Magi Edge: (The Magi Saga Book 4) - EBOOK

Prologue
Minsk, Belarus

The air whipped by as Liz dropped the forty feet from the rooftop. Her hair flew out behind her in golden waves as she left her stomach behind. With a sickening crack, she landed on the shoulders of one of the German gunrunners who had scattered to the winds at the start of their attack. He dropped to the ground and went limp. A quick glance confirmed he still lived but was suffering from several broken bones.
Gunfire peppered the ground around her and ricocheted off of her Aegis with pops and whines. Liz ducked behind a nearby truck. She looked up and watched Rebecca move around one of the Russian vehicles opposite her in a smooth crouched hustle. Rebecca held her enchanted MP5 9mm submachine gun with silencer up and ready. Rounding the van, Rebecca let off a controlled three-round burst at the first man she saw, two to the chest and one to the head, dropping him.
Another man popped out in front of her, only for Rebecca to repeat the process without fuss or problem.
Rebecca looked like she meant business, both in her actions and how she looked. She wore a one-piece black catsuit with a gun strapped to her leg, and two blades strapped to her back. Everything she wore seemed to be Magical.
Movement caught Liz’s eye from the left side of the Russian group, across the rank of cars from Rebecca. Liz watched as a man saw her and raised his gun almost as if in slow motion. He had a clear line of fire across the gap to where Liz crouched next to the pickup truck.
Liz braced herself, only to see the man’s exposed hand explode as Rebecca put a bullet through it from over twenty feet away. Rebecca moved quickly, checking her corners and soon found the man leant up by the side of the car he hid behind, holding his ruined hand. She put two rounds through his head without any hesitation and continued on, sparing one quick glance and nod to Liz as she moved.
Rebecca had been assigned to their group at the last minute by the Magi Council. Apparently, she came from the Arcanum, the organisation of Initiated Riven who policed the crossover between the Mortal population and the Magi. Rebecca was one of their highly trained Black Ops Agents.
Because there would be a strong Initiated element to this mission, the powers that be saw fit to send her.
Liz wondered if this might have been as much to keep an eye on them as it was to help them.
From the other side of the row of cars the Russian gang had brought, a man appeared and looked out into the space between the vehicles of the two gangs. Liz watched as he checked around before focusing on the three handcuffed men sitting huddled in no-mans-land. They’d been brought by the Russians, apparently to sweeten the deal. But as the fight broke out, they’d been left in the mud.
The man, who had been leading the negotiations for the Russians, took a couple of steps and raised his gun, aiming it at the three men.
Working her Magic quickly, Liz erected an invisible Aegis around the prisoners. As the Russian fired, the bullets bounced off the Shield leaving the men unharmed.
“What the hell?” the man said in Russian. Liz understood him, having Magically learnt the language not too long ago.
Running forward at a blistering speed, Liz took advantage of the man’s confusion as he looked at his gun, wondering how he’d missed. He looked up a moment before Liz’s knee slammed into his nose as she jumped at him. With a satisfying crunch, the man whipped backwards off his feet as blood exploded from his nose all over her black leggings. She landed behind him, turned, and with a quick twist of Magic in his mind, he fell unconscious.
Looking up, past the three terrified looking men, she could see Xain and Orion doing their thing with the German gang. Orion ran up and over a van, jumping off in a flip, firing his guns as he went, while Xain took on several at once, his sword in one hand and a futuristic-looking pistol in the other. His movements were graceful and fluid, but lethal.
Beyond them, the side of the warehouse exploded as a huge metal gas tank flew through the wall, widening the hole that was already there.
Balor stepped through the hole he’d made just before Liz had jumped off the roof. She wondered if he’d killed the Nomad Magus he’d slammed through the wall.
Walking through the flames, he roared as he waded into the waiting men who opened fire on him.
A faint noise and a feeling of foreboding made Liz duck and look behind her as a gunshot rang out, aimed for where her head had just been. A shiny black blur appeared beside the man. It was Rebecca. She kicked his gun arm up, sending his gun flying, and buried one of her blades in the man’s gut.
