Con & Conjure

Chapter 23

Vegard wasn’t moving. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

I started to go to him, but was abruptly nose to muzzle with the goblin thief’s poison dart gun.

“The Guardian’s alive,” he told me. “I only kill when need demands it.” The thief smiled and pointed the gun at Vegard’s exposed throat. “However, a second dose would be sufficient to kill a man of his size.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

“No!” I shouted, loud enough for the Guardians upstairs to hear.

Silence.

I didn’t think that was good.

The thief still glamoured as Mychael pointed the gun at me. “You on the other hand are rather small. It may be too large a dose.” He took a few steps back, keeping his eyes and the gun on me. “Dalen,” he called, his voice entirely too casual. “What was that?”

“Cahil tripped, sir.”

The thief chuckled. “Human eyes in the dark are worthless.”

“Permission to drop our glamours?” the goblin called back.

“In a few minutes.”

Oh crap.

“Khrynsani,” I said. So much for help—at least for me.

He smirked. “You catch on quickly, but not quickly enough.”

Three Khrynsani glamoured as Guardians. Two had been glamoured as elves in the harbor. Who knew how many more there were in the citadel and around the city? No one knew.

And no one knew I was here.

With the Saghred and a goblin master thief glamoured as Mychael.

Something wasn’t adding up. Like how the hell he was in two places at the same time—running from us with the Saghred one minute, then landing on a sky dragon as Mychael five minutes later? Not to mention, the longer I got him to talk, the longer Vegard and I got to keep breathing.

“You stole the Saghred and brought it here,” I said. “We saw you and chased you. Then you fly in here on a—”

Mychael smiled. The goblin might have looked like Mychael, but he didn’t bother to copy Mychael’s mannerisms any longer. His smile gave me ten different kinds of the creeps. “Did you actually see me on the dragon?”

“No, but—”

“Or any of my men?”

Realization dawned, and I thought it might just be worth taking a poison dart in the gut to get my hands on him. “Four Guardians flew in . . . you and those Khrynsani were there waiting. You killed them.”

“You make it sound simple,” the goblin said. “I assure you it was not. However, their arrival saved us a great deal of trouble.”

“You got what you came for,” I said. “So now you’re hiding in a basement?”

The thief winked at me. “Not hiding, Raine. Merely awaiting transportation.” He looked over my shoulder. “I’ve sent the signal that I have the Saghred; within minutes, we’ll have direct passage home. What would we do without magic?” He laughed. “Though it looks like you may be finding out; what a pity.”

Bastard. I took a quick glance behind me. Nothing there but a brick wall. I froze.

A Gate.

The bastard had just ordered a freaking getaway Gate.

A Gate was a tear in the fabric of reality. Stepping through one was like stepping through a doorway, except that Gates covered miles instead of inches. Black magic made them, and torture and death fueled them—the more the merrier.

Once that Gate was open and stable, the thief would have all the help he needed dragging me through it kicking and screaming. The Saghred would just be happily going home.

If that happened, it was all over—or I’d wish it was. At that point, the best thing I could do for myself would be to fall on one of Vegard’s dainty daggers. I wasn’t going to do that, because I wasn’t going through that Gate. To keep that from happening, all I had to do was get the Saghred, get past a fully armored man with a poison dart gun, then dodge three Khrynsani. And I’d have to do it all without magic. Just me and mine.

Help wasn’t coming. Vegard was unconscious, the real Guardians who’d flown in from the citadel were probably dead in an alley, the dragons were snacking on thugs, no one knew I was here, and I had no magic.

But I had desperation in spades.

Think, Raine. Think. Keep him talking.

“That’s why you came forward first out there in the street. You didn’t know I’d lost my magic, until . . .”

“You told me. Again saving me much trouble.” The thief gestured toward my daggers with the gun’s muzzle. “Drop the daggers, Raine.”

I made no move to comply.

The thief pointed the gun at Vegard, then back at me. “Your choice—the Guardian takes a fatal second dart or you take your fatal first.” His sea blue eyes glittered coldly—Mychael’s sea blue eyes. “Drop. The daggers.”

I dropped them and rethought my strategy, such that it was.

The thief kicked my daggers across the room to the base of the stairs, keeping the gun aimed at me the entire time. “I didn’t think I’d get the chance to take you alive. Put your hands behind your head and stand against the wall.”

Like hell anyone was putting manacles on me again. I began to circle him. When in an impossible situation, keep your goals simple. Circle until I reach my daggers. Get them without being shot. Simple. Right.

“Come with me without any trouble and you need not die.” The thief started circling me with a saunter as if he had all the time in the world. “My employers would rather have you alive, but they’ll be fine with dead.”

I kept my eyes on his, my peripheral vision on that gun. I didn’t need to look at the stairs, not yet. I knew where they were. “Yeah, Sarad Nukpana would be an extra happy psycho if he could kill me on a Khrynsani altar.”

I had only a few minutes to prevent that from happening.

The thief drew a dagger—long, thin, with a needlesharp tip. That wasn’t Guardian issue.

