Magic Kingdom (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 3) (21 page)

As soon as he was gone, she turned to Zinnia and declared, “You’re in my seat.”

Zinnia leaned back. “I’m quite comfortable here.” The hint of a challenge tugged at her lower lip.

Alex wasn’t going to hint. She was going to challenge that evil witch outright. “You should go now.”

“Maybe
you
should go.”

Alex smiled at her. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“You’re hoping to sweep in with your tales of the good old days of killing and screwing your way across Europe.”

“Not just Europe,” Zinnia said, looking smug.

“Whatever. I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.”

“It seems to be working just fine.”

“You’re delusional,” replied Alex. “You hope your sordid tales will remind him of everything he’s been missing all these years.”

“Years?” Zinnia laughed. “What has my dear Slayer been telling you? Our last rendezvous was but six months ago.”

Alex tried not to think about how recently that was. She and Logan hadn’t been together back then. She hadn’t even known him. She had to remember that.

Zinnia leaned forward, balancing her chin on her hands. “We were due to meet again. About every six months, Logan and I run into each other. Sparks fly. We can’t keep our hands off each other. We end up in bed.” Her smile widened. “Or sometimes we can’t even wait that long. It’s always the same. You might call it a pattern. Or even destiny. It’s inevitable.”

The only thing that’s inevitable is the ass-kicking I’m going to give you if you don’t shut up.

“He’s not yours. And he’s not been telling me anything.” Alex allowed a feral smile to curl her lips. “In fact, he’s never even mentioned you.”

“Of course not, darling. He didn’t want to upset you by making an unfair comparison.”

Zinnia’s face remained haughty, but her magic was bubbling below the surface. There was something so undeniably delicious about her turmoil.

“Logan and I are soulmates,” Zinnia said, dropping her voice to a hissed whisper. “Of course he feels it too.”

Alex’s fists clenched, her pulse throbbing under her skin. She was aching to draw her sword.

Hit her,
Nova said.

No, that’s what she wants. It would play into her hand.

Logan has super-hearing,
Nova told her.
He’ll know she provoked you.

With words, no more,
Alex said.
No, if I strike first, I lose. And I will not let her win. Logan is too important.

Pretty words and all logic aside, Alex was on the edge of her control. There was just something about Zinnia that drove her to violence.

The fact that she’s slept with your honey?
suggested Nova.

Yeah, that must be it. This Blood Magic bond has its downsides.

It’s not just your bond,
said Nova.
It’s something far more powerful: love. Love drives people to all manner of insanities.

Her dragon wasn’t wrong about that. Alex needed to breathe, to cool down before she lost it and attacked Logan’s ex-flame. She rose from her seat. Glaring down at Zinnia, she declared, “I’ll be back.” Then she turned and started walking toward the exit.

“Giving up so soon?” Zinnia called out to her back.

Alex ignored her scorching need to respond and just kept walking. She had to find a way to burn out some of this rage or she’d leave Zinnia short a head. Lost in her own daydreams of vengeance, she bumped into someone on her way out of the cafe.

“Sorry,” she muttered, continuing on.

The man stepped back into her path. “No, you’re not. But you soon will be.”

Alex glanced up at the idiot. His body was covered in leather, piercings, and tattoos. He had muscular arms and a potbelly that had long since hardened into a ball of solid fat.

She laughed. Sometimes you had only to ask, and the world spat out the solution.

“Are you mocking me?” he demanded. “You think this is funny, do you?”

“Yeah, it kind of is,” she told him.

He shouted behind him, “Hey, boys! The Black Plague thinks I’m funny.”

Three other guys stepped out from behind a storage shed, all decked out in the same leather and tattoo getup. They circled around Alex, surrounding her. When it rained, it poured.

“Actually, I prefer the Paranormal Vigilante,” she told them, drawing her sword.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Soul Crusher

“WELL, WE PREFER you dead,” Potbelly told Alex. “You freak of nature.” He spat at her feet. Charming.

Alex shrugged. “I’ve been called worse things.”

