. Instead of resting, however, Lienna had the Sha’ir’s grimoire open on the table in front of her.
I glanced at the faded array filling the page. “Getting in some light reading?”
“I only meant to check for damage, but I got distracted.” She let out an aggrieved sigh. “Why did the Sha’ir have to write all his notes in Arabic? The spells are in Latin, so he was fluent. Would it have killed him to keep it consistent?”
“Maybe Latin gave him headaches. It gives me headaches.”
With another sigh, she closed the grimoire and began folding brown paper around it one-handed. I reached over and helped her wrap the book with my left hand, the partially healed bones in my right hand still aching.
She tucked the bundle into her satchel beside a similarly wrapped object—the astrolabe—then set her satchel on the floor by her feet. The document bag sat on the table where everyone could see it, like a trophy we still couldn’t believe we’d won.
In the aisle beside me, the healer finished setting up a tabletop IV bag, pulled on a new pair of latex gloves, and smeared Darius’s stomach with an orange potion that smelled so strongly of antiseptic that I was pretty sure my nose hairs had been disinfected too.
Lienna entwined our fingers. “How are you holding up?”
“Well,” I drawled with a half-hearted smile, “we got the documents, but Griva almost killed Darius and Kade almost incinerated us, so I guess it’s a draw.”
She frowned. “It looked like you handled Kade’s attack pretty well. You figured out how to power up, right? Is that how you got through the archive door?”
“I figured out how to draw the power, but as soon as Kade did it too, all the energy went to him instead of me. Either he’s doing it better than me or he’s …”
… stronger than me. I could hear the words echoing between us even though I hadn’t spoken them. They’d been hiding in the corners of every conversation about Kade since Greece.
“He had the Sha’ir’s grimoire to study,” she said, her voice so quiet I had to lean closer to hear her. “And I think the Sha’ir was the perfect role model for Kade in terms of how he learned to wield his abilities.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember what Dr. Sorensen said about how the Sha’ir needed Bodil to mentor him? I think that’s because the Sha’ir wasn’t an archmythic when he first met Bodil.”
“Huh.” Her words felt like a passcode unlocking a mysterious vault in my brain. “That’s why he had the astrolabe. He stole Bodil’s powers just like Kade stole mine.”
“I don’t think he stole them,” she countered. “She trained him afterward, so she must have participated willingly.”
I frowned. “But why? Did she need another archmythic to help fight off all her enemies?”
“Maybe.” Lienna’s gaze was intent. “Either way, his grimoire may very well have been Kade’s how-to manual on wielding archmythic abilities from scratch.”
“Fantastic,” I groused, slouching backward. “Don’t suppose I can get a crash course now that we have the grimoire?”
Lienna grimaced. “I can’t translate the Arabic, only the Latin spells. But even if Kade has extra knowledge about his new abilities, he doesn’t have experience using them. You do, and not just your archmythic magic. You’ve been increasing your strength and skill since the day we met.”
I knew she meant to encourage me, but her words didn’t bolster my spirit. I slumped in my seat, my eyes sliding closed. “When can I stop?”
“When can you stop what?”
“Becoming stronger. I don’t want to be more powerful than every other mythic on the planet.
I don’t want to be different. The weird foster kid, the nameless-psychic-powers guy, the ultra-rare psycho warper—I’m already different enough.
Before New York, I was feeling pretty good about being a mostly not-weird MPD agent. ”
I’d also been Darius’s unofficial secret agent protégé on the side, and that had felt pretty good too.
“I didn’t ask for extra abilities,” I mumbled, not sure Lienna could even hear me anymore. “I’ve only pushed so hard to get stronger to protect us. Kade wants to be a god above all other mythics. I just want …”
What did I want? I could see Lienna in my mind’s eye—not the exhausted, wary fugitive version, but Lienna when she was fired up with excitement and intrigue, chasing a lead or exploring new magic.
And not only her. I could see Vinny having a crisis over his girlfriend, Tim wrangling me into helping with his training demos, and Vigneault’s grin while sharing juicy precinct gossip.
I could see Blythe sitting across her desk from me with that calculating expression she got when I told her about a new case.
There was the Crow and Hammer too—guild members calling me over to chat, their friendly razzing, Tori or Clara bringing us burgers when Darius and I were locked in the boardroom with all our documents.
“Got the second bullet,” the healer announced, holding up a pair of long tweezers. A flattened chunk of metal was pinched in them, dripping blood. “I can suture the wounds now.”
I was immediately glad I hadn’t been watching closely enough to notice her fishing around in Darius’s abdominal cavity for that squashed bit of bullet.
As she discarded the shrapnel and started prepping a curved needle, I gave my head a small shake. “How did Griva manage to shoot you twice?”
“He’s a seer,” Darius said, turning his head to bring me into his line of sight.
His complexion was still washed out, but he wasn’t writhing in agony, so I assumed the healer had given him the good painkillers.
“He sees constant visions of his immediate future, which allow him to evade attacks before they happen.”
“That’s one hell of an advantage.”
“When he worked in the field, he was known by quite a few nicknames, including ‘Untouchable’ for never getting injured and ‘One-Hit Wonder’ because he only needed a single shot to take out a target.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you—those are both terrible.”
“Nicknames aren’t one of the SI’s strengths.” Darius’s mouth curved up. “‘Mage Assassin’ suffers from a similar lack of creativity.”
“Well,” Lienna remarked, “he didn’t get you with one shot, so I guess he’s lost his touch.”
“To his deep disappointment, I’m sure,” Darius said. “I expect he’s realized by now what our objective was and that we succeeded.”
“I know the purpose of the documents is to expose the Consilium,” Robin said hesitantly.
She was curled up on her seat, fidgeting with the chain of her infernus.
“But will the documents stop the MPD from prosecuting us? Will any of us get to return to our normal lives? Will exposing the Consilium stop the SI from hunting me?”
I frowned. “The SI is hunting you?”
“SI agents have been chasing me across Europe for weeks. They tried to take my infernus.”
“They’re helping the Consilium collect the world’s most powerful magical items,” Darius said. “Demon contracts, especially ones with powerful demons, are a finite resource. They’ve also begun openly abducting mythics with rare or powerful abilities for the same reasons.”
Lovely. Had the Consilium intended to use the astrolabe to copy more mythic powers, or were they planning to turn their abductees into loyal minions via magical mind control?
“Those artifacts the SI agents were using,” Robin said, “were they stolen as well? I’m pretty sure they’re illegal.”
“They’re definitely illegal,” Lienna confirmed. “Weapons utilizing Magna Potestas were outlawed by the MPD centuries ago for being too dangerous.”
“Weapons utilizing what?” I asked.
“Raw magic, essentially,” she explained. “The power in those artifacts wasn’t given any shape or purpose by the spell. The magic was simply expelled as pure, destructive force.”
“A lot of force.” Robin shifted uneasily. “That’s probably why the artifacts were all steel and so large.”
I frowned. “Okay, but what if these magnum potato—”
“Magna Potestas,” Lienna interrupted.
“—weapons aren’t part of the Consilium’s stolen weapons cache?” I wondered. “The SI isn’t all that fussed about the ethics and legality of what their agents get up to. How many more mega-blasts are we going to have to dodge before this is over?”