I kept circling. “Let me guess. Poisoned.”

“You don’t have to find out.” His voice became low, coaxing. “Come now, little elf. Let’s not make this hurt any more than it has to.”

He didn’t want to kill me, but I didn’t care what I had to do to him. Problem was, if I didn’t do it quietly, I’d have to do it three more times to the Khrynsani who’d come running down those stairs.

There were no winners in a knife fight. This was especially true when your opponent was wearing armor and had a poisoned dagger. He didn’t need to stab me; a scratch could kill me just as dead. Either I won or Sarad Nukpana won me, and I got a long and painful death, followed by the destruction of civilization as we knew it.

No pressure.

Nukpana could feed the rock just fine without me. All he’d have to do is sacrifice victims so that their blood fell on the Saghred. The rock would take the sacrifices, and I would feel every last one of them; it didn’t matter if I was in the same room or hundreds of miles away. I’d taken one mage already and he hadn’t even been murdered first. I’d be stark raving loony within the first hour.

“Though you may welcome death,” the thief said. “If I don’t kill you now, you’ll beg for it later—or do it yourself.”

My mind was racing even faster than my feet. Okay, Raine. He was a thief, a thief who could make himself look like someone else. Big freaking deal. That was all the magic he had. If he’d had any more he’d have used it by now. The only advantage he had was that he was bigger than me. You’ve dealt with that before and come out on top. Literally. Come on, girl, time for some ugly.

I darted my eyes to the right like I was going to make a run for the stairs.

He bought it.

I ran straight at him, driving my shoulder into his midsection. The impact with that armor hurt like hell. Better to hurt like hell than to be dragged there. The gun fired, the dart went wide, and we hit the floor together. His head and hands were the only parts of him without armor. I sank my teeth into the wrist of his dagger hand. He swore, but held onto that dagger. Dammit. I didn’t kid myself into thinking that I could reach anything vital, but I knew extreme pain made me drop my glamours. If it didn’t work on him, at least I’d go down biting.

A thief and a glamourer did his job by hiding and sneaking, not direct confrontation.

My fist directly confronted his temple.

The thief dropped the dagger—and his glamour.

He had the high cheekbones and fine, straight nose of a pure-blooded goblin. He wouldn’t have either for long, if my fists had their way. Mychael’s armor vanished with the glamour, leaving the goblin wearing his own clothes with leather armor covering only the most vital of areas. Hurt a man badly enough in a non-vital area and it’d turn vital real quick.

He was bigger and stronger. I was desperate and terrified and exhausted. But desperation trumped terror and exhaustion every time. It had to. The thief pivoted his body, trying to pin my arms, my legs, pin anything he could to get me to stop kicking and punching. I didn’t have long nails, but I used what I had on the upswept tip of one ear and sank my teeth into the other.

He screamed. I snarled.

Next to nuts, the tips of a goblin’s ears were one of their most sensitive parts.

I growled and shook my head like a terrier with a rat. I didn’t have much, but I used what I had. It was an ugly fight, but I wasn’t in it to make it pretty. I was in it to win, or at least survive. I used every trick in the book and wrote a couple of new pages right there on the spot. The damned rock just sat there watching, or waiting, or whatever.

I had to hand it to Imala’s uniform design—skintight also meant impossible to hold on to.

The air grew heavy with power, like air just before a lightning strike, prickling my skin like thousands of hot needles.

Not yet. Please, no, not yet.

I was facing the back wall. A long, narrow part of the bricks shimmered. The sickly sweet, coppery stench of blood came from beyond.

The Gate.

It opened simply, no mouth of Hell, no brimstone stench, just a parting curtain of silvery fog. The smell of blood came from the Gate and the chanting of voices came from beyond it. The chants and what was feeding the Gate were worse, much worse—the screams in the background proved it.

A tall figure appeared just beyond the opening.

Sarad Nukpana. Now in his uncle Janos Ghalfari’s body.

Sarad Nukpana had been consumed by the Saghred, escaped, and attempted to regenerate his body by ingesting the life forces of the most powerful mages he could hunt down. Desperate for a body to inhabit, Nukpana took the corpse of his recently dead uncle, the nachtmagus Janos Ghalfari.

Sarad Nukpana considered it all my fault.

In a way, it was.

Now he was going to make me pay.

Nukpana was lean and lethal. His black hair gleamed in the light of the torches burning behind him. Like many a serpent that’d slithered out of a dark place, Sarad Nukpana was beautiful to look at; but unless you wanted to die, you needed to stay out of striking distance.

I was within striking distance. I knew it, and so did he.

So did the thief. He planted his fist in my gut.

I folded double in a red haze of agony. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I was facing the Gate, curled up and panting on the floor less than ten steps from being at Sarad Nukpana’s feet.

He smiled, fangs gleaming in the firelight. “Mine,” he purred. He whispered as if I were his lover. “Even my dreams were not this good, little seeker.”

He had me right where he wanted me, or he would as soon as he stepped through that Gate and claimed what he saw as his—the Saghred and me.

