My Immortal Assassin (17 page)

CHAPTER 21

T
he mage came off the car with a start when Durian undampened them and crossed the street with Gray at his side. She, of course, had been magnificent. Focused. Calm. Intent on their goal. With no reason to worry she’d need assistance, he’d been able to concentrate on keeping their magic ramped down to a point too low for all but a rare gifted few to sense their presence. He and Gray worked well together.

The magic that kept the mage hidden in shadows that were darker and quieter than normal floated around the car like smoke. A ripple of awareness of the mage slid down his back. A few more steps and they were close enough to identify the mage.

Gray’s disappointment that it wasn’t Christophe was palpable.

Nor was it Rasmus Kessler.

Leonidas.

How disappointing, and for any number of reasons. Still in the street, he and Gray came to a stop, close enough for Durian to see the mage’s eyes go wide. Leonidas didn’t quite manage to suppress his leap of fear. The mage knew what Durian was, after all. There weren’t many reasons for an assassin to appear as if from nowhere.

“Shall we have that coffee now, Leonidas?”

Leonidas muttered something under his breath that moved through Durian like a whisper of fell air across his soul. Within seconds, the magehelds he and Gray had left alone loped toward them, coming from both ends of the street. Too little. Too late. In any event, they weren’t moving fast enough to have been ordered to attack.

Never trust a mage.

Durian kept his magic at the ready. Leonidas frowned, realizing, Durian supposed, that not all of his magehelds had responded to his summons.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Durian said. “Well. I’d invite you in.” He tilted his head in the direction of the house. “But I’m afraid we have some work to do before we have guests again.”

“Where are the rest?” The mage gestured toward the opposite side of the street where his other magehelds had been standing watch. The two magehelds who had stayed with him took up positions at the trunk and hood of his car, a placement more defensive than threatening.

Durian slung an arm around Gray’s shoulders but twisted his upper body to look behind him. When he looked back, Leonidas was watching Gray. Intently watching. Durian kept his arm around her and said in a deliberately easy tone, “The ones you sent inside will not return. The others are… not currently at your command. Give them a few minutes to recover.”

“Thank you.” He inclined his head. “It would have been a pity to lose them.” Leonidas straightened the sleeves of his double-breasted suit jacket. A pair of faceted square-cut rubies glittered from his cuffs. Absolutely perfectly made suit. His trousers fell with exactly the right drape.

“Custom or bespoke?”

The mage looked insulted. “Made to my precise measurements, fiend.” He didn’t put a mage’s usual insulting tone behind his words. “I use a tailor in London. Bond Street.” The magehelds he’d called in reached him, but he lifted a hand. The fiends stopped. They arranged themselves on the sidewalk near the trunk of the car. Not so close that they represented a danger, but not so far that they would not be of assistance. Durian did not feel more magic from the mage.

“I prefer the Italian style,” Durian said.

“Is that so?”

He did not begrudge the mage his superior smile. He still had on the dark sweat pants and shirt he wore for training with Gray. “Perhaps you’ve changed my mind,” Durian said. “I don’t suppose you’d give me your tailor’s name?” Gray jabbed him in the side with a sharp elbow. He covered his reaction by drawing her closer to him and smiling.

“No.”

“He tried to kill us. Is there some reason you’re making nice?”

“Kill you?” Leonidas looked offended. “Hardly.”

“My dearest love,” he said. “That suit was made by someone who knows his way around a pair of scissors. I had to ask.”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s hot for your clothes, mage. Don’t you find that a little disturbing between enemies?”

Leonidas’s attention moved from Durian to Gray and back. “Perhaps I am not your enemy.”

Gray’s look of astonished disbelief made Durian smile. “You attacked us. I think that qualifies us as enemies.”

The mage studied Gray for much longer than was polite. He, too, stood in the street, though he kept his back to the car. The chances of a fight in the street were low but not non-existent. This was not a neighborhood where one could get away with conversations that disturbed people in their rest, and the kind of magic Leonidas was using to mask their presence only went so far. They kept their voices deliberately low.

“I find,” the mage said, “that some enemies are more worthy than certain allies.” He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket. When Gray went on point, he slowly extracted a pack of rolling papers at the same time he gave Durian a questioning look.

He shrugged.

