“Focus, Jade. Do you see Randy?”
Jade shifted, nudging Kaylee over a bit.
“No, I don’t. Maybe he isn’t here?”
“He has to be. This is where Edwin’s charm led us.”
“That means he came by at least once before, but maybe not right now.”
Kaylee couldn’t believe that. They couldn’t have come out here and found the Slayers without Randy. Because if they were in this den of Slayers without Randy around…
“Wait, there’s some more people.” Jade pressed her cheek more firmly against the grate so that small squares popped from her skin. “At a far table. I can’t get a good look, but it looks like they’re holding a meeting. Seems important.”
“Can you tell what they’re talking about?”
“If you’re asking if I can read lips from thirty feet away the answer is no. All but one is facing away from me. One’s wearing a hood, too.”
Kaylee tried to get a better look. “A hood?”
“Ouch! Watch your elbow. I can’t get a good look—especially with that elbow of yours!”
“Sorry. Just…scooch.”
“Kaylee…” Jade’s eyes narrowed on the scene below. “We can’t see Randy. But that hooded one…you don’t think…he wouldn’t be…”
“No,” Kaylee said, refusing to let her finish voicing the thought.
“But you said he goes out a lot, and he just kind of showed up and nobody knew where he’d been for a while.”
“No, Jade. Randy’s not a Slayer. He can’t be.”
The half of Jade’s face that was awash in light gave her a pitying look.
“You sure?”
“Positive. You don’t know him like I do.”
That was the thing, though, wasn’t it? That was what she had wanted to find out. She didn’t know Randy. At least not well enough for her voice not to hitch when she denied that he was a Slayer. Or enough to say with absolute confidence that it wasn’t him down there.
But it couldn’t be. Randy was rough. He was curt, and rude, and mean, and his training was grueling, but he was fair, never cruel. Even though Edwin had said there were some dragon-kin with the Slayers, Randy couldn’t be one of them.
Believing it’s true doesn’t make it so, a nasty voice inside her cooed. What allegiance does he have to anyone? What loyalty does he have to you?
But what about to his family? He had to care about them—
The picture! The picture of the girl Kaylee had found in Randy’s room. No Slayer would be that sentimental. They weren’t capable of it. They were monsters. Evil and single-minded and—
Horrified. Resignation writ across his face as he looked up into the beams crashing towards him. As he looked up at his death.
Had Brendan been that, too? A complete monster? Incapable of love or caring?
Kaylee wanted to scream that he was, that they all were, but the scream locked in her throat. Brendan had been someone with his own hopes, dreams, aspirations. But they were all gone now, crushed into nothing at the instant he had been.
“Kaylee!”
Kaylee’s eyes flew open.
“Steady!” Jade hissed. “Where’d you go?”
“Let me try to get a look at the table,” Kaylee said.
“Okay, let me just—hold on, Kaylee. I can’t move—”
“Watch it! The screen. The screen is—”
Kaylee heard the sound of wrenching metal a second before the grate popped off. Time held its breath as the grate disappeared from view, suspended before the moment of impact.
There was a loud bang below. Kaylee’s breath stopped. Every Slayer’s eyes went to the floor. Then traveled up to them.
“Oh, crap,” Jade muttered.
Chapter Sixteen
Oh crap indeed.
Before anyone could move, Kaylee’s hand slipped on the lip of the air duct. The metal gave a torturous squeal as the entire duct collapsed, followed close behind by a chunk of the ceiling, spitting them out onto the floor in a heavy cloud of plaster and dust.
“Get them!” Someone shouted. Kaylee was already up, tugging Jade to her feet. The Slayer’s murky shadows were closing in on all sides.
Kaylee pulled her lightning to her and sliced through the haze, creating a protective, sparking field around them, and splitting the Slayers’ ring in two. The pair plunged through. Jade grabbed her arm and pointed to another break in the Slayer’s line. “The exit’s just to the right once we get through.”
