Blake was silent for a moment. “Why the hell are you in their lair?”
“Former lair. They abandoned it after we broke in. Our guild’s been watching it for two weeks but no sign of any cultists.”
The terramage grunted. “The cult is trying to kill me because I know about them. They’ll try to kill you too—and you’re making it real damn easy for them.”
“There’s no one here, Blake.”
“Have you forgotten about the mentalist?” he growled. “Even just walking around in the open is dangerous.”
Grimacing, I glanced at Ezra. “We’re leaving now anyway. The thing we came here for was a bust.”
“Good. And once you’re out, get your ass back to your guild.”
I waved at Ezra to follow me and strode across the reservoir. “You’re awfully bossy, you know.”
“You’ll thank me when you don’t die. I just explained how the cult’s been trying to kill me, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I started up the steps, phone in one hand and flashlight in the other. “So you’re going to stay in hiding, right? You can just sit tight until my guild deals with the cult.”
“Your guild?”
“Well, not only my guild.” Grayish sunlight bloomed through the stairwell, and I flicked off my flashlight as I hastened toward the friendly glow. “We’ll get help from other guilds too.”
“Do you think that’ll be enough?”
“Our GM is basically a genius.” My head popped up out of the sunken, earthy stairwell, and I climbed the last few steps. “If anyone can do it, he—”
“Tori!”
A few steps below me, Ezra grabbed my legs. At the same time, something dropped past my face—and a rope snapped tight around my upper arms.
Someone behind me yanked me up out of the hole, tearing my legs from Ezra’s grasp. I was flung down onto the rubble, bits of rocks digging into my back through my leather jacket—and a length of shining steel appeared an inch from my nose.
The stranger towering over me set the point of his long sword against my throat.
Chapter Four
My hammering pulse beat against the sword’s cold steel edge. The constricting pressure of a rope cut into my elbows, pinning my arms to my sides, and its other end was in the swordsman’s free hand. The stocky man with short blond hair standing near my shoulder was completely unfamiliar.
Well, shit. Blake had been right. My phone was no longer in my hand, and I had no clue if our call was still connected.
Ezra, halfway out of the sunken stairwell, stood unmoving, his gaze snapping between the blade at my throat and my captor.
“We finally meet, Enéas.”
Without moving, I strained to see the speaker. A second man, tall and rail-thin, stood just beyond the cenotaph ruins, his arms folded over his narrow chest. He wasn’t wearing the Court’s oh-so-classy scarlet cloak of villainy, but he had the hood of his jacket pulled up, shadows covering most of his face.
“But you don’t go by that name anymore, do you?” the man added.
“Who are you?” Ezra’s voice was eerily calm—but frost was forming on the ground around him.
“The Magna Ducissa asked us to speak with you.”
“Afraid to face me herself?”
The man smiled. “She’s a busy woman.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“We’re very pleased you survived, Enéas,” the cultist said, sounding more sour than delighted. “If we’d known you escaped Enright, we would’ve extended a welcoming hand of support many years ago.”
“Of course.”
The man’s thin lips twitched downward as he tried to parse Ezra’s flat tone. “We wish to extend that helping hand now to a blessed child of the Goddess.”
“Thank you. I accept.”
Silence fell over the clearing, and despite the sword poised at my jugular, I almost laughed at the cultists’ palpable confusion.
“Are—are you committed to returning to the Court’s ways?” the lead cultist asked tentatively.
“Absolutely. You should’ve invited me sooner.” Ezra ascended the last few steps, keeping his movements slow, then pivoted toward me and the blond swordsman. “Tori will come too. She’s wanted to experience the Goddess’s Light for herself ever since I told her about it.”
Oh yeah. Sign me up.
Ezra raised his hand toward me as though indicating the awesomeness that was Tori Dawson and her burning desire to become a cultist. His expression was vaguely pleasant, and only because I knew him so well did I see the slight tightening of his jaw.
He snapped his fingers into a tight fist—and a burst of wind hit the swordsman. He and his blade flew backward, and I rolled in the opposite direction. Launching onto my feet, I sprang over the sunken stairwell. Ezra caught me in mid-leap and swept me behind him.
An instant later, the reedy cultist, the stocky swordsman, and a third mythic had surrounded us in a half-circle, fifteen feet away.
“This will be your only warning,” the thin cultist intoned icily. “Return to the Court, or we will have no choice but to silence you.”
Crimson light ignited over Ezra’s fingers and snaked up his wrists. “Go ahead, then. Silence me.”
“Perhaps you don’t appreciate the ramifications of your actions. We will—”
Ezra raised his hand, fingers spread. Scarlet light blazed in his left eye and a swirl of magic erupted from his palm, solidifying into a hexagonal spell. Lips curling in a sneer, the cultist shoved his hood back to reveal a long face with flat cheekbones—and eyes sheened with red.
The man was a demon mage.
And I was standing in the wrong spot. No way did I want to be this close to a demon mage duel. I frantically wiggled my arms, trying to loosen the rope cutting off the circulation below my elbows.
The demon mage cultist bared his teeth. “You are a prodigy, Enéas. A child of the Goddess in true union with his Servus. You could become the first true apostle of the Goddess in living memory. Will you throw it away?”
Ezra’s spell flared brighter, and when he spoke, a guttural accent had infected his voice.
“Ask your Servus what he
