Ruby fever epb, p.16
Ruby Fever EPB, page 16
We had to make Arkan come to us.
“This is your last chance to save your family,” Arkan said. I knew what he sounded like from videos but hearing him over the phone sent shivers down my spine. He had a voice that cut across your senses like a knife.
“You seem to be under the impression that you hold a trump card in these negotiations,” I said.
Konstantin grabbed the folder and the pen, wrote something on it, and held it up. Get him out of Canada.
Thank you, Prince Obvious, I would’ve never thought of that.
I kept going. “You are mistaken, Mr. Orlov. You are not even invited to the table. We have reached an agreement with Mr. Smirnov. He’s proving exceedingly useful. We have secured the cooperation of the federal government. Your threats are hollow.”
Konstantin started writing something else. Alessandro grabbed the folder and tried to pull it away from him. They struggled over it in a silent tug-of-war.
“The FBI won’t help you. The Wardens won’t help you. After my people walk away from the burning ruin of your home, they may show up to recover the bodies.” He was hammering each word in like nails into my imaginary coffin.
Alessandro grabbed the middle of the folder and ripped it in half. The prince and my fiancé frantically scribbled on their chunks.
“You’re driven by patriotism. You think what you’re doing is noble because you’re still a naïve, arrogant child. Your country will use you and throw you away when you no longer serve a purpose.”
I needed to convince him that the only way he could win would be by showing up himself. We had seriously thinned his ranks over the past year. He was suffering a heavy personnel shortage. I’d hit him on that.
“Your reward will be a row of headstones. You’re fond of Sagredo. Think of what it would be like to never hear his voice again. How will you fill that ragged hole where your mother used to be?”
Alessandro and Konstantin jerked their folder up at the same time like judges raising their scorecards at a figure skating competition. Alessandro had written 5 Primes left, and Konstantin’s paper said Lost 1/3 of his operatives.
I reached over, plucked the two halves of the folder from their fingers, and threw them over my shoulder.
“That was a splendid speech,” I said into the phone. “Mr. Orlov, we both know why you’re wasting your air and my time. You’re down to five Primes, Malchenko, Sanders, Krause, Buller, and Xavier, who, as we both know, is a potential liability. Your roster of Significants suffered heavy losses. Even if you field everyone at the same time and Sanders brings his sons, I still have no problem countering you. Since you and I started this little dance, you haven’t won a single skirmish, and that was before I had access to Smirnov. When all of your agents are gone and you have no one left to hide behind, killing you will be easy like swatting a fly.”
Konstantin and Alessandro stared at me.
“Let me be blunt: I’m not doing this because I’m trying to keep my country safe. I could ignore that you murdered my fiancé’s father. I could even ignore your little serum scheme, but you had the audacity to send killers into my new home. You’ve made yourself into an obstacle. I will remove you from my path, the way I would remove a pile of crap a stray dog left on my lawn, and then I will live happily ever after, content that nobody will remember your name.”
He hung up.
Konstantin laughed, his eyes sparkling. “You called him a pile of dog shit to his face. I love it.”
Alessandro gave me an odd look. “‘You sent killers to my house’?”
He was asking me if it still bothered me. “If he thinks we’re doing this ‘for God and country,’ he’ll keep trying to intimidate me to knock me off course. I had to make it personal. He knows people with a personal vendetta are difficult to stop. You taught him that.”
An alarm wailed outside. We were under attack.
The two men charged to the door. I grabbed the Imperial contract, tossed it into Konstantin’s cage, and locked it. I didn’t want to take any chances it would get ruined in whatever fight I would run into. I wasted another precious second on keying the code into the nearest gun cage. The lock turned green, I pulled the door open, grabbed a DA Ambassador, slapped a magazine into it, and sprinted to the door.
Both Alessandro and Konstantin were already gone.
The alarm cut off in midnote.
The grounds were eerily still. The north gate was to my right, the main house and a long driveway leading to it to my left. There should have been people running to their stations, noise, even gunfire, but there was nothing. The Compound was silent. I was alone.
