Bound by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #2)(8)

“Hang on,” Vanit said, his thick lips curling into a grin as he held up his hand in the direction of his crew mates. “Let’s play this out. I think Little Miss Sunaya here’s let her new position as the Chief Mage’s pet go to her head, and I for one would like to remind her where she stands. What say you and I have a little match, huh?”

My eyebrows shot up. “You want to what, have a duel or something?”

“No, I want to kick your entitled little ass.” He bared his teeth at me, fangs sliding out from beneath his gum line. “If, for some reason, you should happen to win, my crew will more than happily get Sillara’s files for you.”

“Sunaya,” Lakin said, his voice low and urgent. “You don’t have to do this. We can come back when the Captain is here.”

“No.” I glared at Vanit, unstrapping my crescent knives from my right thigh. “If Vanit wants a fight, he’s getting one. Just because he’s got his panties in a twist over me doesn’t mean he’s getting away with this. We’re getting those files.”

Vanit’s expression turned downright ugly, and he shifted into a fighting stance, holding his sword aloft. I curled my fingers around the handles of my knives and took up a stance of my own, holding one knife out towards him and the other close to my midsection so I could block any blow that got past my initial guard, much like a traditional empty-handed stance. The other Enforcers gathered around us in a circle to watch, their eyes gleaming with the thrill of an impending fight, and I saw quite a few of them exchange coins out of the corner of my eye.

If most of them were betting on Vanit, that didn’t bother me. It just meant they were going to lose their money.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I demanded. “Weren’t you going to teach me a lesson?”

Vanit let out a snarl of rage, then rushed forward, jabbing straight for my midsection with his sword. Magic crackled at my fingertips, and I itched to simply blast him with a fireball, but I knew the Chief Mage would be pissed at me if I ended up killing Vanit, so instead I simply caught the blade using one of my knives, then side-stepped him. Off balance, he had no time to move out of the way as I slashed down the length of his forearm with the knife in my right hand. Blood gushed from the wound, splattering across the front of my leather jacket, and Vanit howled in agony. His fingers went limp, the sword clattering to the ground, and I wasted no time, swinging my fist back around to my ear and then smashing it into the side of his jaw, a vulnerable spot regardless of the size and strength of an opponent.

Vanit dropped like a stone.

The resulting silence in the room was deafening. All eyes were on me, and my skin prickled under the weight of the crowd’s attention. Ignoring them all, I nudged Vanit in the side with the toe of my boot just to make sure he was down. He groaned slightly, but didn’t budge otherwise.

“Anyone else feel like challenging me?” I lifted my head to meet the eyes of the rest of Vanit’s crew.

One by one, the rest of the shifters lowered their eyes submissively, accepting their defeat. No, they didn’t hate me any less, but damn if they weren’t going to respect me, and that was all I really cared about at this point. Now that I was finally out from Garius Talcon’s thumb, nobody at the Enforcer’s Guild was going to push me around anymore, no matter who they were.

“Very well,” a dark blonde woman stepped forward from the rest of the crew, her gaze hot but steady on mine. “Come this way. I’ll take you to the files.”





4





Vanit’s crewmate took us to where Sillara’s files were stored – which turned out to be in the basement, on the same floor as the jail cells I’d been forced to spend the night in after the whole city found out I was half-mage. There were several boxes of files, so Lakin and I had to call a cab to help transport them to his house in Shiftertown, driving alongside the cab with our bikes. No way was I leaving my steambike at the Enforcer’s Guild parking lot – Vanit’s crewmates were liable to slash my tires for what I did to their foreman, or worse.

“You really did a number on that guy, Sunaya,” Lakin commented as we lugged the banker’s boxes into his living room, admiration in his voice. The one-bedroom house was sparsely furnished, with only a single armchair and a low wooden coffee table in the living room. Still, the space was open and airy, with a large window that let in plenty of sunlight, and a fireplace that would make the space very cozy in the winter. “He looked like he was twice your weight, but you didn’t even break a sweat when you took him down.”

“Eh.” I set down my stack of boxes on the ground, then shrugged. “I’m used to fighting opponents bigger and stronger than me. That’s why I have these.” I lovingly patted my crescent knives, which were strapped to my thigh once more.

Lakin glanced at them curiously. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use weapons like those before,” he admitted.

“They’re Garian-style weapons,” I explained, sitting down cross-legged on the hard wooden floor so that we could start going through the boxes. “Great for close quarter fighting, and also for deflecting larger weapons. They’ve saved my hide more times than I can count.”

“I’ll bet.” Lakin joined me on the floor, then turned his gaze toward the sea of boxes between us and sighed. “Let’s start with the most recent one,” he said, grabbing a box that was a few feet away from him. “That’s probably where we’re going to strike gold.”