Mob Sorcery 4 - Ch12

The succubus’s eyes glowed. Vince reached for his dragon, sending magic surging through the beast.

Against any normal opponent, this would have been over in an instant. His dragon was summoned, pumped full of magic, and able to cast spells almost instantly. Ordinary enforcers needed an incantation to focus their magic, introducing a brief delay that gave him an insurmountable advantage.

Except demons didn’t need incantations. The succubus cast spells as quickly as he could.

Or, as he found out, just that tiny bit faster. He chalked it up to her experience, or perhaps the delay caused by controlling his dragon.

Daggers slammed into his mind, and he nearly doubled over. His muscles tensed as if being pushed to their absolute limits.

Several small flame lasers cut through the walls, and the succubus yelped. She summoned a pink barrier in an instant that caught one of the lasers before it punched a hole through her head.

“How?” she gasped. “That should have paralyzed you!”

Vince grunted and stumbled back a few steps. The pain decreased a little. Once again, he reached for his dragon, attempting to summon the finishing blow.

Only for the succubus to reach out with one hand and clench her fist.

All thought vanished from his mind. He couldn’t even see, as white obscured his vision.

A fluffy sensation cocooned his every sense. He felt soft fur along ever pore of his skin, including those he swore were covered by clothing. Rustling greeted his ears. He smelled freshly dried fur, much like Pola’s or Nina’s tail, but mixed with a delicate perfume. A hypnotic view of innumerable black and red tails swayed across his entire vision.

He even tasted fur for a second, before the taste of lipstick and a tongue filled his mouth.

Daji pulled away from him as the meeting room returned to his vision, fresh from kissing him. Her tails lay around him.

“So much for your mental protections,” she said wryly, but her eyes belied concern. Even a little bit of fear. “I’d prefer you alive, Vince.”

Shit. Had Salome ever tried to outright kill or destroy him with her mental magic?

No time to think about that, he reached for his dragon.

No dice. Losing his mind like that meant he lost his spell.

Daji stepped aside, revealing the succubus. For some reason, she smirked at him.

Striding toward him, one foot placed daintily in front of the other, the succubus stopped in front of him. She’d even dropped her barrier.

Vince took a few moments to realize he appeared dazed. AN apparent victim to her magic.

After all, he simply stood here, staring into space after being blasted by the succubus’s mental magic. While he doubted that was a meister-tier spell, she’d gone all out. Without Daji’s help, he worried what sort of brain damage he might suffer even if he pulled through.

The succubus placed her fingers under his chin and smirked. “I can’t believe I had to do so much damage. You’ll be useless. A braindead puppet at best, and easily detected by any demon. A shame. I’d hoped I might trick that bitch, Eva, for at least a second and take her position.”

Vince blinked and snorted, unable to contain himself.

Instantly, the succubus reeled in shock. A screech escaped her.

Her eyes glowed again. If she hit him with her magic again, he’d be on the ropes. Even with Daji’s help, he didn’t want to find out.

His mind raced. No dragon meant no chance to cast anything, although that hadn’t worked last time. He sure as shit wasn’t able to incant a spell.

So he hit her instead. His gloved fist shot up. In that instant, he activated the glove—a magic tool Ashley had given him for Christmas. Magic boiled the blood along his arm, and raw, unyielding strength flowed through his muscles.

His fist slammed into the succubus’s fist with a sickening crunch. Her head snapped back.

The succubus collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Her eyes no longer glowed.

Not taking any chances, Vince pointed at her with his other hand and blew a hole in her head with a flame laser. He repeated the process with her chest.

Demons were hardy as fuck. He’d seen the big ones take swings at him with their heads missing, or holes in their chests the size of a tire.

Who knew how old or powerful this bitch was, and how good her regeneration magic was. She’d die before he could risk finding out.

Heavy breathing filled the room in the ensuring seconds. He leaned against the table, eyes fixed on the dead demon.

“Thanks,” he breathed out.

“Ask your succubus friend for a tool that provides mental magic protection,” Daji said, ignoring what he said. She stroked his back gently. “It’s true you are used to mental magic assaults, but when your opponent does not care if your mind survives, it’s a different story.”

“I get it,” he said. “Salome said she could have stopped me earlier, but it would have required her to pry me apart.” He frowned. “I had thought it would still have needed to be a more complex spell.”