What the hell was this?
Magic shifted high above me. I looked up. A black hole gaped above the north gate and another, identical hole punctured the air above the main house. Twin summoner portals.
The two holes writhed in unison and collapsed on themselves. Whatever had been summoned must’ve already crawled out.
A shot popped, echoing through the buildings. Mom just sniped someone from her crow’s nest atop the main house’s roof.
They were going after my family and Linus.
I ran toward the main house.
Another shot.
A third rifle shot.
Mom was a one shot–one kill sniper. Either she was killing multiple targets, or she was shooting at something huge.
I moved off the main driveway onto a side path, hidden by the decorative shrubs, and sprinted, the Ambassador heavy in my hand.
There was no return fire. No screams, no growls, nothing. Every hair I had stood on end.
The path curved and spat me out into the open right by Leon’s tower. The main driveway widened here, connecting to a huge paver patio. At the other end of the patio, stairs led up to the main house.
People sprawled on the stairs, unmoving. Our guards, Patricia . . . I saw a wave of blond hair. Arabella lay at the top of the stairs, curled into a fetal ball, her blond hair fanning over her face.
Panic stabbed me.
I forced myself to stand still and look carefully. A faintly fluorescent indigo dust shifted on the pavers, like very fine glitter. It covered the entire patio. The front of Leon’s tower shimmered with it. If he was alive, he was trapped in the tower.
I had seen this before.
I took another step and saw it, an eight-foot-tall plant in the center of the patio, anchored by a twisted mass of dark green roots. A tire-size flower bloomed atop the braided stem. It resembled a monstrous mum, with rows and rows of indigo petals rimmed in cornflower blue at the edges. A whirl of tentacles, flashing with the same pale blue, stretched from the plant, trying to wrap around Runa. She stood with her feet apart, arms bent at the elbows, palms up. The air around her was emerald green. Sweat drenched her forehead.
The flower pulsed. The outer whorls of petals rolled down and into the stem and the new whorls opened at the center, sending a burst of indigo pollen into the air. It touched the green air around Runa, turned grey, and fell to the ground. The tentacles slid, trying to wrap around her and failing.
The nightbloom, a strange creature midway between a plant and an animal. They grew in the arcane realm, crawling across the landscape and sending puffs of poisonous pollen in the air. The pollen put their prey to sleep, slowly killing them, and eventually the nightbloom would make its way to them and root in their bodies, sucking up the nutrients.
We had about forty minutes to administer the antidote or everyone affected would die.
Don’t think about Arabella. Focus on the flower.
I raised my gun. The flower and Runa were intertwined. No clear shot except at the blossom. I sighted the flower, and squeezed the trigger, sending a two-shot burst at the bloom. The flower didn’t even jerk.
“Run!” Runa squeezed out. “Run now!”
Something shiny winked at me through the gaps in the flower’s roots. Something tall.
I took a step back.
A man emerged from behind the nightbloom. Over seven feet tall, he was built like a linebacker. Thin strands of nacre crystal wrapped over every inch of him, forming a semblance of a medieval suit of armor. He looked like he was wearing full plate shaped from long sheets of chopstick-thin, multifaceted icicles. The crystal mesh sheathed him from head to toe, thickening in some places, woven and braided in the others. Even his face was completely protected, the nacre strands twisting into a barbute helmet with a single slit of clear crystal over his eyes. The armor fit him like a glove.
Dato Buller. Prime armamagus, the Crystal Knight. Arkan had thrown one of his precious five at us. Oh shit.
Buller saw me.
I fired, squeezing the trigger. The bullets smashed into the helmet and slid to the ground.
He flicked his arm. A thin razor-sharp blade made from a single crystal slid from his forearm. Death was coming for me.
A sniper rifle cracked. I saw the bullet strike—it smashed into his head, jerking him a bit, and fell to the ground, flattened.
A firestorm erupted from Leon’s tower, a weird noise halfway between a deafening vacuum cleaner and a high-powered drill—the M134 minigun. Leon was trying to help me.
