StrategicSurrender (4 page)

“Mmm,” Kiera hummed, not disagreeing but neither exactly
convinced she could get so lucky. “It’s bizarre. I have wished for months to
get involved in something real, something
interesting
and amazing. Now
finally after begging for something like this Morgan drops it in my lap, and
you come along and my interest in an exciting work life dissipates to nothing.
What are the chances, eh?”

Kiera heard the tone, though not the actual words, in Josh’s
voice and realized her partner was wrapping up his call.

“Quick, I don’t think I can last another half hour without
one last kiss,” she whispered softly under her breath. Hayden bent his head and
Kiera met him halfway, their lips fusing together as if they had been born
kissing one another.

Electricity arced between them, heat sizzled in Kiera’s
veins and her pussy tingled with a startling jolt. Wet, hungry and
craving
the scruffy, sexy wizard unlike anything she had previously experienced, a
large part of Kiera was awfully tempted to blow off her mentor and the dark
grimoire.

Years of training and being the good, reliable, dependable
worker, however, reasserted itself as Hayden pulled away to gasp and draw in
his breath. Her eyes glazed, Kiera sat back in her chair and struggled to
remember her name, let alone recover herself enough to convince a very
knowledgeable Josh she and Hayden hadn’t been doing what they so obviously had
been.

“Yes, babe, I swear,” Josh said from the corner of the room.
“It will be amazing, just you wait and see. I’ll be there in a few hours, I
just need to wrap this up first… You too, see you then.”

As Josh closed his cell the door opened and Morgan returned
with a manila folder that had been tied closed by a long piece of string.
Wrapped up almost like a package, the folder appeared completely normal and
average, until Morgan placed it on the table before Kiera, Hayden and Josh. The
power seeping from the folder was
dark
, corrupted, tainted.

Kiera’s stomach churned and she could understand now why
Morgan had not spent any real time studying the papers within. As if a gas rose
from the folder, the stench filled the air and seemed almost sentient and
alive. Kiera wrinkled her nose and looked to her mentor.

“I know.” Morgan nodded. “It is not a simple solution, nor
an easy task that I have asked you three to undertake. If it appears as if your
discussion will drag on I would suggest moving the folder somewhere temporary
so you will not have to be in the same area as it. I do not know how badly it
can contaminate a room, or how quickly, but I would certainly advise caution in
your dealings with it.”

“We will do our best,” Josh assured Morgan. They all stood
and shook hands with the large, dark-skinned wizard.

“Just remember, whatever you are going to do, it needs to be
final and completed within a few hours,” Morgan reminded them urgently. “The
preliminary hearing before the Tribunal isn’t until later tonight, but I will
need at least an hour or so to meditate and prepare myself for the meeting. I
am positive one of the first things the Tribunal will insist from me is the
location where the manuscript is being held. I want to be able to deny all
knowledge of it truthfully, but I’ll only be able to protect you from their
questions for so long. Remember to be circumspect in what you do and don’t tell
me. Whatever you are going to decide, make it a permanent decision and make it
as soon as you are able to agree it is the best course to take. Above
absolutely everything else, remember
I
trust the three of you. I have
complete faith in you and the whole reason I have brought this about is because
deep in my soul, I believe you are the best judges of what is to come. Hold on to
that when you doubt yourselves.”

“We understand, Morgan,” Kiera promised her mentor. “You can
trust us.”

For only the second time this morning Morgan’s face broke
out in a happy, relieved smile. Some of the burden lifted from his eyes and for
a moment he seemed much as he always did to Kiera. Morgan wore the look of a
proud, strong, wise mentor who had nothing but faith in his charges.

“I know I can trust you to keep it from causing harm to
anyone,” he insisted firmly. “I have never been more proud to call the three of
you friends. Do what’s best, and we can deal with the consequences later.”

With quick farewells Morgan, Josh, Hayden and Kiera
exchanged platitudes and Morgan left the room, leaving the three wizards with
the growing stench of the dark manuscript on the desk between them.