“A mental battering ram is still a battering ram. Your friend is a surgeon, while this young thing was a thug.”

Well, he supposed there was a reason mental magic had special laws restricting it. Quintus’s cane wouldn’t be as powerful as it was if anyone could shrug it off.

He pulled his phone out and messaged Ashley. She needed to know he’d taken out a succubus.

While he waited for her answer, he continued his search for the raiju.

He soon found the best candidate for her hiding place: a pair of double doors with electricity warnings, secure doors, and a large sign labelled “power room.” Rather than resummon his dragon and waste valuable magic and infusions, he merely melted the hinges off with a flame laser.

More alarms went off, for what little that mattered. The fire suppression systems remained inactive and no special security systems activated. A place like this couldn’t afford a bunch of magical automatons anyway.

The power room was a relatively small room, at least compared to the rest of the halls of the warehouse-turned-data-center. A series of racks stood near the walls with various electronics, and a lot of bulky batteries. Large yellow cabinets lined the walls further in, and cables ran along the ceiling into metal sheathing that guided them toward the rest of the facility.

His phone buzzed, but Vince’s attention was drawn away when he spotted his objective.

A young woman lay on the ground. A dotted yellow line had been painted on the ground around her, demarcating her “prison.” Heavy duty cabling ran from a series of clips on her body to what Vince guessed to be nearby transformers. Rubber-sheathed chains tied her to the wall while demonic runes glittered along the length of the black material.

She looked emaciated. An IV hooked up to her arm presumably fed her, but not very well.

“Fuck,” he breathed out, taking in her awful condition.

He rushed up to her, only to stop dead before crossing the line when her head snapped up to glare at him. Lightning crackled in the air. The hairs on his skin rose despite his barrier. Presumably, the temperature rose as well, but his barrier blocked it.

Describing the raiju’s appearance was a challenge. He only knew the legend vaguely. A lightning-based beast associated with multiple animals.

And this raiju certainly held the appearance of several animals. She was short and mousey, with mouse ears and ragged dark blonde hair down to her waist. Both a wolf’s and cat’s tail intertwined with one another on the ground. Somebody had tied them together, Vince realized. Her clothes consisted of a black rag of a t-shirt. Presumably somebody had given her an oversized shirt and it had slowly been ruined over who knew how many weeks and months. At least it looked mostly clean.

She blinked up at him with confused black eyes. Then blinked some more.

“You’re no demon?” she rasped out with a voice like a century-old pack-a-day smoker.

He grimaced. “No. You’re the Yakuza raiju?”

Her face lit up like a Christmas tree and her tails thumped against the ground despite their bindings. “They came for me! I…” She spluttered and coughed. “Fuck. I hate this stupid body. Would have been way better if I’d died and could have reborn, but noooooo…”

Vince inched closer. This time, lightning didn’t appear. “You’re not going to shock me if I try to free you, right?”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” She looked him in the eye, then frowned. “You look stupid, though. Do me a favor. If you can’t get me out, just kill me. This body is way too young and weak. Figured stealing the body of a US kid would be a good idea, but it backfired bigtime.”

Part of him wanted to fulfil her wish. Partly out of pity for her situation, partly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to learn what was involved in “stealing” the body of a kid.

But he had come here for a reason.

“I need your skills for a job,” he said. “I doubt you’ll be able to possess a new body fast enough.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Figures they only want me back for a reason. You’re right. I’d need months, minimum.”

“Don’t have that. So sit still.”

He got down and began running his hands over the chains holding her down. That’s when he realized how the cables were attached to the raiju’s body.

They weren’t merely clipped to her skin, but melted on. Either intentionally or as a side-effect of running so much current through them for so long.

Suddenly, the raiju’s arms closed around him. Magic pulsed in her frail arms. “Wow. You’re soft. Figured you can’t be Yakuza. Who hired you?” Her eyes fixed on him.

“Kiyoko.”

Her entire body stiffened. Seconds passed, and her eyes watered.

“Fucking…” She closed her eyes and sniffed. “Idiot. What the fuck is she doing in this hellhole? Girl’s never even left Japan, and now she’s in this isolationist shithole that treats magic the same way we used to treat foreigners.”

Vince had no clue what she was even talking about, but figured she had history with Kiyoko.