The stream of bullets staggered Buller. He leaned into it like a man fighting a strong wind.
I dashed around the clump of greenery. Singing would do no good. My wings wouldn’t work. Within his armor, Buller was deaf and impervious to mental magic. It was ballistic resistant, it maintained a temperature of exactly twenty-four degrees Celsius, and it somehow generated its own breathable air. It was a bulletproof spacesuit he could alter on the fly, and he was about to murder me.
The bushes went flying. A crystal blade emerged. Buller bore down on me like a nightmare come to life.
I scrambled through the brush to the main driveway. He was only feet behind me.
I burst through the hedges onto the main driveway and straight into Alessandro. He grabbed me by my shoulder and shoved me behind him. An unfamiliar man who was probably Konstantin in a new shape caught me and pulled me out of the way.
Buller carved his way through a hedge and loomed in front of us, a faceless knight ready to slaughter.
Orange sparks flared around Alessandro’s hand and coalesced into a short sword.
Buller struck. The crystal sword sliced through the air. Alessandro leaned out of the way and sliced across Buller’s forearm. It wasn’t a lash. He’d planted the knife onto the crystal bracer and rolled his wrist, cutting a half crescent through it. Before Buller moved to counter, Alessandro caught the knife on the other side of his arm and sliced upward. Buller whipped around, but Alessandro clamped his hand on the bracer and ripped it away.
How?
The Crystal Knight howled, his voice muffled. Blood drenched his right arm from mid-forearm to his fingers. Muscle glistened under the blood, as if Alessandro had skinned his hand.
Buller flicked a second crystal blade onto his left arm and stabbed at Alessandro, crystals flowing over his injured right hand. Alessandro dropped under the thrust, sliced at Buller’s leading leg, and tore another bloody chunk of crystal free.
Buller screamed and kicked at him in a frantic frenzy. Alessandro had nowhere to go. He braced, took the kick, rolled across the driveway, and sprang to his feet. A trickle of blood wet his lips. He flicked it off and started toward Buller.
The armamagus took a small step back.
The crystal armor was like a ballistic vest—it stopped a fast projectile but not the comparatively slow knife.
I needed a blade.
I whipped around and saw a boot knife in Konstantin’s hand. It looked like one of ours. He must’ve taken it off somebody.
“Knife!”
He blinked at me.
“Give me your knife!”
He held it out to me. “This is unwise . . .”
I grabbed it off his palm.
Buller was a whirlwind of crystal blades. Alessandro floated around him, carving pieces off.
I was a siren through my father but also magus Sagittarius through my mother. I only got a little bit of it. She never missed while my magic helped me stab my opponent in the most vulnerable spot. It required two things to activate: a blade and a target. I had both.
Magic zinged through my palm and pulled me toward Buller. I swayed from foot to foot, looking for an opening.
Buller slashed at Alessandro. Sparks pulsed, and a heavy modern replica of a falcata on my sword wall popped into his left hand. Instead of dodging, Alessandro blocked the vertical slash, knocking the arm aside, and carved a cut on Buller’s helmet. Blood swelled.
My magic pulled me. I darted behind Buller and lashed across his back. It was like slicing through a thick bunch of fiber-optic cables. The blade sank in with an odd crunch. Buller whipped around toward me. His crystal sword grazed my arm, drawing a hot line of pain across my shoulder, and then Alessandro carved a three-inch ribbon off his side.
We moved around him, slicing, slashing, cutting, just as we’d practiced hundreds of times against every conceivable practice construct and mech Linus could throw at us. We bled him cut by cut, like two wolves fighting a bear.
Buller raged. He had been invulnerable for so long, and now we hurt him again and again, and the pain and fury had driven him mad. Blood drenched his crystal armor. He kept trying to regrow it, but we had ripped too much of it away. Chunks of raw muscle wept blood through the gaps. The crystal crawled, trying to seal the gashes, but it was slow, and we kept opening more.
