Steel Victory (Steel Empire Book 1) (9 page)

He wandered toward the center of Limani. Though the night was warm, it was still late. He encountered a few pedestrians, people on their way home from evening jobs of their own. He passed the City Hall, noting by the lights shining from the upper windows that council must still be in full swing. Mikelos was anxious to know the results of the meeting, but he would have to wait until Victory finished inside. He couldn’t help but hope Victory and Max put that awful woman through the ringer.

He had walked the few miles from the manor to Jarimis University, catching up on some exercise, and then taken the last evening shuttle into town. He planned to wait until council was over and ride home with Victory. He ripped a page out of his music notebook and left her a note under the windshield, letting his partner know not to leave without him. She would check his usual haunts.

Message left, he headed for the first—the nightclub Twilight Mists, one of the few havens for the younger adults of Limani. Walking toward the club, he imagined he had gone back a century in time, and that he was heading home from work to join a friend’s band before returning to his empty apartment. Victory opened the Twilight Mists decades ago, trying her hand at a civilized business after the constant stress of the mercenary calling. She first found him in the club, and both of their lives had been forever changed.

The front door opened and a group spilled out, laughing and shouting into the night. Loud music washed across the street.

“Mikelos!” The doorman greeted him by name and clasped his hand.

Mikelos hiked up his bags once again. “Hey, Radek. Busy night?”

“Not too bad,” Radek said. “School is done for the summer, so every night will be busy and not just the weekends. Might be too crowded for you.” Another group of customers walked up behind Mikelos, diverting Radek’s attention.

Mikelos headed inside the club, pretending not to hear Radek calling his name. He didn’t feel much like chatting tonight. Dancing would keep his mind off of the council session, and the random visions he kept having of Victory lunging across the table and throttling Emily Fabbri. Entertaining though it was, he didn’t think that particular scenario would end well.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Toria said. “I mean, we could run right into scouts. We are not exactly stealthy like this.”

Under the dim light of the half-moon, Toria could not see Asaron’s smile, but she heard his low laugh.

“The river crossing is a few more miles away.” Kane pulled his horse abreast of hers. “What’s wrong?”

Toria steered her own mount around a stone in the road, taking advantage of the time to compose her thoughts. “Well, after we cross the Agios River, I know of a place to the south where we can camp during the day. And we will reach it before dawn. But any farther south is out of our usual range. What are we going to do during the day?”

They’d borrowed horses from the stables kept by Limani’s Mercenary Guild for just such missions. None of the small electric town-cars that the majority of Limani’s citizens owned had the range for excursions too far out of the city’s limits, but they traded distance for speed.

“What do you think I did before trucks were invented, child?” Not quite under his breath, Asaron said, “Modern times have corrupted the youth. It’s a shame.”

“I have no problems being corrupted,” Kane said.

“I’m sure you’ll muddle through. You’re—” Asaron broke off, reining his horse to a halt.

Toria and Kane followed suit, trusting he would not stop for less than a good reason. She resisted the urge to ask what was wrong. Instead of trying to peer into the surrounding darkness and figure it out for herself, Toria cast out with her own special senses.

Keeping her permanent physical shields intact, she lowered the mental blocks that prevented her from being overwhelmed by the magic she could see flowing through the world. She tuned out the brilliant emerald shields surrounding Kane, and ignored the uncomfortable black hole where Asaron should have been.

“See anything?” Kane had gone the same route, and stared at the trees lining either side of the road. “And by the way, you’re going weak in the rear.”

“Thanks.” Toria caught the loop of power her partner threw and reinforced the shielding behind her back. She sometimes forgot about what she couldn’t see. Kane had a similar problem with the area below his knees.

“Hush.” Asaron’s tone was more absent-minded than irritated. They stilled at the command. Then, the elder vampire relaxed his alert stance. “That was odd.”

“What’s going on?” With the apparent danger past, Toria banished her magesight. She had nothing.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” Asaron gave the partners an expectant look.

“You mean with magesight?” Toria shook her head. “Just Kane’s shields, his sword, and your necklace you still won’t tell us anything about.”

