Author: Benedict Jacka
Category: Science
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/benedict-jacka/page,17,482328-fallen.html
“Why?”
“Because the longer I wait, the better the chance that the Council will show up.”
“Wait, how bad a falling-out did you have? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
“Probably wise,” I said. “So there are a bunch of reasons I’m coming to you guys. First, you both have history with Onyx. You know the area and you’ve apparently been in and out of his mansion before. You even tried to stage a rescue from the place. Secondly, last I checked, he and Pyre were your enemies too.”
“Doesn’t mean we want to kick his door down.”
“I’m not expecting you to do this for free,” I said. “I’m willing to offer you what I can. Money, favours, items. Whatever you want, as long as it’s something I can give.” I looked at Kyle. “I’m guessing you’re speaking for Cinder as well?”
“Yeah, about that,” Kyle said. “There’s a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Cinder’s not really in a position to help.”
“If it’s about payment—”
“Not about payment. You’re not the only one who’s had a falling-out lately.”
“With Deleo?”
“Guess news travels fast,” Kyle said. “Yeah, with her.”
“Is this you we’re talking about, or Cinder?”
“Oh, me and Deleo were never friends in the first place,” Kyle said. He touched his knee. “She’s the one who took my leg, and she’d have finished the job if not for Cinder. When he said he was making me his bondsman, she held off, but it was just holding off. Cinder was the only thing holding her back.”
“To be honest, I never really understood why those two were together in the first place.”
“Well, they’re not together now.”
“Let me guess. Richard?”
Kyle nodded. “Cinder was never happy about working for him. He wanted to go back to being free agents. But Deleo wouldn’t listen, so they had a compromise. Deleo would work for Drakh, Cinder would help Deleo, but Cinder wouldn’t take orders from him directly. It was never that great a solution and there were arguments. I guess one of them finally went too far. I don’t know the details—Cinder’s not in the mood to talk—but he had to fight his way out of Drakh’s shadow realm and he got cut up pretty badly. He’s not in shape for an op like this.”
“How long until he will be?”
“Three, four days.”
Too long. “Well,” I said. It was bad news, but there was nothing I could do. “Guess that’s that.”
“Hold on,” Kyle said. “I didn’t say no. Cinder can’t do it, but I can.”
“Cinder okay with that?”
“He’s not my mother.”
I hesitated. I’d fought both with and against Kyle. He was competent and resourceful, but he didn’t have the raw power that Cinder did.
“From the sound of it, you aren’t really in a position to turn people away.”
“If things go wrong, this is going to turn into a heavyweight fight,” I said. “You okay with that?”
“Well, maybe I can help make sure they don’t go wrong,” Kyle said. “You know any good ways into that mansion?”
“No.”
“I do.”
I glanced through the futures, but only briefly. Kyle was right about one thing: I needed all the help I could get. “All right,” I said. “You’re in.”
Kyle nodded.
“Guessing you’re not doing this just to get back at Onyx and Pyre.”
“Pretty much,” Kyle said. “I want a favour.”
“What kind of favour?”
“Let’s just say it’s something you should be able to handle,” Kyle said. “We pull this off, I want it done. Okay?”
I looked at Kyle for a long moment, scanning futures. “Agreed,” I said at last.
“Where are we meeting?”
“On-site,” I said. “I’ll stake out the place today. Meet me when you’re ready.”
* * *
I checked in with Luna and Variam, then took what steps I could to make myself hard to track, including using an annuller and overcharging my shroud. I’d managed to stay ahead of the Council so far—from what Caldera had said, it sounded like their number one priority was Anne—but it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to me.
The area around Onyx’s mansion was forest and meadows, largely deserted. My gate landed me some distance off, and I walked ten minutes before the mansion’s roof and chimneys appeared over the hill ahead. I found a good vantage point in a copse of trees and settled down to wait.
It was the third time I’d been back to this mansion, and I hadn’t enjoyed any of my visits. The first time, it belonged to Morden; the second time, it had been taken over by Onyx. For whatever reason, when Morden had escaped last year, he hadn’t moved to reclaim his old home, and with Morden gone, the place belonged to Onyx by default.
Right now, there were two mages living at the mansion, Onyx and Pyre. Pyre was a fire mage with some nasty dating habits and he would be trouble, but the biggest problem was Onyx. Onyx was Morden’s Chosen, and he hated me for a variety of reasons, not least because when Morden was raised to the Junior Council, he hadn’t appointed Onyx as his aide but had picked me instead. I’d tangled with Onyx many times over the years and pretty much every time I’d come out ahead, it had been by outmaneuvering him. But outmaneuvering him on his home turf was going to be hard, and that was bad, because while Onyx wasn’t great on subtlety, he was an extremely deadly battle-mage. There were few mages who could beat him in a straight fight, and I wasn’t one of them.
I sensed Kyle coming in the second hour. He approached cautiously from behind; I waited for him to come into view and made a movement to catch his attention. The adept changed course and approached, dropping into a crouch near to me. “Good overlook,” he said, glancing out between the bushes.