Her hands slipped free of him and he focused on the chains. While he couldn’t work out exactly what magic bound her, he did know it was strong and likely focused on lightning resistance.

Recalling Ally’s explanations about different materials being better for specific spells, he suspected the raiju’s prison was bespoke. Hopefully that meant his fire magic could break her out, because he didn’t see any locks. The chains ran into the wall.

If he was Nina, he’d simply rip the chains out and carry the raiju out.

A thought occurred to him. “Do you have a name?”

“… just call me Zaira.”

“I’m guessing that’s not your real name?”

No answer.

He stood up and took a step back. She scowled at him, but remained limp against the wall.

To break her free, he could summon his dragon. He’d prefer to avoid that, however. In this small a space, he’d almost certainly destroy something powering the building. He also didn’t know if blowing up the power infrastructure might automatically set off the fire alarm, or perhaps start a fire given the materials they’d be made of.

“Stay still,” he said.

He tried a carefully aimed flame laser first. It scythed through a chain and left a molten piece of metal in its place. Success.

Before he cast another spell, Zaira grabbed the end of the chain with a triumphant grin. Her body lit up with bright lightning, nearly blinding Vince. He covered his eyes.

Cursing filled the room in the ensuing seconds.

“Did you have to cauterize the fucking rubber?” she snapped, gasping for air. “Fuck. I’m so low on juice, thanks to these damn things leeching off me 24/7. Thought I’d be able to break free.”

“I am breaking you free,” he said.

She’d tried to use her power to blast the chains open, after he’d cut one. Unfortunately, his fire had melted the rubber over the chain. Perhaps somebody had designed it to do that.

Nearly a minute passed as he cut through the chains and cables. Zaira had been about to burst free and rip the cable clips from her skin when he’d stopped her. The potential blood loss it might cause might be too much for him. Especially as a healing infusion couldn’t undo months or years of malnutrition and atrophy.

“Can you walk?” he asked her when he bent down.

She eased herself to her feet and winced. “Yeah. Not quickly. Gonna need Kiyoko to hook me up with some proper healing if I’m going to help you break into anything.”

He bent down to help her walk and she shoved him. Her hands barely moved him a fraction of an inch. She cussed him out.

Above her juvenile swearing, he heard distant banging. Rumbling ran through the ground. He tried to strain his ears, but couldn’t hear anything over the teenage voice spitting words in his ear.

“Shut up for a second,” he said.

Zaira bared her terrifyingly sharp teeth, displaying incisors as long as his fingers. Blunt ones, though. Somebody had been filing off the edges.

Then she blinked. Her mouse ears pricked upward.

“Good ears,” she muttered. “Company.”

Even with her being quiet, he couldn’t hear much more than the rumbling. But a door opened and slammed shut close enough for him to know somebody was nearby.

He pulled his phone out to check if Ashley was close. Then saw the message he’d missed when his phone buzzed earlier.

Goon squad is here. I’ll be out front, she said.

He swore internally. What timing.

The rumbling must be Ashley fighting Sanchez’s demons, and the nearby noises was at least one other demon. Probably one looking for the succubus Vince had iced.

Zaira shot him an odd look, but he held up a hand.

After pulling out his cane, he took a deep breath. The time to truly use his dragon had arrived.

Daji appeared beside him. “The demons will be on you the second you start casting. This room is heavily warded, but your spell will still stand out.”

At least he’d be ready for them.

He closed his eyes and focused. Thirty seconds.

No, less than that with Daji’s help.

Vince began casting. Magic roared through his veins, and rainbow-colored flames rippled off his body. Zaira’s jaw dropped as she took a step back.

“That’s one hell of a spell, human,” she gasped. “No wonder Kiyoko chose you.”

Shouts echoed from outside, filtering through the thick door. They were in demonic, and too muffled for Vince to make them out.

But his earpiece could. It helpfully translated for him.

“In the power room! What the fuck are they doing in there?” a male voice shouted.

“Shit! Did Hierum find out?” a female voice responded

Huh. Ashley hadn’t known about Zaira being trapped here, but Salome had. Did Sanchez think Quintus didn’t know he’d been using a raiju to power his little business? The idea that Salome might know something Quintus didn’t amused Vince, even though it was likely wrong.

At the very least, it would keep him safe in the aftermath.

Ten seconds. Footsteps clattered on the tiles outside and he heard doors slam open. He needed seconds more, but couldn’t do anything.

