The Order of Merlin Complete Trilogy

Book One of the Order of Merlin Trilogy

Destiny calls when you least expect.

After five harrowing years in the Hundred Halls surviving dangerous supernatural threats, our group of young mages have each taken their own paths away from the university.  But the recently returned Head Patron, Invictus, has need of their skills. Brought together under the banner of The Order of Merlin, these mages must survive everything their teacher throws at them—and each other—to become the team the world needs.  Otherwise they don't stand a chance against the imminent demonic invasion.

Chapter One

The ambush was going to be a strategic masterpiece or a complete train wreck. Beckett Dreadmarsh didn't know which. As stated by the eternally wise Professor Kingsley at Coterie of Mages, using magic in the heat of battle was like a frog trying to balance on a razor blade; sometimes the little green amphibian managed the dangerous feat like a tightrope walker, and other times the poor frog slipped and had his balls sliced right off.
Becks checked his watch. Another twenty minutes. He clicked the walkie-talkie.
"Everything in place?"
Two replies crackled through the plastic speaker in quick succession.
"Good as gold."
"Finger on the trigger, here." Then a moment later, "Signs?"
"I'll let you know when I see them. Becks out."
He let the walkie-talkie drop to his side. The cheap plastic communicators made him feel like he was playing a game and not planning a deadly ambush, but he hadn't wanted to use more magic than necessary. Hiding the enchantments for the trap had been his biggest worry. The targets might be some of the best mages to graduate from the Hundred Halls in the last fifty years, and as far as he understood, they'd survived some pretty heinous stuff during their time in school. Caution was warranted.
The roof of the refurbished warehouse in the eleventh ward had a good sight line of the two cross streets. The area had seen something of a revival in the last five years. Becks could see a silver-and-black Rolls Royce Archmage and a cherry red Maserati Fireball sitting in front of Lilith's, a trendy restaurant that served delicacies from other realms. Becks had heard the speckled locanath was a culinary delight. There were a few other restaurants, high-end shops, and late-night dance clubs that wouldn't open until after midnight. He would have preferred to set the ambush in an area that was completely uninhabited, but none of the buildings he'd scouted had the reinforced walls or mage-hardened floors necessary. The warehouse was normally a logistical transfer point for alchemical elixirs with dangerous natures: exothermic, pathogen carrying, or organically transformational. The features of the warehouse that helped protect the surrounding area from leaks would also mute the noise from the ambush.
Becks turned his head to the west. The sun was due to set soon. A low bank of clouds had been blocking it, but the orange-red glow burst through the gap, reflecting off the windows in the area, making them look like burning embers or demon eyes.
A strange light at the center of the city had Becks looking to the northeast. The city of Invictus was a huge metropolis of three million people living in thirteen wards. At the center was an enormous tower called the Spire that was twice as tall as any other building in the world. It was the administrative center for the Hundred Halls, as well as the home of the school's head patron, Invictus, for whom the city was named. The lower two-thirds of the windows on the Spire reflected the setting sun, while the upper third, was jet-black. Moments before, the upper section had been pulsing with an eldritch light that his mind thought was a deep blue, but he'd read that everyone saw the colors differently. The strange lights had been going on for the last year, a couple times a week, sometimes twice in the same day. No one knew why the lights were happening, or for what purpose. The head patron had always been an enigmatic figure, even more so after his long absence, and those unknowable lights reflected his personality.
Most thought he was performing experiments based on what he'd learned while he was "missing." Becks thought Invictus was purely a showman who liked to keep people guessing, reminding them why he was the most famous person in the world, making them believe he was important. The whole thing smacked of bullshit. Invictus had probably been in one of the other realms, drinking their version of mai tais and having sex with the locals, while the various halls of his school had turned on each other, making them more vulnerable to outside threats. Some in Becks' circle even thought Invictus might be behind the infernal warnings they'd been receiving, but even he wasn't so sure of that level of corruption. The more likely explanation was that Invictus was an old man who'd grown tired of running his school and had only come back when the complaints of the patrons had grown too loud.
Becks pulled a tiny stone no bigger than a diamond from his pocket. The angled milky surface looked like condensed smoke. No one knew what it was or why it'd come out of Byron's mouth during the ritual, only that the words that had followed had struck fear in everyone at the ceremony. He squeezed his fist around the stone. If they were successful in the ambush, the threat that had been revealed during the Convergence might be safely squelched before it could grow from embers to flame.
The sun slipped behind the clouds, and the blinding orange-red reflections on the windows turned black like obsidian. A dark blue Toyota Charmer turned the corner with its lights on. Becks' heart jumped in his chest. They were here.
"Target acquired," he said into the walkie-talkie before jogging away from the edge. He threw the device onto the roof before heading to the stairs that would take him to the main floor of the warehouse. Becks rubbed his sweaty hands on his pants, reminding himself that the two women about to enter the warehouse were going to cause—whether knowingly or unknowingly—the destruction of the city and possibly their entire world from an infernal invasion. As head of Chroma and Key, and in a way all the secret societies, it was his charge to protect the Hundred Halls from this threat. If he didn't stand up, then no one would. Becks just wished it hadn't happened on his watch.
The smooth floor of the empty warehouse echoed his footsteps. Becks found his mark at the halfway point and checked to make sure the bracelet was clasped around his wrist. If everything went as planned, he'd be safe as long as he stayed on that mark, then once the initial barrage was over, the bracelet would allow him to retreat to the back rooms, where they could be finished off from a safe location. Assuming they weren't dead already, but given their reputations, Becks wasn't going to take them lightly.
He inhaled deeply through his nose. It smelled like cleaning chemicals. No sign of faez—the raw stuff of magic—that would give away the ambush. Nothing that suggested the entire area was blanketed in wards and enchantments, ready to trigger at the right moment.
He knocked his dark brown hair out of his face and prepared the kind of smile that had always charmed his professors and dates, letting them know that he was just a regular guy. Not a member of the famous Dreadmarsh family. Nor the mage that had scored highest on the Merlins in the last thirty years, earning him a spot in Coterie of Mages, the only school that mattered in the Hundred Halls.
Smile, dammit, he told himself. You're only here to kill them and save the world.