There was a high-pitched whirring at their backs. Before Kaylee could register the source of the noise, Jade threw herself in front of her and brought up her knife. A spinning bladed disc shattered at their feet. Kaylee ducked as more discs buzzed overhead. Jade slashed two more down. Bits of twisted metal scattered across the floor.
“Go, Kaylee!”
Kaylee drew the lightning to herself and blasted it forward, creating a singed scar of black on the floor to lead their charge through. The nearest Slayers shouted. Kaylee pulled Jade behind an overturned table. There was a dull thunk as more discs bit into the wood.
People were shouting now, mobilizing as the dust settled and their vision cleared. At least three Slayers were advancing on their hiding place. Kaylee threw herself onto her back. She drew her magic to her feet. She felt her bones hardening, the skin knitting together tighter, the muscles swelling.
She kicked. The table launched forward and pummeled those in the front of the group. Their comrades leapt over them and continued the charge.
That…hadn’t been as effective as she thought it would be.
Exit. They needed the exit.
As Kaylee looked, her eyes brushed over the group that had been sitting apart at the table in the corner. Two of the Slayers, the leaders, she assumed, were standing and staring fixedly right at her. The third had pulled his hood farther around his face.
“Kaylee!”
The nearest Slayers reached them. Kaylee rolled away as a sword cut the tile where she’d been. She blocked the next strike with her scaled arm and whipped to standing, spinning an air current around herself as she did. Debris leapt from the ground and smacked her assailants away.
“Duck!” Jade yelled. Kaylee obeyed a second before a buzzing disc would have cleaved her head off. Seemed these Slayers, whether they knew she was a storm dragon-kin or not, wanted her dead.
Kaylee broke the blade of the nearest Slayer and Jade delivered a crunching blow to another’s nose. Her eyes widened.
“Behind—”
The whistle of a projectile, then the sensation of the skin of her exposed back splitting as something sliced across it.
Without thinking, Kaylee conjured another torrent of wind. There was a clatter as a half-dozen arrows were blown off course and hit the far wall. Kaylee scoured for the source of the attack. Crossbowmen. At least five taking shelter behind the front counter. Kaylee shot a bolt of lightning at them but they simply ducked and her blast toasted the popcorn machine behind them.
Jade grabbed her collar and yanked her behind another upturned table as they fired a second volley. Vicious arrowheads punctured through the wood, their points reaching for her.
“Turn around,” Jade demanded. Kaylee let her prod the tender cut, biting her tongue to keep from crying out.
“Bad?”
Jade flattened the remains of the fabric on it. “Not your worst. We’ll have Edwin look at it once we get out of this.” She peered over the table. “They’re cutting off our escape.”
“And they’re getting away,” Kaylee growled.
The three Slayers that had been at the table were beating a hasty retreat now that Kaylee and Jade had been contained. They’d stuffed a sheaf of paper into a small bag and were hurrying towards the only available exit.
“Can you hit them?” Jade asked.
“I’m pretty drained.” She nudged her head towards the crossbowmen. “Need to save it for these guys.”
Another volley nearly took Kaylee’s head off as she
looked again. And then…she barely had time to duck before—and she had to blink twice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things—an electrified bowling ball exploded against the front desk, blasting apart the Slayers’ cover.
Where Randy had come from Kaylee didn’t know, only that he was there.
And he was pissed.
Kaylee had only seen snippets of how annoyed he could be during their training sessions, often when she was being lazy or obstinate or just didn’t agree with him in general.
But she had never seen his fury. And if this was it, then Kaylee could believe that whatever stories Alastair had heard about Randy were true.
Randy gripped the nearest Slayer by the throat and hurled him across the room, his body slamming against the exit and stopping the three fleeing Slayers dead in their tracks.
