Return to Ashburn
20
They teleported to the loading dock behind the humanities building, deserted and icy. The first thing Emily did after the landscape resolved itself was put her nausea to good use.
After she finished retching, she led them on an unnecessarily circuitous route to the Inferno. She headed down several wrong corridors once there. And, threatened by Shaw to “get on with it or I’ll make you,” she wasted a few more moments sniveling.
All of it buying Hartgrave time. Heroics disguised as cowardice.
When she finally reached the correct wall, she tried for more time by feeling around in an area a dozen feet shy of the door. But Kincaid must have had a sixth sense for spellwork. He unerringly brushed his fingers on the right spot .
“Here,” he murmured, so quiet she could barely hear him. “I think this is what you’re—ah—looking for.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she said in a strained whisper, following his commandment to speak softly else the quarry hear them. She undid the spells on the door with both hands. “It all looks the same to me.”
“Remember what will happen if this does not go well. Is that understood?”
Then he pushed the gun against the small of her back.
She’d been around guns before—rifles, mostly. She knew how to shoot. But she had never, ever had a muzzle pressed to her, and the sensation was nearly as suffocating as Kincaid’s earlier torture session.
Would he keep it there once they were in? Her mind raced ahead—she would have to shove it aside long enough to escape when all hell broke loose—and probably shove him, too, to make sure he wouldn’t get a shot off at one of the men instead—and above all she couldn’t let anyone get out because then her parents—
“I said, is that understood?”
“Yes!” she squeaked. “Yes. It is.”
“Good. Now let us in. Quietly.”
She surreptitiously moved her right hand to her side, within striking distance of the gun, and turned the handle with her left. Crawford and Shaw slipped through the opening with the lithe speed of dancers, Kincaid pushing her in after them, fingers clamped on her shoulder .
They were met by a pitch-black room and heavy silence. One of the women—Emily couldn’t see which—shut the door behind them.
“No lights,” Crawford whispered, flicking the switch up and down.
“Conjure some up,” Kincaid said. “Focused beams so it blinds him, not us.”
Illumination shot out from both women’s palms—as bright as headlights. Their beams swept across the room, quickly enough to catch anyone skittering around to avoid detection, but they revealed nothing. The room appeared empty.
She practically vibrated with wild hope. Hartgrave had understood. He’d done something to the chandelier; he’d hidden himself, and Bernie and Willi besides. She wasn’t outnumbered three to one anymore, and she had lured the most dangerous members of the Organization to the one place where (she prayed) their advantages would not weigh so heavily against less-powerful opponents.
One of the hardest parts about doing magic was gathering enough of it to you. Wasn’t that what Willi had said? Mightn’t this room, with its abundant magic, even the playing field at least a little?
Heaven help them all if it had the opposite effect.
Shaw stomped back to them, no longer trying to be quiet. “So? Do you see him?”
Kincaid, keeping his voice down, said, “Did you put a barrier around the room as I told you to do? ”
“I did,” Crawford said. She sounded tense. “Sir, there’s something off about this room—it’s like we’re swimming in magic.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Kincaid said. “Never mind that right now.”
“Well—if he really is in here, he’s not getting out,” Crawford said.
“If.” Shaw bared her teeth. The spillover from her partner’s beams transformed her face into a patchwork of harsh light and shadow. “Let me interrogate her. Let’s find out where he really is.”
Emily’s empty stomach churned, despite the imminent help. The earlier example of Organization interrogation had been bad enough.
“It’s my turn, and I’ll get something useful, you know I will,” Shaw added, reaching for her right thigh. She came away with a hunting knife, sleek lines spectacularly lit up by her spell. “Nothing gets people to spill their guts like actual gut-spilling.”
Emily flinched so violently that her head hit Kincaid’s shoulder, her back arched against his gun.
“I’ve every confidence in your abilities,” he said to Shaw. Emily couldn’t look away from the blade. “However,” he added—Shaw made a noise of protest—“perhaps you could first check this room with a bit more care?”
“Vicious fuckwit,” Crawford added to Shaw, stalking off to the beds.
Shaw, weapon still in hand, went with bad grace in the other direction, leaving Emily and Kincaid alone by the door .
This was more like it.
Any moment now, Hartgrave and Willi and maybe even Bernie (though she hoped not Bernie) would jump through the magic giving the impression of an abandoned room, startling Kincaid and allowing her to take him off guard.
Any moment now.
Any ... moment ...
Shaw walked the perimeter, lighting up corners, prodding the walls. Crawford, finished with the living area, inspected the bathroom. Between the two of them, they’d gone completely around the room. Hard to tell in the oppressive near-darkness, but it didn’t appear smaller the way it had when Hartgrave tried to fool her into going away, those many weeks ago.
