Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) (13 page)

Lewis listened to the chief weather mage and chief geomage shout and hammer at the door of his outer office. Shawn Johnson, Lewis’s assigned PA and bodyguard stood out there, but they had evidently double-teamed him and gotten past him. Shawn would be furious. In fact, if Lewis concentrated he could hear Shawn’s muttered commentary. It dealt profanely with the character of the two senior mages and something about snow in an office being conduct unbecoming. Evidently, Samuel, the weather mage, had let loose his magic.

Lewis could have ended the dispute, but he wanted a few more minutes. His report on the Group of 5 was complete, and had just incorporated Gina’s contribution.

She’d borrowed Shawn’s desk to write up both her morning’s activities online and her earlier findings on the Group of 5, while Shawn had guarded the doors, respecting Lewis’s demand for an hour of quiet.

Quiet! Huh. Not in the Collegium.

But Lewis had taken the precaution to overwrite the wards on the presidential office with the silver energy he saw. It locked him and Gina away as securely as a nuclear bunker. The senior mages and all the others could rage and question, but he’d speak with them in his time.

Everything had changed.

Lewis kept his sight resolutely human and studied Gina.

She’d finished her report and pulled an armchair around to sit by a window in his inner office and look out across New York. Before taking the portal with him to Collegium headquarters, she’d insisted on changing into office wear.

He preferred her casual in t-shirt and jeans, or better yet, in that purple nightgown. Her body was perfect, strong and curvy. But in a severely cut black suit worn with a cream silk shirt and killer black heels, her red hair and green eyes shone in vivid contrast, and her whole presence was a challenge and an assertion of her strength.

He’d bet the guardians, led by Kora, still underestimated Gina, dismissing her as a house witch. He’d learned that house witchery was more subtle than many other magics, but it drew from the heart. It was Gina’s love and nurturing for home, family and friends that centered her magic.

“The Collegium board will object to my presence at the meeting.” She kept her attention on the view from the window.

“You’re the expert I’ve brought in to confirm my suspicions as to the Group of 5’s existence and dark web activities. The board will listen. And if they’re rude to you personally, I’ll silence them.”

She looked at him, then. “Don’t be too ruthless, Lewis.”

He reached for his jacket and shrugged it on. He also ceased ignoring the real issue between them. “You must have seen Morag use more power than I did this morning? Or your aunt Deborah?”

“Morag has probably used more power, but I never noticed it. And…she’s not human.”

“Are you wondering if I still am?” Ironic that he was noticing her sexy figure and beauty, and she thought him inhuman. He was more aware of her than he had been of any woman in years. She could distract him from his work!

She shook her head. “I’m wondering what Aunt Deborah sacrificed to travel to distant galaxies. Did she really want to travel to them or is she too scared to use her power here on Earth?”

“I am not scared of power.” He walked to her and was glad she didn’t flinch. There was no need to pretend a romantic relationship with her now that he’d told the Collegium of the Group of 5 and he could translocate himself to Morag’s den, but he clasped her hand. He wanted to touch her.

Her fingers closed around his. “Perhaps that’s why Morag insisted it had to be you whom she taught the Deeper Path?”

A note of sadness and something else tugged at his attention. He frowned at her. “You can attain clarity of sight. Your control of magic is strong. If you center—”

She pulled him towards the door. “Don’t worry about me. You have a heaving, seething, uncertain Collegium to appease.”

“Not appease,” he said. “Command.”

Gina’s breath caught at Lewis’s uncompromising correction. He was so quiet and disciplined that the sudden glimpse of near-hostility in his response shocked her. It was as if he no longer considered his fellow Collegium members as allies.

He opened the door from his outer office to the corridor and two elderly men tumbled in as whatever wards had held it, broke.

Shawn Johnson, Lewis’s PA, stood just outside and stared down in sardonic triumph as the two elderly men grumbled and tried to push themselves up and off the floor. Neither Lewis nor Shawn moved to assist them.

Gina took a step towards them, and Lewis pulled her back against him. She glanced at him, startled.

He watched expressionlessly as the two senior mages regained their feet. Then he guided Gina around them and down the corridor.

There was her answer. Lewis was definitely feeling hostile towards his fellow Collegium members. And they’d be panicked, having no idea where Lewis’s new power came from. Kora would have reported that power to them, wouldn’t she? It would make for an interesting board meeting, in the definition whereby “interesting” meant disastrous.

She was glad she wore her most serious suit and statement heels.

Through her work, she’d gained a degree of exposure to the political realities of corporate culture. Big corporations often called in an outside IT security expert to convince recalcitrant board members of a need to act. She just hadn’t expected that the Collegium would ever require her services.

But then, she wasn’t here for the Collegium. She was here for Lewis, who walked silently beside her. She didn’t know what it meant that he held her hand, but she wasn’t letting go.