Kyle was dressed in drab clothing that blended into the hillside, olive and dark brown. He carried no equipment; with his ability, he didn’t need to. I returned to studying the mansion.
“Any movement?” Kyle asked.
“Three going out, two coming back.” A collection of flashy cars were parked in the mansion’s driveway. “No sign of Onyx or Pyre.”
Kyle grunted. “They use gates anyway.” He glanced at me. “You hurt?”
I’d been lying in a position that didn’t require me to use my right arm. “Something like that.”
“You weren’t using that hand at the restaurant either.”
“That’s because it doesn’t work.”
“You’re doing an op like this with only one hand?”
“Yes.”
Kyle didn’t answer, but checking the futures, I saw that he was looking at me in a considering sort of way.
Minutes ticked past. Usually I like the quiet, but not today. My thoughts kept on wanting to go back to Anne and to what had happened between us, and each time I had to force away the memories. I still hadn’t really dealt with it, and I wasn’t sure if I could. The best I could do was focus on the job. If I concentrated on it, it was easier not to think.
Right now, though, my attempts at scouting out the mansion were being disrupted. To path-walk, you need your immediate future to be as stable as possible. Any kind of conflict or uncertainty makes it too hard to look ahead. It doesn’t need to be definite either—just the potential for it. Such as the possibility of someone aiming a gun at the back of your head.
“Can you stop that?” I said without turning to look.
“Not doing anything.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said, and I could feel his eyes on me. “I guess I am.”
I twisted around to see Kyle watching me with a calculating expression. “You thinking about getting some payback
for all those years ago?” I said. “Revenge for your friends?”
Kyle didn’t take his eyes off me. “Pretty much.”
“Way I remember it, Cinder and Deleo killed most of them.”
“Back then there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“And now there is?” I asked. “Fine. Go for it.”
Kyle frowned.
“If you’re going to pull one of those guns out of nowhere and take a shot, then fucking get on with it and stop wasting my time.”
I felt the futures sharpen, violence flickering. “You think this is some sort of joke?” Kyle said.
“I’m about a million miles away from the kind of place where I’d be making jokes.”
“Will was my friend,” Kyle said. His voice was quiet and dangerous. “So were the others. Give me a reason not to make you pay for it.”
“You want a reason.” I leant forward and looked Kyle in the eyes, my voice steady. “In the last forty-eight hours, I have gone from the top of mage society to an outlaw. Ninety percent of what I own has been taken away from me. My oldest friend is gone and is never coming back. I’ve been mind-controlled and forced to beat the woman I love to a pulp. I watched her look at me with tears in her eyes and beg me to stop, and I was made to keep hitting her anyway. The last thing she did before being possessed herself was to cripple me. This relic is my only chance of saving her, but I’ve been promised, by a creature that knows the future, that if I take it, I’ll pay with my life. So tell me, Kyle. What are you thinking of doing to me that’s going to be worse than what’s happened already?”
It was the first time I’d seen Kyle at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, looked at me, then closed it again. I turned away and we went back to watching the mansion in silence.
* * *
Midafternoon found Luna, Variam, and me gathered in the Hollow.
“The Precursor gateway we’re after is in Onyx’s main storeroom,” I said, laying out a map on my desk. The map was hand drawn and wouldn’t win any art prizes, but it was accurate. I tapped a rectangular room towards the back of the ground floor. “Here. Luna’s seen it before. Vari, you haven’t, so I’ve sketched you a picture. It’s a statue of a guy in robes, grey stone, a good six feet tall. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Variam studied the map. “Two doors?”
“The second one’s sealed.”
“So the only way in and out’s that corridor.” Variam traced it on the map. “And that leads to this junction . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “You can see the problem.”
“You mean getting boxed in?” Luna asked.
“Once the gateway is open, we’ll have our exit,” I said. “Until then, no way out.”
“Chances we can get in without them noticing?” Variam asked.
“Kyle says he knows a hidden passage that’ll take us to the kitchens, and from what I can see it checks out,” I said. “We should be able to reach the storeroom easily enough. But Luna needs to use her cube to activate the gate, and once she does, it’s going to put out a magical signature like a fire alarm.”
Variam glanced at Luna. “Sure it’ll work?”
“Worked fine last time,” Luna said. “If I were you, I’d worry less about that and more about what Onyx’s gang are going to be doing.”
“Last time we did this, the gate took a few minutes to open,” I said. “We’re going to have to hold the area until it does.”
Variam studied the map. “That corridor’ll screw them if they rush us.”
“The normals and the adepts, sure. Pyre and Onyx are another story.”
“They both going to be home?”
“They were last I checked,” I said. “Plan is to maintain surveillance on the mansion throughout the evening. Soon as we see one of them leave, we go in. If we’re lucky, they both will.”
“And if we’re not, they’ll both be home,” Luna said. “I’ve got a question. How are we going to get out?”
