‡
The urge to vomit was a constant pressure from the back of her throat. Amana took another sip of ginger ale, willing the acid to settle back in her stomach and behave.
Once again, her hand stroked over her bag, feeling for the shape of the book within it, as she had done every minute since she walked out her door to the trendy café on the corner. With every ring of the bell over the door she looked up, and so far all it got her was disappointment and stretched-out nerves.
Another sip of soda, hand again ghosting over the book. She wanted…she wanted to meet a god, or the Oracle, and ask them why? For the first time in ten years she had felt…
That was it. She had felt. She had opened up to someone, trusted them enough to let them in, and it was so good. Warm and remarkable and now… Now she was supposed to go back to what she was before? Worse, she was a betrayer, a thief who had stolen from him, stolen his faith in her.
Nakoa. This was the price for Nakoa to come back to her. How many times had she said she’d pay any price, only let him come back to her?
The gods took her at her word.
A phone rang, and the person behind the counter answered. His countenance turned from disinterest to fierce focus, and after he hung up, he called out, “Everyone out. Not you,” he said, looking to Amana. The two other patrons startled, but taking in the proprietor’s expression, they made hurried movements to grab everything and go. In moments, the place was empty.
The view from the café’s huge ceiling-to-floor windows was clear for a minute before Fallon and Laire appeared outside. Fallon gave a quick sweep of the area inside and out before she entered, Laire behind her in fire-engine red thigh high boots and a red and black skintight dress, which ended mid-thigh.
Fallon wasted no time to stand before Amana, the redhead all in black and twice as intimidating as when she fought a group of werewolves with her bare hands. “Where is it?”
“Where is my brother?” She had given up too much. There was no way they’d touch this book until Nakoa was in her embrace.
“The book first.”
If Fallon thought Amana was going to jump when told, the woman was disillusioned in a big way. “There is no first. Get Nakoa and you have this book. That was the deal.”
“And that’s still the deal. We need to go through channels to get to him.”
“Then you’ll wait.” Amana’s hands curled with the desire to claw at this woman. “He should’ve been at the ready to go. That was the deal, and like hell you’ll get this book a moment before I see him. I’ll throw this book to the necromancers before I let that happen.”
From the corner of her eye, Amana saw Laire straighten, the mage’s hands opening in slow, methodic circles. Fallon’s expression was set, her eyes hard. “I told you, we’ll get you your brother. I guarantee it. But we need the book now.”
Yet another lie, another broken promise, and this one took from her the only good thing to happen to her since her brother. Damn Guild. Damn them.
Laire raised her hands, but before she could finish whatever magic she was going to cast, a filmy black cloud whipped over Laire’s face. It pulled tight and backward, like someone had wrapped a scarf around her head, but this was not fabric. This black mass moved and shifted, and Laire lost whatever power she was harnessing, her hands coming up to claw at the blackness as her struggling breaths sounded loud through the room.
The mage was thrown to the floor, skittering across the tile as her hands never stopped trying to pull away the black mass, and Merc burst forth in a quickstorm of movement so sudden Amana could not tell from where he arrived.
Time slowed, passed in a frame-by-frame reel, like a movie in quarter-time. Reality was a paltry second or two, but to Amana the shifting of expressions on Fallon from startled to battle-ready, a burning focus radiating from her body as she faced the incoming enemy, was big and bright startling clarity. Fallon pivoted toward Merc and lunged forward, moving into position with enough time to deflect the punch that was aimed at her, a hit that would have sent anyone else sprawling, and met the attack with her own strike, only for that to be deflected as well.
Now time returned to normal pacing, and now Amana could see nothing, the two warriors too fast for a step-by-step recounting as they threw punches and kicks toward each other.
This was nothing like what was found on movies. This wasn’t even like the brawl at the bar involving the wolves. At the bar Fallon was enjoying herself, a smile on her face, the movements and adding in furniture and the music playing making the whole production theatrical, with punches that seemed…less, less than the maximum amount to hurt or stop another, letting the fight linger on far longer than it needed.