Entering the boardroom, her house witchery instincts were unimpressed. She’d seen plenty of boardrooms and this one was on the shabby side of standard, which was a reminder that Lewis’s predecessor as president hadn’t wanted to share power. Until a month ago, the board had been sidelined. How were they adapting to the new reality of active corporate responsibility?

People had already assembled in the boardroom. Half the chairs around the table were filled and three more mages stood near the coffee maker, talking. All voices ceased at Lewis and Gina’s entrance.

Suspicion, caution, uncertainty. Working in the hospitality industry, you learned to read facial expressions and body language. You wanted to know about trouble before it happened.

This room was primed to explode.

Three chairs for non-board member attendees were lined up near the door. Gina chose the one furthest from the door that gave her a line of sight between two already seated mages to Lewis’s chair at the head of the table.

The two mages who’d fallen into Lewis’s office entered and took seats at the foot of the table. The trouble quotient increased.

Lewis nodded to Haskell Mondo, his guardian bodyguard/PA, and the woman closed the boardroom door.

Kora, commander of the guardians, was not present.

Lewis didn’t wait for her to appear. He opened the meeting. “This meeting is a courtesy to you all. It is not required under the Collegium’s regulations.”

“Hardly.” The objection came from one of the two mages who’d fallen into Lewis’s office. “If you hadn’t called this evening’s meeting, we’d have summoned you to answer questions about your sudden use of magic.” The sharp-voiced man stared across the table at a tall, painfully thin man. “William said your power had burned out.”

“It has,” William answered in a deep voice that had about as much flexibility as iron.

“Kora witnessed him use it.” The other of the two troublesome mages added his bit.

Where was Kora?

The first troublesome man edged forward in his chair. “I questioned one of the guardians who accompanied Kora to Cape Cod. He said he’d never witnessed power such as Lewis exhibited. Lewis contained the magic and physical movement of eleven mages.”

That would have been the young, scared guardian. Gina couldn’t imagine Sven giving this elderly, accusatory fuss-budget the time of day.

Lewis certainly didn’t. He continued as if the senior mage hadn’t spoken. “The reason I called this meeting was to outline a threat I’ve been tracking for two years. Until now, I lacked the proof to justify employing Collegium resources against it. Now, with two attacks against Gina’s home and the online evidence she has found, the threat is naked. The time of this group hiding has passed.”

“You’re the one trying to hide.” The two troublesome mages spoke in unison. “Don’t duck the issue,” one added.

Gina wished she knew their names. It’s hard to hate people when you have to call them Fuss-budget and Stained Tie.

Someone knocked at the boardroom door. Haskell silently stood and opened it.

Kora walked in. She walked around the table, behind Lewis’s chair, and took the empty seat opposite the door. Unlike the other mages present who wore some version of business attire, Kora wore the unofficial uniform of guardians in the field: tough hiking gear.

Lewis ignored her belated entrance. Just as he ignored the tension and suspicion in the room. “The threat is a group of five individuals who use both mundanes and hired mages to influence activities around the globe. Destabilization has benefits for those whose greed outweighs conscience and commonsense. It wasn’t something to involve the Collegium until the use of mages could be established as a characteristic pattern. Kora, did the combat mages hired to attack Gina have any useful information?”

Kora stared at Gina. “No.”

“This is my report on the Group of 5,” Lewis said. “They operate efficiently and hire via intermediaries. Gina is familiar with the dark web—”

“The what?” Stained Tie broke off muttering to a colleague to bark the question.

Zhou Tan answered. The Collegium’s chief intelligence officer often stayed at Gina’s family’s hotels, and had been known to request information from her family. The Sidhe family were discreet, but when it came to solving difficulties, sometimes the best solution was a quiet word with Zhou. “Have you heard of the internet, Neville?”

“There is no need to be sarcastic, Zhou. My secretary prints off my emails and types up my responses before sending them.”

It was like dealing with a dinosaur—but dinosaurs could be dangerous, Gina reminded herself. Just which department, and form of magic, did Mr. Stained Tie Neville represent?

“The dark web is the Wild West of the internet,” Zhou said. “It is the online space inhabited by people who require more privacy than standard email accounts offer.”

Neville’s pale blue eyes bulged. “Are you saying people read my emails?”

Kora intervened. “The Collegium email server is warded.”

“In the dark web, many things can be hidden,” Zhou continued. “It requires significant skills to track someone through it.” He swiveled in his chair. “I look forward to your presentation, Ms. Sidhe.”

“Gina won’t be presenting her findings,” Lewis intervened. “Her report, attached to mine, is comprehensive. She’s here to answer additional questions.”

“We can hardly have questions when we’ve only just received the report.” A pertinent point from a female mage who’d been silent till now.

“Read it, now.” Lewis was uncompromising.

Everyone around the table stared at him, then started reading.

He leaned back in his chair.

