“Then let’s give them a reason to not return to it,” Rowe said, grinning at me.
“A fire?”
“Sounds good to me. All this stuff will go up easily.”
“Too easily. We have to get through the first floor and the basement. I don’t want to get trapped in the basement when we’re trying to get out of this place.”
“Just a small fire that will spread. The chaos will work in our favor while we get through the area.”
I shrugged my shoulders as I walked back over to the opening where the rain was pouring into the room. I placed my knives in their sheaths and lifted one arm and pointed at the opening while pointing with my other hand at a pile of boxes at the far end of the room. Closing my eyes, I summoned up another lightning bolt. However, this time the energy surged straight through me and exited my other hand to slam into the boxes. Paper and cardboard exploded in a shower of ash and flames.
“Holy shit!” Rowe gasped, surprising me. “I’ve never seen anyone do that.”
“Yes, I’m quite unique,” I bitterly muttered, letting my arms fall limp at my sides. That particular trick took a little bit out of me, but I was regaining my strength as the fire started to grow. Pulling my weapons back out of their sheaths, we jogged toward the door marked EXIT and quietly eased out to concrete stairs blanketed in thick darkness. I was forced to pause as my eyes struggled to adjust.
Sliding along the wall, we quickly descended to the first floor and stopped. I frowned, noticing a dim light coming from the basement level, when there should have been no light at all. There was a great deal of shouting going on from that level, but things seemed to be relatively calm outside the stairwell door to the first floor. I was tempted to say to Rowe that we should continue to the bottom floor, but I didn’t want to leave potential enemies at my back. We needed to clean out the first floor before moving on.
As I reached the door handle, an alarm went off in the building. I looked over my shoulder at Rowe in confusion. I thought we had taken out all the power.
“It’s the smoke alarm on the second floor,” he explained. “They’ll be calling the fire department soon if we don’t take care of the first floor employees.”
I nodded, pulled the door open, and was immediately faced with a tall, lanky man in a suit. He was staring straight through me with a confused look on his face. He couldn’t see me because I was cloaked, but was confused as to how the door opened on its own. Rowe reached around me and pulled the man into the darkness, plunging his knife into the man’s throat before he had a chance to give a shout of surprise. We left him gurgling on the stairs leading to the second floor before we tried again to enter the first floor.
Dripping wet, we stood in the dimly lit office building. The few windows that dotted the building had been blacked out for privacy, but it also left them blanketed in darkness when the power was out. I felt like another shadow lost in the darkness. Around us I could hear nervous voices raised as people huddled in various offices in hopes that being in a group would protect them from the darkness as they waited for the power to return.
“Take the right,” Rowe said, jerking his head in that direction. “I’ll go left. Kill anything that moves. We’ll meet up on the other side. Don’t let anyone make any phones calls. They could call up some assistance from the ground floor. I’d rather keep this a private party.”
“See you on the other side,” I said, clinking my knife against his raised blade before heading to the right, disappearing into the deeper shadows.
My footsteps were silent across the carpet. In fact, the only sound I made was the occasional splat of water hitting the floor as it dripped down from my face and hair. The air was cool, raising goose bumps on my flesh, and I was forced to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. With my heart racing in my chest at the thrill of the hunt, I knew my body temperature would soon rise.
I paused at one small office whose door was open. A man sat in a chair in front of a desk, while another man lounged in his leather chair behind the desk. Both were wearing white shirts and ties. I edged into the room and stood there in silence, watching them. It almost seemed wrong to kill them as they sat so innocently, but I reminded myself of the tenet that had guided the sword of so many naturi over the years: humans were destroyers of the Earth. And worst of all, these humans were going to be destroyers of my kind when they were given the chance, simply because we represented something different.
A low growl gave me away, but it wasn’t enough to give them a chance to protect themselves. I threw one knife, which buried up to the hilt in the throat of the man behind the desk while I turned my attention to the other man. Gripping the handle of the second knife, I plunged it directly into his chest, piercing his heart, while my free hand went over his mouth and nose, blocking any noise that would escape him. In one quick motion I jerked the knife free and slashed his throat. The spray of his blood across my cheek and arm somewhat warmed me while silencing the man. Retrieving my other blade, I slipped out of the room and closed the door behind me.
I was in and out of two more small offices in the same fashion in only a couple minutes. Blood was splattered across my arms and face and starting to take on a pink hue in my rain-soaked clothes. With knives still gripped in both hands, I turned a corner, heading toward the front of the office, when I heard a woman gasp in horror. She sat by candlelight at her large desk, her hands tightly gripping the arms of her chair as she stared wide-eyed at me. Confused, I did a quick scan of myself to find that I was indeed still cloaked. However, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one emanating energy. The woman was a witch.
Raising my hand to throw one of my knives at her, I saw her reach out with one foot and step on a red button on the floor. I knew that couldn’t possibly be a good thing. I flung the knife at her with all my strength, but she had already succeeded in throwing up a magical force field around her so my weapons couldn’t penetrate.
We have a problem, I said, reaching out mentally to contact Rowe.
What?
The woman at the main desk in the office is a witch.
The receptionist is a witch? His voice sounded amused in my head, and I felt the need to punch him in the arm so he would be serious again. You think they’d screen for such things since the coalition doesn’t like nonhumans.
This is serious. I think she alerted someone to our presence.
They still won’t be able to see us.
They will with her help.
Then make sure she can’t help them, he admonished before cutting off the connection between us. A part of me wanted to snap at him. It was as if we were back in training together with him issuing all of the orders. But in this case I knew that he was right. I had to get rid of the witch before she could assist anyone who might be banging up the steps from the basement.
“Wh-What are you?” she demanded, keeping her back pressed into her chair.
“The person sent to kill you for betraying your people,” I murmured as I walked toward her. I raised one hand and rested it against the bubble of energy that sizzled around her. I couldn’t physically penetrate it with my body or my knives. However, I suspected that magic would do the trick. I stepped backward again to give myself some room while I unhooked my whip from my side. Snapping it once, I flicked it at her to see if it would penetrate her bubble. She was smirking at me until the tail of the whip snapped around her knees, leaving behind a trio of long, deep scratches. The end of the whip was imbued with magic, allowing it to penetrate her bubble of protection.
Anger warped and twisted her features as she threw out her right arm toward the front of the building. The glass in the front door shattered into a thousand pieces, as if an explosion had gone off. Yet, instead of falling to the ground, the glass pieces hovered in the air in the door frame. The witch then pointed her extended arm, sending the shards flying directly at me. I had enough time to throw up both arms to protect my face. However, the rest of my body was exposed. I could feel a hundred little cuts across my body as sharp pieces of glass scraped along my flesh and embedded deeply. Little rivers of blood ran down my body and started to soak into my clothes. I was tempted to give a little shake and brush off the glass but suspected that would only push the shards even deeper into my skin. The pieces would need to be picked out one by one.