The other mage responded by raising his own hands, which were encased in very expensive looking gloves worked all over with sparkling silver spellwork, and Julius felt a stab of panic. He would bet on Marci any day, but mage duels were famously deadly, often in horrific ways. He was trying to catch enough breath to suggest that Marci stand down before the situation got out of hand when she bared her teeth like an animal and pulled on Julius’s magic so hard he nearly blacked out.
If he hadn’t been fighting to stay conscious, the sight of the enemy mage’s cocky expression collapsing as he realized just how much power he was up against would have been comical. Marci was shining like a supernova now. The heat of the trapped power was so intense, smoke was starting to curl up from her bracelets, filling the air with the smell of burning plastic. But though she was holding enough magic to blow the whole place sky high, she didn’t release it. She just kept turning the power over on itself, folding and sharpening and honing the pressure until Julius’s ears were popping and the air itself felt tight.
The other mage was building something, too, but they never got to see what. He’d barely started pulling on the various magical sources Julius could feel in the pockets of his long vest when Marci threw her fist out like a punch, sending the ball of power she’d built through the pink bracelet containing the telekinetic choke she’d used back in the alley. But there was no choking now. Instead, Marci’s magic bit down like a bear trap, and the whole world seemed to shudder as the mage’s building power snapped.
The scream that split the air made Julius’s blood run cold, but with her choke spell going, the mage couldn’t fall until Marci let him. When she released him at last, he collapsed onto the driveway, clutching his silver gloved hands to his chest like they’d been broken. It was such a pathetic sight, Julius would have felt sorry for him, but that was impossible with Marci’s satisfaction coursing through him.
There was so much of her in him now, it was hard to tell where she ended and he began. He could actually feel the rush of joy and vengeance as she wrote the mage off and started looking for her next target. Considering what she’d been through, he didn’t actually begrudge her that, but when he felt her make the decision to pull more power off him in preparation to go hunt down the survivors, Julius knew it was time to end this.
Fast as he’d opened to let her in, he snapped his magic shut. If he’d ever bothered to train his power, he probably could have done it more elegantly, or kept Marci from taking so much in the first place. He hadn’t, though, so he had no choice but to cut her off cold.
She jerked when the connection collapsed, snatching her hand out of his as though she’d been burned. Without her support, Julius dropped like a stone, landing hard on his back in the grassy embankment beside the basement’s dug-out stairs.
“Julius!”
Marci was beside him in an instant, but though he could see her clearly, she sounded a million miles away. He didn’t have the presence of mind to listen in any case. He was too busy trying to breathe.
Now that he’d cut the connection, the emptiness she’d created when she’d sucked out his magic felt like a yawning cavern, and his whole body seemed to be collapsing into it, starting with his lungs. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get them to expand. But then, just when he thought he was going to black out for good, his lungs thundered back to life.
Breath exploded into his body so hard, he arched off the grass. He’d never tasted anything so sweet in his life as that first gulp of air, but the next burned like fire, sending him into a full body coughing fit.
He curled over in the grass, his body folding into itself as he tried to breathe through the coughing spasms. Finally, after what felt like ages, the attack passed, and he slumped into ground with a groan, twitching as he tried to find some part of his body that didn’t hurt to rest his weight on.
It was a hopeless quest. Between the magic and the coughing, he felt like he’d been run through an industrial crusher. It was all he could do to just lie still and keep breathing. But this was one of those times when being a dragon was actually a blessing. A human would have been motionless for hours after something like that, but Julius was able to roll over after just a few more deep breaths, grimacing through the pounding in his head as he looked around for Marci.
He found her a few feet away, staring down him with a look of absolute, horrified guilt. “Julius,” she whispered when he met her eyes. “I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to take that much, I swear. I—”
She cut off when Julius raised his hand. After a second’s hesitation, she took it, helping him sit up. Now that his body had realized it wasn’t going to die, he was finally calming down enough to actually take in their surroundings. Or what was left of them.
Marci couldn’t have been pulling on him for more than a few minutes, but the area around the house was now completely empty. The only exception was the mage, who was still lying in a whimpering ball in front of Marci’s car. Julius could vaguely hear the moans of the other men from beyond the disaster area of broken bushes and shattered yard statues where Marci’s blasts had thrown them, but those who were still alive seemed more concerned with pulling themselves to safety than retaliating. By all accounts, it looked like Marci had just beaten Bixby’s force hands down, which was why Julius was so surprised when he heard the sound of a pistol cocking just a few feet away.
“Don’t move.”
Marci’s head snapped up at once, but it took Julius a few seconds to turn far enough to see a large, heavily augmented man with a bald head and a very nice, though now very dirty, gray suit step out from behind the trunk of Marci’s car. He must have used the vehicle for cover during the fight, Julius realized, which made him the only one of Bixby’s hirelings with the presence of mind to do something clever. But while that was unexpected and unlucky, what really caught Julius’s attention wasn’t the man’s unexpected survival or his gun; it was the golden ball he was clutching like a trophy in his left hand.
If Julius had had any lingering doubts, Marci’s horrified gasp would have ended them. The big man was holding the Kosmolabe, the priceless magical tool Marci carried in her bag at all times… the bag she’d left in the car when they’d run for the house.
“Put it down gently, Oslo,” Marci ordered, holding out her hands, though her fingers didn’t glow this time. A fact that didn’t escape Bixby’s second.
“You shouldn’t leave such valuable things lying around,” he said casually, tossing the Kosmolabe and catching it one-handed. “Anyone could just pick them up.”
He tossed it again, and Marci made a strangled sound. “You’re messing with things you don’t understand,” she warned. “That Kosmolabe is irreplaceable.”
“So I’ve been told,” Oslo said, tossing it again. “But I’m not in the antiquities business, and I’m getting mighty tired of chasing a ball like a dog.” He snatched the Kosmolabe out of the air as he finished, fingers curling menacingly over the thin glass as he leveled his gun at Marci with his other hand. “The only reason you’re not dead right now is because Bixby wants to do it himself, but just because I can’t kill you doesn’t mean you’re safe.” Before Julius could even wonder what that meant, Oslo turned the gun on him, aiming the barrel straight between his eyes. “Hands up, or pretty boy here says goodbye to his head.”
Marci’s hands shot up at once.
Julius followed more slowly and with far less obedience. He might be drained, beaten, and unable to stand, but that didn’t mean he was ready to roll over. He’d spent his whole life cowering before real monsters. This human didn’t even come close.