“Not important right now, Toria,” Kane said.

Unrepentant, Toria ignored him. They were still on home ground, and if Asaron already saw bad signs, it didn’t bode well for the mission at all.

“I must be getting old. Let’s get out of here,” Asaron said. “The night’s not getting any younger, and we’ve still got a river to cross.”

They once again pointed their horses down the road. The darkness made Toria sleepy, and her mind drifted toward the past. They had headed north with Asaron the summer after they graduated high school on their first journeyman tour. The first bout of trouble they ran into was a late-night summer storm. Asaron lost track of time, and the clouds blew away to present a sun already beginning to rise. The scramble to set up camp and get the vampire under cover had not been pleasant.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Kane startled her out of her reverie. “Just remembering the Calverton trip and trying not to fall asleep.”

“That was wild, wasn’t it?” Kane said.

“Victory and I have had our share of close calls,” Asaron said. “But that was one for the books. I wish these things wouldn’t happen so often.”

“Often for us or often for you?” Toria said. “Your definition of time can get a bit warped, Grandpa. Like Mama’s. You talk about things that happened three centuries ago like they happened last week.”

“Time is strange for those who live for centuries,” Asaron said. “Vampires are forced to realize that events they are part of today can have reverberations decades in the future while also living in the here and now.”

Kane took a swig of water from his canteen and tossed it to Toria. “Must be even stranger for Mikelos, then.”

“Indeed,” Asaron said. “My daughter’s daywalker does not live in a life ruled by the change of the light.”

“But he does live by his connection to Mama,” Toria said. “He told me once that the three years he wasn’t bonded to a vampire were the hardest of his life. He said that sometimes he worries about me growing up. I think he’s afraid of change.”

“And he wouldn’t be the first daywalker to have that particular phobia,” Asaron said.

Toria took point when the conversation turned more philosophical. The more intangible aspects of life were Kane’s specialty. The chemist in Toria lived in the physical. She nudged her chestnut mare forward, and the sounds of the others’ low voices retreated behind her.

Soon she could scent water in the air. They’d headed south to where the Agios River could be forded on horseback. Max had requested that Asaron not use the ferry closer to Limani—he didn’t want to alert any more people than necessary to where they were headed. The original settlers chose their building site because of the defensibility of a peninsula. But since that made leaving difficult, on occasion it had its downsides.

Next she heard flowing water, and small waves lapping the shore. Though Asaron must have heard the river long before she did, she couldn’t resist calling out, “We’re almost there!”

The Agios River that ran next to the university was a wide expanse of water. By that point, various other water sources had merged with it. Now, however, it was more of a wide creek masquerading as a river, with water shallow enough to ford on horseback with just the risk of damp boots.

The rushing torrent of springtime had slowed, and the current was firm and steady. “Let’s go,” Asaron said. Taking the front of their trio, he urged his mount to step forward into the water.

Kane’s followed suit without a problem, but Toria’s mare seemed to have an inherent dislike of the water. Once she reached the point where the water met the narrow band of sand and mud alongside it, the mare planted her feet and snorted in derision. “Oh, come on, girl.” Toria nudged the horse’s flanks with her heels. “I’m not going to get off and push you.”

But any effort to press the horse forward resulted in her skittering to either side, rather than any farther forward. Laughter reached her ears, from across the river where her companions waited for her. “Enjoying this, are you?”

“Of course!” Asaron called back. “But we don’t have all night, Toria!”

Rather than waste time with a response to her companions, Toria said to the horse, “I promise I’ll feed you an apple when we get across.” Another loud exhalation of air met her bribe. “Carrots?”

“Toria!”

“I’m working on it!” It wasn’t her fault her horse was hydrophobic.

Nothing else to be done about it. She swung out of the saddle and stepped back to glare at the horse as a rush of displaced air over her head stirred her hair. A crossbow bolt thudded into the tree trunk next to her, straight through where Toria’s mounted torso should have been. She yelped and lunged forward, grabbing the mare’s reins to haul her back into the woods. The horse jerked and gave a grunt, letting Toria know she was most annoyed. But the mare wasn’t panicking. A second bolt followed the first, sailing farther into the woods before snapping against a tree.

