Page 40 of A Fury Of Shadows

The sphere trapping Oscar’s core opened up like a puzzle, revealing the spell subduing it. Nikolai crushed it with his powers.

The spell vanished immediately.

What?!He froze.Wait! That—that was too easy!

His heart stuttered as a complex sequence of golden runes interlaced with demonic and white magic flashed into life under his hands.

Alastair screeched out a warning.

Fuck!

The hidden spell raced all the way up the path he’d created between his and Oscar’s cores before he could lift his fingers from his brother’s flesh. Nikolai gasped as it blasted him and his familiar clear across the room. Pain bloomed on his back when he struck the far wall. He tasted blood on his tongue as he and Alastair slumped to the ground.

The Sorcerer King’s shout reached him dimly through the ringing in his ears. Darkness encroached on the edges of his vision. With it came a flurry of memories that faded along with his consciousness.

CHAPTER15

Vlad stared,his pulse accelerating. “You did what?”

“I put a few spells inside Oscar before Vedran rescued him at the warehouse,” Mae repeated.

Hellreaver hummed smugly against his witch’s chest. Vlad exchanged a startled look with Cortes and the Nolan cousins.

They were in the back of a van taking them to the airport. Lou was driving, with Tom riding shotgun.

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Violet mumbled.

Miles appeared similarly dumbfounded beside her.

Cortes lowered his brows at Mae. “I suspect she’s the only one who could do that.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know it was possible until that moment either,” she muttered.

“What do the spells do?” Serena asked curiously in the stilted hush.

The super soldier had chosen to sit with them near the rear doors. The rest of her team chatted among themselves where they crowded the rest of the vehicle.

Vlad masked a frown. He’d done some research on the mercenary group run by Gideon Morgan that afternoon, before their scheduled pick-up. Considering the circles he belonged to, he was surprised he hadn’t heard the guy’s name before. He’d ended up having to ask his uncle Yuliy about him after he’d come up with a handful of vague rumors.

It was Gustav Luchok, Yuliy’s secretary and Vlad’s former tutor, who’d finally uncovered the unsavory truth from one of his trusted sources.

Gideon Morgan and his employees had operated in the shadows for over a decade. They were suspected to be behind some of the most baffling incidents to have rocked the criminal underworlds and political arenas of a range of countries, across several continents. Enabling and reversing coup d’états. Rescuing hostages trapped in regions of the planet no one would send their special forces to. Finding persons of interest who had gone so deep underground to hide from the authorities they might as well be dead.

Assassination. Intimidation. Blackmail. Cyberespionage. Counterintelligence.

They operated above the law and under circumstances most governments would not tolerate. Which had led Vlad to one undeniable conclusion.

A greater power supported the super soldiers. One that was even more secretive than Gideon Morgan’s group. One every government in the world was wary of.

Vlad clenched his jaw.The Immortals.

He didn’t know how he felt about a shadowy society of supernatural beings playing with the fate of mankind as if they were chess pieces on an invisible board. It left a sour taste in his mouth, even though he wasn’t completely human himself.

From the guarded way Cortes occasionally watched Serena and her team, it seemed the Columbian had gleaned the same unpleasant facts he had. He looked as thrilled with his findings as Vlad was.

It didn’t matter that Violet had reassured them the Immortals were working for the betterment of humanity. Evil acts were more often than not performed in the name of the greater good.

Besides, he and Cortes were used to being the sharks in their respective oceans. Finding out an apex predator they’d known nothing about had been waltzing about in their territories was unsettling.

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