Kiera turned to look at Josh as the door closed behind
Morgan. For a moment a stunned silence sat between them until her partner broke
it.

“I’m still asleep in bed,” Josh said with a small, slightly
strained smile. “None of this has really happened and I’m about to wake up,
realize how late for work I am and be in a panic.”

Kiera chuckled.

“I hate to break it to you, Josh,” she replied warmly. “But
you already
were
late this morning. Besides, I don’t think the three of
us can share the same dream. I for one know my subconscious could not have come
up with something as bizarre as this.”

Kiera threw an annoyed look at the folder that contained the
manuscript and then looked around the small meeting room. The room consisted
only of a few small tables drawn together to create a larger one, half a dozen
chairs and a whiteboard. Nowhere really struck her fancy as a decent hiding
place for the grimoire.

Determined to not sit around with the folder so close, Kiera
picked it up and did another slow circuit of the room. Finally she ended up
just tossing the folder into the farthest corner from where they sat.

Kiera took her seat and rested her chin in her hand. Part of
her seriously wished she could just dump the entire mess in Josh’s lap. Or
Hayden’s—surely he’d dealt with nasty things like this in his time?

Reality, however, reared its ugly head. Hayden had been
seriously burned recently by his partner, betrayed by his closest friend. While
the wizard seemed completely on top of things, albeit sad and under pressure,
foisting a dark manuscript like this upon him mightn’t be good for him. Too
much more pressure and cracks might begin to show in his rock-solid strength.
Besides, leave this totally in Josh’s care and chances were good her colleague
would simply lock the manuscript in his locker and leave for his date. Nothing
would be resolved and Morgan’s faith in her would be broken.

She couldn’t do it.

“Okay.” Kiera spoke with firm determination. “What do we
do?”

“I vote we toss the ritual into the darkest corner of a
cupboard somewhere and pretend none of this has happened,” Josh replied
instantly as if to prove her earlier thought true. Kiera snorted and shook her
head, hoping her partner was only half serious in his suggestion.

While Kiera worked for multiple areas within the Enforcers,
going over various plans and strategies, Josh worked predominantly as a
Strategist working to solve white-collar crimes. They frequently teased each
other about how Josh never sullied his hands with anything resembling dirty
work, but truth be told Kiera knew how to only do many things
in theory
.

Neither of them had any real field experience, having been
kept out of the action of the situations they lent aid in. Kiera actually could
feel her heart race with excitement. For the first time ever she actually had a
chance to get really
involved
in something. Even though she could feel
the evil from the manuscript, for now it was bearable.

On top of her excitement to really do something, Kiera
didn’t want to let Morgan down. Out of all his protégés he had chosen
them
to take care of this matter. She would not allow him to regret such a decision
to trust them.

“Not the best option I believe we could come up with,” Kiera
insisted firmly. She turned to where Hayden sat next to her.

“Hayden?” she asked with a small, secret smile at the sexy
wizard. “What do you suggest? You’ve had some experience here, surely more than
Josh or I. What do you think we should do?”

Josh frowned and stared from Kiera to the corner where the
folder lay and then back again at Hayden. Hayden’s brows furrowed deeply in
thought. Kiera watched him. The wizard’s focus seemed completely internal, as
if he were asking himself a very important, private question.

She then followed Hayden’s gaze as he glared intently at the
manuscript for a moment or two before finally his eyebrows shot up and he
blinked, severing the contact and looking back to her.

“Well, okay. I just had a thought, but it’s dangerous, very
permanent and kinda crazy,” Hayden said slowly, his voice deep. “Why don’t you
put forward a suggestion first.”

Kiera was surprised for a moment, but decided to go with the
flow. Curious and eager to try her hand at some field work—of a sort—for once,
Kiera jacked up her magical senses and used a small part of her essence to
search for Strategies surrounding the grimoire.

She slowed her breathing and calmed her heart. Pushing all
thoughts from her mind, she opened herself to the endless possibilities of life
and in particular the dark ritual in the room with them. As magic swirled
around her, invisible to the naked eye, Kiera could see thread after thread of
destiny and fate weave all around herself and Joshua.