The remaining Slayers sensed that Randy was the more imminent danger and switched all their attacks to him. Randy moved like a lightning bolt. First one place, then in a blink another, swiping out with claws bared and sending Slayers flying every direction. Electricity enveloped him, knocking away arrows and discs and hurling them back at his attackers. Sparks from the lights rained down, coating his head and shoulders in a shimmer of destructive force.
Kaylee could only gape in wondrous horror. This was what a dragon-kin in full control of his power could do. This seamless melding of man and beast, of magic and brutal, beautiful ferocity.
Kaylee’s eyes fell on the three figures, still standing stunned in place.
“Hey!”
The three turned as she charged them. The one in the hood shrank back from the ball of lightning Kaylee had conjured in her hand
“You were stupid to come here, girl,” the lead Slayer sneered. “This pathetic attack hasn’t accomplished anything.”
He thrust out an arm. Kaylee ducked as needles shot towards her face. She slammed the lightning into the ground and the nearest Slayer yelped as the electricity shocked him unconscious. The other two leapt to safety on top of a table.
“Don’t just stand there!” The lead Slayer said, shoving the hooded one towards Kaylee. “You want to truly be useful then take care of her!”
The hooded one hesitated. Kaylee didn’t. She attacked, trying to mimic the same ferocity she’d seen in Randy. Though her elemental magic was almost drained she still had enough energy to take these clowns down.
Despite his initial hesitation, the hooded one dipped and dodged, easily flowing away from each of her attacks. Kaylee whipped up a sudden burst of wind, rotating her wrists to direct the attack at him.
The Slayer lunged forward and grabbed her arms. Kaylee swore she could feel his penetrating gaze on her—right before he released her arm.
Kaylee didn’t question why. She sliced, tearing at every spot she could reach, tattering his cloak, tearing at his arms.
“Are you an idiot?” The lead Slayer atop the table bellowed. “Use your weapon!”
Kaylee drove a punch into the hooded one’s stomach, sending him stumbling back towards the exit. She dropped to the ground, shifting one foot to talons and swiping clean through the table’s legs with one kick, dropping the other Slayer to the floor. Kaylee heard a soft cry behind her. She whirled around, but Randy had already dropped the first Slayer Kaylee had thought was unconscious. A crossbow the man had been aiming at her back clattered to the ground.
Randy’s eyes flickered. “Get him—”
But by the time Kaylee turned the hooded figure had already pushed his way out the exit.
Randy knelt by the man who’d been on the table. Out cold. His eyes narrowed on something in the rubble Kaylee couldn’t see. He picked it up, glared at it, clenched his fist around it.
Jade was kicking weapons away from any of the other downed Slayers. Edwin had somehow made it inside and was surveying the surrounding carnage with a semi-shocked expression.
Kaylee went to try to help Jade but suddenly Randy was blocking her way. Her stomach dropped.
“Oh, hey, Uncle…”
Kaylee’s quip died on her tongue. Randy didn’t look upset. He looked furious, made all the worse by the white-hot snarls of electricity snapping off him and nipping at Kaylee until she was forced to back away.
“Why don’t you explain to me what you’re doing here,” Randy said.
“F-following you.”
“Following me. Following me straight into a den of Slayers?”
“Yes…?”
Randy gave a mocking laugh, running a shaking hand through his hair. “Alastair told me you were reckless. Reckless I can deal with. Stupid I can’t. So what he meant to say was stupid.”
“You’d disappeared again,” Kaylee shot back. “I wanted to know where you went. What was I supposed to do?”
“I was on a job for the Convocation! You know, that organization in Scarsdale that clearly fails at teaching any of their members common sense?” At this a bolt of electricity shot from one of his hands and exploded against the pinsetter. Kaylee tried to stop her own from shaking. She’d seen her mom and dad truly angry before, but it was nothing compared to this. This frightened her. This was more than anger, more than Kaylee simply disobeying the rules, though she couldn’t imagine what it was.
“You were gone again,” Kaylee said in a steadying voice.
“On missions, Kaylee. It’s what I do.”