Trees. Trees meant cover. Toria’s brain dredged up everything it had ever learned about combat and she scrambled toward cover. The horse followed without protest. Probably since she now headed in the opposite direction of the water. Pulling the mare farther into the trees, Toria threw the reins over a low branch.

Now the shouting registered. The bolts had come from the opposite side of the river—her family had to be in more trouble than she. She wanted to dive into the river herself and help them out, but Asaron would be appalled by her lack of common sense. So she forced herself to pause and draw power straight from the air to strengthen the shields surrounding her. Then she crouched low and snuck back toward the edge of the forest.

Across the river, Asaron slashed out with his sword, keeping three attackers at bay. Her grandpa could take care of himself, so her eyes sought her partner.

“Bastards! Get off! Ow!”

Kane wasn’t faring as well as Asaron. The writhing figure on the ground under two others in dark clothing must be him. A last stranger held the reins of both horses, a crossbow slung across his back.

Toria crouched and placed her left hand on the ground. She pushed a small tendril of power out through her palm and into the earth, threading beneath the water. Nature provided the current, and the water surged through her magical net.

She had never tried this particular tactic before, so she wasn’t prepared for the spontaneous rush of energy that backwashed along her line of power. She shunted the overload back into the earth, a quick and dirty way to discharge power.

Kane’s steady stream of insults cut off when he howled in pain. That overrode Toria’s instincts and instead of the earth, she shoved the power through the constant link binding her with Kane.

Her physics didn’t fail her. The sudden influx of electrical power caused a negative reaction with Kane’s shields and shocked his attackers off him with a few hundred volts of electrical power. Her professors would be proud.

The real-world result was messier. The last of the power overloaded Kane’s shields and rebounded to Toria, and the world went black.

Mikelos paused inside the Twilight Mists to let the bass of the music reverberate through his body. Ten o’clock was still early by youth and nocturnal standards, so the club was filling up. He inhaled in appreciation, capturing the scent of an old building that had seen sweat and smoke and music for over a hundred years. The new owners of the club had updated the décor, but the place still held many fond memories.

He first trained in classical music three hundred years ago, but time had broadened his tastes. His younger Roman street-rat self would sing anything for a penny or bread crust. His famous self once refused to play accompaniment for an operatic soprano who might be more popular than he. Now he appreciated the modern beats and synthetic sounds not possible from a classical orchestra. In his old age, he had relaxed and learned how to have fun. After he left his violin case and messenger bag with the disinterested coat check girl, Mikelos headed straight for the dance floor.

Many of the patrons were students from the high school and university enjoying the start of summer break. Toria would have known more of the people in the club, but he did receive waves from the group of young werewolves in human form lounging on couches in a corner and recognized a lone elf already spinning across the dance floor in the center of the club. What was her name? Lyri? Syri?

He reached the elven girl during a song change. She paused at his approach, though her hips still swayed in time to the subtle beat.

Mikelos put on his best court manners and gave her a sweeping bow. “May I join you, milady?”

She looked him over. She appeared to be about Toria’s age, not much older than twenty. In reality, she must be closer to Mikelos’ three centuries. “It would be my pleasure, daywalker.”

With a cascade of harsh drumbeats, the music launched into a faster rhythm. Mikelos caught the girl’s hand and spun her around to the whistles of the wolves. Other dancers began to leave the floor, leaving them plenty of room. Mikelos thought nothing of it, instead taking advantage of the space to spin his partner around.

He’d started relaxing into the rhythm when the speakers cut out, leaving a ringing silence after the loud music. Mikelos and the girl froze. Two men approached them, Radek and the second, burlier, Twilight Mists bouncer.

“We need to ask you and your friend to leave,” the unfamiliar one said. Standing behind the bouncer, Radek shot Mikelos a helpless look.

“I’m sorry, were we dancing inappropriately?” He directed his question to Radek. Not much was too inappropriate at this club, and that was part of the appeal.