You greedy asshole. “And what did Diatheke require from you in return for that easy money?”
He chuckled. “Not much. I was supposed to tell them if she made sudden large deposits.”
Benedict wanted to know if Sigourney started doing jobs on her own.
“And of course, now they called me to get Runa out here.”
“What do they want with Runa?”
He shrugged. “Hell if I know. Who cares about Runa, anyway? Let’s talk about you.”
Let’s not. “Do you know who killed Sigourney?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t know, don’t wanna know, don’t need to know. She must have pissed off some powerful people and it ain’t my business.”
The more we talked, the more the polish of education wore off. He sounded more Texas country with every word. I needed to wrap this up, or he would chase after me, and Alessandro would shoot him. He deserved it, but I didn’t want to murder anyone we didn’t have to kill. Besides, there were better ways to punish.
“Do you know what happened to Halle?”
“Burned up with her momma.”
“Are we done?” I asked Alessandro.
“Ask him who his contact was at Diatheke.”
“Who did you talk to at Diatheke?” I asked.
“Some lady named Jocelyn.”
“I’m done,” Alessandro said.
I yanked my magic back. Moody gasped, throwing himself back against his chair, his spine rigid, his eyes glassy.
I got up, turning around. Alessandro had this cold look in his eyes, as if Moody wasn’t a human, but some centipede that had slithered out of the drain and needed to be stepped on.
“We have to go,” I told him.
He didn’t move. “Wait for me in the front office. I’ll catch up with you.”
“Alessandro, please.”
He sighed and turned to the door. “If that’s what you want.”
The receptionist waved at us as we passed her. “Y’all drive safe now.”
We were out of the hallway and going down the stairs when I heard the scream.
Alessandro paused midway on the stairs.
“He won’t come after us,” I told him.
“I wasn’t worried. What did you do to him?”
“He’s been to Sigourney’s home. He’s met her children. She invited him to holiday parties. The entire time he was spying on her. And after she died, he tried to lure her daughter here knowing that nothing good would come from it. I can remove my magic gently or I can do it the way I did it to Moody. I’m told it feels like the love of your life has died in front of you. I wanted him to feel grief. It’s all he can feel right now, and it will take him a long time to heal.”
“So, he’s suffering?”
“Yes.”
Alessandro gave me a narrow smile. Just a hint of fangs. “I like your way better.”
We exited the stairs into the lobby hallway and kept walking. This was too easy. Why get us all the way out here and not do anything about it? Maybe once they realized that Runa hadn’t shown up, they dropped the whole thing and went to the warehouse to get her.
“We could be cutting Moody apart with a bone saw right now, and Diatheke wouldn’t give a crap, would they?”
Alessandro shook his head. “Sigourney’s dead. They have no further use for him. He’s a loose end. We didn’t cut it, but they will.”
“Who’s Jocelyn?” I asked.
“A psionic. Upper-range Significant. Experienced. Strong. Dangerous.”
We rounded the corner. A person stood in front of glass doors, blocking our escape. Tall, wrapped in a black coat, deep hood hiding his face. More a dark shadow than a human, a smudge of night in the lobby flooded with electric light.
Hello.
The hooded figure thrust its hands to the sides, palms up. The mage pose. A knot of black smoke burst into life above him and surged open, spiraling out like a blossoming flower, a deep indigo darkness shot through with blue lightning at its center.
A summoning portal.
Alessandro raised his arms, a gun in each hand, and fired.
Before the first shot rang out, the portal flared with blinding white and a swarm of flying creatures tore out of it. Bright psychotic green splashed with blotches of yellow and crimson, they swirled in front of the summoner, hiding him from view, each beast the size of a turkey vulture and shaped like a bloated tick with beetle wings and six long segmented legs. The swarm churned, chaotic, contracting and expanding like a flock of monstrous birds, the creatures zipping back and forth.
I pulled my Beretta out and fired into the mass of whiplike tails and big mouths lined with serrated teeth. The gun spat thunder and I counted the shots.
One, two, three . . .
