There were three males and two females in their group. They looked confident, but I projected their deaths in my eyes, and once they saw that, they lost a little of their easygoingness. It made me happy to see they understood the situation.
More than likely they’d been told we didn’t kill our opponents, so they probably thought they could deliver their little message and be on their way. Evidently Malphas wasn’t equipping his troops with the most accurate information, not that he knew it, but we were in an official war and certain acts received very specific punishments.
There had to be some rule that to be a warlock, which even the females were called, you had to have black hair. It was either that or they all decided to dye their hair, which I found annoying. Malphas more than likely decided to make his minions in his image. For them it was a bad fortune, because it only reminded me of their leader.
As my mind wandered, I had to admit I had seen warlocks that didn’t have black hair, but maybe two out of a hundred was such a low number that I tossed them to the side as irrelevant. They were more than likely the ones who had dyed their hair. I imagined if I’d sold my soul, I’d do everything I could to not have to face that fact when I looked in the mirror each morning.
Our two groups stopped twenty feet from each other. On my side of things, I didn’t need to get any closer to kill them. I imagined on their side they didn’t want to get any closer because they thought it’d be easier for me to kill them.
I assumed they still believed they’d be able to somehow kill me, which was a joke. Along with the black hair, warlocks all seemed to have a cockiness about them that made them irrational.
“Where did you take them?” I asked, breaking the ice. My voice was low and menacing, and sadly it didn’t scare them into spilling their guts.
We’d stood there for thirty seconds and it didn’t seem like they were going to start talking. A few of them were darting their eyes around, searching for either a place to retreat or an attack, which was a reaction I hadn’t seen before. A retreat would’ve been smart of them, not that it’d help in the long run.
I was pissed and there wasn’t a speck of dirt they could hide under that would save them. Even if their “master” had worked some kind of magic to protect them, I would’ve found a way to undo it.
“Breathe, Avery,” Nate said, mentally trying to get me to clear my head a little.
I couldn’t literally see red, but I knew where the phrase came from. My brain was singularly focused on the task ahead, and even Nate’s calming wasn’t going to do much to help that, not that it often helped a whole lot.
The warlocks were in a V formation, which they always seemed to take when there was more than two of them. It was kind of funny since my people actually had birds amongst us and a V formation was well-known in our flying patterns.
“I can’t tell you where your people are, just a simple message I was told to pass along.” It was the warlock at the point of the V doing the talking.
He was a pale man, who wasn’t that tall, maybe five-seven. Most of those in his group were about the same height. One of the females was closer to six-foot. She stood in the back of the left side of their V.
They all wore black, so we looked like two opposing ninja forces squaring off in the middle of the street. Numbers were clearly on my side, though, and the squirming I saw let me know they were aware of it. It was good to know that they could at least count.
“I’d like to know exactly what happened here, and then you go about delivering your message.”
I didn’t leave any room for argument in my statement. There was something off about the town, and it wasn’t just the fact that my people were missing from it. There should have been noises coming from the celebration, but other than nature quietly moving around us, I couldn’t hear anything.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to have to be more specific. We’ve been in town for a few days, and quite a few things have happened in that time.”
I sent a warning fireball across the wide gap between us. I made sure they had a chance to see it form and come towards them and set it to a mild scorching level. It wasn’t meant to cause damage, just let them know I wasn’t going to put up with any crap.
Since it was aimed at the lead guy’s feet, he jumped back a foot to keep it from hitting him. It was smart on his part not to use magic to combat it. I would’ve taken any magic as a threat and acted a little more accordingly.
I really was in a foul mood.
“Do I really need to repeat the question and clarify, or are you going to stop acting like an idiot and tell me what I want to know?”
The warlock shook his head. “No need. We put the town in stasis when we got here. Malphas said none of them could be hurt, so we thought that’d be the easiest way to ensure that while we handled your forces.”
My eyes narrowed as I growled at them. I wasn’t the only one making that particular noise, as Joseph’s growl came out more like a roar. Since wolves were one of the more numerous uniques, at least half of the forces we’d had in the town were his.
“Joseph, correct me if I’m wrong, but the calls you received didn’t include any news of the town being frozen, did they?”
My initial thoughts about the town being a trap for our recon team were looking to be true, which was one of the reasons I was so mad. I hated the idea of Malphas getting one over on me. I knew he was powerful, but if I was forced to factor in him being intelligent as well, things weren’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped.
“Not a word. I was told there was a festival and the warlocks were trying to blend in.”
“So, I guess my next question to you guys,” I said, glaring at the warlocks, “is whether you’re good at throwing your voices or if you had skin-walkers lying in wait.”
The lead warlock looked a little nervous about how I would react to his answer. He had to be one of the smartest warlocks I’d met. They were usually all about telling me how brilliant Malphas’ plan to defeat me was. Sadly, none of them were able to tell me what the plan was so I could come up with a really good plan of my own.
The other warlocks looked like they wanted to speak up, but they waited for their leader to say what was on his mind. The look of fear in their eyes wasn’t as deep as the man out front. He knew for sure how things would end that particular day, and he was trying to figure out if there was a way for him to change that.
“I’m sure you know I can’t reveal the full plan. Malphas wants you to be surprised as you travel around for the next few days, and he’s ensured you can’t torture what he foresees happening out of us.”
