We were heading down to Denver in the morning. The guys would pick us up early and we were supposed to meet with Victoria's contacts in the afternoon.
It would be Nikolai's first time in a modern city. Hopefully the internet had prepared him.
Victoria's gasp brought me out of my pizza coma and quiet contemplation. I threw up shields around us without thinking and focused on my surroundings—which I should have been doing all along.
Still, my shields held the blast of sickly green magic at bay. Something I had learned from both the demon and Nikolai was to identify what spells were intended for. This one was nasty. The weaves in the magical net were barbed, designed to cause a great deal of debilitating pain in a short period of time. It was strong enough that it could kill the person it hit or might just take them out of the fight for a while.
Victoria shrieked as the magic settled around us, held back by the dome of my shield.
I snarled, rage flooding my veins, followed by a rush of magic that crackled along my arms in lavender waves. Maybe it was left over from the demon. Maybe I was just done with their shit, but I was not putting up with this any longer.
The target of my fury stood in the middle of the road. I didn't recognize her magical signature, or her physical form, but the attack on me and Victoria I wasn't going to forgive.
Though I now knew several spells that would kill her where she stood, I wasn't quite ready to go there yet. Instead, I wove a magical starburst that would distract her. It carried the signatures of a particularly nasty spell, but would do nothing more than dazzle her eyes.
I dropped my shield and launched the starburst. It flashed bright in the dark night. As I had hoped, the woman threw a shield over her head. Quicker than she could react, I tossed the other spell. This one I had concealed, and it shot along the ground, a barely visible arrow of purple light that twisted around her legs and coiled up her body.
The mage screamed and her shield fell as the leach I had cast pulled all of her magic out of her body and sent it into the ground. There were other things I could do with her magic, but this was currently the safest.
"Run!"
I grabbed Victoria's arm and we sprinted back the way we had come. I dragged her down an alley and cast Nikolai's invisibility spell. I wasn't as good as he was, but I didn't have to fool anything but a handful of humans.
A few of the tourists shouted and sirens blared in the distance, but they didn't cover the agonized wail of the mage I had taken out. The spell was intended to hurt enough to take someone out of a fight, but the real horror that fueled her cry was probably her belief that I had stolen her magic forever. She would recover, though it would take a day or two. She didn't know that.
I leaned against the wall, panting and trying to catch my breath. My phone buzzed and I fished it out of my pocket.
"Shouldn't we keep running?" Victoria's voice shook.
"They can't find us. We'll need to get to the car but we have a minute. Nikolai?" I answered the phone in a whisper.
"What happened? We all felt you draw on your powers."
"Got attacked," I answered. "We're okay. Trying to get to the car now."
"Come up here for the night," Allan said into the phone. "Bring Victoria."
"Yeah, we'll head that way as soon as it's safe."
"Use invisibility on car. Just, remember no one will see you," Nikolai added. "Did anyone see what happened?"
"I don't know. There were a handful of tourists. We're in town. The cops are probably going to get the mage that attacked us. I disabled her."
"Well, it was self-defense. Hopefully no one identifies you."
"You don't sound too worried."
"We can disappear into Russian steppes. No one will find us." He laughed.
"I don't like winter that much," I grumbled.
He laughed harder. "You should hurry. See you soon."
He disconnected the call and I shoved the phone in my jeans pocket. "They want us to come up to the yurt."
"Yeah, sure." Victoria stared at me.
"What?"
"What did you do to her?"
"Uh, not much actually. Leached all her magic out so she couldn't attack us. She probably thinks it's permanent. I doubt she's seen that spell before. Let's go." I grabbed Victoria's arm. She didn't flinch, which I took as a good sign, and we made our way to the other street and jogged for the parking lot. Victoria still clutched the pizza box in her arms. Good.
Sirens blared down the main street and we could still hear people shouting. The mage had stopped screaming, but unless she had backup, I doubted she would get away. I wasn't about to stick around and find out, but this probably would be the last time they only sent one magic user to capture me, and clearly, somehow, they were watching us.
Victoria's hands shook as she tried to unlock her car. I finally took the keys from her and she wordlessly went around to the passenger side.
I extended the invisibility that cloaked Victoria and I to include the car then booked it out of the parking lot, praying I wouldn't run into anyone else on the road as it was difficult for someone to avoid something they couldn't see and I wasn't used to driving an invisible car.
Once we hit the main roundabout, I hit the accelerator a little hard as I headed up out of the valley. If they were going to attack
