Nothing jumped out at us, and no one moved.
Our group filtered into the suite, his Alpha scent faint. He smelled of rotting leaves and I would forever be disgusted by any scent resembling his. Once Nolan had checked the rooms off to each side and confirmed there was no one present here, we went back out into the hallway.
Across the mansion was Kylan’s office.
Before we made it to the door it was obvious he was in there. Guards stood watch and a couple more paced the hall, more than we’d bargained for. I glanced back at our hired helpers, wishing I’d asked them what they were capable of doing. I could take out two at a time with my immobilization spell. Nolan would be able to get one with his air magic. There were three more in the hall, and if any of them let out a peep, we’d be giving Kylan a chance to realize he was being ambushed.
Drawing upon my newly perfected mental magic, I tried my hand at telepathy. I could have done a spell to quiet our voices, but the tiny chance of it failing made me wary.
“Can you get three of the pacing men? Without letting them make a sound?”I shoved the words at the men forcibly.
All three of them winced.
“No need to shout,”Vaughn grumbled through the temporary mental link I’d opened between us.
“We’ve got the three,”Ward said.
He made some hand gestures to his brother and Calloway, a silent language I wished I’d thought to learn. Telepathy made my head hurt. I snapped the connection with the three teammates and skimmed my fingers up Nolan’s arm to get his attention. He’d been observing the guards. Considering we had a constant mental connection and I’d apparently been yelling, I assumed he’d heard the plan.
When he was looking at me I pointed at one of the pacing men, indicating I would immobilize the two by the door. Oswald slid a weapon from the belt at his waist. He was useless using it in battle, but Shan had shown him about a thousand times how to aim for the heart. Once the guards weren’t moving, they were easy targets.
Holding up my hand with three fingers, I counted down slowly, dropping one finger at a time.
I pulled the last one into my fist and muttered the spell, using my hands to aim. If I’d used my wand in one hand, that side of the spell would have been stronger. With a full-body ordeal like this I would trade worse aim for the sake of equality.
Nolan’s target reached up to grab his throat and the other three guards — the ones not held stock still by me — turned to look at him. For a moment I worried Ward had lied and they weren’t capable, but then vines cracked the stone walls, shooting out and grabbing the guards around their mouths. Unable to make a sound, they reached up to tear at the vines, which appeared to be stronger than anything found in nature.
Well, maybe not. I wasn’t familiar with Zemterran wildlife.
While Oswald zipped forward to polish off the ones Nolan and I had taken out of the game, Vaughn tapped one of the many metal bracelets on his wrist. It melted down, then reformed into a thin weapon. It resembled a chopstick, if chopsticks were pointed and deadly. With a flick of his fingers, it flew through the air and punctured the hearts of the guards, one after the other.
I had no idea what the fuck kind of demons these guys were, but their powers were pretty awesome.
The thump of bodies falling to the floor was likely suspicious to anyone inside the office, so we hurried forward. I dropped our invisibility and let Nolan take the lead, watching him turn to the doorknob.
I inhaled sharply when he flung the door open, revealing what was in the depths of the room.
Kylan stood in the centre, pacing around a desk, and when the door opened I caught the most delightful expression on his face.
Shock.
For the first time, we’d caught him off guard.
This was our fucking chance.
He stepped over to his mage, but before the weak witch could even think about opening a portal, Nolan had sucked the breath from his lungs. Being deprived of oxygen wouldn’t only incapacitate a witch. It would kill one, and as the man’s face went purple, Kylan visibly grit his teeth.
There would be no running. The only other person in this room who could create a portal was me.
Several guards rushed for us at once, but Ward and Vaughn used their magic to hold them back. Calloway shifted into a mountain lion, prowling among the vines with sleek grace. I strode forward to Kylan, who was now alone on the far side of the room.
“You’ve made my life extremely fucking difficult for the past few years,” I said, weighing my dagger in my hand.
Nolan and Oswald stood just behind me, both tense. Grey was nowhere to be seen, which was a shame because I would have loved to see Kylan when he realized I used one of his own men to kill him. Without his guards or his mage and with two of my mates by my side, I was confident I could kill him myself.
Not confident enough to have a long conversation, though.
I didn’t wait for him to respond to my comment before I was tossing magic in his direction to see how he responded.