Gina couldn’t work out what he was doing. Suddenly he wanted the Collegium board’s approval for chasing the Group of 5, yet his whole attitude stated that he’d commit the Collegium’s resources to pursuit of the group regardless of the board’s vote. Was he even putting things to the vote?

“Fine. Send the guardians after this group that has you worried.” Neville slapped the report onto the table. “It seems a minor matter to me. A handful of people operating for their own advantage, but it seems they do hire mages while themselves showing no particular magic. I don’t care for mundanes utilizing magic even at one remove.”

“I would like to know who the fifth member of the group is.” Zhou looked at Gina. “Do you have any suspicions? Any ideas you weren’t willing to commit to paper?”

“No. He or she is more adept than I’d anticipated at hiding their identity and location. However, everyone slips up. It’s a matter of how many resources can be thrown at the hunt.”

The Collegium’s chief forecaster nodded. “I will ask my people to work on the problem.”

“Thank you,” Lewis said. “In the real world sphere, I’d like the guardians to locate and observe the four people who have been identified. Kora?”

“You’re asking for a significant reallocation of resources.”

Until just over a month ago, Lewis had been commander of the guardians. Everyone in the room knew he understood precisely what he asked of Kora, and that it wasn’t a request.

“I’ll pull them off other duties,” she said.

“I’d like Sven to head the team.”

She nodded, tight lipped.

“Now, can we get back to the reason we’re really here?” Neville’s colleague demanded.

“What would that be, Samuel?” Lewis was blighting.

“Your power, damn it.”

“Oh. That.”

Gina had to suspect Lewis was being purposely difficult. She didn’t think it like him, and she noticed other concealed blinks and stares of surprise from the board members.

Lewis stood. “I’ll say this once. It’s a personal matter and not up for debate at a board meeting, so consider this one final courtesy from me. A year ago, pursuing the suspicion of the Group of 5’s existence they lured me into a trap. Five people died in that helicopter crash during the ice storm. I burned out my magic. William can attest to my absence of magic, as can anyone who looked at me with mage sight during that time. No magic coiled in me or around me.”

“It still doesn’t,” Kora said.

Ah.
Gina had forgotten to consider that for magic users, Lewis’s power would be inexplicable. She slipped into mage sight and saw the boardroom glowing golden with wards, protection, personal spells and the magic each mage held. But around Lewis, there was a void.

He was a conundrum for everyone, and that meant
everyone
, who didn’t know of clarity of sight and the Deeper Path.

“For a year I have been without magic. It has shown me the world in a new way,” Lewis continued. “On the far side of magic, there is something else. I’ve never been a research scholar and I lack the words to describe it. After the Group of 5 is stopped, I will answer questions for those who wish to investigate this far side of magic, one which I am still discovering.”

“No one else has ever…” Samuel’s protest faded into a strangled squawk.

“This is the ability I discovered when guardians and hired mages fought near Gina’s home—in public—where mundanes could have observed them or been hurt.”

Kora flushed at the reprimand. “Sometimes hiding is impossible. We were outnumbered.”

“Give me back my magic,” Samuel panted.

“I never took it,” Lewis said. “I simply moved the energy I saw somewhere else. You see magic as golden threads. I see the world in layers of silver.”

Samuel’s friend Neville stood. He leaned gnarled hands on the table, perhaps in an attempt to hide that they shook. “You can’t control all of us, Lewis.”

“I don’t intend to. I never have. I never will. But you elected me as president of the Collegium because you thought I could be controlled. That was an insult to the role of president. Whoever takes this role after me must be free. The new layer of reporting between president and department heads means lines of accountability exist, but respect boundaries. The president can once again become a touchstone.”

“So you would judge the truth of us?” And that was William, the healer.

“My successor’s primary role will be to assess the truth of the Collegium’s activities.”

“More chairman of a corporation than CEO,” Gina said.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

Except Lewis. “The Collegium has become a bureaucracy and needs to be one to succeed. But from the presidential office I can see the imbalance. If we are to serve justice, then we must pursue truth.”

Gina’s stomach tightened. What did Lewis see when he looked off into the distance? Other dimensions. Did the world she knew and all of the people in it vanish for him? She realized that the Collegium could argue and debate, question and criticize, but he’d already eluded them all. He could translocate out at any time. And who knew what else he could do?

A soft tap at the door barely came to Gina’s ears.

Closer to it, Haskell stood and opened the door. An urgent if indecipherable whisper and Haskell pulled the door wide.

Shawn Johnson entered. His face was fierce with some controlled emotion. A powerful one.

Already on his feet, Lewis strode around the table. “What’s happened?”

“The United Nations office in Beirut has just been blown up. And the geomages here report an earthquake in Izmir, Turkey, on the Aegean coast. The city is…devastated. The earthquake was triggered by magic.”

“No!” By Neville’s appalled reaction he was a geomage. “No one would. The destruction. In such a location…” He slumped in his chair, mouth quivering.