The four supernatural haters were closing in. Potbelly was the clear ringleader, but the other three were just as lovely. Thug number two had a pierced tongue. Ouch. Thug number three had tattooed hair on top of his bald head. Double ouch. Thug number four was wearing rings on all his fingers. Each of them carried a wicked-looking knife that was clearly designed to cause maximum pain.

“Go back to where you come from,” Skull Tattoo told her.

“Come from,” echoed Pierced Tongue.

“San Francisco?” Alex asked them with an innocent smile.

“There’s no place in this world for you and your kind. You’re tainted,” Mr. Rings spat.

“Tainted,” repeated Pierced Tongue.

“Is that tongue piercing getting in the way, or can you seriously not string more than two words together?” Alex asked the thugs’ walking echo chamber.

Pierced Tongue stuck his tongue out at her. There were even more piercings stapled into his tongue. At least three. Eww.

Potbelly must have mistaken her disgust for fear because he grinned and said, “That’s right. We’ve got you outnumbered. Now put away that sword before we get angry.”

Alex glanced at their knives, then at her sword. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

Potbelly’s grin grew more intense. “Suit yourself.”

He took something out of his pocket. It was a strange metal orb, about the size of a tennis ball. Its glowing surface was pulsing, slowly turning from silver to gold. Magic was building on it like an electrical storm. She didn’t have a clue what it was, but she knew for certain it was bad news. Suspicious glowing objects were always bad news. She sprinted for the orb, trying to grab it before the thugs unleashed its power.

Magic slammed hard against her, throwing her down. It felt like a giant was pressing his foot on her back, pinning her to the ground. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. Her head was screaming like a chorus of blaring sirens, and her insides were being cooked. Sweat trickled down her neck and face, clinging to her skin in hot, sticky pools.

Footsteps crunched over gravel. Through blurry eyes, she could make out eight pairs of boots. She blinked. No, make that four pairs. She was seeing double. The brutes laughed over her body.

“When I get up,” Alex ground out through clenched teeth. It was getting even harder to breathe. A kaleidoscope of purple and yellow spots danced in front of her eyes. She reached for her knife, slowly freeing it from her thigh strap. “…I’m going to…kill you.”

The brutes laughed again.

“We’ve used this little trinket on a full-grown ogre,” Potbelly told her. He rolled the sole of his boot over her fingers, crunching them.

Alex cried out in pain as they broke. She lost her grip on the knife.

“The ogre didn’t get up again. Neither will you. It’s called the Soul Crusher.” Potbelly walked once around her, then kicked her in the ribs. “Is your soul feeling crushed yet?”

Alex struggled to breathe, heaving it air. It didn’t help that her head was pinned to the pavement by that artifact.

Nova,
she said to her dragon, pushing past the horrible headache.
The artifact is using iron and a boatload of magic to magnify its power.

Yes,
Nova agreed.
And I say we crush the Soul Crusher.

We’ll combine our magic and punch on three. One.

Two,
said Nova.

Three,
they said together.

The magic blasted out of Alex’s body. It hit Potbelly right in the gut, throwing him back. The device slipped from his hand. It fell to the ground and rolled across the pavement. The three other Musketeers gaped at Alex in shock.

“I am not an ogre,” she told them, wiping the blood dripping from her nose with the back of her good hand.

The thugs dove for the artifact, but they were too slow. Alex hit the ball with magic-breaking magic from all sides. The metal groaned, then crunched in on itself like an aluminum can. The gold light faded, and the magic puffed out like a birthday candle. The painful pressure lifted from Alex’s head.

The four haters were getting to their feet. Alex walked up to the crushed artifact and stomped down hard on it with her heel, shattering it into tiny metal pieces. The thugs looked at the pile, then at her. Anger and hate stormed inside of their auras, which were as black as their souls. They pointed their knives in her direction.

Alex’s eyes darted to her fallen sword, then to her ruined hand. The pain had faded out, thanks to her body’s trick of masking it during battle. But it was only masked. It was still there, hidden beneath a thousand layers of magic anesthesia. It was really, really, really going to hurt when this was all over.