No. No, no, no, he had to be in the room, had to. The lights were off. Surely that meant something.
But as Crawford and Shaw finished their search, as she was once more about to be surrounded, she remembered Hartgrave had turned on the lights with a wave of his hand every morning. They weren’t electric. They were magic. And magic spells wore off.
She swallowed, throat closing in on her. Hartgrave wasn’t here. He had to have seen Kincaid, Crawford and Shaw on his map, had to have guessed they’d brought her with them, and he’d chosen to leave.
What would they do to her? More importantly, what would they do to her parents?
The gun shifted against the small of her back as Kincaid let out a frustrated breath. “Well? ”
“It’s his quarters,” Crawford said. Emily wondered how she could tell. The books? The clothing? His aftershave on the sink?
The stab of jealousy that came with these thoughts was so patently ridiculous considering the circumstances that she laughed. It sounded like a sob.
“The point is, he’s scarpered.” Shaw tapped the flat of the blade against her thigh in a staccato beat. “Give me a go—come on.”
Emily’s knees buckled. Only Kincaid’s hand on her shoulder kept her upright.
“No,” he said. “As a source of information, she’s past her usefulness.”
Before Shaw could protest, Crawford did. “You mean to let him get away? Hasn’t it occurred to you that she could be lying about his tracking system to allow him to do just that?”
“Naturally. But I don’t think he would have run, had he been here.”
Crawford looked as if she wanted to argue this point, but Kincaid pressed on. “I admit that catching him unawares was the best strategy, but I do have a substitute. While you searched for Dr. Daggett earlier, I reached an accommodating administrative assistant here who gave me Alexander’s mobile number.”
Shaw laughed. “What’s your plan, ring him up and say, ‘Hallo old boy, awfully sugar-and-spice to hear your voice again—why don’t we schedule lunch tomorrow with your execution for afters?’”
“No, Verity,” he said a touch impatiently, “because if he’s dead, he cannot replace the tracking system. Besides, I rather had in mind, ‘Give yourself up if you don’t want your lover to suffer for your misdeeds.’”
Crawford fell back a step. “You must be joking. Her?”
The insult cut through Emily’s haze of despair. She opened her mouth automatically to say—well, something—but Kincaid beat her to it.
“You didn’t see his face when he realized too late that I had her. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s right now trying to break into headquarters in a misguided attempt at rescue.”
Emily sighed. If only she could believe that.
“Let’s go.” Kincaid’s painful grip on her shoulder eased, and he stopped pressing the gun to her back. “Aim for—”
The lights snapped on, blindingly bright.
Before she could react or even see, Kincaid gave an earsplitting yelp. The sound traveled—he was moving. She blinked rapidly and enough vision returned for her to see him forcibly propelled across the room.
His lieutenants, swatted backward a different direction, nearly plowed into the stone table. Shaw grabbed Crawford, knife clattering to the floor, and jerked them out of the way a second before impact.
The man responsible for this feat teleported directly in front of Emily from wherever in the room he’d been concealed, long black coat billowing around him.
Holy crap, she was glad her doubts had been wrong.
Hartgrave made a swooping motion. Dozens, hundreds of stone blocks tore loose from the floor, ceiling and walls, careening like an avalanche toward their foes. She gasped. How was that possible ?
Crawford and Shaw, both flat on their back, cast shields to save themselves—stones piling over their protective dome. But Kincaid stood amid the maelstrom with his arms crossed, working no counterspells.
“It’s an illusion,” he called out. “He couldn’t manage these stones if they were real.”
An instant later, a melon-sized chunk struck him in the chest and knocked him sprawling.
“Managed that one,” Hartgrave snarled. Then he leaned in and whispered: “Destroy their barrier so we can teleport. We have to get out right now.”
“No! We can’t leave—we have to fight!”
“Daggett, this is not the time to prove you’re a sodding hero .”
“No, no , they know where my parents live and”—her throat felt too small; she had to choke the rest out—“and they’ve threatened to kill them.”
He gaped at her.
“We can’t let any of them get out,” she whispered, knowing full well what that meant. What she and Hartgrave would have to do.
He nodded, expression steel hard, and raised his hands again. The illusory rubble vanished. The room snapped back to its original intact state. Crawford and Shaw dismantled their shields, leapt to their feet and collided with air—Hartgrave had obviously cast a replacement to hold them at bay.
A similar spell trapped Kincaid where he stood, the real stone pinballing around the interior, pummeling him. It split into two chunks, then four. Enough to keep him off-balance, preventing effective spellcasting, but his layer of magical armor protected him from real harm—and it was just a matter of time before he broke free.
Same for the women. As soon as all three wizards could attack at once, it would be over.
Emily stepped closer to Hartgrave, pulse pounding. “I have to nullify their armor. It’s the only way.”
