Page 80 of Ignited

They just needed a spark, and a fuse. Suddenly Blake slapped his head, reached into one of his cargo pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. With a fucking matchbook tucked into the cellophane.

“Here you go, Boss.” He tossed them at Boomer.

Boomer caught them automatically. “They left you this when they searched you?”

Blake smirked. “I guess they didn’t think anyone could break out of a stone storeroom with a lit cigarette.”

They all said in chorus, “Amateurs.”

Blake lit up the cigarette, standing well back from the door, while Boomer threaded the end of the cloth tube into the front of the bin. It puffed out with air traveling down from the vent into the bin.

Boomer took the cigarette from Blake, who went behind the barrier with the other men. Boomer waited until flour dust started seeping up out of the crack between the top of the bin and the door, showing that it had filled the bin.

He stood behind the barrier, and with a snap of his fingers, flicked end of lit cigarette across the room onto the top of the bin, and watched it roll through the crack.

Then he ducked down behind the blast barrier.

This better fucking work.

Deep under the mountain, in the room with the Orb, Maximilian turned to Karisma. “As you can see, your little plan failed, and the men you tried to lead to me have been captured. Soon, the strongest of them will join you in the Orb’s circle.”

He smiled at her, his dried-up lips peeling back to reveal teeth that made him look like a grinning skull. “You have exceeded all expectations, my dear. Although you escaped me, I knew we were still connected. I sent you out into the world, guided you to find the other sections of my Orb. I drank of your power, and I gave you some of mine.”

What? “What are you talking about?”

He laughed. “Did you really think you were clever enough to defeat those other sorcerers on your own? I lent you my power, that allowed you to enter their lairs and escape their traps. I led you to the tools that would help you, like that jewel you wear.”

“That was you?” she whispered. Everything she’d been through, everything she thought she’d done on her own, had really been his doing?

“I did,” he said. “And you did so well—my power has been doubled.”

Oh, fuck. Did that mean the wards were more powerful too? Was that why DB hadn’t been able to break through?

“I’m still going to kill you,” she said. “One way or another.”

“So defiant,” he purred. “So strong. You were the best of my subjects.”

“I was never your subject.”

“You always were. You brought me everything I needed. And now you’re going to bring me one last, best thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Thanatos.”

Karisma thought her heart would stop. How did he know about Thanatos?

“How would I do that?” she said. “I don’t even know who he is.”

Maximilian wagged his finger at her, like she was a naughty four-year-old. “You’re lying, my dear. You can’t lie to me. You are bonded to his wolf shifters. I have you, and him—” he gestured to Bro— “and those others in my power. Through you all, using the Orb, we will draw him to us through the ether.”

“Wait,” Karisma said. “You want to use the power of the Orb to drag Thanatos in here through some kind of interdimensional doorway?” She had the wild desire to laugh.

“Perhaps, he said. “The full knowledge of the power of the Orb is lost in antiquity. All I know is, it will compel him, and he will come.”

“Faster than you think,” Bro muttered.

Karisma couldn’t give in too easily—it would make him suspicious. She said, “I won’t help you.”