A few bodies dropped, leaking nacre-colored ichor, but more kept coming, spilling out of the portal. This was beyond any summoner Prime on record without a complex, House-grade arcane circle to help them. There was no circle under the summoner’s feet.
Four, five . . .
They kept coming and coming. Too many. We had to get out of the lobby.
We backed up in unison, moving toward the stairs.
Six. Seven.
The swarm built on itself, so big it filled the lobby like a storm cloud come to life.
In a single smooth move, Alessandro lowered his arms, letting the two guns clatter to the floor, and raised them again without a pause, a new firearm in each hand. He squeezed the triggers, and bullets punched into the beasts. How?
Metal clanged behind me, the exit door swinging open. Pressure smashed into my mind, searing hot, trying to crush my will. I lunged to the side to cover Alessandro’s back and snapped my wings open, taking the brunt of the mental attack on my feathers.
The pressure battered my defenses. A psionic. At least a Significant, maybe higher.
Alessandro whipped around, looked over my shoulder, and fired a rapid burst down the hallway. Boom, boom, boom.
“Stay behind me,” I ground out.
If I turned around, I’d have to engage the psionic full-on. Once two mental mages locked in combat on a mental plane, there was no moving. I couldn’t fight a mental duel with flying scorpion ticks trying to rip us apart.
The first wave of creatures dived at us, screeching. Alessandro shot, quick, barely bothering to aim, the steady gunfire mixing with the shrieks of the summoned beasts into a deafening cacophony. The scorpion ticks rained on the floor. Every bullet he sent hit and killed a target.
A beast dove at me, flying low. I raised my gun and fired. The creature crashed to the floor by my feet, splitting open. Ichor spilled onto the polished floor. An acrid, salty stench washed over me. I gagged.
The pressure turned into pain, the dull battering ram of the psionic’s magic splitting into sharp spikes trying to rend my defenses. Claws tore at my side, slicing across my thigh in an ice-cold burn. I fired to the side on instinct, without turning to look. A shriek answered and died.
The swarm flailed around us. I couldn’t even see the walls. Claws cut my left arm, then my right.
Alessandro dropped the guns. A machete appeared in his right hand.
“Elevators!” he barked.
I had to save my bullets. I thrust the gun into its holster and pulled my gladius out. We sliced at the swarm, carving a way through it. Alessandro cut a path ahead of me, slicing, chopping, cutting in a controlled frenzy. A step. Another step. The battering ram of the psionic’s magic hammered against my will. If my defenses broke, the psionic would flood my mind with fear, rage, or any of the other primal emotions, smothering all conscious thought.
I stumbled after Alessandro, hacking with my gladius on pure instinct, almost collided with the wall, and frantically pushed the call button.
A creature smacked into the wall on my right. Ichor splattered my face. Oh, gross. I pushed the button again. Come on. Come on!
The elevator chimed. The doors took forever to open.
“Get in!” Alessandro shouted and hurled his gun into the swarm.
I dove in, grabbed his jacket, and pulled him back into the elevator. A scorpion tick thrust in behind him, trying to claw at Alessandro’s arms with its segmented legs. Alessandro chopped at it with the machete. The beast screeched, ichor and severed legs flying everywhere. I punched the panel, lighting up all floors, and mashed the close doors button.
The doors started closing, ever so slowly, the swarm surging toward us like a tsunami through a shrinking gap.
Close, close, close!
The doors shut. The cabin slid up. The pressure on my mind vanished and I exhaled.
Alessandro raised his hands, flexing his fingers. I ejected the magazine out of my Beretta and slid the full one in. I still had eight bullets left, but I might need fifteen bullets fast.
The digital display counted off the floors: 2, 3, 4 . . . I had pressed all of them. The elevator should have stopped.
“They’re taking us to the roof,” I guessed. On the roof there would be nowhere to hide.
“Yes.” His face was grim. “Stay close to me.”
“What is your Antistasi range?”
“Not far,” he said.
When he’d used it on me, he’d been within touching distance. During the trials, when he was defending himself, he was about fifteen feet away. That was probably the extent of his range. He would have to get close to either mage to negate their magic, and neither the summoner nor the psionic would let him do that.