The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(37)

“The medeian’s not here,” Tristan said, which was possibly the most troubling conclusion he could have reached. “Let’s get rid of these three and move.”

“Aim me,” she said without hesitation. “I can take out three.”

Tristan didn’t doubt it.

He took hold of her left arm, guiding her just as one of the gunmen fired another round of bullets. As with before, Libby’s explosion ricocheted backwards into the assailant, though Tristan didn’t wait to see if he’d achieved his intended results. The others were moving, and quickly, so he pulled her into his chest, aiming first for the one coming towards them and then, with a little added difficulty, at the one who was slipping from the room.

“They’re headed that way,” he said, pulling Libby up and racing after the escaping gunman. “Must be where the medeian is. Can you—”

A thin bubble of atmospheric change warped around them, sealing itself with a little slurp of vacuumed pressure.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” she panted, as Tristan caught traces of magic and followed its trail to land them in one of the sitting rooms.

The illusionist was easy to find, even before they had fully entered from the corridor; the cloaking enchantment was obviously expensive, covering most of the room and reaching into the nearby access points. Tristan held Libby back, watching the medeian first to see if he was working with someone else.

It looked like he was, though it wasn’t clear if whoever the illusionist was working with was a remote partner or someone else in the house; he was typing rapidly into a laptop that didn’t seem to be magical at all. Probably programming security cameras to be able to see, if Tristan had to guess, which meant they had seconds to spare. If not for having to control the illusions at the same time, the illusionist would have known they were there already.

“Go,” Tristan said to Libby, “while he’s not looking.”

She hesitated, which was the one thing he’d hoped she wouldn’t do.

“Do I shoot to kill, or—?”

In that exact moment, the medeian’s eyes snapped up from the laptop screen, meeting Tristan’s.

“NOW,” Tristan said, more desperately than he had hoped to sound, and Libby, thank bloody fuck, threw up a hand in time to stop whatever was coming towards them. The medeian’s eyes widened, obviously startled at the prospect of being overpowered, while Libby advanced towards him, shoving the force of the medeian’s own expulsion backwards.

The medeian wasn’t going down without a fight; he tried again, and this time Libby’s response was like a bolt of lightning, snapping the medeian’s control with a lash of something around his wrists. Tristan heard a cry of pain, and then a mutter of something under his breath; some basic obscenity, Tristan suspected, though his Mandarin was rusty.

“Who sent you?” Libby demanded, but the medeian had scrambled to his feet. Tristan, concerned the medeian might conjure more illusions as a defense, leapt forward, taking hold of Libby’s arm again and raising it.

“Which one?” Libby gasped. “He split.”

“That one, there, by the window—”

“He’s multiplying!”

“Just hold steady, I have him—”

This time, as Tristan locked Libby’s palm on the trajectory of the medeian’s escape, he caught a glimpse of something; evidence of magic that hadn’t been clear from afar. It was a little glittering chain, delicate like jewelry, that abruptly snapped.

In that precise moment the medeian turned his head, eyes widening in anguish. It had been a linking charm, but it was gone now.

“He had a partner but he doesn’t anymore,” Tristan translated in Libby’s ear.

She tensed. “Does that mean—”

“It means kill him before he gets away!”

He felt the impact leave her body from where his fingers had curled around her wrists. He could feel the entire force of it pumping through her veins and marveled, silently, at being so close to what felt like live ammunition. She was a human bomb; she could split the room, the air itself, into tiny, indistinguishable (except to Tristan) atoms. If Adrian Caine had ever met Libby Rhodes, he wouldn’t have hesitated to buy her somehow; he’d have offered her the biggest cut, given her the highest privilege of his little witchy cult. He was like that, Tristan’s father; male, female, race, class, it didn’t matter. Optics were nothing. Usefulness was paramount. Destruction was Adrian Caine’s god.

Tristan turned his head away from the explosion, though the heat of the blast was enough to sting his cheek. Libby faltered, struggling for a moment from the effort, and he locked an arm around her waist, half-dragging, half-carrying her from the room.

He kept moving until he saw Parisa, who emerged from one of the lower floors onto the landing of the stairwell, white-faced. Callum was at her side.

“There you are,” said Parisa dully, sounding like she’d seen a ghost.

“What happened?” Tristan asked them, setting Libby back on her feet. She looked a little woozy, but nodded to him for release, disentangling herself from his grip.

“I’m fine,” she said, though she remained braced for another attack, shoulders still tense.

“Just ran into another medeian downstairs,” Callum said. “Some spy organization from Beijing. A combat specialist.”