Page 90 of The Last Slayer
“Who the hell are you?”
Patience isn’t my best virtue. “Who else has told you to stop tapping your foot?”
“You’re not Ashera. You’re not even mortal.”
“What?”
His eyes roamed my face, a frown deepening. “You’re like…a high-grade supernatural. How did you get in? Who invited you?” There was a tiny bit of fear his voice, but he held his ground. “No, no. You’re not…oh damn, are you a dragonlady or something?”
Ice was forming in the pit of my stomach. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve seen your kind. You have this aura. How…what are you doing here?”
“Blake, get out of my way.”
He shook his head, stood his ground. “What have you done to Ashera?”
“Damn it, I am Ashera.” I pushed him out of the way, not wanting to hear any more. He landed hard on his butt. I stepped over him, continuing on to the elevator.
“Hey, here’s your cell.” Valerie tossed me one of the firm’s tiny black units. We had several on hand in case hunters had theirs destroyed while working. “And the keys.”
I caught them both in air. “Thanks.”
In the reflection of the glass panels on the receptionist’s station I saw Blake behind me, still on his ass and staring. Oh well. He was young, he’d adapt.
Sandy placed a datasheet on her desk. “Here’s the client info, Ashera.”
I nodded and snapped it up as I walked past her. The job should be easy, especially now that I had a heartstone. I was brimming with aggression and power, and couldn’t wait to prove Ramiel wrong. My life was here. In the mortal world.
I went over the case facts inside the elevator. Mary Spencer, 21, SWF, the only daughter of a Virginia state senator. Wanted the job done in the afternoon so no one would know she was seeing a hunter. We don’t get much work during the day since people usually aren’t sleeping. She would have been told to either drink a special sleeping potion we’d prepared for her or stay up the night before the job. The potions work better, but sometimes you get a granola type who wants to go all natural.
“Ashera,” Edward called out from behind his desk as I stepped out onto the lobby floor. “There are people outside. I threatened to call the police for trespassing, but don’t think it worked.”
“Uh…okay.” So there were people outside. I didn’t understand why he looked so worried.
Until I walked out the door.
There was a huge crowd, and it converged around me like hyenas on fresh meat. “You’re the dragonlady,” someone shouted.
The rest of them were clamoring for my attention too, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of my heartbeat. They started grabbing at me—my hair, clothes, everything—and I almost lost my footing.
My blood grew hot; my skin tightened. The urge to fry the lot of them rose within me, almost irresistibly seductive, a siren song of power. Magic sizzled along my body. All I had to do was concentrate and pour it into the crowd. It would be a black tsunami of death.
And I wanted to. I so wanted to hurt them all, have them screaming in pain for invading my space, for thinking that they were entitled to a part of me. I owed them nothing!
Something held me back. To take life away so casually—that wasn’t right. Wasn’t even really human. That was some other being that couldn’t care less about mortals. Like a wyrm. Or Apollyon.
But that didn’t mean I was going to let them rip me apart. I conjured a shield to push the people away. It was low-grade magic and wouldn’t hurt anyone touching it—although if they tried to get too close, it would fight back.
The barrier wedged itself through the crowd, causing some people to stumble backward. A couple of them tripped over the curb, and they started yelling.
The crowd was thick enough that I still couldn’t move without hurting someone.
Your home isn’t down there. It’s at Eastvale.
Screw you, Ramiel. My frustration manifested itself in my magic, which cracked like a hundred whips around me, but I was still in control. Time to put the heartstone to good use. I visualized a blade sticking out of my feet an inch into the concrete below me. Then I saw it turn 90 degrees, extend out and rotate, scything a quick underground circle twenty feet in radius. Then it was time for a simple levitation spell, but on a scale I couldn’t have managed before.
A huge disc of concrete ripped free of the parking lot and rose around me, carrying the crowd with it. A small piece in the center stayed put under my feet. People screamed and stared at me with fear in their eyes. Two fell off the edges. Some of the TV crews—when did they have the time to scramble out here?—were outside the compass of my spell and continued to film, and I heard auto-winders clicking on cameras. I snapped my fingers, and all the equipment burst into flames. Cameramen dropped whatever they were holding and cursed.
