I ran my trembling hands up his chest to his shoulders and around the back of his neck, intertwining my fingers, stroking the skin there. I raised my face to his, my eyes wide, my lips parted, entreating.
Surrendering.
Nukpana/Tam lowered his head to mine.
I clenched the back of his neck and jerked his head and upper body down as my knee came up, slamming into Tam’s ribs—the second rib on his left side. The one that had never healed.
I heard it break. Hard.
Nukpana/Tam’s shields buckled along with his knees. He landed in a groaning heap on the floor.
I ran like hell.
Dad had cleared the five Khrynsani out of the way, the force of his magic slamming and pinning them to the wall like armored bugs. That left Janos Ghalfari and he stood squarely in my way, disbelief on his face giving way to determination. The Saghred’s power still coursed through my veins. I hissed a single word and Ghalfari folded and collapsed like he’d taken a giant fist to the gut.
There was no time to retrieve my blades. The three of us cleared the doorway and ran for the rats’ tunnel.
Tam’s weak laughter floated on the air behind us.
Tam, not Sarad Nukpana.
I brushed tears out of my eyes and kept running. And hated myself for it.
Chapter 22
Most people run from rats. We ran after them.
While trying not to stumble and fall on my face, it occurred to me that rats didn’t need a door to escape; a hole or a crack would work just fine. I hoped there was a door at the end of that tunnel, but if there wasn’t, I was fully prepared to make my own.
A tall figure ran toward us out of the shadows and Dad damned near skewered him with his sword.
Piaras neatly parried the blade. “Glad to see you, too. I found a way out. This way.”
I didn’t ask him how he knew and we sure as hell didn’t need any urging to follow. Dad summoned a lightglobe and rats squealed as they ran for their tiny lives. We were doing the same thing, minus the squealing, at least for now.
“We’re coming back for him,” I told Talon. “We need help.”
“You’ve got the Saghred!” he managed in a hissing whisper.
“Which would have eaten his soul,” I shot back.
So much for filling in Piaras. He swore, a word I’d heard Guardians throwing around the citadel. “He got Tam.”
“Not for long,” I growled.
I wanted to scream, I wanted to kill Sarad Nukpana, I wanted to cry, but most of all I wanted to use what I had. I mean really use it. For the first time, and possibly the last, I wanted to cut loose with the Saghred. Take down anyone who had hurt me or had hurt anyone I cared about. But through the red haze of my rage and pain, I knew that once I did that, there might not be any going back. Cancel that—there definitely wouldn’t be any going back.
As of this moment, I did not care.
Everybody said that Saghred had unlimited power. I had a big damn surprise for them. It wasn’t unlimited. All it could do was kill, suck souls, and destroy—none of which would get Sarad Nukpana out of Tam’s body without taking Tam with him.
Killing everyone in that bunker except for Tam would have been smart. Leave no live enemy behind, receive no dagger in the back was a Benares family mantra. But that would have taken time. Even with steel and magic, it would have taken time we didn’t have.
Get out, get clear, then get even.
The bad thing about any kind of defensive spell, even one with a touch of Saghred power, was that unless you broke their legs, the bad guys would get up and come after you. It might take them a few minutes, but you could count on a group of very pissed-off, armed people on your ass pronto. So you escaped and you did it fast. I had to get out, warn Mychael, and when the goblins followed us, they’d have plenty of trouble and we’d have plenty of backup.
And Nukpana/Tam would be out in the open where either I or Mychael or Justinius—or hell, it might take all of us—might be able to get him immobilized long enough to get a team of exorcists to work on Tam.
The success of that plan depended on Mychael and Justinius not being on the other side of the Conclave complex. I was counting on Janos Ghalfari being right. Mychael was close by.
The tunnel was longer than it had any right to be. Piaras was ahead of us with Dad’s lightglobe, his sword held deceptively relaxed in his hand, his eyes alert. Piaras wasn’t relaxed; he was ready for anything. The kid who I loved like a little brother wasn’t little anymore. His shoulders were back and the responsibility he carried now just made him stand all the straighter, his quick strides sure and determined. It couldn’t have been a trick of the light—there was just one lightglobe—Piaras shimmered with a luminescence that I’d only seen once before when he’d fought at Justinius Valerian’s side, his back against a wall, killing every demon that came against him.
A faint green glow the size of a fist shimmered unmoving in the dark ahead of us.
My gut knew what it was before the Saghred told me.
A ward.
I didn’t care about the ward, either.
