Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) (14 page)

“Get up,” Lewis snapped. “Get to your people and try and stop the aftershocks.”

Neville stumbled out.

“Weather will be affected.” Samuel went after him.

“I need more information.” Zhou cut around them, fitter and more motivated.

William, chief healer, was already out the door.

“This is the Group of 5.” Lewis stared at Kora. “Find the four we know and bring them in. Whatever it takes. It has to be a priority. At the same time, send help to Izmir. Coordinate with Fay.”

“Pardon?” Kora jerked back as if he’d slapped her.

“You remember Fay Olwen?” Sarcasm, harsh and brutal as Lewis’s control of his temper slipped.

“Of course.”

“She lives in Cyprus. She’s close to Izmir and she has her own magic plus the support of the weres. Work with them.”

“Good idea.” A gray-haired woman who’d been seated one chair down on Lewis’s right bounced up. “The closer we keep Fay, the stronger we keep the Collegium.”

“It was her father who as president allowed the demon in,” someone argued.

“And it was Fay who banished it. Fay who has always been stronger than any of us.” Did the older woman’s gaze linger on Kora? “And it is Fay who is mated to the weres’ new Suzerain.”

“I still don’t know what that means. Suzerain? Pah,” her opponent muttered. But he was obviously already giving up. “We never worked with the weres in the past.”

Weres were shifters, people who changed into an animal form. They and the Collegium generally ignored each other since weres couldn’t be directly affected by magic—something that disconcerted mages who were used to controlling their world via magic.

“Some of us did,” Kora said. “Guardians and weres have a history of teaming up. Although not as personally as Fay. If you’ll excuse me?” She walked out.

“Meeting adjourned. Move, people!” Lewis commanded. “If you can’t help with the immediate problems of earthquake and terrorism, look for patterns. I want to know about trouble before the Group of 5 bring it to our door. They practice misdirection. I want to know what they’re planning, what they hope to achieve, and how we can stop them.”

He gathered up Gina, pulling her to her feet and out with him. She had to concentrate to keep pace with his quick return to his office. “One of these could be the Group’s real objective or they could be distracting us for a hit somewhere else. Do you have any feel for…?”

She put a hand on his arm, halting him just inside his inner office. “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t have any inkling of this. I thought…I thought they’d concentrated on you and me.”

“Damn.” He reached for a remote and switched on a television high on the wall.

The traditional news media were streaming coverage by journalists on the ground, but mostly, images private citizens had shared on social media. The earthquake in Izmir had caused immense damage. Houses and apartment blocks were tumbled, jagged nightmares. Fire licked among the ruins. Faces were distorted in shock and terror.

“Good God.” English words among the torrent of images. The television news focused on one video, streaming live. How the news crew managed to be on the scene and with a satellite connection was one of those mysteries of a connected world. But someone held a high quality camera steady on the fifth story window of a broken building. Flames crawled over the building, engulfing it. But in the window…

“Lewis!” Gina would have clutched his arm, but he was gone.

On screen, in the fifth floor glassless window, a little girl wailed in silent terror. The orange glow of fire lit the room behind her. She clutched a doll with black curls like her own.

And then, the girl was gone.

Had Gina seen, just for a fleeting instant, a black-suited arm with an immaculate white cuff wrap around the girl? She couldn’t be sure for the smoke that obscured the window. But the smoke cleared for a moment, and the little girl was gone.

The camera shook, then steadied, focusing on the window before the image fell away, searching the building and down to street level.

“She’s safe,” Lewis said. “The girl recognized a young man, her father, and ran to him in the street. No one noticed me.”

“They’ll notice you, now.” Gina wiped at the soot on his cheek and inhaled the dust and smoke smell of him.

The door to his inner office clicked closed as Lewis shut out likely visitors. “I’ll shower and change.” He put a hand either side of her waist and they were in his apartment. Translocation was that easy for him. “People would expect me to have a change of clothes in the office.”

Gina ignored the change of scene. What mattered was the man in front of her. “Thank you for saving the girl.”

“I can’t save everyone.”

She uncurled his left fist and put the palm of his hand against her face. “Thank you for trying.” He looked at her bleakly, unconvinced. She understood. He would burn himself out, not just his magic, but himself, trying to save the world. It would be a heart-aching loss. She kissed his unyielding mouth. “Shower.”

He strode off to the bathroom and she walked to the window of his apartment to look out at the city. Not that she saw the city. Her mind replayed those moments in his office. The sight of the child’s terrified face, Lewis’s absence and return, and her own emotions in between. Her heart had ripped in those few seconds of his absence. She’d worried for him.

The shower turned off. Lewis returned, looking tough and ready for a fight in his guardian gear. The khaki cotton shirt delineated the breadth of his shoulders and chest.

“Your hair’s wet,” she said.

“It’ll dry.”

She crossed to him and put a hand up to touch his hair, darker blond with the water that glistened on it. “May I?”

“Yes.” He looked into her eyes. He could have been a million miles from her, and yet, he’d brought her with him to his apartment and now he bent his head to her touch.

A whisper of her house witchery magic dried his hair.

An instant later, Lewis translocated them back to his office. “Thank you.” He took his hands from her waist.

She exhaled unsteadily. “I guess I’ll see if Zhou can use my help tracking the Group of 5 through the dark web.”

Gina knew she was a skilled hacker, but working with Zhou’s forecasting mages was a revelation. They had minds that spun out in a thousand unconventional ways. They asked what if, but then they answered that question uniquely before calculating odds to maybe a hundred different answers.