“Plan A is the bubble realm,” I said. “It has a one-way exit system. Doesn’t have to be back to the relic either. If everything goes perfectly, we’ll show up a hundred miles away while Onyx and Pyre are still waiting for us to come back out.”
“What’s Plan B?” Luna asked.
“Starbreeze is going to be on station. If someone gets hurt or we need an evac, she can swoop in, pick them up, and GTFO.”
“Oh yeah,” Variam said, glancing out the window. “I still can’t believe you’re friends with an air elemental. How’d that happen?”
“I’ll tell you the story afterwards.”
“About that,” Luna said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see Starbreeze again. But she’s not exactly super reliable. Does she even know what ‘on station’ means?”
“Sort of,” I said. I’d had to explain it to her.
“And if she decides to go chase some butterfly to the Outer Hebrides?”
“I’ve told her that it’s important,” I said. “Really important. And bribed her and told her again it’s important. But yeah, there’s a reason she’s Plan B.”
“I thought elementals were super powerful?” Variam asked.
“It’s her attention span I’m worried about,” Luna said.
“Once we’re inside the bubble realm, things should get easier,” I said. “There are traps and defence systems, but I remember most of them from last time. I should be able to guide us through to the relic without any trouble.”
“Yeah, until you actually pick it up.”
“You sure about this Kyle guy?” Variam asked. “He’s switched sides once before, right? What’s to stop him doing it again?”
“He’s got a personal stake in this,” I said. “Besides, he’s not stupid enough to try selling us out to Onyx.”
“He’d better not.” Variam glanced at his watch. “I should check in.”
Luna watched Variam go, then turned back to me. “Are you sure about this?”
“I know it’s not the safest of plans,” I said. “But I’ve been thinking hard and this is the best I can come up with.”
Luna was right to be dubious. As far as plans went, calling this one “not the safest” was a major understatement. It wasn’t that any of the steps were unrealistic on their own—we’d done things that were harder in isolation—but there was very little margin for error. If something went wrong, then the four of us would be stranded in hostile territory with enemies closing in all around. We had our magic to fall back on, but the people in that mansion could do magic too, and there were a lot more of them than there were of us.
“It’s not that,” Luna said. “It’s what happens afterwards. Last time you tried using that relic, it didn’t work out so well, remember?”
The last time I’d picked up the relic, its current resident, a two-thousand-year-old mind mage named Abithriax, had tried to possess me and walk out in my body. He’d come pretty close to succeeding. “Just as well I had you and Starbreeze.”
“So what’s to stop him mind-controlling you again the instant you touch it?”
“For one thing, my mental defences are a lot better,” I said. “For another, I’ve got the dreamstone.”
Luna shook her head. “You just got away from one mind mage. Wouldn’t have thought you’d be so eager to go head-to-head with another.”
“There isn’t any other choice,” I said quietly. “My old life’s gone.”
“But—”
Movement in the futures caught my attention and I looked up sharply. “What’s wrong?” Luna asked.
“Trouble.”
We walked out into the clearing and met Variam coming the other way. “We’ve got trouble,” Variam confirmed. “I just heard from Landis. Council are sending a force, and he thinks you’ve got one, maybe two hours before they track you down.”
Dam
n it. “I’m going to path-walk.” I said. “Stay here.”
I walked off alone, and once I was isolated, looked to see what would happen if we stayed here. It took me less than a minute.
“Tell Landis his guess was right on the money,” I said, walking back to Variam and Luna. “We’ve got two hours at the outside before the Hollow’s under siege.”
“Can we hold them off?” Luna asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Once they bottle us up, we’re finished.”
“They know you’re here?” Variam asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “From the looks of the futures, I think they’re using divination. Auguries and probabilistic readings. The time is what it’ll take them to narrow it down.”
“I might be able to stall them . . .” Variam began.
I shook my head. “You and Luna have to get out of here.”
“What about you?” Luna asked.
“I’m going to be playing cat and mouse.”
“On your own? At least let me come with—”
“No,” I said. “We can’t let them link the two of you with me. Right now, they might be suspicious, but they haven’t got solid grounds to actually arrest you, and we are not going to give them any. You guys go to Onyx’s mansion and link up with Kyle. We’ll do the raid tonight.”
“While you do what?” Luna asked. “Be a human shield?”
“While I lead them on a chase,” I said. I smiled slightly. “Relax. The Keepers aren’t going to be expecting Starbreeze.”
“Just don’t play games, okay?” Variam said. “You didn’t see the mood in Keeper HQ. They really want to catch you.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I’m going to be playing any more games for a long time.” I glanced at my watch. “Let’s move.”
* * *
It was seven hours later.
Sweat trickled down my back as I leant against the wall of the service room. Brooms and mops were piled in the corner, and the far wall held a garbage disposal. My heart was thumping from the last round of sprints; now I was doing my best to stay silent and still. The weather in London had been hot; here in New York, it was sweltering.