Born in Fire (Demon Days, Vampire Nights World Book 1)(10)

Thanks for the hole in the wall, Big C. Now that I know where you are, it’ll be easy to extract you.

To throw him off my scent, I walked toward his door with heavy footsteps, stopping five feet away. “This is not the way to make friends, Big C. Come on out and we’ll talk it through. There’s no reason why we can’t compromise.”

There was eight hundred dollars’ worth of reasons why we couldn’t, actually, but who needed details?

“You insignificant human!” His spell-encased voice boomed through the house and wrapped around my head, stealing my breath. My lungs started to burn, lacking oxygen.

I didn’t bother cutting through the spell. I let him pour his power and focus into it, sapping his energy even more. It would be a painful few minutes for me, but since I didn’t need oxygen to live, it would be worth it.

I quickly backtracked and ran into the first room. My feet thundered across a spot of hollow wood.

Mental note: see if there is anything cool hidden in the floor.

I kicked away a small black pot. Liquid sloshed out. Smoke rose into the air and one of the few remaining patches of clean carpet started to burn away.

I sheathed my weapons and bent to look through the hole in the wall. My mark stood in front of a large cauldron. Purple steam curled above the metal lip and wound around his body. The look and feel of the spell said it was his try at body armor. The casting was all wrong, though. Both the color and the way the spell moved said it wouldn’t fully solidify.

The character of this mage was starting to come into focus. He worked magic he didn’t fully understand, with power he couldn’t totally harness.

Self-taught, probably, and not very intelligent. No wonder he harassed his neighbors—he couldn’t keep his creations under control. Doofus.

I braced one hand against the wall and punched through with the other.

His head snapped up and he flinched toward me. I curled my fingers around his shirt and dragged him closer to the wall. His body hit wood and he grunted.

“Wrong entry point, Big C,” I wheezed. I might not need air to live, but it turned out I did need it to talk. The things you learned.

Annoyed, I ripped out my sword and cleared away the sticky suffocating spell before yanking him toward the wall again. His head banged off the hard surface. That would hurt.

“Let’s work together, Big C, and this’ll go a lot smoother. I will be taking you out of here, and I’d like to do that with you still alive. It’s your call.”

I ripped chunks of wood out of the wall, making the hole bigger. He seemed relaxed.

When did marks ever relax when I had a hold of them?

“Don’t do whatever it is that you are planning to do, buddy,” I said. “It won’t work out well for you. Trust me on that one.”

“Telco matzo burn!” he shouted.

A blast of heat surged through the hole and raked across my face.

There went my eyebrows.

Like a live thing, the blistering fire crawled across my skin and ate away a strap of my tank top. I should’ve worn leather on my torso. Trying to get home half-naked wouldn’t be awesome.

The house rumbled. The floor splintered with the pressure, and bits of the ceiling rained down.

I kicked a larger hole in the wall as the heat of my magic surged through me. I grabbed him with both hands, easily ignoring the dying blast of fire. He didn’t have the power to sustain it.

I wrangled him through the hole, finishing the job with a fast jerk. The fire sputtered out and the house sagged onto its frame, creaking and squealing as it settled.

Uh oh. That wasn’t a good sign.

“You okay, Big C?” I let go of him, and he crumpled to the floor.

Definitely not a good sign.

Hoping he was just knocked out, I put two fingers to his neck. No pulse.

“Dang it.” I straightened up, my hands on my hips. I hated when I accidentally killed the mark.

I kicked the wall in a temper. My foot went through to the other side and hooked on a jagged piece, stuck.

“Flippity-shit, double damn it!”

Would nothing go right?

Forcing myself to calm down, I twisted my foot and delicately brought it back through the wall. Breathing heavily, I stared down at the lifeless body.

“How’d you work up that kind of fire, huh, Big C? That’s a rare spell. Not many mages know how to do it. Or so I was told.”

Silence met my question.

Of course it did…I had bloody killed him. A human’s body was so fragile. I dealt with non-human types so often that I sometimes forgot to be careful.

I blew out a breath into the silence. Cracks and breaks in the wood made for a very uneven floor surface. How he had planned to live in this house after his weapon-spell went off? But then, the criminally insane rarely thought ahead.

Remembering that hollow area I’d heard earlier, I tapped the spot in front of me with my boot. It sounded solid. I kept trying until I found the location, then bent to run my hand just above the floor.

A pulsing sort of magic vibrated across my palm. A defensive hex, surely.

I didn’t bother using my sword as a medium this time. With no one to witness and then possibly tell on me, I was free to openly use my unique sort of magic.

Fire sprang to life along the floor, but it wasn’t wild, like the kind the mage had created with a spell. This was concise, as hot as liquid magma, and completely controlled. A blast of it would melt a normal person’s skin off.