Consensus Breaking (The Auran Chronicles Book 2) (21 page)

Seb only had one chance. His
sense
wrapped around a shard of broken glass that lay nearby. He channelled Novo, feeling the shard in his mind’s eye. He called the Script as the mage swung the staff. The glass shard flew. Something
thunked
into the mage’s neck and she staggered backwards, a bemused look on her face as her staff clattered to the floor. A shaking hand rose, the fingers unable to stem the gushing blood that poured from the wound. With a final gasp and a blink of her eyes, the Ninth mage toppled to the floor.

The room was spinning. Seb dropped to his knees. He closed his eyes, funnelling away the pain from his broken nose. Avatari came, the bleeding stopped, and his bone realigned. He didn’t have time to knit it together. Others needed him now. He picked up the mage’s staff. He turned back.

Five Ninth magi stood before him.

He looked left at the plate glass windows, then back at the magi. They smiled. They thought they had him.

What now? He couldn’t outrun them. He couldn’t fight them.

It left him only one option.

He turned and ran towards the window. The magi realised only too late what he was thinking. The air fizzed as they
blurred
towards him, but they were too slow. He locked his eyes on the building opposite, where an exposed floor was covered with drapes and cans of paint and building materials. He couldn’t
sense
any Aware there, but that didn’t mean anything. Besides, he had no choice. He raced towards the window, and without a further thought,
blurred
into the open air.

For a split second, time seemed to stop. Glass exploded around him. His feet ran on air. Then the building, a street’s width away, exploded into view, up close and personal. He had a split second to take in the concrete wall and the square hole where a window would one day be before he slammed into the building’s exterior. The breath blasted from his lungs. Instinct made his legs reach for the floor but nothing was there. A mad panic filled him and he flailed with both arms as gravity began to take hold. He slid downwards, the stone cutting his face before his free hand grabbed onto the exposed window frame. His fall stopped. His fingers began to slip. He channelled Avatari, a mad burst that strengthened his supporting arm. The action bought him an extra second and he was able to bring his other arm up. Both hands took a firm grip and he was able to steady himself. With a final heave, ignoring the buffeting winds that tried to wrench him off of the building exterior, he hauled himself through, landing on a cold stone floor.

‘Get up, Seb,
get up!’

He rolled over onto his knees. Okay. Focus. He closed his eyes. His ribs screamed, some of them no doubt broken. But they weren’t important. Already he could feel the buzz in the air as Ninth magi scanned the area, no doubt looking for him. Come on, dammit! One was getting close. He could almost see the dust being disturbed as the mage’s
sense
gazed across at the building.

At the last moment, the air around him shimmered. His shields rose. A heartbeat later the mage’s
sense
passed over him. It continued on, unaware it had found its prey.

Seb stood. His legs felt like jelly. He rested against a stone pillar, out of sight of those across the way. The burn in his chest turned to a dull ache as his ribs knitted together. Energy returned to tiring muscles. Seconds later his legs were his own again and he stood to full height.

What the hell? What the fucking hell had happened? The Ninth. The goddammned Ninth. How the hell had they done it? How could they ever penetrate the Family? What were they doing working with Sedaris?

And who or what the
hell
was Sedaris?

He dared a
sense
back. His heart sank. The Ninth numbered in the tens, if not the hundreds. A mix of soldier and mage. Something else amongst them too, an alien presence, its aura burning a bright red, dwarfing that of the magi around it. Turning his sight to the infrared, he saw the cooling bodies of many of the other magi. Many had been slain outright, burned by the Ninth or gunned down by their soldiers. Some, though, had escaped, Sylph leading them out.

Hopefully it would count for something.

He ran past the opening that led to the stairwell. He was at least five floors up, if going by the auditorium was a good comparison. Instead, he ran straight towards the open shaft surrounded by yellow tape.

The shaft that would one day house an elevator.

Seb leapt over the tape and dove down into the darkness. The ground raced towards him at speed. He focused, calling the Scripts to mind that created a cushion of air underneath him that slowed his descent. He alighted on cold concrete, sending plumes of dust billowing into the room beyond. Without hesitation he was off and running back across the wasteland that separated Domus from the abandoned buildings around it.  As he moved he saw the gates were open, five black vans stood parked and empty. On the floor lay two dead First guards, their weapons still in their holsters.

The poor bastards never had a chance.

Seb picked up speed and ran past the gates. There was nothing more he could do there now. He just needed to find a Way and get to safety.

A sudden flare in his
sense
made him slide to a halt.

Sylph!

He stopped and looked back, scanning the compound. His
sense
honed in on her in an instant.

What was she doing? She should’ve been out by now, fleeing back into the world of the Unaware, into the safety of the Consensus, so why wasn’t she out?

Then it hit him.

The acolytes.

Stupid girl! She must’ve gone back for the raw trainees, those not deemed important enough to be invited to the Commune. She was hurrying through a canteen, a handful of acolytes with her along with a small group of Domus soldiers. Just behind them, a party of the black-clad soldiers was moving at pace, closing the distance between them and their prey with every second.

Even worse was the group of four Ninth soldiers, crouched in the yard, weapons aimed at the only set of doors that Sylph could come out from.

They weren’t going to make it.

He shot a look down the open road. At freedom. Behind him the tidal wave of blackness crept through the auditorium building like a weed, overwhelming those in its path before they could respond. Anyone sensible would get out whilst they could.

Screw that. He was done running.

Seb ran towards the nearest van. The driver, a Ninth soldier, was leaning against the open door whilst the engine ran.

