Hi,

Okay, I'll admit it. I did it again... This time I'm giving you a heads up, though. Beware, this chapter ends in a cliffhanger!!! Read at your own risk! ;-)

I hope you like this one and thank you all for reading :-)

Lara

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Chapter 36

Somewhere in the distance sirens started wailing. Just a few more minutes and the Force would be here. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. Then frowned at it. All sticky red.

Blood.

I was shaking, but all I could do was sit there and stare up at the invisible building. Going into second sight was out of the question, but I felt the vibrations in the air nonetheless. I did this.

I might be going into shock.

"What have you done?"

The noise was soft, muffled, as if I had a set of snowball-sized cotton swabs in my ears.

My head whipped around. I spotted a figure on the other side of the street, arms raised, jacket billowing behind him. The walk. The expression on his face as he moved into the shaft of light. His eyes were glinting with the familiar blood-curling sharpness that was dancing on a razor-edged line between lunatic and genius. Salt-and-pepper-hair, graying at his temples.

Raphael Medici.

He was wearing a jacket, similar to mine – the one I stole from him. His was less wrinkled. I wondered what Raphael Medici had in his pockets now. Wondered if I dared use one of the objects I had against him. Wondered if I dare use dark magic against him.

Three rogues were following him like a second set of shadows. I knew all of them.

Who would kill me first?

Medici's hands erupted into electric fissures – Spirit in its most unadulterated form. Deadly.

I raised my hand, palm facing him, feeling for magic. My fingers blurred against Medici's approaching figure, vanishing in elongating shadows that turned and reached for me like greedy fingers.

Just a soft pressure against my fingertips, not enough magic, and Medici was approaching.

I pushed myself on my feet. For a moment the world was spinning. I blinked against it and my vision cleared. I could do this.

I looked up and raised my hand, reaching again for my element. Air particles formed, came to my call, slowly, like unwilling soldiers. Medici was coming closer, behind him the rogues. I had no chance of outrunning them.

Too slow.

I had to finish drawing up my walls of air before they-

Medici grabbed the lapels of my jacket, his lips pressed into a thin line.

Hands pushed against my jacket. The former owner of my jacket pushed against its lapels, trying to pry into its pockets. I pushed against Medici's chest, sending a sphere of compressed air rolling against him. He twisted and staggered back, coming to a halt mere ten feet from me. We stared at each other. The Raven had the clearest brown eyes I'd ever seen on someone dabbling with Spirit.

What if I reached out and used dark magic myself?

"I wouldn't think about that," he said, as if he pulled the thought from my mind. "You know it. I know it. You can't pull out on your own. Without me, you wouldn't be able to stop. Without me you wouldn't survive long enough to stop what's coming."

I raised an eyebrow. "What's coming? What exactly are we talking about?"

Maybe I could use another magical object? See if I had any chance of overpowering him in a fist-fight. I laughed inwardly. Or not. Certainly not in the state I was in now.

He attacked without a warning. A flash of deadly electricity exploded out of his hand, raced into the space between us. I deflected with a wall of air. And failed. Cracks appeared on the edges and I twisted, spinning, ducking in mid-air.

I tumbled to the ground, got on hands and knees, scrambling to get up and away. I turned, arms swinging, ready to face-

Too late.

He was already there, plunged a hand forward, cold fingers latching onto my neck.

"You're not strong enough to handle the magic. You don't have enough control over Spirit." His hand tightened on my neck. "Maybe I was wrong after all. You're not strong enough to be a Pentagram."

Dark magic dwindled down his arm, electrocution lashing deep gashes into mind and flesh. I screamed, feet kicking, fingernails digging into his hand. White pain seared my vision. I blinked, saw his hand go to the pockets of my jacket, closed my eyes. He was going to kill me, but first he would steal what I stole from him. Objects of power that might be enough to tip the scales in his favor, once and for all. And I couldn't do a thing about it. Powerless.

No. No!

When trapped in an unfamiliar situation, when panic presses down on our mind and our abilities, it is the routine we fall back on that takes over. The actions and skills that have been branded into our mind and muscles, those that feel as natural as breathing, are really those that we will be able to perform, no matter what.

I opened my eyes, reached into that place inside of me, opening myself up to magic. No matter which magic, no matter where. Something snapped and tore in that place.

Air, my own element, came to me in a golden rush of heat, blossoming and blooming in my core. I pushed against his chest with all I had. The Raven flew through the air, landed in a heap on the other side of the alley.

I coughed and sputtered air, lost a few precious seconds. Looked up.

The Raven was standing, facing me. A slow smile on his lips. I caught the flicker of silver in his right hand. I felt for them in my pockets. He got one of the null bombs.

No. No you're not! I'm going to-

A crack in the stillness. A fireball rushing through the night. Then hell on earth. The explosion tore through the still air like a hand clawing its way through dirt, sent me flat down to the ground, skin scratching, tearing over asphalt. I lifted my head, tried to throw up a wall of air for protection. The air particles flashed and came up slowly, engulfing me in a mushroom-like umbrella.

Smoke billowed out from the building behind, obscuring my vision. I blinked against it, tried to see. The flames had swallowed at least one of the rogues and encircled ... I inhaled sharply. Medici.

Had they hit him? The dancing flames made my vision hazy, swim with possibilities and blinding heat. I blinked furiously, looking up and around. Where had the fire come from?

Somewhere between the flames I glimpsed figures. Impossible to make out if these were Force members, or the Death Squad. But whoever did this was powerful enough to kill with one blow.