She also realized that Zhou had accepted her offer of assistance for reasons other than her hacking skills and experience of the Group of 5. He wanted to learn more about her, Lewis’s supposed girlfriend. At least he and his team were subtle about it. They observed her rather than outright questioned her about herself, Lewis and their relationship.

What relationship? It was too complicated. Analytically, she knew Lewis was a huge relationship risk. His focus would be out there, whether in galaxies opened to him by the Deeper Path or out trying to save people.

If she acquired clarity of sight and learned the Deeper Path, in theory, she could go with him. But in practice…she wasn’t sure she had the detachment to burn through her magic. It hadn’t been one catastrophic event—the North West Passage ice storm—that had torn away Lewis’s magic. He’d eroded his ties to Earth and those around him for years.

Definitely not a good relationship risk. And yet…

“Has anyone gotten even a tingle as to this unidentified fifth member of the group?” Zhou paced a circuit around the Forecasters’ Zone.

The Zone was a mix of multiple screens with complex news feeds, computers, desks, lounging areas, food areas and even an exercise bike for people who needed to move to think. People talked or slipped on noise-cancelling headphones.

Gina had never considered forecasting a creative exercise, but evidently it shared elements of an art. Science and art. The mages were constantly testing each other’s conclusions—and hers.

She’d long ago kicked off her high heels. Now she curled her legs under her in the ergonomic chair. It didn’t help her posture, but then, nothing would. She was tired. Dinner had been pizza, hours past. “Nothing,” she echoed everyone else’s response to Zhou’s demand.

The fifth member of the Group of 5 was remarkably hidden.

The guardians had moved fast, utilizing portals to travel swiftly to the other four group members’ various locations, and securing them simultaneously. The four hadn’t had time to warn the fifth of their apprehension, but it seemed that they also couldn’t share anything useful as to the fifth group member’s identity. And they would have if they could have.

Zhou and Kora’s teams were working together to interrogate the four suspects. None of the suspects had magic themselves, so they were unable to prevent truth spells extracting everything they knew from them.

The information was both revealing and impenetrable.

It revealed the Group of 5’s ambition and lack of conscience. They could detail plans to destabilize critical ventures around the world and capitalize on the failure of those projects to make obscene profits themselves.

But the four seemed to have little understanding of how each of their individual targets fitted together. Their fifth member—whom they only knew by a title, Believer—had pointed out targets to them, or approved or disapproved targets they suggested, but as to Believer’s identity…

“Someone has to know who the bastard is,” Zhou howled.

The whole room was silenced.

Gina rolled her neck. Too many hours at the computer, too much tension.

Strong hands curved over her shoulders and pressed thumbs deep along the spinal column at her neck. She groaned at how good it felt, and didn’t question that unseeing, guided only by touch and the faintest trace of scent, she knew it was Lewis who kneaded her knotted muscles.

“Midnight. Time to go home while Zhou calls in the second shift,” Lewis said.

“We haven’t found the fifth group member,” Gina mumbled.

“So I heard. Zhou, there is one person who knows Believer’s identity.”

Gina stopped fishing for her shoes with her toes and looked at Lewis. “Who?”

“Believer, him- or herself,” Zhou answered. “I have people dowsing, I have genealogists looking for patterns within families whose magic has faded, I have my people trying everything. This person is not a ghost. Somewhere, they exist.”

“And they know we’re hunting them,” Lewis said. “I want you to be alert for distractions. This person sacrificed the other four members of the group without a thought. In fact, they were probably recruited to act as a skin that could be shed while this snake wriggles away.”

“Ugh.” Gina got her shoes on and stood. Judging by the neck rub, Lewis was still pretending she was his girlfriend. She was tired, cold and disheartened and only too content to use the excuse to lean into his strength.

He put an arm around her and said a general, “Goodnight.”

A chorus of farewells followed them from the Zone.

“Zhou’s Zone. It’s a bit of a giggle,” Gina whispered as they waited for the elevator.

“You’re tired.”

“Tired to the point of inanity,” she agreed.

He held her more firmly.

What could be done for the earthquake survivors of Izmir was being done. The Collegium had a recognized rescue crew they sent out in emergencies like these. Medical and disaster training gave them a reason mundanes could accept for their presence on site. Once there, the mages would discreetly use their magic to stabilize buildings, search for survivors and heal.

In this instance, the rescue crew was bolstered with guardians and they’d be alert for any further action by the one remaining Group of 5 member at large.

“Why does he or she call themselves Believer?” Gina asked as the elevator carried her and Lewis down to the foyer. She didn’t expect an answer and she didn’t get one.

The night was warm and smoggy, the city restless despite the late hour.

“I can walk you to the portal if you want to go home,” Lewis offered.

She shook her head. She hadn’t considered sleeping arrangements, but she couldn’t leave the Collegium before Believer was identified. “Do you mind if I sleep on your sofa?”

“We’ll manage something better than that.”

Her hormones gave a little skip, but there was no sensual promise in his expression. Gina went back to watching the street. “Is Kora still assigning guardian bodyguards to you.”

“No.” A beat. “But chances are someone is watching us.”

His apartment was as sterile and dull as always. He put his hands on her waist.

She had an instant to wonder if he intended seduction at such a time, and if she was awake enough to appreciate the experience, and then, they were inside her home on Cape Cod.

“I’ll collect you at six thirty in the morning.”

She lowered her hands, raised to rest on his shoulders. “Okay. Um, thanks?”

“I thought you’d sleep easier here.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.”

He vanished.

“Oh damn.” She looked around her beautiful, empty kitchen. She’d wanted to sleep with Lewis.

The steps up to her room were steep and dispiriting.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
She’d only gone and fallen in love with the president of the Collegium and the man most likely to leave this galaxy.