Page 40 of Ascendant King
This time, I didn’t even wait. I shifted so fast that I wasn’t sure even Rhys’s magical cloth could take it. In wolf form, I could smell Cade strongly here, and I followed the most recent scent trail. It led straight into the wall.
If it was a transportation spell, who knew how long it would remain active? The part of me that didn’t want to get injured wasn’t stronger than the part that couldn’t bear to lose Cade. I sprinted into the wall and landed on the other side, back in Declan’s old office.
The table was shattered, but Cade wasn’t there either. Following the scent, I ran through the window, ending up in an empty dining room. I didn’t have time to worry about where the rest of my pack was because Cade was on his back, someone’s blue tattoos pressing down on him. Black ink coalesced, crowding close, and then Cade disappeared, the blue spell slamming so hard into the floor that it cracked.
Cade reappeared behind me, and I turned, searching for the source of the magic. Reality shifted just slightly in the corner, like the fluttering of a curtain. I leapt over the table, my claws scrabbling on the polished wood, and then I was on the other side, my teeth rending the spell.
It burned my mouth, like I had just swallowed battery acid, but I could see the person on the other side. If this was Leon, I expected it to be a group of mages. He’d have to send several of the mages he’d been pumping full of stolen wolf magic to take us down.
But the person hiding wasn’t anyone from House Bartlett. Elizabeth, House Morrison’s security chief, was on the other side of the layer of protective disguise magic. She hit me with a wall of sticky blue power that tossed me to the side and glued me to the floor as she took aim at Cade again.
He had used her distraction to prepare and threw a series of lances at her, each one penetrating the spells around her. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, a flash of dark ink on the pale wall.
Elizabeth started to turn, but I couldn’t let her see Basil. Lowering my head, I bit down on her magic again, tearing it loose and grinding it between my teeth until it burned up in my mouth. She screamed as it disintegrated, the magic disappearing.
She snarled at me, her eyes narrowed. I’d made her angry.
Pissing off a mage who’d probably been training in combat magic since she could walk wasn’t my best idea. But my other option was to let her and Cade duke it out without intervening, and that wasn’t an option at all.
Elizabeth dragged a circular tattoo off her arm that expanded until it was the size of a round shield. She wore it on her arm like a gladiator. The next time Cade threw a lance, she used her shield to block his tattoo.
Then, Basil leapt from the wall toward her. I followed the arc through the air, part of me relaxing. He was going to get her, and this would be over.
Fluidly, Elizabeth spun, raising her shield up. For one terrifying second, everything stopped. I was going to have towatch Basil get killed a second time, this time without the benefit of darkness to mask the moment of death.
Instead, she dropped her shield down on top of the snake, and it wasn’t a shield now; it was a cage, trapping Basil inside.
Cade screamed, his eyes going hot and furious. He released a volley of magic that destroyed the wall behind her, shredding the curtains and blowing out a wide window.
The magic seemed to pass through her, and her body lost color, turning blue and white. She was disappearing into that in-between place Cade had taken us once to listen in on a conversation between Isaac, Jay, and the freed wolves from House Bartlett.
Shifting back into human form, I finally got myself free from the sticky blue substance trapping me and ran over to Basil, kicking off his cage of magic. “We have to follow her.”
Cade strode across the room, grabbing my hand in his. His skin was hot, as though he had a fever, and I couldn’t stand it. But then he reached forward, his magic wrapping around Elizabeth like a lasso, and she dragged us with her into a world where everything was blue and white.
Just like when we’d eavesdropped on Jay and Isaac, everything was blue and white here, and whilewewere invisible, we could finally see everyone in the house again. My wolves circled, sniffing the air, clearly searching for us, their expressions closed and angry.
If this was the shadowy, in-between magic place I knew, then where had Elizabeth taken us before when we were trapped in an empty house?
“Mages?” Heather asked Nia.
Nia’s eyes scanned the room but passed right over us, the in-between spell keeping us hidden. She nodded sharply.
None of the damage Cade and Elizabeth had done to the room was real, in this in-between place. I could see that thedining room was whole, undamaged by the volleys of pure power.
“Let mego.” Elizabeth struggled out of Cade’s magic and sent a sharp burst of blue at Cade, but it was a feint. She started to gain color again.
She was going to return to the real world and leave us here.
“It’ll be a hundred on one if she goes back,” I said to Cade.
A hundred angry Los Santos Pack members and Cade versus one mage. Her odds were very bad.
Cade shook his head. “She can leave us here. Trapped.”
My blood went cold, but I didn’t have time to think. Instead, I leapt at her, wrapping a hand around her throat and reaching back, holding Cade with the other. We stumbled back into the real world in fits and increments.
Everything flashed repeatedly, a movie projector coming to life with the click click click. Nia lunged toward us, but Elizabeth was too fast. We sped straight through reality, back into wherever she had held us before, all the wolves disappearing, everyone gone.