“She’s three floors down,” he explained quickly, quietly. “Right wing, I think. But you need a door code to get out of the stairwell.”
Tag chuffed a small, sardonic laugh. “Door codes I can handle. I’m a fox and they’re locks. Show us where we’re going, naked guy.”
“Now that I’m inside, I can feel her too.” Deck drew in a deep breath. “Kyle, get to the SUV and lock yourself in.” Deck sent forth a small burst of electricity that caused the nearest security camera to smoke. “May alert them there’s a problem but at least they won’t know immediately that we’re the problem. Now go.” He gestured toward the front door.
Kyle tensed. “Sometimes I like it when you order me around. But this isn’t one of those situations. I’m staying.”
“You’re naked and bleeding.”
“And? Not like I was shot recently or anything.”
Deck nodded slightly, acknowledging Kyle’s point. “But I have magic, at least. You have your body and it’s injured.”
“I also have my brain, which, as you keep reminding me, is a good one. And I’m staying.”
Deck sputtered. “But…you have medical training. Wouldn’t you tell someone else in your condition to sit down and get some rest? Or at least find some pants?”
“Yeah,” Kyle admitted. “But under the circumstances, I wouldn’t expect him to listen to me. Wish you’d thought to grab my jeans, but didn’t Celtic warriors go into battle naked? I can channel your ancestors.”
Deck seemed to be struggling for an answer. Kyle circumvented whatever he was about to say by heading toward the stairwell, gesturing for the others to follow.
Paul shrugged and grabbed Deck’s arm. “Tag never listens to me either.” He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper that seemed deliberately pitched to allow both Kyle and Tag to hear. “And he usually turns out to be right. Just roll with it. For all you know, he’s getting intel beamed into his subconscious straight from Trickster.”
Kyle had reached the stairwell door a few seconds before the others did. He was bouncing up and down with impatience by the time Deck caught up. That wasn’t so unusual for Kyle, and under other circumstances, Deck would have teased him about his adorable impatience. This time, Deck shared his urgency. Meaghan was so close. All they had to do was open the door…
But the lock sparked fuchsia and gold when Tag touched it, like some kind of badly thought-out Mardi Gras decoration. “Never seen anything like this before,” Tag confirmed. “There’s a normal lock mechanism and keypad, but obviously that’s not all that’s going on. I’m scared to fuck with it too much.”
“Deck,” Paul whispered, his voice intent and tight, but fascinated, “I don’t understand this magic, but it’s fascinating. There’s witch magic and sorcery and some other component I can’t identify, but I have no idea how to unravel it. I’d love to study it, but we needed it disabled five minutes ago. It involves electricity somehow, so I’m hoping you can make something of it.”
Deck didn’t touch the lock, just hovered his hand over it and opened his witch-sight. Very tentatively, because if Paul didn’t understand what he was looking at, the odds of Deck doing so were slim to none.
Except he did.
He’d seen something like this in his studies to understand his own freakish magic. Psytech, it was called, working off the low-level electrical impulses and low-level magic inherent in all life. The government used it, and some corporations, because it was damn hard to hack. This was probably keyed to specific people who worked here. Picking the lock would be impossible, and even trying would trigger the sorcery Paul had noted.
Blowing the lock up, though…that he could handle.
If you’d asked him even a few hours ago, he’d have said that calling lightning underground was close to impossible. Most of the time, it might be. But he carried a storm inside him, both its energy and its brute force. Combined with his own anger, his need to reach Meaghan, and the red magic he and Kyle had generated, the lock wouldn’t stand a chance.
If he simply fried it the way a power surge fried a computer, he might weld the damn thing shut so no one would ever be able to open it without dynamite.
But if he directed a miniblast just right, and then applied a gentler touch right there…
His brain, never the most normal or cleanest of places, came up with the metaphor of sex with Kyle and Meaghan for the combination of force and delicacy.
