“Wow!” Alistair’s voice came over the comms. “That was impressive, Charlie! You show ‘em who’s boss!”
“Stay off the comms unless you have information for us, Alistair.” I tossed Krew’s head aside, heaving heavy breaths. I turned on the others. “That was too fucking close! We can’t let something like this happen again, or we aren’t walking out of here with that key. We’ve got two bodies now, and we just got in. These bodies are going to be discovered quicker than we wantthem to be, because they’ll be expected to report back to the higher-ups, and people will know they’re missing.”
“We can at least get rid of the evidence to slow Salvatore’s people down,” Ava suggested. She aimed her Fire magic, and warmth filled the air as her flames ate away at the vampires’ bodies until there was nothing left of them.
I whirled on Danny. “You care to explain what just happened? How do you know these people? Every detail you leave out puts us at risk.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Danny insisted. “I lived in The Devil’s City for a while after my parents kicked me out. Ivy and I spent some time together, and they took me on jobs to help out. I never officially joined the mob, but I met a few guys along the way. That’s it.”
“You better hope that’s it,” I sneered. “Because if your mobster friends catch us off guard like that again, it’s over. I won’t hesitate to kill them, even if you’re caught in the line of fire.”
“Believe me,” Danny replied darkly. “I won’t be.”
“I don’t understand,” Chancey said. “We shouldn’t have been caught after taking Marcus’ warding potion. It must’ve not worked.”
“But I brewed it perfectly!” Marcus insisted. “I don’t know what could’ve gone wrong.”
“The spy in the palace,” Ava sneered. “Someone must’ve sabotaged your potion. Just one wrong ingredient could make it ineffective, even if the magical signature remained.”
That fucking spy again. We needed to figure out who they were, because we would never make any progress if someone was always sabotaging our moves.
I shook my head. “Nothing we can do about it now.”
“What if the spy told Salvatore about our plan? Charlie, we could be walking into a trap!” Marcus panicked.
I paused. He was right. But we were already in the building, and the key was a hundred stories up. We were so close. Could we really turn back now, even if there was a risk?
Keep going forward, my grandfather would say. So that’s what I decided we’d do.
“We don’t quit until we have that key. Marcus, keep a close lookout for any potential wards,” I warned. “Let’s keep moving.”
We hurried across the boiler room, but we didn’t run into any other vamps. At the service elevator, Marcus and Chancey pried the doors open. I felt a column of air rising upward all the way to the top of the tower. Somewhere in the middle I could sense two elevator cars, but there was enough space around them that we could maneuver past them. This was our best way to navigate the building undetected.
“Let’s move quickly.” I ushered the others inside.
Ivy and Danny grabbed the side of the elevator shaft and began climbing. Marcus used his telekinesis to fly himself, Rishi, and Eddie upward, while I cast my Air magic to levitate myself and Ava. Oberi shifted into a phoenix to fly on her own, and Chancey spread his angel wings to follow up the rear.
Danny and Ivy climbed as fast as the rest of us flew. We moved at a quick pace, and I figured it would only take us a couple of minutes to reach the top. Floors flew past us in seconds. Ten floors, then twenty…
I sensed a shift in my Air magic, as if someone had opened a doorway overhead.
“Intruders!” a deep voice yelled.
“Fuck, we have company!” Ava cried.
I could feel her shock through the bond, and it was easy to read her. Two vampires stood several floors above us, peering out into the open elevator shaft. I reacted quickly, sending a column of Air upward to knock them off their feet.
“We have to move faster!” I shouted.
No sooner had I shoved those vamps backward did I feel another doorway open overhead. The sinister laughter of a vampire echoed off the elevator shaft.
“You have nowhere to hide!” the vamp called down to us.
Then the most horrible sound filled my ears— the sound of snapping cables, and the groan of metal on metal. The Air around me seemed to shrink. An elevator car was coming down on top of us!
“Everyone to the walls!” Chancey screamed.
I thrust my arms outward, and my Air magic pinned my friends against the corners of the elevator shaft. I lifted my arms to slow the elevator down, but my Air magic fought against it, like the vampires were using powers of their own to make it fall.