“Circumstances change,” Leonidas said. “I have been alive long enough to watch allies become enemies and enemies become one’s closest allies.” With the same deliberation, he took a small paper packet from an outside pocket which he unfolded. He proceeded to roll himself a cigarette from the substance inside. From the color and texture, the contents were likely copa-laced tobacco. Mages used the drug when they were magically exhausted or when they needed to call more magic than they comfortably possessed. Leonidas did not have the latter problem.

The mage’s dose of the drug looked to be too small to give him much of a boost, but then Leonidas would be well aware of the dangers. For his kind, copa was addictive, and addiction led, inevitably, to magical burnout. When he was done rolling his cigarette with practiced hands he replaced everything and took out a square silver lighter. “The ones inside were not mine.”

“No?” He didn’t like the way the mage continued to stare at Gray over the top of his copa cigarette.

“No.” The lighter flared. The paper caught and hissed as the mage inhaled. A moment later, the scent of some rich blend of copa-infused tobacco wafted into the air around them. His hands shook as he inhaled and returned his lighter to his pocket.

“If not you,” Durian said, “then who?”

“Forgive me,” Leonidas said to Gray. “Do I know you?”

Durian tensed. Leonidas was one of the older mages. Possibly the oldest of Durian’s acquaintance. He was, among the magekind, one of the few whose opinion had any effect on the more powerful mages. He distrusted and disliked his interest in Gray. “I doubt it.”

At the same time, Gray said, “Sure. You were hitting on me at Nordstrom.”

“That isn’t it.” He took a step forward, his free hand extended with the obvious intent of taking her chin between his fingers.

Durian grabbed the mage’s wrist in a motion too fast for a human to track. Gray recoiled. One of Leonidas’s magehelds growled and took a step into the street. The mage shook his head, and the mageheld backed away. Durian locked gazes with the mage, his magic banked but ready should Leonidas strike or order his magehelds to do so.

“Try to touch me again, mage,” Gray said, “and you’ll lose the hand.”

Leonidas spread the fingers of the arm Durian gripped, a response meant to indicate he intended no harm. If Leonidas were anything but a mage, Durian might even believe it. “The old days are gone, Durian,” he said in a soft voice. “When humans worshiped at your temples and our women came to you willingly.”

“Long gone,” he agreed. “We have adapted.”

“Yes.” He looked at Gray. “Yes, you have.”

“If the other magehelds weren’t yours,” Durian said, “who sent them?”

Leonidas took a long drag on his cigarette and didn’t answer until he’d exhaled the smoke. “If we’re enemies after all, of what benefit is it to me if you know the answer?”

Durian kept Gray close. “The benefit? I won’t need to assume it was you who attacked here, despite your presence here. Nikodemus, I’m sure you understand, won’t be pleased if I tell him you tried to kill us.” He allowed his private outrage to show in his voice. “Nor will he appreciate what was done to those magehelds. If it was not you, then I assure you it’s to your benefit that Nikodemus know that.”

“That was an abomination, fiend.” The set of his mouth hardened. “Abomination.” He cocked his chin in Gray’s direction. “As bad or worse than what Christophe did to her.”

“Agreed.”

He took another drag, holding his breath for a moment before he exhaled. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“Yet here you stand. Smoking copa to regain your strength.”

Leonidas stared at his hand-rolled as if he didn’t know what it was. “Not for that,” he said in a low voice. “That is an unwise use of the drug. By the time I arrived, it was done. There was nothing I could do.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “I stayed behind to make sure none of them escaped to the general population.” He shivered and reached up to rub the outside of his arms. His cigarette glowed between his index and second fingers. “He destroyed their minds.”

“Who?”

“I don’t want to imagine what could happen if even one of them had gotten free.”

“Careful,” Gray said. “Next you’ll be agreeing fiends are people, too.”

The Spartan frowned. “I presume, Durian, that none of them did survive.”

“No.”

“Thank the gods in heaven for that.” Tension bled out of his shoulders. “I’ve heard rumors about dit Menart,” the mage said. He glanced over his shoulder at his magehelds and lowered his voice. “Unpleasant ones. Are they true?”

“Most rumors about the magekind are unpleasant.” Durian returned his steady look.

Leonidas flushed and avoided looking at Gray. “That he intended to breed his magehelds. With human women.”

“If you want to know the answer to that question,” Gray said, “why don’t you ask me?”

Durian slid his hand to the back of her neck and softly stroked there, as much for his own calm as for hers. He steeled himself against a too familiar rage. Dit Menart deserved to die. For what he had done to Gray and more. Nikodemus was a fool to think there was a greater good in keeping that mage alive than there was in killing him. “I think this is not the time for such a disturbing discussion, Leonidas.”

