Page 2 of Furever Loyal
“I am ready,” Kvoss said, ducking low as a green thunderbolt sizzled through the air, smacking into a parked car across the street and melting through its door.
“Then do it already,” he growled, watching as one of his men was flung back by a ghostly blue hand, smacked clear across the street and into a storefront, glass shattering. The noise was dulled, barely audible, but the spell that had been cast would do nothing to slow electronic alarms. They had to finish this up and finish it soon.
Kvoss lunged forward, reaching into the folds of his long, sweeping leather cape and withdrawing something. He slapped it onto the door, said a few words and then punched the ring on his middle finger into it.
Blue energy flung him and every shifter back as it dissipated.
“Holy shit,” Kincaid muttered, getting to his feet. “This motherfucker Girard is more powerful than we thought.” Turning to his men as they got back to their feet—most of them, anyway, as one was down and not moving—he shouted a warning. “Be careful! He’s got more juice than the intel showed.”
The energy discharged was an indicator of how strong the wards on the building had been. Kincaid had expected to be rocked backward, and he’d braced for it. Yet he’d been tossed five feet back onto his ass, and some of his men even more.
Goddamned Intelligence. Can’t get anything right!
He wisely ignored the fact that he oversaw the intelligence operations among other aspects. Now was not the time to get distracted by failure. If he wanted to get his men home, he had to end it and end it soon.
Kvoss moved up to the door, and a blood-red nimbus of magic appeared in front of him. A breaching shield. The assassin walked up to the door and kicked it in with one foot. Almost immediately, a stream of green energy impacted the shield, but it held, and Kvoss entered the room.
Behind him came Kincaid and his men. The Assassin’s job was to hunt down rogue mages, and really, the rest of the bear shifters were just there to assist him, but they weren’t about to let him shoulder all the danger, no matter how annoying the man was.
They spread out into the room. Girard swept his hand around and lashed out with a bright orange blade of fire.
“Everyone down!” Kincaid shouted, putting his command into practice.
Everyone but Kvoss got as flat as they could, but at least one of his men was too slow and received a blackened burn across their side. Kincaid cursed, but they would live. That was the important thing. Wounds would heal. Right now, though, they needed to take this bastard down, and quick!
The old building was going up in flames as the mage battled against Kvoss’ shield. Lifting his gun, Kincaid let a round fly, but he wasn’t surprised when it ricocheted away less than a foot from the mage, a blue glow surrounding him. Of course, he had his own shield.
“Any day now!” he shouted at the assassin, but one look at Kvoss told him the assassin was giving everything he had into keeping up the shield under the onslaught of green magic.
This was going to have to be settled by Kincaid and his men, and soon. The fire blade had gone dark, but Kincaid could see the mage preparing to attack them again. He needed the initiative. An idea came to him.
“If it’s on fire, throw it at the bastard!” he hollered, grabbing a flaming box from nearby and tossing it with all his strength.
A veritable barrage of missiles descended upon the man, who was shrouded in shadow and black clothing, missiles coated in flames borne from his own magic. The shield stopped the debris, but sparks showered down on Girard. He wasn’t able to repel his own magic.
The mage screamed, and his concentration fell, all his magic dissipating in a heartbeat. Kincaid rose to one knee and fired at almost the same instant Kvoss condensed his shield into a spear and flung it forward. They would argue for years over who struck first, but it didn’t matter. Girard was finished, a magical spear in his arm, and one of the depleted uranium bullets in his torso. Spinning like a rag doll, he fell to the ground as blood erupted from his side, spattering the far wall.
That was when the screams began. These weren’t normal screams of pain either. The thing with magic, or with shifter DNA—which was more science-based than anything—was that it reacted very violently and painfully to radiation of any kind. Introducing radioactive elements into the body, such as via the depleted-uranium bullet, was painful beyond measure.
Kincaid knew as he’d been shot with one before.
“Kvoss,” he snarled, gesturing at Girard. “Do your job. The rest of you, fan out, take anything of note, and get any casualties on their feet or over your shoulder. We’re moving in three minutes. This place isn’t going to last much longer.”
Truthfully, he doubted they had three minutes, but his men were done in under two, and they cleared the building. Outside, most of the casualties who were hit by the magical defenses were either on their feet or awake. Two wouldn’t get back up though. Kincaid said a brief prayer for the men, men he’d known and talked with, laughed with and fought beside for years.
Then he was back in the command chair, and his men disappeared into the night mere minutes before the magical silence fell apart and the nearby world became aware of the blazing building.
Already, in the distance, he could hear sirens ringing. The damage wouldn’t extend beyond their target building, thankfully.
He jogged up next to Kvoss. “This is the third one this year,” he muttered quietly, not wanting to unsettle his men with his thoughts. “Just in Europe alone.”
“There have been others,” Kvoss said. “It happens. A cycle. It will happen again. I sense nothing untoward about it.”
He fell silent, not sure he believed the man.
Almost at the same time, they both reached for their pockets, pulling out cell phones.
“Hello?” Kincaid said quietly, his ears picking up the sound of his voice from the Assassin’s phone as well.