“That’s the door leading outside,” Piaras told us. “That glow is a ward; I don’t know what kind.”
The door was huge, metal, and looked like it’d been forged from the same mold as the one Nukpana had closed on us. The rats ran out of a hole under the base of the door. A breeze stirred the dust and dirt on the floor. Fresh air, outside, and so close.
Shouts and booted feet ran toward us down the pitch-dark tunnel.
Khrynsani.
“It’s a goblin ward,” Dad said, getting as close as he dared. “I don’t know how to—”
“Fuck the ward,” I snarled. “Dad, get behind me and shield them.” He did and I aimed all of my rage and my will and my pain at that lock and ward and hit both of them with everything I had. Metal screamed as the door was ripped off its hinges, sending it flying up and out into the blinding sunlight. Panicked shouts and screams erupted from all around us as we shielded our eyes and scrambled out onto the grass of a massive quad, surrounded by buildings—and full of mages and young apprentices.
Crap in a bucket.
My eyes were blinking and tearing with the light, but there was no mistaking mages running at the sight of us—or probably at the sight of me. I glowed with the remnants of the power I’d just used, and a few feet away was the door I’d turned into a twisted, smoking metal ruin. No doubt we made quite a picture.
Damn, but that had felt good.
My vision cleared and I saw two goblins, walking quickly away from the chaos I’d caused.
Nukpana/Tam and Janos Ghalfari.
There’d been another way out of that bunker, and they were getting away.
Oh, hell no, they weren’t.
I ran after them and black- robed mages scattered like startled crows to get away from me. I couldn’t let Nukpana and Ghalfari out of my sight.
“Mychael!” I screamed in mindspeak. The leftovers from the power that’d blown that door sky-high amplified my voice into a massive mind bellow. The mages closest to me fell to the ground, clutching their heads. Just what I needed: sensitives.
Nukpana/Tam and Janos Ghalfari quickened their pace toward a group of young student apprentices. Ghalfari glanced back at me and smiled. Those young mages were hostages for the taking. He expected me to stop or at least slow my pursuit.
I was finished doing the expected, the noble, and the sane. Rational thought had no place in my mind anymore; it’d been drop-kicked by revenge.
“Damn, girl, think you made enough noise?” barked a familiar voice coming up behind me. Someone who liked revenge just as much as I did.
Justinius Valerian.
I turned to see that the mages who had scrambled out of my way scuttled even farther away from the old man and his phalanx of armed Guardian escorts.
“Not nearly as much as I wanted to,” I told him. Tam being possessed by Sarad Nukpana didn’t need to be public knowledge, even to Guardians. I got next to the old man and whispered in his ear, my words succinct and clipped with rage. “Nukpana’s possessed Tam; they’re getting away. Where’s Mychael?”
Justinius calmly nodded toward an archway that appeared to be the only way out of this side of the quad. Nukpana/Tam and Ghalfari were about to pass under it. “Taking on those two goblins.”
I looked up. Mychael was on the roof.
Oh hell. He didn’t know.
“Nukpana’s possessed Tam.” I tried for quiet this time.
Mychael’s head snapped up and so did the crossbow he had trained on Janos Ghalfari. He’d thought Tam was a hostage. He was, just not in the normal way. Apparently Saghred-amplified mindspeak cut through all of the mage distortion. At least the rock was doing something useful.
We couldn’t confront Nukpana/Tam and Ghalfari, at least not here. There were too many chances for too many people to die, and Tam was one of them. If Ghalfari took an apprentice hostage, a trigger-happy Guardian or hero-wannabe mage might just think that Tam was his partner, not his prisoner.
When I looked back at Mychael, the roof was empty.
Oh crap. “What’s through that arch?” I asked Justinius. “The stables. And this time of day, it’s full of horses and coaches.”
The goblins would have their pick of transportation.
I started forward. “He’s not getting away with Tam.”
Justinius’s wiry and surprisingly strong grip on my arm jerked me back. “He can’t get away with you, either.”
The Saghred’s power surged like liquid fire through my veins. The old man slowly removed his hand from my arm, though I know the rock had burned him. Badly. I’d felt it strike. Most men would have screamed and been on the ground. Justinius definitely wasn’t most men. We had enough terrified mages looking at us—looking at me; he didn’t want to add to the show. He just stood there, regarding me with cool, blue eyes, assessing, not judging. At least not yet.
The Archmagus of the Conclave wanted to know right here and now if I was a danger to his people. If he decided that I was, he would act.
Right here and right now.