She swiped her sword off the ground with her left hand. As she leaned down, she could feel blood saturating her shirt. And her broken ribs poking her. Fun times. She straightened, putting on a smirk. She couldn’t let them know it hurt.

She pointed her sword at the thugs and said, “Come and get me, boys.”

They charged. Alex threw up a wall of fire. It erupted from the ground in fiery tremors. The men barely stopped in time. They tried to run around it, and she threw up another barrier, blocking that way too. She slid the walls of magic closed around the men, trapping them inside a ring of fire.

Terror split across their faces. Terror with a heap of hate.

“Abomination.”

“Monster.”

“Vile creature.”

“Supernatural filth.”

Alex ignored their insults. She’d heard them too many times before. “You’re Convictionites,” she said.

“Yes,” Potbelly replied, puffing out his belly with pride. He spat at her feet again. It hit the fire instead and splattered like wet batter hitting a hot pan of butter. “And we will rid the world of your taint.”

“Not today,” she replied. As she dropped the fire barrier, she slammed wind against the thugs like a solid punch to the head. The four of them banged heads, then went down.

She stepped up to them, thinking about how they’d hurt her. About their hate. She’d thought a fight would calm her rage, but it had only made her more upset. Standing here now, over these haters’ bodies, it took every shred of self-control she had not to kill them just like they’d killed so many supernaturals.

They were more useful alive than dead, she told herself. If she brought these thugs to the Magic Council’s interrogators, they could learn something about what the Convictionites were planning in the city. She found that rational argument strangely dissatisfying.

Alex felt Logan’s familiar magic behind her. Strong, smoothing waves flowed across their bond. She turned from the Convictionites and walked stiffly to him, trying not to breathe too deeply against her broken ribs.

Logan looked so perfect in his black leather, covered in knives. It was like coming home. He even had a milkshake in his hand. The only blotch on this perfect picture was Zinnia. She stood beside him, gaping at the heap of four unconscious men on the ground. Alex chose to ignore her.

“You’re hurt,” Logan said to Alex. His hand reached for the bottle of healing spray at his belt.

“Forget that,” she told him. “Just give me some of that milkshake.”

He handed it to her. She took it with her left hand and slurped it up through the thick straw. Mmm, chocolate.

He watched her. “You should let me spray this on you.”

Alex shook her head. “I’m fine. My wounds are already healing.”

His hand darted out, peeling up the bottom of her shirt. She yelped before bottling it.

“You’re such a bad liar,” he told her.

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “I’m healing faster thanks to our bond. We need to get those four Convictionites secured before they wake up. Do you have the restraints?”

“What bond?” Zinnia asked.

“Logan and I mated in a vampire Blood Magic ritual, which means we are linked and share some magic. It’s also given me a nasty temper, so if you make one more reference to your bedroom adventures with him, I’ll rip out your heart and feed it to you.”

Logan chuckled. Alex held out her hand and he handed over some rope. Unlike his other accessories, the rope was white, not black. He’d once explained that you could see blood better on white than black, and it really freaked out prisoners when they saw their own blood on the ropes. Which they inevitably did because they always struggled, and then the metal thorns woven throughout the rope cut into them. God, he had a devious mind.

So do I,
she told herself, binding up the thugs.

Logan helped her. Alex kept her eyes on her work, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t keep her mind on it too. She was still too riled up, too close to the edge of her control. And she was so sick of fighting the rage. She just wanted to go home—or to kill Zinnia, but she couldn’t kill someone just because that someone was flirting with Logan. Not even if she’d threatened Zinnia that she would do just that.

“Monster Cleanup is not far,” Alex told Logan as they secured the final thug.

She reached her left hand across her body and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Miraculously, the screen had survived the fight. It was a good thing too. There wasn’t a single cell phone insurance company left in the world who would take her on as a client. She broke her phone in some fashion or another at least twice per month. She’d even had one disintegrate on her once. Apparently, cell phones and giant caterpillar slime didn’t mix. Who would have guessed it?

“What are you doing?” Logan asked.

Alex tapped the number for Monster Cleanup’s front desk. “Calling to have the trash picked up. Monster Cleanup is just around the corner.”