With unconscious reluctance, Kiera turned herself around and
let her magical gaze peer over to where the folder with the manuscript lay on
the carpet. Innocuously it sat there, malevolence seeping from its every fiber.
With her senses heightened and the ambient evilness of the ritual so close,
Kiera felt physically unwell just looking at it.

Strengthening her resolve, Kiera forced more magic into her
blood and opened her talent as widely as she could bear and not falter under
the awesome power of magic retained within the pages of the script. A solid
wall of information slammed into Kiera and she was profoundly grateful to be
sitting down.

With a mammoth effort of will, Kiera waded through thread
after thread of possibilities. Much like trying to untangle a ball of yarn that
had become hopelessly messed up, the complexities of dozens of scenarios
revolving around the manuscript made it hard for her to understand what each
strand could indicate.

Time extended in her magical state and even though only a
few moments had passed Kiera felt as if she had spent hours banging her head
against a brick wall. Eventually she began to feel as if she were drowning
within the myriad of complexities surrounding the folder and needed a breath.
Drawing back and lowering her focus of magic, Kiera rubbed her head, exhausted,
the beginnings of a headache pounding at her temples.

“I could have done without that,” she remarked tiredly.
Closing her eyes and massaging them for a moment, she collected herself.

“There are about a million possible roads connected to that
beast of a script,” Kiera began, “and all of them are tainted with the
potential for evil and mass harm to all of wizardkind. Anyone who gets their
hands on that set of papers will have far too much power and knowledge for my
peace of mind.”

“I agree,” Hayden said quietly. “I didn’t even look at it in
the same manner you obviously did—I took but the merest glance. Something of
that power though, something destructive enough that caused even Morgan to show
an unusual amount of caution about it could be nothing but pure evil waiting
for a vessel. I didn’t need to delve deeply to know the contents of the folder
could be earth-shattering.”

“Literally,” Kiera muttered darkly. “If any one wizard or
witch learned how to harness time, how to cause rifts and tear holes into our
very fabric of reality…the mind just boggles.”

“Let’s not even dwell on that,” Josh interjected. “I get the
creeps just hearing the words spoken aloud. So…”

Kiera frowned. She had gathered Hayden had been struck by a
completely crazy idea that would blow all the other more “normal” ideas out of
the water. That, in effect, was exactly what they needed. Morgan had trusted
them with this puzzle to look
outside
the regular frame of mind, to think
on a totally different plane to anyone else.

As her headache receded, Kiera racked her brain to catch up.
The memory of all the threads of potential surrounding the ritual flooded back,
burned into her brain. Kiera picked up different threads, examined the
possibilities and discarded thought after thought.

Regardless of which strand she studied, they all were
tainted with evil. Kiera sat back and let her gaze return from inside her head
until she once again watched Josh.

“That manuscript, the entire ritual, is evil from start to
finish,” she insisted quietly. “I don’t see any route we could take to keep it
from potentially causing harm to people. And that’s what Morgan wants—for us to
do something with it that will keep wizarding kind safe.”

“But he wanted us to think outside the box,” Josh reminded
her. “Morgan wants us to do something no one else would think of to do. Just
clear your mind for a minute, Kiera. Ignore the fact this is a dark manuscript
of untold power. If you’re wanting to protect someone from something, what do
you do?”

“I’d make it impossible for them to have access to it,” she
replied promptly. It was difficult for her not to think in terms of the
actuality of the grimoire there in the room with them, but she managed to pull
back slightly and look at this from a less involved point of view.

“If this were something else, say an artifact or a relic,
I’d suggest we take it out of circulation,” Kiera replied. “We could hide it
amongst the archive boxes, or even bury it in the catacombs somewhere. There
are literal mountains of old, unusable relics down there. Hide it in plain
sight. No one would ever believe an item of such dark value would be placed
down there with all the dust and ruins.”