“Don’t get anywhere near them,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s too dangerous. I’ve got this.”
There was no way he could beat them alone. Not even with Bernie and Willi helping—she suspected they already were, hidden wherever Hartgrave had been.
Kincaid caught one of the stone fragments and reduced it to gravel in the space of a second.
“I have to do this,” she said. “Now. With or without your help.”
“All right,” Hartgrave ground out. “All right. Crawford first when I give the signal. At all costs, stay away from Kincaid until we get that gun.”
She tried to catch her breath—the air seemed wholly insufficient for lungs paralyzed by fear—and heard him mutter, “Versuch ihm die Waffe abzunehmen. ” He still wore his small cell-phone earpiece. More evidence that Willi, at least, was in the room.
“Now ,” Hartgrave said.
Crawford and Shaw burst through the magic holding them. Both of them—she couldn’t handle both at once. But the next moment, a spell Shaw fired at Hartgrave ricocheted back, prompting a string of curses. He’d trapped her again .
Emily lurched toward Crawford, legs wobbling, hands shaking, seconds away from a confrontation. Then the wizard shimmered and disappeared.
Emily had three heartbeats’ worth of gut-clenching fear that Crawford had somehow teleported out of the room and straight onto her parents’ farm. But only three heartbeats, because Crawford reemerged directly behind her, hooked a sleeved arm around her throat and dragged up so sharply her feet left the floor. She gagged and struggled, once again unable to get enough air.
“It’s over, Alex,” Crawford shouted at Hartgrave, who couldn’t intervene without leaving either Shaw or Kincaid unguarded. “Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.”
“Gwen, you know this is wrong,” he yelled back. “Everything about him is wrong.”
Crawford pressed harder. Emily, desperate for oxygen, toed off her shoes and tried to work her left sock off with her other foot.
“Gwen —”
“You betrayed us,” the wizard said. “You betrayed me .”
Emily got the sock past her heel and rammed bare skin into Crawford’s shin. Perhaps it was more surprise than pain, since the anti-magic had only an instant to bite at the wizard’s protective armor, but Crawford’s choking grip loosened. With an almighty wrench, Emily hit the floor, spun around and grabbed at the woman’s jaw with both hands.
Minor irritation, like bug bites, for a second or two. Then pain, sharp and hot and dreadful .
Crawford jerked violently to try to free herself, screaming with hardly a pause for breath. Emily screamed too because oh shit it hurt.
She thought of her parents and held on. Breaking through Crawford’s protection wasn’t enough—she had to keep the wizard from immediately recasting it. She had to hold on until Hartgrave could intervene.
The agony stopped as suddenly as someone flipping a switch. Except she hadn’t let go. And Crawford still screamed.
Emily backed away, hands shaking, everything shaking, and bumped into Hartgrave. He looked as shocked as she felt.
“The magic in her aura is gone,” he said in a tense whisper, still holding off the others. “I think you’ve drained it all.”
Crawford collapsed onto the floor, inhalations ragged and exhalations doubling as moans. She looked worse than Hartgrave after the battle beside the highway.
Emily wanted to avert her eyes but couldn’t. Good God, she’d inflicted that agony. She had.
“Tell me you’re all right,” Hartgrave demanded. “Oh fuck , this is all my fault, all of it—”
“Not your fault.” She pulled her socks fully off with trembling fingers and pushed her sleeves up to her elbows. “I’m—I’m okay.”
He nodded, expression grim, and advanced on the injured woman.
Oh, no.
With no way to reliably imprison magic-users, he had to kill all three wizards to keep her parents alive. She’d known it would come to this when she decided to fight. She hadn’t realized just how ghastly it would feel in the moment.
She didn’t want him to be a killer. She didn’t want to be an accessory—to be the reason.
But she had no choice. She turned and ran toward Shaw, trying to think only of what would happen if she didn’t succeed. Trying to rouse anger instead of despair.
Shaw bellowed, “Alex, God damn you, no ,” and broke through his spell a moment later. The horror on her face suggested the window to intervene had already closed. Emily faltered.
That was when Shaw struck, closing the distance between them with a flying kick to the stomach.
A shout—Hartgrave’s—rang in Emily’s ears as she hit the floor, knocked breathless. His spell whizzed overhead and bounced Shaw off the nearest wall, but her armor protected her.
Rolling to her side in an attempt to get up, Emily caught sight of Kincaid. He’d seized the last stone.
As he pulverized it, she saw his gun rise from his holster and fly to the ceiling. Through the ceiling.
Kincaid looked up. Without even bending his knees, he launched himself after it.
The ceiling let him pass. Like it was an illusion.
Oh, God.
Shouts, the hiss of spells, the sound of trouble. Bernie and Willi tumbled through, hitting the floor fifteen feet below.