“I didn’t know that! And then we find out you’re headed towards more Slayers and—what was I supposed to think?”
“You thought…” Randy said, putting the pieces together. “You thought I was one of them? That’s your grand deduction? Not any of the other two dozen options?”
“N-no.”
“Haven’t I earned your trust yet?” Kaylee was shocked to hear real hurt in his voice.
“You have…”
“Clearly not. Alastair not trusting me I can understand. Even the Convocation, and your mother, too. But you? Have I ever put you in harm’s way or given you any reason to doubt me?”
He hadn’t. Not at all. But for some reason those words of reassurance didn’t help. Because while he hadn’t given her a reason to mistrust him, he hadn’t given her a reason to trust him either.
Randy waved a disgusted hand to the mess around them. “Now look what you’ve done.”
A flare of anger ignited in Kaylee. “I know what I’m doing, Randy.”
“Obviously, which is why this little raid or whatever you want to call it went so smoothly. One got away to go warn his friends and the rest, who were giving me plenty of intel, by the way, won’t be giving anyone much of anything for a while.”
“You’re not the only one who’s dealt with them before! While you were out running around all over the country I was protecting myself!”
“Not well enough.”
The sure way he said it infuriated her. It was as if he thought she was completely incapable of anything except staying put and behaving herself like a good little dragon-kin. Because he was Randall Conners, the great electric dragon-kin of which a hundred stories had been told, each supposedly more incredible than the last. Randy, who even Alastair had admitted was a force to be reckoned with. Randy, who could take out an entire group of Slayers as if it were nothing but a warmup. In his eyes, she was, and always would be, just an overeager newbie who was way out of her depth.
“So I messed up this time,” Kaylee said. “At least I was trying to help somebody else besides myself.”
“Stop talking before you sound like an even bigger fool,” Randy said.
“Just because I can’t fight as well as you doesn’t mean I’m useless. I can help—”
“When you’re older and stronger we’ll see.”
“You can’t hide me like Alastair did! You can’t hide me like—like that girl!”
She hadn’t meant to say it. In her anger, the knowledge had sort of slipped out.
Randy looked confused. “Girl? What girl?”
Kaylee wanted to take it back, but there was no stopping now. “The girl
you have a picture of. Is she…is she someone you lost? Because I get it, and…”
As she spoke, Randy’s expression darkened with understanding. His mouth turned to a snarl.
“If you want to talk to me about her—” Kaylee continued.
“You had no right to look through my things.”
“I know, I’m sorry—”
“That was something I didn’t want the Convocation knowing—”
“But I get it now, why you’re so worried about me—”
“Enough!” A small bolt of electricity slammed into Kaylee’s chest, punching the air from her lungs. She gasped for breath, but Randy was already storming towards the exit.
“Our training is done. Good luck facing the Slayers without me next time.”
“Hey! What about all these guys?” Edwin said to Randy’s retreating back.
Randy didn’t even slow. “You’re adults now, right? Figure it out. But I’d make it quick.”
He pushed his way through the exit and was gone. A second later the sound of a motorcycle revving to life came from the alleyway, then faded down the street, soon replaced by sirens.
Kaylee met Jade and Edwin’s terrified faces.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Edwin eased the car to a stop. His lips were pursed so hard they were a thin line in the darkness. He wouldn’t look at her, but Kaylee knew it wasn’t her he was mad at.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I know you don’t. You’ve only said it about ten times on the drive over here.”
“Well, then I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“He’s my uncle, Edwin. He’s not going to hurt me.”
“You sure about that?” Jade said.
“I know he won’t hurt me.” Kaylee looked at Randy’s house at the end of the drive, draped in night. She knew Randy was angry—beyond angry—at her. But she had sensed something else behind the anger. A deep sadness that hinted at something more than what she had done today.
And…she kind of did have to apologize. As much as the word made her mouth taste like chalk, and her mind resist it with every fiber of her being.
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