With the hinges blown off the door leading inside, the moment a demon reached them, the only thing protecting him would be his barrier.

A towering man skidded into sight. He had a Mediterranean complexion and wore a black suit and patterned silk silver shirt, but without a tie. A shock of red hair rose into the air, clearly slick with hair gel. Four horns spiraled around his skull.

Before Vince could do more than register the man’s appearance, the demon threw a jab. A solid jet of flames shot forth and exploded against Vince. The world transformed into fire as the jet burst into an explosion that filled the room.

Something exploded near the entrance of the room, followed by several more things. Batteries, if Vince had to guess. Another alarm went off. This one had to be the fire alarm.

Vince stood unharmed, however. His barrier repelled the presumably wizard-tier spell effortlessly.

And, fortunately, his barrier also repelled the rain of stinky black water that followed the activation of the alarm. The smell got through and he screwed up his nose.

“Fucking fuck!” Zaira snapped, her tails shooting bolt upright as her body was smothered in stagnant water from corroded pipes.

Ashley hadn’t been kidding when she said Sanchez was cheap. Not only had the fire suppression system been left to water in a data center, but he hadn’t maintained it. Countless millions of dollars of hardware was going up—not from flames, but the water meant to save it.

Not that it had a chance, but Ashley would be damn happy to know Sanchez wouldn’t have an insurance claim.

Only a couple seconds left. Vince mouthed the final words of his incantation.

The demon stood there, grimacing as he summoned more magic. Red light surrounded his body.

Then his eyes widened and he froze.

“Oh, shit. It’s you,” he said, meeting Vince’s eyes.

Just enough time.

Vince’s dragon erupted into the room, plumes of fire blasting across this room and through the door. The demon cowered.

Power surged through Vince, and he downed another infusion, ready for a difficult fight. Another demon lurked nearby. This would be two-on-one against enemies of unknown strength.

Zaira nearly forgot about the water pouring down on her, which slowly began to clear up as the sprinklers drew on fresh water. Her trembling hand reached out for the massive Chinese dragon stretched out along the length of the power room. The prospect of burning her hand off when she touched glittering scales formed of molten lava didn’t bother her.

His dragon opened its maw, and the sun itself appeared within it. Ten flame lasers at once erupted.

“Idiot!” a second demon shouted, leaping forward. She had dark skin and wore a purple tank top and jeans.

Her hands moved in a blur, somehow casting a spell as fast as Vince’s dragon. Golden light remained in the air behind her movements. A pattern appeared in that fraction of a second.

The massive flame laser struck the golden pattern, only to split into a hundred smaller spells and shoot around a barely visible globe of light. Each flame laser incinerated whatever it touched. Holes appeared in the ground, ceiling, walls, and servers. Explosions echoed throughout, along with more fires.

Vince winced. He hadn’t been expecting to control so much fire, and lost control of the aftermath. The building was very much on fire.

By the time he finished this fight, it might be too late to put it out. Especially as the fire sprinklers weren’t suited for magical flames.

“You’re strong,” the dark-skinned demon said, striking a pose and flicking her ponytail. “But we’re—”

His dragon whirled, sending its molten tail through the walls. Unlike the partitions holding up the other walls, the power room had real concrete walls. They couldn’t stand up to Vince’s meister-tier spell churning out heat capable of melting iron and steel at a glance. He did hope if they were load bearing, that the building didn’t come down on their heads instantly.

The female demon cursed, but her ally grabbed her by the waist and leaped backward. The tail missed them by a few feet. Fireballs followed them. The room beyond burst into flames. With the fire alarm activated, Vince stopped caring about keeping a low profile.

“Shit, shit, shit, are you trying to kill us?” Zaira asked, gripping his jacket.

“We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before a REAT team reaches us,” he said. “That’s fifteen minutes to kill these idiots and get the hell out.”

“I’m good to not die, thanks!” the fire demon shouted back.

“And I’m good for…” Zaira blinked. “I don’t know your name.”

“His name’s Vince,” the fire demon helpfully said.

Vince nodded.

Zaira frowned, then continued shouting, “And I’m good for Vince to rip your head off and shit down your neck after everything you’ve done to me!” She blinked. “Why do they know your name?”

“Small world,” he said glibly.

Better to not go into the details here. Zaira appeared to be the emotional sort, and appeared to make rash decision.