And that ramped up the red magic he’d stored back on the stormy beach with Kyle. His body sizzled. His witch-sight overtook normal vision, which proved useful in the dim light. Stored power throbbed, and it felt like arousal without satisfaction. Felt like hopeless, unrequited longing. Felt like the long struggle to control his magic and still having it aching to burst out of control.
Then Kyle stood by his side, with one hand on Deck’s left shoulder, the other at the small of his back. Through the cords of their bond, he felt Meaghan. She knew they were coming for her—how could she not, with her powers?—and her energy and magic surrounded him, even from a distance. The discordant energy balanced.
Frustrated desire became the pleasing heat of a long tease. Hopeless longing morphed to mutual love. And wild, dangerous magic…well, it still felt wild and dangerous, but in a useful way.
He could do this.
With Meaghan and Kyle on his side, he could do anything.
Donovan magic usually involved words and gestures. This was deeper, more instinctual. He opened to the power and let it flow through him to the complicated lock mechanism.
The air crackled and snapped around him. Sizzles of lightning played around the lock, zapping his hand. His hair stood on end, not just on his head but everywhere on his body, itchy and uncomfortable. The sharp smell of ozone filled the stairwell, with undertones of hot metal and a chemical burning. A red light flashed on a small box above the door. Kyle whispered, “Alarm about to go off,” and Deck sent another electrical surge to fry its circuits before it began to blare.
The door crashed open and boomed as it hit the wall behind it.
The good news, Kyle assessed quickly, was it knocked down the agent who’d been between the wall and the stairwell. The bad news was, though she looked pretty silly sprawled on her ass, she was sprawled on her ass with a gun trained on them. Her hands were shaking. Kyle wasn’t sure if that made the situation better or worse.
“Hi, sugar,” Tag said as he aimed his own gun at her and took off the safety. “First night on the job?”
She nodded tightly.
“Might be a good time for you to consider new career options.” His Southern accent was thicker than usual, pure hillbilly. His gun was smaller than the agent’s, but his aim was steadier. She looked very young, and her attention kept shifting to Kyle, as if the muddy, bloody, naked guy was more of a threat than two witches and an armed good old boy.
Great, he could distract her from the more dangerous members of the party. Kyle bared his teeth and growled.
Growling didn’t come all that naturally to otters, but based on the way the agent was looking at him, she’d figured out dual but not what flavor other than exceedingly pissed off.
Still trying to hold her aim steady and failing miserably, the agent reached for her radio.
“I wouldn’t.” Tag’s voice dropped to a whisky whisper.
Her eyes were still on Kyle, and he had a feeling she hadn’t figured out the blood was all his. So he said a quick, silent prayer to Trickster, took a step forward and made his voice as deep and menacing as possible. “Listen to him. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will.”
She dropped the gun and crab-walked backward until she bumped into the wall.
“Radio too,” Deck said, also stepping closer. Deck might be a gentle guy raised to be nonviolent, but he looked, at the moment, like a particularly wild-eyed Viking about one annoyance away from completel
y berserk.
She obeyed, her eyes wide, and shrank even closer to the wall.
As the others ran past her, Paul said a few words in Gaelic, gestured with his left hand. Her eyes got even wider and she opened and closed her mouth without any sound coming out.
Silence spell, apparently. Deck flashed a thumbs-up in Paul’s general direction as he ran.
Hang on, Meaghan. We’re coming. Deck didn’t think Meaghan could hear his thoughts. As far as he knew, she was a visionary, but only mildly psychic in the reading-someone’s-mind sense, and his own psychic abilities were practically nonexistent. But it made him feel better to make the attempt. More to the point, it helped him focus on the silver cord that connected him to Meaghan, helped him feel certain he was heading the right way in the dimly lit institutional maze.
Kyle found her first, though, by the simple means of saying, “In there. Room Fourteen A. I smell her.”
Tag’s nostrils widened as he sniffed the air. “Maybe. I’ll take your word for it. I’d think my nose is as good as yours or better, but all I know is there’s a human female in there.”