“She’s human. You should release her.” He took another drag of his cigarette and offered it, butt end, to Durian.

“No, thank you.” He kept his magic hot. At his side, Gray’s traceries reacted to his pulling and holding his magic, and that got another stare from the mage. Leonidas twisted his wrist, and, after a moment to prove he didn’t have to let the mage go, Durian let him go.

“Not entirely human, I’ll grant you that.” Leonidas blew smoke over his head. Another whisper of magic came at him. Leonidas had always been a subtle user.

“Whatever you’re doing,” Gray said, “stop it.”

“No wonder dit Menart is so desperate to have you back. He can’t be happy knowing you came away with some of his magic. How on earth did you manage to escape with your life? ”

“He underestimated me.”

“No doubt he did.” He cocked his head, his copa cigarette momentarily forgotten, though his eyes were turning from brown to a brassy gold. For a mage of his longevity, he was remarkably sensitive to copa. Most mages who’d been alive as long as he had either never touched copa or needed more than he’d had to experience any effect.

“Fascinating. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for anyone to integrate the two sources of magic as you have.”

A taxi came down Broadway going at least twenty miles over the speed limit. All three of them retreated to the edge of the street. Durian felt a flare of magic from the mage, but it was defensive only, a push outward. Away from them. Aided by the copa he’d taken.

The driver stayed intent on the road. His passenger stared out the window, a cell phone to her ear. If she noticed any of them standing there on a street of mansions, she gave no sign of it. When the taxi had disappeared toward its downtown destination Durian took Gray’s hand in his and pulled her out of the mage’s reach.

“I should very much like to study how it was done. The implications are enormous.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “Christophe likes to go on about how dangerous fiends are.” She took a step closer. “If you ask me, the magekind are just as dangerous. More, because you seem to think you have some kind of holy call that makes it all right to do whatever you want.” She gestured at his magehelds with a movement of such ineffable grace that even Durian was arrested. “Slaves, Leonidas? What’s just or right about that?” Her quiet voice gave her words power. “How long have you been alive? How many lives have you taken so you could live another year? How long since the kin were more of a threat to you than humans are to themselves?”

“Passionate, isn’t she?”

“I don’t much care for mages,” Gray said.

“Understandable.” Leonidas looked to Durian. “If Nikodemus is interested in an alliance, tell him I’ll meet with him. Christophe needs to be stopped, and I expect I am in a position to help make that happen. Provided you, Assassin, do not carry out a sanction on me for doing so.”

“I’ll see Nikodemus gets the word. Anything else is between you and the warlord.”

“I’m relieved to hear you say so.” He smiled. “Are you sure,” he said to Gray, “that you won’t let me study you? I could make it worth your while.”

“Like how?”

Leonidas grinned. “I’ll give Durian the name of my tailor.”

Gray smiled back. And then she said, “Give up your magehelds and maybe we’ll talk.”

CHAPTER 22

G
ray shook her head when Durian held the back door for her. There was just no changing some habits. His were growing on her. When the door closed behind them, she stripped off her borrowed jacket. She got a whiff of herself and shuddered. “Don’t get too close. I need a shower.”

“Thank you for the warning.” His expression stayed as serious as ever, but there was a hint of a smile on his mouth.

She headed upstairs to her room next to the do-jang because that’s where her clothes were. She turned the water on as hot as she could stand it and soaped off what felt like ten layers of sweat and grime. She changed into fresh clothes: faded jeans, a lime green shirt over white, and a pair of sandals. Her hair was still short enough that she didn’t have to do anything to it but give it a good toweling off before she headed downstairs. She found Durian, once again dressed in meticulous black and more black, standing in the ruined doorway to the living room.

What had once been a living room worthy of a decorator’s envy was now a disaster. Ruined furniture littered the floor. Her vision wasn’t completely normal yet, but she could make out bodies, some in grotesque positions. The remaining corpses were harder to see, and the smell of magic lingered like burnt air. Fog-tinged air came in through the shattered windows, carrying the smell of blood and viscera through the room, cloying and sharp.