“And if it were a dangerous artifact?” Hayden probed,
obviously leading her to where he had already mentally arrived. Kiera shrugged
at his suggestion and replied off the top of her head.

“Why I’d destroy it of course,” she answered promptly. “It’s
the only way to be sure it can’t ever fall into the wrong hands.”

Kiera blinked as Hayden looked equal parts smug and proud of
her. Once again her jaw dropped in stunned amazement.

“Hayden,” she replied with a wobble in her tone. “We can’t
possibly
destroy the manuscript. The Tribunal would completely implode. We’d be
punished, lose our jobs, our
homes
. Not to mention they’d make all three
of us pariahs. I don’t know how you feel about living on some rock in the
middle of butt-fuck nowhere, but I rather like Chicago for myself.”

“Hang on.” Josh raised his hands as if he could halt the
proceedings simply by his will alone. “We are
not
going to destroy an
object of any kind—evil incarnate or not—that is a possession of the Tribunal.
I like my balls—indeed I am incredibly attached to them. I do not want to sever
them and hand them on a platter to the Tribunal elders. Which is what we would
have to do to beg for their mercy.”

“Don’t you think it slightly suspicious that Morgan stressed
so strongly that he would protect us from fallout from the Tribunal?” Hayden
countered after a small wince at the visual Josh had evidently sent the wizard.
Kiera snorted as she ran a hand through her dark curls.

“Hayden, he meant he would protect us when the Tribunal puts
pressure on the group of us to tell them where we
hid
the manuscript. If
Morgan
wanted
the folder destroyed he would have done it himself, not
passed along the problem to us. He’d not do that to us,” Kiera insisted firmly.

Hayden appeared struck by her logic and thought seriously
about her comments for a moment. Reluctantly he nodded his head as he came
around to her point of view.

“No, you’re right, he wouldn’t get us to do his dirty work,”
he agreed. “All right then, so Morgan simply didn’t
think
about
destroying it. He purposely gave us this file so we
could
come up with a
better alternative and I still think he’d want us to do this.”

“I just don’t know, Hayden.” Kiera shook her head though the
more she thought about it the more uncertain she became. Hayden genuinely had a
good point and Kiera started to doubt her initial assurance it wasn’t the
correct way. “I can’t help but think Morgan wanted us to put it somewhere that
no one else would ever think to look for it. For blindingly obvious reasons he
doesn’t want this artifact to fall into the wrong hands. That does
not
give us the right to destroy something that I feel certain the Tribunal will
decide should belong to them. Morgan’s taking this manuscript might to others
appear debatable in its wisdom, but we know he’s acting in the manner he feels
right. Destroying it, even though technically it’s not yet properly of the
Tribunal, just isn’t our place.”

“I’m with Kiera here, though I can’t believe we’re even
discussing this.” Josh shook his head. “We need to treat this as if it’s the
Tribunal’s manuscript—even if they technically haven’t got possession of it and
don’t know of its existence. But assuming it’s rightfully theirs, how can we
possibly consider destroying it? I don’t even want to think about what they
would do to us if we tell Morgan it’s gone, and he goes to them tonight and
says, ‘Oh hey, guys, guess what, my two protégés and a wizard you only recently
cleared of dark magic
destroyed
a grimoire of yours I was supposed to
bring with me tonight—so sorry’. That just boggles my mind.”

“Firstly, Morgan’s parting words were a reminder he would
help smooth the way with the Tribunal, I for one don’t take his promise
lightly. Second, Josh, are you really saying you don’t think something as
obviously evil as this needs to be burned?” Hayden pressed, an eyebrow raised
in evident disbelief. Kiera hesitated before answering.

“I didn’t say that,” Josh hedged, apparently on more
uncertain ground when put in that manner. “But I don’t know how comfortable I
am irrevocably destroying something that belongs to the Tribunal. They have a
tendency to be twitchy and paranoid at the least little thing, I don’t even
want to imagine how they would react to peons like us
burning
a
manuscript that had been given into our care.”