“You’re not in love with her. I trust Kyle.” Deck was already working on the lock. “Also the floor’s wet here, like the sprinkler went off randomly and then just happened to stop, and there are wet footprints walking away.”
“Which means Meaghan bought us a little time. Someone was standing right here, only they decided they’d hang out somewhere dryer, maybe notify maintenance. Hopefully find a dry shirt and grab coffee while he was at it.”
“That’s right, Kyle. But they may be back any second. Gotta concentrate. Gotta get Meaghan out of here.”
This lock was trickier than the one in the stairwell, shielded against magic.
Or at least some forms of magic. They’d thought of Angelini-style metal magics, and sorcery, and probably competing psytech and something kind of stripy that Deck figured had to be shamanic magic. His earth magic was shut out, and the kind of electrical magic most people would be able to use underground, the kind that drew on the building’s wiring, was also blocked.
Deck’s stomach lurched. Could they be this close and not able to get to Meaghan? Would they have to wait for a staff member to pass by and then force him or her to open the door?
The hair on the back of his neck and at his groin prickled, and the hair on his arms stood up.
I’m a Donovan and a Thorssen and the combination makes me unpredictable. I carry lightning inside me, and it’s magic wild enough that one of my ancestors was called a god. These shields can’t stop me, because they didn’t expect me.
For a second, Deck hoped it was true.
Then he knew it was, as surely as he knew he belonged with Kyle and Meaghan.
This time he looked for the alarm first and detonated it.
Then he called a tiny, contained bit of lightning, a mere shard of a bolt, and sent it straight through shields that weren’t anticipating it and into the lock.
Magic surged. The door jolted open.
And Meaghan, wearing institutional-looking pajamas and bright-red sneakers that fastened with Velcro, was waiting just inside. “I knew you were coming,” she said calmly, “and I even knew when, so I could try to get the orderly out of the way. But the vision didn’t even begin to let me know how good it would feel to have you this close.”
Deck and Kyle, without saying a word, sandwiched her between them.
Paul coughed quietly. “I don’t blame you for wanting the group-hug moment. But we need to leave. Now.”
“Not a bad idea,” Kyle agreed. “Get safe first, then spend like the next ten years or so holding you.”
“I’m not the only prisoner here. We need to open more doors. We’d need to be careful, though, because some of the prisoners may be as dangerous as the Agency thinks they are.”
Deck wanted to say no, wanted to grab Meaghan and run like hell. But Meaghan’s voice was uncannily clear, and Deck suspected it was touched by prophecy.
And he was a Donovan, which meant that even if he wasn’t the most responsible guy out there, he couldn’t leave prisoners of the Agency to rot…and a Thorssen, so he just liked blowing stuff up. “Of course. But we won’t be able to get everyone into the SUV. Paul, could you cloak yourself and Tag, get the hell out of here and then call my father? We may need some backup.”
Paul’s face fell. “I didn’t bring…”
“Your cell?” Tag patted his pocket. “I know, witch boy. That’s why I grabbed it on the way out the door. Desmond will think he got butt dialed if I call him, but he’ll pick up for you.”
Deck stepped out into the hall and began blasting locks open.
Chapter Twenty-Five
On the third level, they’d freed two children, another seer who looked about twelve, and a girl with curiously greenish skin, who couldn’t have been more than six, a badger dual teenager with a hint of earth magic in his aura, and a woman who looked human, appeared almost human to witch-sight and according to Kyle smelled human but had wings like a bat. They’d sent the prisoners off toward the surface with Paul and Tag guarding them. To everyone’s amazement, the green-skinned child, whatever she was, had cloaked that group before Paul had even gotten his spell started.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t included Deck, Kyle and Meaghan in the cloak, and they hadn’t wanted to drain Paul, who was already looking shaky.
And even more unfortunately, this door set the alarms blaring. So Deck, Kyle and Meaghan were running down the stairs pell-mell toward the fourth level, hoping to outrun whatever was coming for them. The lights went off in the stairwell except for dim emergency strips on the stairs, but the darkness made no difference to Meaghan. She moved like she knew exactly where she was going, because she probably did. A little cautious and tentative, but she always was.
