Page 1 of Furever Loyal
1
He went over the plan in his head one last time.
It was a fairly straightforward assault. No fancy tactics or areas to exploit. Their target had chosen the area well.
Maybe too well, he thought unhappily, staring at the squat stone building that their quarry had holed up in. No buildings touching it, and at least ten feet of space on all sides. He and his men would be seen coming no matter which direction they came from. The roof was covered with pressure sensors according to his intelligence, and Kincaid knew there would be other, more deadly and decidedlylessdetectable threats up there as well.
That’s what came with the business of mage-hunting. Only another magic user could pick up any spells or wards that had been cast on the building, and Kincaid didn’t have one of those available to him.
“Are we going to go in now?”
He tried not to growl in frustration as the man next to him spoke.
“When I’m ready, Kvoss, and not a moment before,” he snapped.
His Queen had seen fit to send him the Assassin. While thiswashis specialty, Kincaid couldn’t help but be pissed. He and Kvoss had never liked each other, even before Kincaid had left for Europe nearly a decade ago. It had been quite nice not to have to deal with the irritating jerk.
My Queen, you have an odd sense of humor.
Shoving his personal feelings aside, he racked the slide back on his specially-made pistol, loading one of the depleted uranium bullets into the chamber while sliding the safety off at the same time. There was no point in delaying any longer.
The rogue mage, one Samuel Girard, was pinned down in the building. Just like Kincaid and his men had no back door or sewers with which they could access the building unseen, neither did their target have any such ways he could escape. It was going to be a straight up showdown, and he had every confidence his men would win out, despite the mage’s strength and spells.
“If you would do the honors,” he said with false sincerity, gesturing for Kvoss to lead the way.
The Assassin, his title as well as his job, smiled and rose from where they crouched at the lip of the building across the street. He muttered a few words, pulling an object from his pouch, and waving it in three circles above his head before slamming it down into the roof with acrack. The sound was visible, a tiny golden ring that spread out from the rod the assassin was holding.
As it went, blackness thicker than the night around them followed. It blanketed noise, and most importantly, would obscure from the nearby residents the sounds and sights of the battle about to come.
Sometimes, I do love magic, Kincaid thought. It really was useful.As long as it doesn’t fall into the hands of the wrong person.
In the modern world, most humans had no idea magic existed. Even fewer still had any idea of the pain that had been inflicted upon the world by magic users who had run wild, or simply lost control.
What would historians think if they found out that much of Attila’s hordes were made up of the undead, I wonder?
“Ready?” Kvoss asked, an eager grin on his face.
“Just do it.”
The man nodded and flicked the rod into the air above the building, sending a ball of green light shooting across it, the signal to attack.
Kincaid was over the edge of the building without hesitation. He might head up all of High House Ursa’s operations in the European theatre, but that didn’t mean he was a desk jockey. Kincaid led from the front, and tonight would be no different.
A swirling beam of red light lanced out from the building, and he threw himself to the side, his pistol tracking the origin—a small, recessed window—and sending rounds flinging into it even as he rolled.
Around him, his operatives erupted from their hiding spots and charged for the inconspicuous house. They came up over cars, out from around street corners, and one even erupted from the sewer in the middle of the street. They had been in hiding for nearly two hours now, waiting for the opportune time to attack, when the fewest possible witnesses would be about.
In the twenty-first century, they had to work much harder to keep their secrets than they had in the past—even with the aid of magic, something humanity as a whole had relegated to their books and movies.
If only they knew the truth of the world they inhabit, he thought with a snort, coming to his feet and firing as he ran. Around him, others were doing the same, targeting the tiny windows, doing their best to ensure Girard couldn’t get any more shots off.
“Anything?” he asked Kvoss as the master assassin landed next to him.
Kvoss was the only magic user in their midst. Not a mage, he had no magic inherent to him, but he was trained in the use of certain artifacts such as the silencer he’d put up over the area.
His other main use was to rip down the wards around the building so that Kincaid and his men could storm inside. To do that, however, the men of House Ursa would have to get him right up to the door.
Yet again he grit his teeth, frustrated at the lack of their own mage. Of course, there was no way the man was coming, mostly because he was dead, killed in the uprising that had split the House two weeks earlier. They were still recovering from that, and he knew it would be a long time before they were back to where they had been.