Unfortunately, he definitely had to kill both these demons. They’d seen him grab Zaira, and that was knowledge he preferred only Ashley and Salome to have. Plus his deal with Ashley was to wipe out everything.

His dragon crashed through the door into the server room outside, and he followed slowly. Strings made of light spiraled around his summon, as if trying to constrain it. He felt something tearing at his spell.

Whatever this female demon’s magic was, it wasn’t ordinary light magic. She appeared to affected magic itself. Much like the elf he’d fought in Kaziern’s HQ. That made her the priority target.

The fire demon ignored the dragon and focused on Vince. He held his fist raised in the air while flames cascaded around it. The fire started red-hot, then turned white.

Alarms rang in Vince’s mind. For a demon to take that long to cast a spell meant trouble.

His dragon spun and raked the fire demon with flame lasers. Both demons had barriers up, but they wouldn’t be enough to stop Vince’s magic.

Immediately, the fire demon dropped his spell and crossed his arms. A craggy shield formed of obsidian sprang from his fists, erupting like lava from a volcano. The flame lasers slammed into it.

Instead of ripping through the shield or exploding against it, the flame lasers went into it. The shield glowed red hot, appearing more like molten rock than obsidian. The lowest portions dripped onto the ground, burning gaping holes in the tiles. Sweat dripped down the demon’s face.

When the lasers finished, the demon dropped the shield and it nearly set the floor on fire upon impact.

“Independent enforcer my ass,” the fire demon breathed out. “I am not getting paid enough to tango with Hierum’s secret weapon.”

When he turned to run, the other woman’s eyes bulged. “Don’t you fucking run, Johann! Sanchez will have your head!”

“I won’t have a head for him to take!”

Vince couldn’t let either escape, but he had a priority target. A dozen fire nets chased the fleeing demon, who tumbled to the ground in a mess of flaming claws.

But his dragon curled around the female demon, who had been focusing some sort of strange golden net in the corners of the room.

Styaring into the dragon’s maw, she scowled. “It’s too early, but enough for a mere human.”

The net snapped shut around his dragon. The golden threads dug into its scales, wrapped around its horns and teeth, and even formed knots over flames, crystalizing them in the process. Vince’s dragon froze, and a whine escaped it as its fire began to go out.

He felt the immense magical pressure on the spell. Unlike other attempts to disrupt his magic, this one didn’t target the connection between him and his dragon, but instead tried to disrupt the spell itself.

His breathing exercises and past practice provided no help. Everything he’d done had been to protect against ordinary disruption attacks.

Daji laughed in his ear. “You worry too much. This is an attack that was bound to fail against you, simply because you specialize at the very thing her spell targets.”

He blinked. The female demon’s body shook as she remained fixed in place, arms crossed in a strange pose as she held her spell against his. Meister-tier spell against meister-tier spell.

His dragon reared its head, and some of the threads snapped. Flames roared to life. Vince channeled magic through his summoned beast.

The monster turned it head to face the demon again, who still stood transfixed. He prepared a relatively weak flame laser by the dragon’s standards.

With a single blast, he shattered her barrier. Her body collapsed limply to the floor. The remaining threads collapsed into prismatic light, unleashing his dragon. A column of flame incinerated the demon’s body.

Vince breathed a sigh of relief. Although he still didn’t understand Daji’s point.

“Fool. Your dragon is a crystallization of your willpower and control of magic,” Daji said, her tails batting him in the side. “Her spell is effective against most because the average spellcaster has a poor mental image for their spells. Your meister-tier spells are immensely powerful because you have such a powerful image, and would be impossible without it. You aren’t just throwing explosive punches, but altering reality.”

Well, at least he was good at one part of the spellcasting process. High praise from a being like Daji.

“It is,” she said.

Unfortunately, the sound of booming doors reminded him of an escaping problem. The server room and power room burned around him, and the fire rapidly spread despite the active sprinklers.

Zaira limped over to him. She grimaced.

“I take it you don’t want that guy to escape?” she asked.

“I’d prefer if nobody knew I bailed you out,” he said. “Don’t bitch.”

She pouted, but didn’t complain when he picked her up. Her form was tiny, even before being starved half to death.

His dragon roared ahead, blasting apart doors and walls as he sprinted behind it. Vince was no marathon runner and certainly didn’t work out for fun, but he maintained the sort of fitness necessary for an enforcer.

