Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Robin
Crouched on the roof of the Agrodome, I leaned over the edge and peered down at the two armed mythics positioned in front of a door set into the side of the building, accessible only by a metal staircase.
Beneath the stairs—and forty feet below my current perch—four more SI agents guarded a big bay door.
Beside me, Zylas studied his prey with narrowed crimson eyes. Gone were his black clothes and sunglasses. He was back in his demonic garb and armor—a breastplate over his heart, a bracer on his left forearm, and greaves protecting his lower legs.
With a sizzle and a loud crack, a bolt of electricity flashed out of the darkness and struck one of the agents covering the bay door. Both the men on the ground and the pair at the top of the stairs shouted in alarm.
Zylas dropped off the rooftop. He landed on the shoulders of an agent on the staircase, slamming the man into the railing. His claws flashed, dispatching the second guard.
On the ground, a team of six Pandora Knights streaked into view, their elemental attacks overwhelming the remaining SI agents.
Vayanin, Zylas said in my mind.
As I braced a foot on the rooftop edge, I looked across a single long building to the low-hanging clouds hurling lightning into the amphitheater.
The deep roar of thunder and the chaotic clashes of bright Arcana and Elementaria made my heart pound with a mix of terror, exhilaration, and a buoyant sort of empowerment I’d never felt before.
Then I stepped over the edge.
Zylas caught me easily. My feet thumped on the metal grate of the landing between the dead guards. I didn’t flinch at the macabre sight. I wouldn’t pity a single SI agent until I saw Tori, Zora, and my other friends alive and unharmed.
Below us, the Pandora Knights finished off the last SI agent. They tipped their heads back to look up at me, and one of them pointed at the door beside me.
“Straight through there onto the raised seating deck,” she called. “Good luck.”
“Ch,” Zylas grumbled.
“Thank you,” I called back.
The Pandora Knights took off down the road toward their next objective. My heart drummed against my ribs. The roar of the unnatural storm and the bangs of distant magic were growing louder, but I focused on the task ahead.
Zylas and I had spent weeks running across Europe alone. Day after night of uncertainty had passed where all I’d wanted was to be home with my friends and my guild. The SI had already taken my guild, and by the time Zylas and I made it back to Vancouver, they’d taken my friends too.
And now we were getting them back.
I faced the door. Zylas stepped in front of me, grabbed the door handle, its lock already broken, and yanked it open.
His surprise flashed over me, and then he dropped low and lunged to the left through the door. A blast of orange magic flew past the spot where he’d been and burst against the doorframe.
I dove after him, one hand clutching the artifacts hanging around my neck.
A second agent lurked just inside the door on the right. An incantation was already flying from my lips as he conjured a fireball in his hand.
“Ori impello cylindrate!” I cried as he flung the white-hot flames at me.
A tunnel of rippling air shot from my artifact, doing nothing to the fiery orb but hitting the pyromage hard enough to shove him into the wall behind him. I threw my arms up to shield my face as the fireball struck.
A chill rushed over me, and the flames barely singed my skin before the heat swirled into Zylas.
He grabbed my arm and swung me onto his back, already leaping away from the door toward the rows of seating.
Beyond them, six holding cells sat in the center of the arena floor, with dozens of agents standing guard around them.
I couldn’t see into the cells from the seating deck, and fear that my friends weren’t there—or weren’t alive—churned in my gut.
As Zylas sprang over the seats, I yanked a golf-ball-sized glass sphere off my combat belt and passed it to him.
He threw the potion bomb a hundred feet and right into the face of an agent guarding the closest cell. The sphere shattered and thick gray smoke boiled off its liquid contents, enveloping the team of agents.
“A demon!” someone yelled. “Kill the contractor!”
Purple light ignited—three agents aiming huge artifacts at us. They looked like the same kind of overpowered artifacts we’d faced in London.
I slapped a second potion bomb into Zylas’s hand, clinging to his back with my other arm and both legs. He whipped it toward the enemy with the same speed and accuracy as the first, then dodged sideways.
Two magna-beams hit the seating deck, obliterating the plastic seats and blowing a crater in the concrete with a deafening concussion.
I clung to Zylas’s back with all my strength as he leaped over three more rows, vaulted the railing, and plunged into the spreading smoke.
He landed in a half-crouch, and as I got my feet under me, I passed him two more smoke bombs.
I couldn’t see much through the gray screen, but that wasn’t a problem for a demon with infrared vision.
He hurled the two spheres, eliciting cries of shock and pain somewhere ahead of us and far to our right.
Shapes loomed in the smoke. The glowing orange fire of another pyromage blazed and soared wide of us, revealing the silhouettes of half a dozen agents.
Turning my focus inward, I reached for Zylas’s power. Its burning heat seared my veins as I conjured a rune with his crimson magic, making it span the floor in front of the agents. By the time they saw it, they’d already run onto it.
“Impello!” I shouted.
The push rune catapulted them straight into the air. Zylas sprang at them, claws extended. He tore through the throats of two men before they hit the ground, then slashed open a third as the agent landed hard on his back.
Blue magic streaked toward him. Zylas spun out of the way with inhuman agility, and the blast hit the main stands.
With a flick of his whiplike tail, Zylas vanished into the smoky depths.
Pulling the last two smoke bombs off my belt, I pitched them in random directions, then oriented myself toward the nearest holding cell and sprinted through the thickening smoke. The hazy shape of the cell materialized—and in front of it stood a tall SI agent, a rune-covered baton in hand.