She caught the gun as it dropped and put one round between the man’s eyebrows, dropping him like a ragdoll.
Two other men approached Rebecca. Liz nearly called out, only to watch in awe as this young woman moved at a speed that was difficult to follow and quickly killed them both without breaking a sweat.
Finished with those two, Rebecca switched back to her own gun and paused.
“I’ll finish the rest of these off, you get the hostages to safety,” Rebecca said without looking at Liz, before raising her gun to her eye and moving out.
Liz nodded and moved over to the hostages, where they crouched in the dirt. With a quick working of Magic, their cuffs dropped from their wrists.
“How did you?” asked one.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said another. All of them looked relieved, tired, and scared.
“Come with me,” Liz said in their native Russian and led them out of the line of fire to the gap between two warehouses. “Get in here, come on,” she said.
They moved quickly, but were clearly in pain and struggling with their movements.
“Who are you guys? Why were you brought here?”
“They hate us. Russia is a dangerous place for people like us,” he said.
“Us?” Liz asked, confused.
“We’re gay,” they said.
“Ah, I understand,” she said. She remembered the Nomad that had been watching the deal, who Balor had hit at one hundred miles an hour through a brick wall. He belonged to the Children of Pain Coven, a Neo-Nazi Nomad coven who operated in Eastern Europe.
Their Intel had said that a Magus called Hans would be in attendance, she wondered if Hans would still be alive.
“Stay here,” she said and ran towards the warehouse Balor had been in and the hole he’d made in its wall. She reached it without incident and looked inside at the terrific mess that the Scion had made. Factory machines lay in a huge tangled heap. She couldn’t see a body in the wreckage, but there was some blood.
Liz furrowed her brow in consternation, had Hans gotten away?
A shadow fell over Liz. Turning quickly, she whipped her hand out, only for it to be caught in a huge and unyielding fist.
“He Ported away,” Balor said as he released her arm.
“Sorry,” she said, feeling embarrassed for lashing out at him.
“Don’t be, reactions like that could save your life one day. Much like they saved Hans’ life today,” he rumbled, his voice sounding like two boulders grinding together.
“We stopped the deal, though, and saved the lives of three innocents. The day wasn’t a total loss,” Liz offered.
Balor looked down on Liz and smiled. “As you say.”
“Speaking of disappearing acts, I think you should make yourself scarce, so we don’t scare the mortals,” she said as she looked over the now-quiet battlefield. Xain and Orion moved through the German gunrunner’s vehicles, looking for any stragglers. To Liz’s right, Rebecca walked towards them, scanning the area as she moved.
“Agreed,” Balor said. His great wings spread wide, he launched himself into the air, and with a couple of beats of those bat-like wings, he’d disappeared from view.
“Heads up,” came a voice from above. A moment later, Stephen Loomis dropped to the ground by Liz’s side and straightened up. “Well done, you were impressive,” he said.
Stephen wasn’t a fighter but had come to offer some Magical aid. He watched the perimeter and kept other Riven away from the fight with a mixture of sound dampening and illusions.
“Thank you,” Liz said. “Did you have any trouble on your end?”
“Kept a few workers away and diverted them to safer routes, nothing too stressful.”
“Good,” Liz said.
“One moment,” he said and concentrated for a second. Liz felt the Magic roll out from him and envelope the weapons in the crates nearby. Liz watched with her Aetheric Sight and saw the guns erode and quickly fall to ruin. They were useless now.
“Good thinking,” Liz said.
“I think we’re finished here,” Xain said as he and Orion approached.
Liz watched as Rebecca walked up to the gap between the warehouses and spoke to the hostages who were down there.
“You’re safe now,” she said in Russian. “You’re in Minsk, Belarus and you’re free to go. Here,” she said and offered them a roll of paper money. She finished with a few pleasantries and moments later, Liz could hear the men run off between the warehouses as Rebecca walked to them.
“Shall we leave?” Xain asked.
Everyone agreed, saying yes, apart from Rebecca, who only nodded.