Stone Guardian(70)

“This way,” Michael said, guiding her toward the emergency exit. No alarms went off as they opened the door. He led her to the elevators, going to the fourth floor where all meeting rooms were placed. Three doors down he opened a door to a meeting room without any windows.

Fallon and Laire were waiting, tonight’s outfit of choice for the mage a lime-green catsuit. Maybe she was colorblind. Or someone who really hated her bought all her outfits.

Fallon nodded at them. “Thank you for coming. Did your bodyguard decide to take the night off?”

Larissa might want a truce with the Guild, but that didn’t mean she was going to become best buds and tell them everything. “Terak has other duties, as you well know. Besides, considering how tense conversations can become, I thought it might be best to leave him out of it.”

Fallon nodded at the explanation. “I hear you. That’s fine by me. In fact, it makes my life lots easier.”

Warning bells went off at Fallon’s words and the smug way she held herself. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have come here without Terak. “Tell me what you wanted to, and then I need to go.”

“Sorry, not going to happen.”

“What the-” Michael’s voice cut-off and Larissa turned. The shadow man from that first night was emerging from the wall, at least his torso was, the rest of his body still hidden behind the wall. He wrapped his arms around Michael and pulled, taking Michael…

…through the wall.

“Michael!”

She ran to the wall and beat on it, but it was as solid as it should be. “Michael!”

“He’s safe, I promise,” and Fallon was there in front of her. Larissa shrank back, but that solid wall was behind her, not allowing any more movement. “Sorry, Teach. You need to come with us now. The time of pussy-footing around you is over.”

Laire’s voice popped up. “Is that what pussy-footing means? Why was I thinking it was something sexual?”

“Just read from the scroll.” Fallon sounded like an annoyed teacher during last period instead of someone in the midst of kidnapping.

Laire huffed, but brought out a parchment sheet. Larissa recognized it from pictures in her lecture books. A magic scroll, which gave a magic user the ability to cast spells they normally couldn’t. There were several conditions to be able to use one, not the least of which was the magic user had to be a powerful caster – the book said only ten percent of casters were powerful enough to make any use of scrolls.

“What are you going to do to me?” Larissa hated that she couldn’t keep the tremor entirely out of her voice.

“You are going unconscious. This is the easiest way,” and even as Fallon explained, Laire’s voice was chanting in some strange language, a mixture of smooth vowels and guttural consonants.

Laire finished.

Nothing happened.

“Laire,” and Fallon’s annoyed voice was now ratcheted up several notches.

Laire was looking at the scroll with confusion plain on the heavily made-up face. “I have never had a scroll not work before. It’s a beginner spell – there should be no way they could mess it up.”

Larissa made a break for it, running past the women, but as she stepped out the door someone picked her up, giving her body a hard squeeze. Even as she struggled a blindfold was placed over her eyes and ropes wrapped around her body.

“Hard way it is.”





It was an interrogation room – big and white, with a long table and two chairs in the middle, a couple spare bulbs hanging overhead, and one wall consisting of what was undoubtedly a two-way mirror.

Larissa sat on one of those chairs, looking toward the mirror. She wasn’t going to throw anything, not until she had a living, breathing target. Those mirrors were notoriously hard to break.

In moments Fallon and Laire walked into the room. Well, more accurate was Fallon had a warrior’s glide, her balance on the balls of her feet in preparation for an attack at any time. Laire was wearing six-inch stilettos and was doing a fast shuffle to keep up.

They made it to about the middle of the room. Fallon never so much as glanced at the mirror as she turned to lean her back against it, her gaze on Larissa. Laire was the opposite, leaning close to fix her make-up and put a very shiny gloss on her lips.

“My brother?” she asked. That’s right. Keep it cool. She could do that.

“He’s perfectly fine,” Fallon answered. “He’s back at his home right now without so much as a hair out of place, though very pissed over what happened. He’s calling his commanding officers even now.”

Several moments of silence followed. “Why?” So much for playing it cool. The word exploded out of Larissa, unable to be held back at the sight of her kidnappers. “Why am I here? Why did you kidnap me? You said we were meeting to talk, and I trusted you.”