Chapter 1
“Kai? Hello, Kai?”
I set my teeth and crept along the dark rooftop, inspecting the expansive lawn below. Stationary spotlights highlighted different features of the boxy modernist mansion I was traversing, and more lights glared on the ten-foot stone wall surrounding the property.
“Kai?” Aaron whined, his voice buzzing through my earpiece.
“What?” I hissed, trusting the sensitive mic to pick up my voice.
“Oh, you’re alive.” Which he knew very well, just as he knew whining would get a response out of me. “Are you done yet? Ezra and I finished our rounds five minutes ago.”
Reaching the roof’s edge, I hunkered low and peered down. Two stories below, four men were positioned in front of the house’s entrance. They radiated boredom, their shoulders flexing and impatient breaths puffing white in the chill air. A light shone down on their heads, ruining their night vision, and I suppressed a disgusted snort.
“Kai?”
“I’m nearly done.” I scooted backward, then headed for the roof’s eastern corner in a stealthy crouch. The idiots at the door didn’t notice me, just as they would fail to notice a trespasser. What was the point in hiring extra security if most of it was incompetent?
An annoyed sigh floated into my ear. “You scouted my and Ezra’s routes too, didn’t you?”
The corners of my mouth twitched downward. “I can’t hear anything. Don’t make me mute you.”
Aaron sighed again but fell silent.
I ghosted across the flat roof and crouched again. A pair of armed men wandered along the property’s outer wall, half-heartedly inspecting the shadows. I waited for them to pass, then planned my route down with a single glance.
Springing off the roof, I dropped half a story before catching the windowsill with both hands, then let go and dropped again. Mid-fall, I kicked off the building, arched backward, and landed in a neat roll. Then I was moving in a low sprint across the lawn.
I reached the wall and leaped. My fitted shoes gripped the smooth stones and I dashed onto the top and straight into the tree branches on the other side. Eight seconds. A swift backward look proved no one had seen me.
Some security.
“I’m in position,” I murmured into my mic. “Check in.”
“In position,” Ezra answered immediately, his smooth voice roughened by the crackle of the tiny earpiece.
“In position,” Aaron drawled. “Which I told you while you were double-checking our work. Asshole.”
I ignored that and checked the time on my digital watch—9:20 p.m. We would hold our positions for ten minutes—between the three of us, we had most of the property in view—then we’d do our rounds again.
And we only had to repeat the cycle three times an hour for the rest of the night. Hardly entertaining, but a paycheck was a paycheck.
“So…” Aaron began, his whisper loud in my ear; he must be holding the mic to his mouth. “Do you know who’s out here tonight?”
“Three guilds, including us,” I answered.
“These rich bastards would do better to hire one guild for comprehensive security instead of three competing ones. Can you believe those morons down there are patrolling? Did they learn their tactics from video game NPCs?”
I watched another pair of guards stroll past and calculated about sixteen ways I could sneak by them in the next two minutes. Crouching more comfortably in the bare tree branches, I rubbed my gloved hands together for warmth.
“We’ve got the perimeter,” I told Aaron. “No one will get past us, so the other guilds don’t matter.”
He made a thoughtful noise. “It would be fun to show them how bad they are, though. Should we sneak in and check out the client’s collection?”
“Good idea,” Ezra said. “We can take selfies inside the safe and post them on the job board in the morning.”
Aaron snorted so loudly he probably gave away his position. “I know you’re kidding, but I’m honestly tempted.”
“Focus,” I reprimanded, scanning from the north entrance to the south corner of the property.
That bought me three minutes of silence before Aaron spoke again.
“Did the job posting say anything about why the client needs extra security for three nights?”
“No, but they’re well-known artifact collectors.” I adjusted my earpiece, wishing I could wear a hat, but I didn’t want to impede my hearing. My ears were frozen. “I checked their job history. They hire security for these three days every year.”
“Really? Huh.” Aaron was quiet for a moment. “That’s strange. Why only three days a year?”
The back of my neck prickled in warning. Several pairs of guards paced across the lawn, and more were positioned at the doors. All else was still and quiet. The property’s lights glared, leaving bright spots in my vision as I pivoted silently on my branch.
In the darkness beyond the perimeter wall, something was moving.
“I might have an intruder,” I breathed into my mic. “Stay in position. I’ll check it out.”
Silence answered me; Aaron could be serious when needed. I slipped out of my tree and onto the wall. Giving a quick hand signal to the nearest guards—they knew me and my teammates were here, though they hadn’t seen us until now—I zipped along the top of the wall. As I drew near, the movement manifested into a slim figure. The trespasser was examining the wall as though debating how to get over it.
Before he could look up and spot my silhouette, I hopped off the wall onto the interior side and caught the edge with both hands. Feet braced on the concrete, I scooted sideways until I was opposite the intruder. I waited, listening. Faint scuffing. A grunt of effort, a quiet scrape, then a thud as though the person had jumped to grab the wall’s top edge, missed, and fallen back.
I set my feet, took a long breath, then catapulted over the wall.
The darkness on the other side engulfed me, but I landed true—right on the trespasser’s shoulders. He slammed into the ground under me with a loud, high-pitched yelp.
I locked him in a hold, bending his arms behind his back and pressing my knee into his lower spine. It was so dark behind the wall I could only make out dark, fitted clothing and a black ski hat on his head.
I opened my mouth to speak—and the surrounding air turned to cold mist. The moisture condensed, then coalesced into a sphere of water around my head.
Instantly I knew what I was up against: a hydromage, and he was about to drown me in a few inches of water.
The liquid bubble clung to my head, and I clamped my mouth shut to keep from breathing it in. Pulling out a short, lethally sharp knife, I pressed it to the side of the trespasser’s neck, hard enough for him to feel the blade. He went rigid under my knee. The water orb collapsed and liquid dropped like an upended bucket, splashing off my shoulders and drenching us both.
“Use magic again and it’ll be the last thing you do,” I threatened.
He gave a tiny nod that I felt more than saw. Pinching my knife against my palm, I grabbed his shoulders and flipped him over in a single rapid move. He gasped as I straddled his chest, his arms pinned under my knees, and pressed my blade against his exposed throat.
I flicked on the light attached to my armored vest. A soft white glow bloomed, illuminating the face of the beautiful woman pinned under me.
--
A Damsel and a Demigod
The Guild Codex: Spellbound / Book 0.5
Copyright © 2020 by Annette Marie
www.annettemarie.ca
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