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Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the security forces converging on the lobby. Gargoyles circled above, keeping the harpies in check, and other people and creatures emerged from various passageways. I knew we needed to buy time to have all our people in place.
“It wasn’t really about you, Roger,” I said, walking toward him. I hoped he’d be distracted by following my movement and not notice the other motion around him. “I was on a mission. It wasn’t personal at all. Actually, you were the best boss I ever had. That is, until you started turning my friends into frogs. That’s not exactly something I can overlook. Mostly, though, I was using you to get to your boss, and it worked, so thanks!”
Evelyn apparently picked up on what I was doing, or else she just wanted to give him a piece of her mind, because she followed my lead. She walked straight up to him. “I was also using you to get to your boss, but for me it was all about revenge for what the Collegium did to my family.”
“You worked for me for years!”
“I’m very patient,” she said with a shrug. “And you did help me achieve what I wanted, so I owe you thanks for that.”
By this time, all our forces were in place. Merlin stepped forward and said, “Enough talk. Stop this foolishness, call off your monsters, and surrender. We have you surrounded.”
Roger glanced around, seeing that he was, indeed, surrounded by angry former frogs and the entire might of MSI. But he didn’t look the way you’d expect someone who was cornered like that to look. There was no tension in his body language, no fear in his eyes. He merely smiled, his eyes remaining cold and hard. “I’m not the only one who’s surrounded,” he said.
I followed his glance to where Owen still stood in the middle of a bunch of skeleton men while harpies circled him overhead. They’d homed in on him because he
was holding the beacon, so he’d never had a chance to get to the rest of us.
He, too, looked calm for someone in that kind of situation, but it wasn’t the same emotionless, effortless calm Roger had. If you knew Owen as well as I did, you could spot the signs of tension in his bearing. He held his shoulders like someone squaring off for a fight, and his eyes were wary, darting around to take in his surroundings.
The room grew very quiet and very still. “What are you going to do, Merlin?” Roger asked. “The moment you make a move on me, your wonder boy gets it. I know he’s good, but can he really take on that many people at once?”
It would have been just like Owen to say something like, “Don’t worry about me, do what you need to do.” In fact, he’d said that sort of thing before. But I don’t think any of us expected him to do what he did.
He knelt very slowly, so slowly, in fact, that it was hard to tell he was actually moving. When he was low enough that he could bend and touch the floor, he dropped something small and shiny—the beacon. It rolled across the floor to the other side of the room.
I was just starting to wonder why he’d done that when there was a loud cracking sound, like a very close lightning strike. I felt a surge of magic so intense that it was almost painful, and suddenly all the harpies and skeleton creatures were in a different part of the room, surrounding the beacon, and surrounded by the MSI people. I figured Owen must have somehow managed to trigger the beacons the creatures had used to home in on his beacon, sending them to its new location. He had said he’d been studying it.
“Now would you care to surrender?” Merlin asked.
“Actually, no,” Roger said genially. “I’d rather fight. You see, I figure if I manage to take you out, I still get what I want. I can take over.”
He raised his hands as though to attack Merlin, but although Merlin was really, really old, his reflexes were fast, and he was already on the defensive, easily deflecting whatever Roger had aimed at him.
At the same time as Roger’s attack, his creatures also turned and went after the people who surrounded them. It turned into a massive magical free-for-all.
I noticed Trish standing stunned near the doorway and made my way through the melee toward her. “This—this is insane,” she said.
“Yeah, magical fights can be pretty intense, but we should be safe enough. Their magic can’t affect us. We should probably stay on the lookout, in case they try something sneaky.”
“Do you do this sort of thing all the time?”
“Fights like this? Once every few months, give or take. It depends on who the bad guy is at that time.”
I racked my brain, trying to come up with a way I could contribute to the battle, aside from shouting the occasional warning when a skeleton creature came up behind one of our people. Then I came up with an idea, based on my brief experience from having magical powers. Magical power wasn’t unlimited. People with magic had the ability to turn latent power in the atmosphere into power they could use. Some places had more natural power than others, so there was more power to draw upon. This building had extra power supplied to it, to support all the magic used within its walls. Without that, there would be less power to draw upon, and the people who had the ability to store more power or create more power with less input would have an advantage.
I knew that Owen and Merlin were among the most powerful wizards around. In fact, Owen was so powerful that he was watched very carefully in case he went bad. They’d be able to keep going long after everyone else was drained.
What I needed to do was shut off the power.
Twenty
“Come on, I have an idea,” I said to Trish, then began making my way around the lobby. Even though I knew the magic wouldn’t affect me, I couldn’t help but flinch when a bolt of something flew toward me, and those harpies were also pretty nasty if they got your claws into you. After glancing back and forth between the battle and me, Trish hurried to catch up with me.
“What kind of idea?” she asked.
“One that should turn the power down here a lot and give us an advantage. I hope.”
“Does this mean getting out of the war zone?”