My face was splattered with blood, and I didn’t know whose. My arm was getting tired, the exertion of making deep cuts gnawing at it. He couldn’t keep this up forever, but neither could we.
Buller charged Alessandro, throwing everything into his assault. Alessandro dodged. Our eyes met for a quarter of the second, and I knew this was my shot.
Alessandro let go of his falcata. The orange glow dropped a riot shield into his hand, and he jerked it up. Buller hammered at it. The sword cut through the reinforced polycarbonate like it was butter. Instead of shying back, Alessandro braced. Buller smelled blood in the water. In a strength vs strength clash, Alessandro would lose, and Buller knew it. He rained blows onto the shield, hacking off chunks of it, locked onto Alessandro with the instinct of a predator sensing wounded prey.
Alessandro stumbled.
Buller pounded on the remnants of the shield.
I slipped my knife through a narrow gap into his liver.
He didn’t notice.
I pulled the blade free and stabbed him again, fast, driving the blade into his flesh over and over like an icepick, flinging blood each time I pulled it out.
Buller jerked, arching his back.
Alessandro dropped the stub of the shield and leaped up. A ten-inch karambit knife shaped like a double-edged tiger claw flashed in his hand. He sliced at Buller’s throat.
The Crystal Knight fell to his knees. A muffled gurgle escaped his mouth, the sound of his last moments skittering away. He collapsed on his side. The crystal armor melted, leaving a dead man on our driveway. He was large, muscular, and pale, with sparse light brown hair cut short and a weak chin he’d tried to cover up with a goatee. His body was a patchwork of gaping wounds and missing skin.
I heaved a long breath. Konstantin was looking at me like he had seen some alien monster.
Alessandro’s right shoulder was bloody. I rushed to him. He met me halfway.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“It’s a scratch.”
A strange hissing noise came from the main house.
Runa.
I turned around.
The nightbloom flailed as if stabbed with a high-voltage wire. Its roots sagged. Its bloom drooped backward, toward us, its petals turning a dull brown and going limp. The flower shuddered. Green fuzz sprouted on the petals. The nightbloom swayed and collapsed, sagging into a liquefying mess of vegetation and rotting fluid, revealing Runa, her right hand extended, her fingers covered with plant gore.
She stared at her fingers in disgust, shook her hand, and said, “Twenty-three minutes since full bloom.”
We had seventeen minutes to administer the antidote. I turned around and sprinted to the infirmary.
The family was back in the conference room. Everyone was in the exact same seats they had taken twenty-four hours ago, but nobody looked the same. We looked like we had gotten caught in an air raid and hadn’t quite made it to shelter in time.
Alessandro sat on my right and Konstantin, back in his Berezin persona, on my left. The fight with the Crystal Knight had come at a cost. Both Alessandro and I were cut up. Once the adrenaline wore off, the pain set in. I must’ve taken a hit to my back, because everything from the left shoulder blade down to my waist felt like one giant bruise. Alessandro must’ve gotten hurt as well, but he showed no signs of it.
Bern had bags under his eyes, and they weren’t clutches, they were totes. He was chugging a Red Bull and staring at his laptop. Next to him, Runa nursed an iced coffee, her expression grim. Halle, her sister, slumped in the chair next to her, with her face on the table. Past Halle, Ragnar had the pinched look and wide eyes of someone who was trying his absolute best to stay awake.
Arkan had hit us with a two-prong attack. It started with three armored vehicles pulling up to the house. Buller got out of the first one and generated his armor. We had expected Buller to show up sooner or later, and the plan always was that Arabella would deal with him. No matter how indestructible he was, there was still a human being in all that armor and after my sister was done venting her frustration, he wouldn’t pose a threat. Predictably, once he popped up on the security feed, Arabella ran out of the main house heading to the front gate.
Unfortunately, Arkan’s Prime summoner, Maya Krause, had opened two portals, one right above the main house and the other at the north gate, and dropped two nightblooms. The sentries at the north gate went down instantly and so did my sister and her strike support team.