He never saw Seb coming. And a moment later the soldier was lying still on the floor.

Seb sat in the driver’s seat. The engine was still running. A radio hung down on the dash, broadcasting from the team’s inside Domus in a language he didn’t recognise.

He put the van into first gear. The soldiers still hadn’t noticed.

Now or never.

Seb floored the accelerator. The van roared forward with more power than he would’ve given it credit for. It ate up the distance between it and the Ninth soldiers in seconds. They only turned around when only a few yard remained.

It was too late for some of them.

The van ploughed through the surprised soldiers. Two of them were too slow, and they bounced off the van with a sickening thud. The others managed to dive out of the way, squeezing off panicked shots that struck the van, cracking the windscreen.

The van crashed through the doors, sending glass and plastic flying inwards. It was going too fast to stop, and Seb dove out before it slammed to a halt against the far wall. He rolled on the floor as the last two Ninth soldiers appeared at the gaping hole that the van had just made. Before they could react, he gathered a pile of broken glass in his mind, before hurling them towards the soldiers, a swarm of razor-sharp daggers that cut them to ribbons.

Seb burst through the double doors that led out of the room, sliding to a stop in the corridor, right in front of Sylph’s party. She jumped up in surprise, raising a pistol on instinct before quickly lowering it.

‘Shit, Seb! I thought you’d got out!’

‘I could say the same about you. Who’s with you?’

‘Some rookies, some firepower and one grumpy mage.’ she said, nodding past the frightened teenagers to the three First soldiers that accompanied her. One of them held Barach. The elite was barely conscious, his injuries so severe that if he were anything but a mage he would’ve surely died.

‘Where are the rest?’

‘This is it. The rest went ahead out into the city.’

A heavy silence hung in the air.

‘Let’s get out of here.’

They turned towards the room where Seb had just entered from. At the same time the other door to the canteen burst open. Some of the black-clad soldiers swarmed in.

Seb didn’t even think. He lashed out, the Script already formed in his mind, a concentrated wedge of force striking one of the soldiers in the neck. Something cracked and he crumpled to the floor.

Seb and Sylph were amongst them a second later. Even unarmed and outnumbered, their skills still far outweighed those of the Unaware before them. Seb
blurred
and he was in amongst three. He backhanded the one nearest him with imbued strength, not needing to turn around to know the man was flying through the air towards the wall. He continued his turn, lashing out with his other hand, cracking ribs. The other soldier stumbled, trying to raise her weapon, but he was already on her, rage fuelling his speed. A knife-hand strike to the side of her head sent her tumbling into unconsciousness.

The final soldier was too stunned to respond. He looked down at his fallen companions, then up at Seb. Some semblance of self-preservation returned in that moment and Seb
sensed
the impulse travelling down the man’s arm, instructing it to raise his pistol.

All too slow.

Seb held up a hand, the pistol leapt out of the man’s hand and into his own. He raised it, aiming at the man’s stricken face.

‘How could you? How could you betray your own kind?’ Seb roared.

The man’s face began to contort, the response coming obviously not going to be something pleasant. Seb had no interest in hearing it, and fired.

‘You okay?’ Sylph was at his side, the other two soldiers lying in broken heaps behind her.

‘Yeah, I’ll live. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘Contact!’ One of the First soldiers said. More of the black-clad soldiers were pouring into the canteen. Seb and Sylph dived out of the way as the First soldiers fired as one, a well-practiced routine that felled two of the Ninth soldiers before their comrades even knew they were in a firefight.

‘Get them out,’ the First soldier said. ‘We’ll hold them!’

Seb herded the youngsters on, Sylph rushing ahead to the gaping hole in the wall. She scanned the yard quickly before beckoning them on. They streamed out of the building, back into daylight.

‘Over there. Don’t look back, just run. Follow Sylph, she knows the way.’

The youngsters obeyed without question, their flickering auras laced with fear. One carried the barely-conscious Barach across their shoulders. To their credit they didn’t slow, they hurried after the Night Sister who led them. Two of the black-clad soldiers appeared from behind a corner as they moved, but two shots from Sylph saw them dropping to the ground.

Seb brought up the rear. Already the first of the young magi were reaching the gates. Beyond there lay the power of the Consensus.

They might just make it.

Seb turned away just as reality screamed in his mind. The air pressure changed, his ears popping. Five of the young magi stopped, confused by the strange tingling in their fledgeling
sense.
Confusion turned to fear as something materialised right in the middle of them, one being vaporised by a reality-distorting portal that appeared.

‘My god!’

Avatari couldn’t suppress the fear that nearly crippled him. Not since he’d first met Clementine months before had he felt such terror, his stomach turning to ice and a tightness wrapping around his chest. He heard his staff clatter to the floor. The distortion coalesced into a physical form, and before Seb could even process the horror he was seeing, a blast of force sent him flying backwards, back into the canteen. He struck the wall with dizzying speed and collapsed to the floor, spots of white exploding over his vision.

‘
Seb!’
Sylph pulsed, her mental voice nearly a scream.

‘
Go, just get out, get them all out!’

‘Seb, I can’t -’

‘Go!’

Then a voice spoke, grim and deep, as if a mountain had a voice and had uttered words for the first time.

‘
Have no fear, children of Danu. I will slay this one, and then I will hunt the rest. It is of no consequence if you die now, or run. I will always find you.’

Seb had recovered enough strength to raise his head. The orbs were still there, but they were receding now, dots rather than blobs.