They burst out the side exit—or the real entrance to the building, given what Vince had learned. A large silver pickup truck stood a hundred feet away, down some stairs. The male demon, Johann, jogged toward it. Strange black flames circled his body.

Eyes widening when Vince’s dragon exploded onto the scene, Johann yelped and rushed to the truck. Too late.

A column of flames obliterated it, sending what wouldn’t be turned into molten plastic and metal flying high into the air. A burning wreck crashed to the ground another hundred feet away.

“Fucking hell,” Johann sighed. “Really wanted to avoid this. Guess Lydia bit it.”

He turned, those black flames still spinning around him.

The dragon barreled down the stairs, ready to end it. Not fast enough, though.

With a snap of his fingers, the demon wrapped himself in his black flames. They coalesced into solid lumps of obsidian shaped around his body like armor plates, complete with greaves and gauntlets. Each piece shimmered with heat as it attempted to set the very air on fire and a molten glow lay within them.

Johann’s eyes glowed solid red the entire time. Vince could only imagine the amount of magic pumped into his armor.

“Damn, that’s an awesome spell,” Vince said.

Pausing, Johann nodded. “Really? You’re not going to call it cringe or embarassing?”

“I mean, it’s a huge suit of armor formed from your own magic. Seems pretty neat. What does it do?”

A grin split the demon’s face. “Basically everything. Physical defense, magical defense, absorbs fire spells like the shield you saw earlier, makes me stronger. But the real trick is that I can use the fire magic in it, or any magic it absorbs, to strengthen my spells. Like this!”

With a clap, Johann summoned an orb of black flames between his hands. His entire suit of armor lit up like the sun, and channels of lava streamed through it toward his fingers.

The orb hurtled toward Vince, but his dragon lurched backward. The resulting explosion sent black fire all over the building and pavement. Concrete melted and the building exterior lit up.

Zaira cowered behind Vince, gripping his jacket. “This fucking idiot! Blow his head off!”

“No appreciation for the finer arts.” Johann shook his head.

Vince mimicked the demon’s movement. “I get it. Neat trick.”

Although he had a hunch the spell spread itself too thin. Vince’s dragon spell came across the same way, but really only did one thing. The other effects of the dragon were side-effects of being a huge conglomeration of magic.

Johann scratched the back of his neck. “Uh, no hard feelings about this. A job’s a job.”

“Likewise,” Vince said.

The crackling of the flames consuming the data center filled the air, preventing an awkward silence from getting between them. Both men shrugged at each other.

Johann’s armor burst into brilliant flames at the same time as Vince’s dragon roared. Their spells surged to life.

Then the second level of the building blew open, and dust and concrete flew outward through the flames. A blood-curdling screech followed it.

Ashley crashed to the ground in a crater, her clothes torn and body covered in blood. Her eyes were a strange swirling mix of blue and red magic.

Vince barely had a second to register the way the blood on her body pulsed, before Ashley blurred forward.

“Jesus fucking christ—” Johann shouted, unleashing a ten-foot high jet of black flames at the crazed hellhound.

Her body vanished in the fire.

Yet even Vince felt the immense magic erupting from Ashley’s still-living form. Her scream ripped through the fire as she crashed into Johann.

He rolled backward, barrier cracking but staying intact. Black columns of fire burst from the ground, spiraling around Ashley. They began to close in on her.

She snarled and swung both her claws at him. Lashings of strange, pulsating blood flew off her claws, covering thirty to forty feet.

Cracks and booms echoed through the air, as hundreds of feet of concrete shattered upon impact with the blood. Johann stood there dumbly. A second later, his armor burst into rainbow flames while his body split apart into chunks.

Heaving deep breaths, Ashley turned to face Vince. His dragon met her, pulsing with magic.

Daji appeared next to him, her expression grim.

“Reach for my power, Vince,” the ancient fox said. “I can guess how this demon has ascended so far so quickly, and it’s not through mere talent.”

He shoved a hand into his pocket and gripped Daji’s soul gem. Power seared his veins.

Then Ashley blinked. The swirling magic in her eyes vanished and she regained consciousness.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, sounding perfectly normal. Her eyes raked the burning building. “Nice to see you remembered the most important part of the job. And even got your bitch. Time to bail?”