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He hung up.
Konstantin laughed, his eyes sparkling. “You called him a pile of dog shit to his face. I love it.”
Alessandro gave me an odd look. “‘You sent killers to my house’?”
He was asking me if it still bothered me. “If he thinks we’re doing this ‘for God and country,’ he’ll keep trying to intimidate me to knock me off course. I had to make it personal. He knows people with a personal vendetta are difficult to stop. You taught him that.”
An alarm wailed outside. We were under attack.
The two men charged to the door. I grabbed the Imperial contract, tossed it into Konstantin’s cage, and locked it. I didn’t want to take any chances it would get ruined in whatever fight I would run into. I wasted another precious second on keying the code into the nearest gun cage. The lock turned green, I pulled the door open, grabbed a DA Ambassador, slapped a magazine into it, and sprinted to the door.
Both Alessandro and Konstantin were already gone.
The alarm cut off in midnote.
The grounds were eerily still. The north gate was to my right, the main house and a long driveway leading to it to my left. There should have been people running to their stations, noise, even gunfire, but there was nothing. The Compound was silent. I was alone.
What the hell was this?
Magic shifted high above me. I looked up. A black hole gaped above the north gate and another, identical hole punctured the air above the main house. Twin summoner portals.
The two holes writhed in unison and collapsed on themselves. Whatever had been summoned must’ve already crawled out.
A shot popped, echoing through the buildings. Mom just sniped someone from her crow’s nest atop the main house’s roof.
They were going after my family and Linus.
I ran toward the main house.
Another shot.
A third rifle shot.
Mom was a one shot–one kill sniper. Either she was killing multiple targets, or she was shooting at something huge.
I moved off the main driveway onto a side path, hidden by the decorative shrubs, and sprinted, the Ambassador heavy in my hand.
There was no return fire. No screams, no growls, nothing. Every hair I had stood on end.
The path curved and spat me out into the open right by Leon’s tower. The main driveway widened here, connecting to a huge paver patio. At the other end of the patio, stairs led up to the main house.
People sprawled on the stairs, unmoving. Our guards, Patricia . . . I saw a wave of blond hair. Arabella lay at the top of the stairs, curled into a fetal ball, her blond hair fanning over her face.
Panic stabbed me.
I forced myself to stand still and look carefully. A faintly fluorescent indigo dust shifted on the pavers, like very fine glitter. It covered the entire patio. The front of Leon’s tower shimmered with it. If he was alive, he was trapped in the tower.
I had seen this before.
I took another step and saw it, an eight-foot-tall plant in the center of the patio, anchored by a twisted mass of dark green roots. A tire-size flower bloomed atop the braided stem. It resembled a monstrous mum, with rows and rows of indigo petals rimmed in cornflower blue at the edges. A whirl of tentacles, flashing with the same pale blue, stretched from the plant, trying to wrap around Runa. She stood with her feet apart, arms bent at the elbows, palms up. The air around her was emerald green. Sweat drenched her forehead.
The flower pulsed. The outer whorls of petals rolled down and into the stem and the new whorls opened at the center, sending a burst of indigo pollen into the air. It touched the green air around Runa, turned grey, and fell to the ground. The tentacles slid, trying to wrap around her and failing.
The nightbloom, a strange creature midway between a plant and an animal. They grew in the arcane realm, crawling across the landscape and sending puffs of poisonous pollen in the air. The pollen put their prey to sleep, slowly killing them, and eventually the nightbloom would make its way to them and root in their bodies, sucking up the nutrients.
We had about forty minutes to administer the antidote or everyone affected would die.
Don’t think about Arabella. Focus on the flower.
I raised my gun. The flower and Runa were intertwined. No clear shot except at the blossom. I sighted the flower, and squeezed the trigger, sending a two-shot burst at the bloom. The flower didn’t even jerk.
“Run!” Runa squeezed out. “Run now!”
Something shiny winked at me through the gaps in the flower’s roots. Something tall.
I took a step back.
A man emerged from behind the nightbloom. Over seven feet tall, he was built like a linebacker. Thin strands of nacre crystal wrapped over every inch of him, forming a semblance of a medieval suit of armor. He looked like he was wearing full plate shaped from long sheets of chopstick-thin, multifaceted icicles. The crystal mesh sheathed him from head to toe, thickening in some places, woven and braided in the others. Even his face was completely protected, the nacre strands twisting into a barbute helmet with a single slit of clear crystal over his eyes. The armor fit him like a glove.