Deck said he could see her, that she glowed to his witch-sight.
And all Kyle could do was to use the emergency lighting and hope for the best.
The good news was they didn’t have far to go to reach the next stairwell.
The bad news was the door opened before they got to it.
Time slowed. “Get down!” Kyle barked, hitting the floor and trying to pull Meaghan with him.
She shook off his hand, but he shoved as she did it so she staggered toward the wall. Deck reeled her in and pushed her the rest of the way.
Two armed agents, which was bad. One who wasn’t obviously armed, which was worse.
“He’s about to cast,” Meaghan said calmly.
Kyle smelled the ocean, felt currents hundreds of miles away. Water poured from the ceiling—dirty water with a distinct sewage stench—dousing the would-be caster’s head and most of one shooter. The caster sputtered, his concentration shattered.
At the same time, a puddle appeared under the other gunman’s feet and he briefly wondered what that was supposed to do. “Deck, now!” Meaghan exclaimed.
A tiny lightning bolt zapped from the damaged door to the puddle. Kyle heard sizzling. The agent yelped and jumped.
Unfortunately, nothing else happened.
“Damn rubber-soled boots,” Deck quipped. Time, which had slowed to a crawl, sped up again like a Quentin Tarantino movie, all violent non sequiturs at hyperactive speed.
The other armed agent fired, but the shot went wild as her gun started spouting a fountain of water from its barrel. At the same time, her lips cracked and her eyes rolled back in her head. She hit the ground, the gun falling from her hand. The agent was still breathing, but Kyle’s EMT training picked out all the signs of acute dehydration.
Kyle smelled sulfur and ice and braced for pain, but the caster, not any of them, convulsed and fell to the floor, trembling all over. His eyes rolled back in his head. Then he flopped, still. Kyle could see his chest rise and fall with shallow breaths, but he didn’t look like he’d be doing anythi
ng useful anytime soon.
Deck grinned. “Water’s reflective. So are water shields,” he said calmly.
The other gunman was aiming at Meaghan. “Stand down!” he barked. “Stand down or I’ll shoot.”
The corridor shook as Deck tapped into earth powers, but it wasn’t enough to be really alarming.
“Stop. Stand down. I don’t want to hurt you.” The agent’s smile suggested something different, that he’d be glad to hurt them, given a chance.
And he was huge and maintaining a steady aim at Meaghan.
Even over the stench of sewage, Kyle could tell the agent smelled wrong. Not dual, not human, not anything healthy.
Time did that slowing-down thing again. The air smelled of sulfur and sewage and blood that hadn’t been shed yet, and Kyle once more felt like he was trapped in a Tarantino film.
What would Tarantino have one of his characters do in this situation?
Something totally stupid and kamikaze so everyone else could live.
Using all the strength and grace garnered from years of surfing, Kyle flung himself up and out, at the guy with the gun—and shifted faster than he knew he could. Help, he thought, hoping someone would catch it, and he found himself surfing on a surge of water that appeared out of nowhere.
Okay, not out of nowhere, since it had a distinct smell of shit, but he’d take what he got.
He and the dirty wave hit the agent in the face.
The agent staggered. A shot rang out, deafening—and a ceiling tile caved in, bringing more water with it, this time clean. Thank you, jerry-rigged plumbing. The gun clattered to the floor.
Kyle began to bite any flesh he could find. His wordside grimaced at the taste of flesh and blood—this wasn’t a sexy moment where you drew blood for fun, humans were definitely not food, and this one didn’t taste like he was properly human or properly anything else either—but his otterside was too mad to care. His raft had been threatened, and in particular his female. One otter couldn’t do much, especially since the human who wasn’t exactly human had gotten over his shock and was trying to pull him off, and humans were stronger than otters…but the guy’s nose was in Kyle’s mouth.
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