Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,4

the storage room, I knelt down and started drawing more symbols on the sloped concrete floor. The sound of the beating wings had died down and the room was silent as the pixies intently watched me. The pixies held no love for the drugmakers, but I suspected that they liked the warlocks and witches even less. The Ivory Towers had been hunting them for centuries to obtain the magical properties found within their organs. We all knew that any good potion could be made even better with a little pixie heart. I was afraid that whatever trust they had put in me was dissolving before my eyes as I sketched each symbol, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t have to trust me. They only had to escape when the time came.

Standing again, I looked over the cages and smiled at the pixies before turning and leaving. The man and woman were seated at the end of the long table in the middle of the basement, inhaling some fast food, while a pair of guards stood watching over Bronx and me. On a patch of dry floor, I drew one more symbol.

“Stay out here for a few more minutes. I’m almost done,” I announced while motioning for Bronx to accompany me up the stairs. The troll was silent, watching my back as I walked through the house, drawing on each door and on the floor before reaching the front door. No one questioned what I was doing. We had all been raised not to question the witches and warlocks. Hell, you never approached one if you could help it. People had been killed by the members of the Ivory Towers just for wishing them a good day.

Drawing one last special symbol on the doorknob, I pulled the front door closed as I whispered the last word of the spell. I chuckled to myself as I followed Bronx down the front steps to the sidewalk.

“Should I ask what you’ve done to the house?” Bronx asked while picking his way across the front lawn beside me.

I smiled up at him, unable to hide my excitement as I tucked the piece of chalk back into my pocket. “It’s called the Spell of Defenseless Enticement.”

“Reave is going to be pissed. You were supposed to do a protective spell.” Bronx shoved one hand nervously through his hair as he turned back to look at the house. Everything looked fine, but that was part of the enticement. That so-called fine was only going to last for another second or two.

“I did. It’s a very powerful protection spell, but to achieve it, you have to leave yourself completely defenseless. In this instance, all locks become useless. You can’t lock a door, a window, or, say, a cage in this house.”

As if on cue, screams erupted within the house followed by loud banging. We paused in the middle of the lawn and looked at the house. Lights could be seen being flicked on through the cracks in the curtains, followed by more bangs. A few sounded like gunshots, but I wasn’t worried about the pixies. They were wickedly fast when they took flight. The humans were more likely to shoot each other than a pixie in that chaos.

“What’s the protection?” Bronx asked.

“Oh, if you enter the house with ill intent toward the occupants, your feet become stuck to the floor,” I said. I was still waiting to see the pixies escape. “A warlock has to release you, or you have to have your feet cut off to get unstuck again.”

“That’s pretty powerful.”

“I’ve been dying to use it for years, but could never come up with a good excuse.”

The front door was thrown open and the man I had spoken to in the basement and one of his guards came running out. They had their hands over their heads while screaming at the pixies, who were pelting them with what looked like scalpels. As they hit the warm night air, the pixies scattered in all directions, rising higher into the sky until they disappeared from sight.

“What have you done?” shouted glasses man. “They’re all loose.”

I gave him an indifferent shrug. “It’s a protection spell. Unfortunately, it has the side effect of disabling locks. I thought you could handle the pixies.”

“You’ve ruined me!”

The asshole grabbed a gun from the guard and pointed it in my direction. Bronx jumped in front of me, acting as a shield. Grabbing at the troll, I tried to shove him away. My magic was out in