“Give me the Saghred,” Nukpana ordered the thief. “Then bring the girl.”

Nukpana didn’t step through the Gate.

He couldn’t.

An instant later, I realized why.

The thief had only called for it less than a half hour before. Nukpana would have had to work fast, and apparently fast meant one-way. The thief could go in, but Sarad Nukpana couldn’t come out.

Hope flickered. It didn’t flare, but at least it hadn’t been stomped out.

Though nothing—especially me—was going to keep the thief from taking me through that Gate with him. I managed a gasp and a little air. Heavy breathing on the bastard’s boots wouldn’t exactly be a defiant gesture.

The torchlight from beyond the Gate glinted off the goblin thief’s dagger on the floor not two feet from where I was curled up. Both of my hands were busy clenched in agony around my stomach. If I could persuade one to move, I could just reach the thing. Though reaching was a long way from using. Hell, breathing was a long way from happening. Every time I tried, it was like pushing a white-hot poker through my own guts.

The thief pulled on the armored glove lying on the chair next to the Saghred and picked up the rock. He was bleeding, but was careful not to let any of it come in contact with the Saghred. Just my luck.

I wasn’t just going to lie there and wait for the bastard to come pick me up like so much baggage. If I did nothing, I was going to die. If I did something, I’d probably still end up dead, but I’d have my self-respect—like that was going to do me any good once Sarad Nukpana started his fun and games. I unclenched my right hand and slid it along the floor toward the dagger. I thought the pain would knock me unconscious. I bit my lip against a scream until I tasted my own blood, but my hand didn’t stop moving. I closed my hand around the dagger’s grip.

Then all hell broke loose.

An explosion from upstairs shook the floor under me as if a giant fist had splintered the door and the walls it’d been attached to. Goblin voices shouted, followed by the ring of steel on steel, screams, falling bodies, and more dust falling from the ceiling.

The thief looked up and swore. He yelled something up at his men. At least I think he was yelling. Everything sounded the same and all of it was too loud, like I’d been kicked in the head instead of the gut.

“Give me the stone and get the girl!” Nukpana shouted.

The thief crossed the distance between us in three strides, and I did the only thing I could do with the dagger in my hand—I drove it through the top of his boot and into his foot.

The goblin howled in pain and kicked me with his other foot, the tip of his boot landing a vicious blow to my shoulder, the movement ripping the dagger out of his foot, but not out of my grip. The fighting upstairs got louder and the goblin snatched me up by the arm, the Saghred in one hand and me in the other. I struggled to get my legs under me and to get that dagger into him.

Eight steps to the Gate.

The thief quickly exchanged his grip on my arm for his arm tight around my throat. The harder I fought, the tighter he squeezed, until my vision started to go black.

Six steps.

I desperately tried to dig my heels into the dirt floor. The thief just dragged me.

Four.

“Raine!” shouted voices from upstairs.

Mychael. And Tam.

Sarad Nukpana extended his armored hand as far as he dared toward the Gate opening, his glittering black eyes locked on the Saghred.

Three steps.

“Give it to me!” Sarad Nukpana screamed.

Then he’d slam the Gate shut. He’d give up the chance to get me to get the rock.

“And leave me here,” the thief growled.

Two steps.

I desperately slashed at the thief’s forearm that was locked around my throat. It was covered in leather, but that didn’t stop me. I cried and screamed and slammed the point of the dagger past my throat into whatever I could stab. The tip sank into skin, once, twice, three times, and the goblin’s hold loosened for an instant. I twisted and brought the dagger up from below, underneath the leather chest plate, and buried it up to the hilt in soft flesh.

One step to the Gate.

Time slowed and stretched.

I looked up into the goblin thief’s eyes. The dagger wasn’t long enough to have reached his heart, but it didn’t have to be.

The goblin’s eyes were fixed and staring. Flecks of foam were at one corner of his mouth. The dagger had been poisoned.

The thief began to fall backward toward the Gate, taking me with him. Sarad Nukpana’s black-armored hand punched through the Gate inches from me.

How the hell did he—

The thief’s hand went limp in death and the Saghred began to fall. I didn’t think; I just reached for it. Sarad Nukpana extended his arm through the opening, the power from the Gate heating the metal of his glove to molten red, like armor on a forge. Nukpana snatched the Saghred out of the air, clutching it and howling in mindless agony. His hand being cooked alive in that armored glove didn’t stop him from reaching through the Gate with his other hand, his bare hand, clawing at me, his flesh burning, the skin melting away from his fingers, his hand.

Black-robed figures rushed up behind Nukpana, pulling him back. He fought them, lunging toward me. They dragged him back and Sarad Nukpana screamed. His words rang through the Gate and slammed into me with physical blows. “No! She is mine!”

A blast of heat threw me halfway across the room as the Gate closed.

Sarad Nukpana was on the other side. In Regor.

I was lying on my belly in a dusty basement gasping for air.

Sarad Nukpana had taken the Saghred.

I was still here.

But part of me had been stolen along with it.