The rogues were in motion. Feet hit pavement, voices roaring over the stinging fire – chaos in a sea of biting, stinging smoke. Medici and the two remaining rogues were in the middle of chanting. Probably a spell that was nasty to the point of being deadly – I was willing to bet my life on it.

The air was potent with power, rough and shaken as if caught up in a storm of magic. The veils to the world of auratic gray lifted and I peered through. A sheen of silvery red glinted on the night sky, rising and rising. I sucked in a breath. Someone was magically sealing the place – from the outside.

I pushed myself up from the ground, forced one foot ahead of the other. There were only two options: It was either the Force or the Death Squad. No matter who, they were encircling the rogues. Unless I wanted to get caught in their crossfire, I had to move and get out before–

A hand clamped down on my arm, fingers digging into flesh. The voice sent splinters down my spine.

"Not so fast," Joshua said.

By the time I realized what he did, we were already in the portal. The travel was as unexpected as violent. Reversed, perverse centrifugal forces jerked me closer and deeper into the no-man's-land where the laws of physics had no business and no validity. Darkness and destructive silence hammered into my mind, flexed fists pummeling into my head.

I had no time to prepare myself for the portal, but I wasn't going to go down. I'd once changed course in the middle of portalling, maybe I could make Joshua change his course too. I imagined a place of my own choosing and pushed with my hands against that shadow around myself, Joshua, an essence I knew.

We lurched from one side to the other, raw mental skin scraping on the void's harsh surface. Confused, erratic motion, invisible vectors changing direction until the forces seemed to pull us apart. Deafening sound threatening to tear my eardrums. Then white-noise.

The portal spit us out, unwanted matter pushed out of space that was unforgiving as it was deadly. I staggered back, crashing into a brick-wall behind, and sank to the floor. I blinked against darkness.

I recognized the place. I managed to bring us to the place I wanted. Well, almost. We were on the other end of the street Andy and I had searched with the wolves, right behind Victor Crawford's mansion.

I didn't see any flashlights from where we were, but the Force couldn't be far. If I was lucky Andy was still here and-

A shadow loomed over me.

"Time to say goodbye," Joshua said softly.

If there was any mercy, any understanding of something human left in his eyes I couldn't see it. Madness of another sort was what I found in the washed-out blue that bordered on deep gray. Joshua and the Inri Brotherhood had suffered severe losses this night. Maybe they'd lost everything. And it was my fault.

Electric fissures formed at the tips of his fingers. I reached for my magic, searching for power, finding little. I needed time to recover from the travel via portal, dammit.

I raised my hand, groping for air particles. I wasn't going to die here.

A growl to my right. A flash of brown, sleek fur. A mountain of a wolf pummeled into Joshua from the side. Blaze.

They rolled further into the shadows, a smudge of brown sleek fur and leather-torn cloth. Another long growl echoed in the side street, and for a moment I wasn't sure if it was human or wolf. Then silence.

I got up on shaky knees, closing the distance between us slowly. A wolf tapped out into the shaft of light, his pelt dirt-smeared and bloody, nuzzle dripping with ... blood.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks Blaze."

He moved his head in what might have been a nod and stared at me. For a long moment I just stared back. I had no idea what would have happened if he hadn't been there. His eyes were saying, he'd had my back and he was going to have it next time too. Because we were friends.

A clatter tore into the silent night. Blaze's furry head snapped sideways, tension infused in his wolfish form. He turned and vanished into the night soundlessly.

Blaze, dammit!

What was going on? I turned and surveyed my surroundings, then plunged into second sight. It came only slowly. Looked like I'd used too much magic. My tank was almost empty. It was as if I had to push through a sticky wall until I could see, until the world fell apart, veils cocooning the human perception raised, and revealed a messy world of auratic gray.

Victor's coven house was a jumble of auratic black and red, a gaping hole in the auratic landscape I was facing.

What had happened here? I took another step forward, then another. Had the rogues attacked the mansion as well?

I walked along the building, making my way towards the front and the main entrance, keeping to the shadows. Maybe Victor had been keeping a couple of magical artifacts himself. Maybe it was just coincidence. Was it a direct attack? What would I find inside? Another corpse?

I rounded the corner, peered into the street and the main entrance to the mansion. There were no flashlights, no sign of the Force or the Circle. From where I was, I couldn't see the entrance of the sewer system.

The gates to Victor's mansion were open, steel bent and warped like modeling clay. No rogues, no vamps visible on the planes of second sight. I couldn't get a clear reading of the building and its vicinity.

Just that black gaping hole. Messed up. Wrong.

Why hadn't I felt it before? Where was everyone? And where was Blaze?

I crept closer to the mansion, trying to get a better read. The sounds of my surroundings were drowned out by my own heart, a fist coldcocking my senses into numbness. The feeling that the rogues had long left the crime scene, if it truly was that. If they truly had been here.

My eyes darted to the side, scanning the scene. Something was off. Even if the rogues had attacked and left, there should have been vamps or crazed human servants, or at least... a sense of motion. I took another step forward and halted.

There in front of the mansion. There, on the steps leading to the front door.

Dark splotches of blood on the ground. Corpses. Vampires died here.

So Victor and his coven had been attacked.

I licked my lips, feeding my shields with more power. Not only that whoever did this might still be close by, Alexander or the Circle could arrive any minute and I was a sitting duck he-

There was no warning. Silence and sound. Stillness and motion. Change on a molecular level. The flare of power whizzed around the corner like a radioactive smog metastasizing in the city. I stilled, turned my head in time to see dark shadows stretching and elongating.

What was-