Behind the chain-link door, Zora, Aaron, Tori, and Ezra stood in a tight cluster, a handful of other mythics flanking them. Relief and terror hit me in equal measure. Where were Kai, Gwen, Venus, Drew, and Sabrina? Were they in another cell?
For an instant, my eyes met Tori’s. A purple bruise covered the left side of her jaw, and a scrape across her cheekbone was streaked with blood.
“Don’t move!” the agent yelled, aiming his baton at my friends. “One more step and they die!”
I slid to a stop, ten paces away from the agent—too far to use one of my artifacts. Concentrating on the burn of Zylas’s magic, I formed the image of a rune in my mind.
“Put your hands in the air,” the agent sneered, keeping his artifact pointed at Tori’s chest.
I raised my hands in surrender. At the same time, I focused on conjuring a rune on the agent’s chest—a trick I was still mastering. A crimson glow ignited behind him, lighting up the cell door and reflecting off the smokescreen. I’d misjudged the distance!
The agent started to turn, then jerked backward, clanging hard against the cell.
“Rumpas!” I screamed.
A hideous crunching noise confirmed that the “break” rune had activated.
Blood spilled down onto the concrete, and as the guard slumped forward, Zora released his belt and withdrew her arm from the chain link.
She dragged the broken cell door open, the lock and a good chunk of the frame shattered by my spell.
Sprinting across the final feet between us, I wrapped Tori in a crushing embrace, then hugged Zora.
“Robin!” Aaron extended his wrist. A metal band marked with runes encircled it. “Do you have—”
I was already pulling bolt cutters off my belt. I snipped the band, and the moment it fell away, fire engulfed his hand. He flung the fireball over my shoulder, grabbed the bolt cutters, snapped the band off Ezra’s wrist, and tossed the tool to another prisoner.
“Kai, Sabrina, and the others are in the next cell,” Tori said, pointing into the smoke.
I dashed in the direction she’d indicated. “Let’s go!”
Shouts erupted and something detonated at the other end of the arena floor, green light flaring through the smoke screen. Someone’s scream cut off with a wet gurgle.
Four hh’ainun ahead of you, Zylas warned.
Not slowing, I pulled another artifact from the collection hanging on a chain around my neck and pointed it at the thinning smoke screen. The incantation fell from my lips before I could even see the mythics’ silhouettes. “Ori impello arcuate!”
A boom rang out as pale light arced out of my artifact toward the agents. They had no chance to defend as the spell hit them, propelling them backward off their feet.
Tori and I ran past them while Zora, Aaron, and Ezra stopped to ensure the downed agents wouldn’t get up anytime soon.
The smoke was fading as we reached the next holding cell. Kai stood at the door, his expression taut. Sabrina, Gwen, Drew, and Venus waited behind him.
I pulled a second set of bolt cutters off my belt.
“Watch out!” Tori yelled.
Something hit me in the back, knocking me to the ground. Zylas’s alarm and fury burned across the link between us, but he was too far away to help.
As Tori pulled me up, a cobalt glow ignited. An agent aimed a heavy steel bat lit with runes at us. Light exploded from the end of the artifact in an unstoppable, three-foot-wide magna-beam that would rip right through me, Tori, and everyone in the cell behind us.
Yanking something from her pocket, Tori jumped in front of me and swept her hand sideways through the air. “Ori averto!”
Her hand met the oncoming spell, and the cobalt beam diverted to the left. It blasted across the arena and straight into an overhead door, demolishing it and revealing a dark parking lot.
With a satisfied grin, Tori blew on the worn Jack of Clubs playing card between her fingers like it was the smoking barrel of a gun.
Ezra, Aaron, and Zora reached us, and moments later, we were cutting the abjuration bands off Kai and the others.
With everyone’s magic now accessible, it didn’t take long for the tables to turn.
A fight that had begun as me and Zylas versus fifty agents ended with a handful of men against twenty of Vancouver’s best bounty hunters.
As the last wisps of the smoke screen faded, all the SI agents were down or dead.
As the rest of my allies grabbed their gear and weapons from the haphazard pile near one wall, Tori pulled me into a second hug, squeezing until my ribs cracked. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
“Same,” I gasped.
She hastily let me go. Her gaze swept across the arena floor to stop on Zylas, who stood near the demolished door, still as a statue while he kept watch over our exit.
“Thanks for getting us out,” she whispered. “When I first saw you two, I wasn’t sure you could do it without revealing … you know.”
Without revealing my illegal contract to a lot of Vancouver mythics who would’ve recognized me and my demon no matter how we might have disguised ourselves.
“Me neither,” I murmured.
“What’s going on out there?” Aaron asked, striding over to us, his long sword steaming.
“We’re fighting the SI,” I said as Zora, Kai, Ezra, and a bunch of other mythics crowded in. “All the guilds are here, and they need our help—everyone who’s capable of fighting.”
“There are injured,” a man said, waving over his shoulder at a cluster of former captives. “And some who aren’t combat capable.”
“Can you get them to safety, Agent Tim?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah, I’ll handle it.” He turned on his heel and hastened away.
“Everyone else, get ready!” Aaron yelled. “Robin, do Captain Blythe and the GMs know there are over a thousand SI agents here?”
“Yes.”
Worry pinched his features. “How many do we have?”
“Two thousand.”
Tori gasped. “Holy shit, really?”
Aaron was silent for a moment. “That might not be enough.”
I smiled grimly despite the danger awaiting us beyond this building’s walls. “We also have Kit.”