From her experience with Christophe, she knew a house in a non-magical neighborhood had to be warded to prevent the transmission of the sounds, odors, and other effects that were bound to occur. Despite the battle that had raged here, if she was right about the warding, and she knew she was, it was just about impossible for the neighbors to have heard anything. If they were to come look at the house right now, they’d see a damn convincing illusion of an undamaged structure. No broken windows. No smell of death.

The inside of the house held no illusions. Behind where she and Durian stood, a large armoire had tipped over near the opposite wall and now lay partially front-side down with one door broken underneath. She steadied herself and turned her attention back to Durian as an intense desire that she not be alone in her thoughts shot through her. “How did any of us survive this?”

He reached for her hand and held it and it was exactly the right thing to do. “Kynan and Iskander are not kin to be trifled with. Nor am I. Nor,” he added, squeezing her hand, “are you. You acquitted yourself well, Gray.”

“Did we really fight like that? It seems like a dream. Or something I imagined.” She leaned into him without thinking of anything except how much she needed the comfort of touch. Their contact, not even skin-to-skin but for their hands, intensified their low-level psychic connection. She put a hand on his cheek, and he tipped his head into her palm.

“Not a dream,” he said.

He was just too lovely for words. Facing him, she slid her palm along the side of his face. In answer, the tips of his fingers danced along the top of her arm. The contact wasn’t sexual but it was sensual in the way of the kin. They took comfort from touch and she was learning to do the same. Amid the calm, she thought about holding him closer, her fingers sliding along the length of his spine, as far as she could reach while his hips flexed forward. Naked skin touching. He knew that about her now, and she was counting on his reaction being as unconcerned as was the case with other kin.

She set her other hand on his waist and her hand ended up underneath his shirt, and the touching felt good. Necessary. Her fingertips found the dent of his spine and moved upward. He didn’t draw away or close her out of his head. They needed this. Both of them. She didn’t push the connection between them; she just let herself fall into his magic. So much. So dark.

Durian bent his head and pressed his mouth to the tracery at her temple, and it was like feeling her body coming awake. He parted his lips, and his tongue touched her skin, and she was appallingly aroused. She wanted to bury her fingers in his hair and bring his hard naked body over hers and feel him push inside her. If he didn’t do something about that in the next five minutes, she would.

And right then, right when she was about to pull Durian’s head down to hers and to hell with waiting for the right time, someone came down the stairs and Durian pulled away, though at least he kept his arms around her.

“Kynan Aijan,” Durian said softly.

Kynan stopped in front of the ruined armoire. He had a lot of magic on tap, and his eyes still weren’t completely normal. The armoire lay tilted to one side, partially propped up by a table that had been near it. One broken door sagged open. “What happened outside?” Kynan asked. “You find Christophe?”

“Not him,” Durian said.

“Is he dead?”

“No.”

“Why the fuck not?” He turned his head to her, smiling. He looked younger than she did. “Honey.” His voice was wry and a bit annoyed. “Chill. I’m not going to do anything to your assassin.”

Iskander came down the stairs at a trot. The blue markings on his face glowed brighter than usual. He slowed when he saw them. He didn’t release his magic either, which only made things worse for her. They were both setting off her oath to Durian. “Did you find the mage?”

“Not Christophe,” Kynan said. He held out a hand in Iskander’s direction and wriggled his fingers. “Pay up.”

Iskander came the rest of the way down the stairs. He pulled a crumpled bill from his front pocket and dropped it onto Kynan’s palm. “Damn. I bet on Christophe.”

“You should have kept your money, Iskander,” Durian said. “The mage we found denies responsibility for the attack.”

Kynan snorted and shoved the money into his front pocket. “The bet wasn’t about who did it. A fucking mage did it. That’s all we need to know.”

“That seems a rather fine point, if you ask me.” Durian, she realized, was still holding her hand. “And probably not in the spirit of the wager.”

“Give me back my money.”

The warlord glared at Iskander. “No.”

Gray cleared her throat. “What was the exact wording of the bet? Iskander?”

“I bet him a hundred dollars you’d find Christophe out there.”

“Who did you bet on?” she asked Kynan.

“Anyone but Christophe. This has Rasmus Kessler’s stink all over it.” Kynan pointed at Gray. “Not that it matters. What mage did you find?”

Iskander dug in his pockets again. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to say it was Christophe.”

“Sorry,” she said over Durian’s laughter. “I can’t lie when you suck so bad at bribery. We saw Leonidas.”

“I always hated the Spartans.”

Kynan said, “You ever get tired of her, Big Dog, you let me know.”