“Barred from the other side.”

The elevator slid down.

A soft thud sounded from the other side of the stairs door, then another, followed by a shriek. The scorpion ticks had flooded the stairway. In a few moments they would be in the elevator shaft too.

I needed to get an arcane circle going fast. Most commercial buildings had flat concrete roofs.

I sprinted for the doorway and into the night.

A rectangular roof stretched in front of me, lit up by orange lights along its perimeter and perfectly flat except for the stubby row of AC units to the far right. Gravel crunched under my feet. A tar and gravel roof. It wasn’t smooth enough for a circle. The gravel would break the lines. Damn it.

Behind me Alessandro marched out of the utility room.

A whirlwind of green spiraled up over the building’s edge, directly opposite us, smashed into the roof, breaking into individual creatures, and vomited the summoner onto the gravel. He landed on his side, awkward, and staggered to his feet, his movements jerky and disjointed. The scorpion ticks circled him, whipping about. I could see glimpses of him, but I had no shot. Pumping bullets into the swarm was futile. I might as well just toss the gun over the side of the building.

To the left of me, Alessandro strode forward, putting himself into the path of the swarm. I moved to my right to get a clear shot.

The summoner focused on Alessandro, his swarm thickening to counter an attack from his direction. His coat hung open, revealing a thin body and a face that was no longer human. His skin had a sickly bluish tint, stretched too tightly over his features. His forehead protruded over his temples and the corners of his jaw were too far apart, as if someone had grafted extra bones onto a human skull.

Revulsion squirmed through me. The mix of human and insect felt wrong on a deep, primal level.

The summoner opened his mouth and hissed.

He was warped, and he was using magic. And doing a damn good job.

I reached out with my magic, trying to sense his mind. It was there, a weak, pale glow to my mind’s eye. The scorpion ticks streamed over him, each a faint greenish dot of primitive sentience. They buzzed around him like bees. On their own, they wouldn’t deter me, but collectively, they formed a mental veil that wrapped around him, all parts of it communicating, connected, and one.

I was looking at an alien hive mind.

This was so far out of my frame of reference, I didn’t know how to go about attacking it. I couldn’t even tell if he was human enough for my siren call to work.

Alessandro pulled a nail gun out of thin air, dropped it, lifted up a shovel, threw it, and came up with a tennis racket–shaped bug zapper. He hurled it at the swarm. It sparked, and one of the scorpion ticks went into a swan dive, landed a few feet from me, and lay on the ground twitching.

I can’t even . . .

A small flock of scorpion ticks tore out of the utility room behind our backs and swallowed us. The creatures washed over me, scratching, biting, stinging, tearing my clothes and skin. One clamped onto my leg. I shot it. It stopped chewing on me, but hung from my jeans, dead. A scorpion tick tore at my hair. I grabbed it by its tail, yanked it off, and slammed it onto the gravel. They were shredding us. I wouldn’t last much longer.

Alessandro barked a short “Ha!”

A stream of fire arched over my head and seared the swarm. Bodies plunged down, burning. The air around me was suddenly clear and I spun left. He had a small black flamethrower in each hand, the fire pouring from them in twin orange jets. A maniacal grin twisted his face, lit up by the flames. His eyes glinted. I had never seen him so happy.

The summoner screamed, an odd, guttural sound.

All around me scorpion ticks dropped out of the night sky, fell to the roof, and kept burning. The stench of chemicals, fire, and singed hair filled the air. Thick black smoke poured from the flames. It looked like a medieval painting of hell come to life, and Alessandro Sagredo was its devil.

The flamethrowers sputtered and died.

“Ma porca puttana,” Alessandro swore, his voice ice-cold. “Ne andasse dritta una!”

A second swarm coiled over the edge of the building to our right, broke apart, and deposited a middle-aged black woman onto the roof. The receptionist from Diatheke. She still wore the same dark suit with a string of pearls, except now it was torn from dozens of scorpion tick claws.

Alessandro was right. Everything had gone wrong today.

I snapped my wings open and hit her with a stream of my magic. My power crashed against the solid wall of her will.

“Thank you, Lawrence,” the psionic ground out.

Her defenses wrapped around her mind in layers. She’d had them up before she ever set foot on this roof and they were entrenched, their pattern old. She must have maintained them for decades and now activating them would come effortlessly to her.

Her magic was combat grade, mine wasn’t. She relied on direct assault, while I beguiled and used subterfuge until my magic gained hold. If I had surprised her or if I had the time and opportunity to draw a circle, it would be a different story. I had her pinned with the blunt press of my power, but that was as much as I could do. If we had been swordsmen, I would be a large strong fighter beating my blade on the shield of a more skilled, more experienced opponent. She made no effort to parry me. She knew that once she engaged me on the mental plane, only one of us would be left standing, and I was a Prime of unknown power. She refused to commit. Instead she sat behind her shell like a turtle and bided her time.

I began to hum, sending tendrils of my magic through my voice, trying to wrap them around the mental sphere of her defenses and trying to burrow into it.

The scorpion ticks regrouped, readying for the next assault. They hung around Lawrence like a maelstrom. The summoner’s jaws moved continuously, cracking invisible walnuts between his teeth. His eyes bulged out of his skull. He’d planted his feet. The muscles on his shoulders bunched, causing the sleeves of his trench coat to ride up his arms. Everything about him emanated rage.

There was no pain feedback between the summoner and the summoned. Mages like Lawrence reached into the arcane realm, pulled creatures out, and sent them to do their bidding. Alessandro’s pyrotechnics hadn’t injured Lawrence, but they did piss him off. He looked like he couldn’t wait to tear Alessandro’s head off.

It was a standoff. Lawrence wouldn’t move until he knew what weapon Alessandro would conjure, and for some reason, Alessandro did nothing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him, his magic winding about him shining with orange fire. He watched both Lawrence and the psionic, his hands empty, a look of intense concentration on his face.

Little flashes of pain flared in random spots on my body. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I was bleeding from a dozen places.

I managed a Victoria Tremaine sneer. “If you run away now, I might not chase you until tomorrow.”

“The name is Jocelyn Rake, my dear. I don’t run and I don’t chase. And your cheap parlor tricks won’t work on me.”

“You just chased me through the building.”

The effort to keep her pinned wore on me. It took all my concentration to keep her where she was. Magic flowed out of me in a steady torrent. I had spent a lot of my power at Keystone and now I was deep into my reserves. Soon they would run out. I couldn’t keep this up too much longer, and if Lawrence unleashed the swarm again, I would be done.

Jocelyn sneered back. “You’re a talented amateur. But I’m a professional. I didn’t survive this long by losing battles. I’ll kill you and be home in time to watch Out of Order and drink a glass of wine before bed.”

“You’re not leaving this roof.” My magic had grown with every word, but the tendrils of my power drummed against her mental shields without doing any damage. This was about to end, one way or another.

Jocelyn bared her teeth. “Big words for a little girl. I know all about you. You were the spare and now you’re the heir. You won’t elbow me out of the way like you did your sister.”

What?

“Look at you. You wanted to be in charge so badly, you climbed over your own flesh and blood to do it. It must have burned you that you had to follow her lead. She’s married and rich and so pretty, and here you are, an ugly dark duckling.” Jocelyn clicked her tongue. “You sad little thing. Couldn’t match your sister in anything else, so you decided to be the Head of your sad little House, climbed over her, and now you’ll die here, and your sister will laugh and laugh . . .”