I smiled. I’d seen the trick before when I’d tried to interrogate warlocks. The second they tried to talk about a subject, a self-destruct switch went off and they were rendered as close to dead as they could get with their heads still attached.
“Hmm, I guess that limits how useful you are to me. It must be a great feeling knowing your great ‘master’ can kill you whenever he wants. Would you have signed up to have your soul stolen from you if you would’ve known what kind of man you work for?”
For some reason my mood had turned more playful. It probably had to do with the fact that Malphas being smarter than me wasn’t waved in my face for once. He’d gotten one over on us in that town, but that didn’t mean he’d be smarter than me when it came to our fight.
“It gives us an easy way to get out of the torture you cretins would try to inflict on us,” the tall woman in the back said, hissing out every word.
“Shut up, Lena,” the lead guy said.
My eyes darted back to her and my smile widened. Sometimes it was just too easy getting under their skin.
“Really? Have you ever wondered what’s waiting for you when you die? You seem eager to find out. To become what you are, who you are is taken away from you, making it so there really isn’t a heaven or hell out there waiting for you. It’s just an endless void where you don’t know where to go.
“You spend years trying to ke
ep your memories fresh in your mind, but eventually everything fades away. Since you’re already a shell of a person, maybe that doesn’t sound so bad to you, but you aren’t alone in the void. There are others like you, and with all that confusion, it isn’t exactly pretty.”
I held the grin on my face, but talking about the void wasn’t something I liked doing. Malphas had given me my memories back, even the ones I didn’t know I needed to remember. I wasn’t in the void long enough to totally forget who I was, but I knew what went on there.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” one of the male warlocks said.
He seemed pretty adamant about his statement, and I was glad to see the usual stupidity of warlocks shining through. If they’d magically grown brains, I would’ve been worried.
“If you are able to remember this moment in a hundred years, feel free to reach out and let me know I was mistaken. Purgatory can be different for different people, but the memory thing is something I know happens to everyone. Anyway, why don’t we get back to what you guys are still doing in town? I believe you have a message for me.”
I already knew from what had been said that it was going to be directions. We weren’t going to be sending in more teams to scout if there was a chance they’d be kidnapped, and Malphas was aware of my thinking. He’d once told me we were more alike than I would ever admit.
He may have been right about that, at least in the sense he claimed. We both had people who looked to us for direction and would do anything we asked of them. His people didn’t have a choice, and mine did. That probably made mine just a little dumber, but they were mine and I would protect them as best I could.
With some of them missing, and in the enemy’s hands, I knew I hadn’t done my job. Someone would pay for that, and I was pretty sure that someone was anyone Malphas put in my path.
“He says to go east to find the place stuck in time. He knows you aren’t a big carnivore, but for those among your group who are, he recommends sampling the bacon. It is by far the best he’s ever tasted.”
I laughed as the lead warlock finished delivering the message. It was disturbing my enemy knew my eating habits, but because he did, I didn’t have to consult my humanoid computer for a location.
Without giving any indication about what I was doing, I generated a ten-foot wide fireball set to destroy and hurled it at the group of warlocks. I’d made a little adjustment to the middle two feet of the ball, so as it incinerated his companions, the lead warlock remained only slightly scorched.
He looked at me in shock as he worked to extinguish the fire that licked at the edges of his clothing and hair. The four other warlocks incinerated without a peep, which I imagined wasn’t something they thought possible. The warlock left standing didn’t seem in a hurry to speak, so I went ahead and said my piece.
“I thought when we walked up all of you saw what was ahead for you, but your friends ended up falling back into the normal warlock state of mind, stupid. You never lost the fear in your eyes, and for now that’s spared your life, because I needed one of you. I have a message of my own that I need delivered, and I believe you’re just the person to do the job.”
I paused for a second to see whether he was ready to hear the message. He’d patted out all the fire, without taking his eyes off me. He looked a little different without his dark eyebrows and newly pink skin, but those were things he could recover from. If he was as strong as I assumed he was, he could say a spell once we left and look normal within seconds.
He nodded his head quickly, so I continued. “First, before the message, we’re going to leave the town after this little talk, and I’d like you to make sure it’s left the way it was when you arrived. The people here aren’t in danger of getting in the crossfire anymore, so there is no reason for them to remain frozen.”
I’d been shocked to hear any consideration had been given to the humans. I’d had to deal with the opposing side trying to blow up buildings with uniques and humans inside.
“Understood,” he said quickly.
“Great. I’m sure Malphas will want a status report, since he’ll know you’re still alive. When you’re telling him what happened here, I want you to let him know that payback is a bitch, and he should consider me killing Alex as nothing compared to what’s coming his way. There will be no warlocks or demons left by the time I’m done, and I’m pretty sure every single one of those deaths is going to be gruesome.”
I had nothing left to say, so I turned around and started walking back to the cornfield. My people parted to the sides as I made my way through them. I saw the looks of shock and gleefully smiled as I practically skipped to decide what our next plans were.
I hoped their surprise was because I’d actually left someone alive. It was a necessary evil at the moment, but I was sure eventually Mr. Warlock would be on the receiving end of a fireball.
CHAPTER 4
Time to start carrying around a fire extinguisher