Quinn cursed and began running toward where he knew Elijah’s truck had been parked. Vincent followed him.
“No,” Quinn gave a strangled growl at the sight. Elijah’s truck was a pile of burning metal. He stood there, stunned, for too long, and Vincent passed him, looking for any sign of Elijah.
“Quinn, he’s over here,” Vincent called.
Quinn ran to him, thirty feet from the truck on the other side of the garage. Elijah had almost been tossed out of the garage, and they were on the third floor.
Quinn could hear firetrucks as he helped Vincent pull Elijah off the car he landed on. Quinn couldn’t see any injuries, and looked to Vincent whose eyes had glazed over. Quinn waited, holding Elijah’s head gently.
“Zander will be on his way over once he’s done with Jasper,” Vincent told him, coming back to the present. “We need to find Sawyer.”
Quinn nodded and searched his pockets. Vincent’s eyes narrowed. Quinn knew he thought that they would actually go searching, but he had an easier way to find her.
He pulled the picture out of his back pocket and opened it. He’d folded it to bring it to Atlanta, just in case.
“What is that?” Vincent’s voice was hard. Quinn showed him as Zander walked over while supporting a limping Jasper. “Where did you get this?”
“I stole it from her,” Quinn answered. It was a picture of Sawyer and a little boy as they played with a small house cat. He knew the picture meant the world to her since he could track her with it. He focused on the image and closed his eyes. His Source reached out in the direction of hers. She wasn’t close by. She wasn’t within five miles of the parking garage.
And she was moving further away at an alarming rate.
“Quinn?” Vincent sounded worried.
“She’s running, or she’s been taken,” Quinn whispered. “Zander, check on Elijah.”
“He’s waking up now. He was just knocked out. I sent a jump start to his brain to wake him up. Like magic smelling salts.” Zander told him. Quinn nodded and stood up as Elijah’s eyes opened.
“Fuck me,” Elijah groaned. “What the fuck happened?”
“Look around. All of our cars were blown up.” Vincent reached down and helped Elijah, who swayed, to stand. “And Sawyer is on the lam.”
“We don’t know that,” Quinn growled. “I just know that she’s moving away from here.”
“There’s no way she orchestrated this,” Jasper groaned, rubbing his leg. Quinn could see the blood stain, even on the dark pants. “We need to get out of this building before it goes down.”
“We should find Jon’s team,” Elijah reminded them.
“I think they’re all dead,” Zander mumbled. “I’m not finding any living bodies in this building except us and James. I say we go and chase her. Why aren’t we already?”
There was a small moment of silence before Vincent spoke up.
“Let’s get James and get out of here. Firefighters are here. We’ll go after Sawyer and find out what the fuck happened.”
They were all limping in some way as they got out of the building. When they made it to the main street, Quinn tried again to find his wolves.
He entered Shade’s mind and took a backseat ride to Shade running through the city in back alleys with Scout next to him. Where were they going? He pushed that question into Shade’s mind, and Shade snarled, throwing him a memory of Sawyer being carried by two Magi that Shade didn’t know. Quinn recognized one, however—Colt, known member of the Ghosts.
“Vincent.” Quinn re-entered his own mind.
“Are the wolves following Sawyer like Kaar is?” Vincent must have checked in with his animal as well.
“Yes, but Shade saw who has her.” Every head snapped to Quinn when he said that.
“Kaar did, too,” Vincent gasped, his eyes coming back into focus.
“Go,” James coughed. “Go. I’ll handle things here. I see Ken and Jon. We’ll take care of it.”
“We might not come back, James,” Vincent reminded him. Quinn didn’t like the dark look in their leader’s eyes.
“I know,” James sighed, “but those mother fuckers need to pay for this.”
“We don’t have a ride,” Elijah reminded them. “Jasper is recently healed, and Zander wasted a lot of energy on that. Can we do this?”
“We’re going to fucking try.” Zander sounded excited, and Quinn looked at him with wide eyes. “Time to steal some cars, boys.”
24
SAWYER
Sawyer wasn’t tied to anything. That was the first thing she noticed when she woke up. Missy was grinning down at her with a syringe in her hand, and Sawyer groaned.
Great. It hadn’t been a nightmare. This was real life. Missy blew her guys to high heaven, and Sawyer was back in the tender, loving care of her least favorite people to walk the face of the earth.
“I’ll make this simple.” Axel’s voice cut through the fog of Sawyer’s mind. “If you put up a fight, this will be much more painful, and it’s already going to be a long, slow death for you.”
“And what did I do this time?” She groaned, pushing herself up. She met his glare. He stood nearly five feet away from her, toying with a long black dagger.
“You made me kill my brother to get to you.” Axel’s voice betrayed nothing except anger, and Sawyer scoffed.
“I think I care more about him than you do,” she hissed. “He’s a bit like you, but he’s at least got a moral compass. I kind of liked him.”
“You don’t know fucking anything about my relationship with my brother,” Axel snarled. “I let him have his fun chasing me around the world, but when I learned he had you, I was forced to make the most difficult decision of my life.”
“There’s nothing you can say to convince me that you gave a damn about his life,” Sawyer said acidly. “Nothing. You didn’t give a damn about Henry, so why should Vincent mean more? You didn’t care when you murdered your s-”
“Silence!” he roared, and she slammed back to the floor and slid several feet.
She pushed herself up, glaring at the Ghosts near her. Toni and Felix were both sitting on several boxes stoically. They watched her as she stood up and swayed. She rubbed her forehead as she turned back to Axel.
“Why don’t you just kill me?” she asked softly. “You have me. I have no magic. I’m completely helpless. Why am I not dead yet?”
“Because I want you to die screaming for mercy.” Axel’s glare would have scared her a long time ago. Back when she thought she loved him and that he loved her. When she was just his thief, looking for a good time. Young and stupid.
She had very little fear left in her, though. Acceptance was the place at which she had arrived. Today she was going to die, and she needed to be ready to meet whatever god or punishment was waiting for her. Maybe there wouldn’t be an afterlife. Just a cold dark abyss, a place where she would feel at home.
Fuck that. She was going to make this a pain in Axel’s ass.
“Let’s go,” she taunted, spreading her arms wide. She was flung across the room into a stack of boxes. It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, and she stood back up. Missy was waiting for her, and Sawyer grunted at the punch Missy landed to her ribs. Bones cracked.
“That’s for my face,” Missy snarled, grabbing Sawyer and tossing her back into the middle of the… Sawyer didn’t know where she was. She regained her feet for the third time and looked around.
What stood out was the small jet and giant doors at one end of the building. They were in an airplane hangar. Not helpful, Sawyer thought, but it was something. She couldn’t fly a plane, so the idea of escaping that way was dead before it even got started.
“Are you just going to toy with me, Axel?” She turned back to him. “Is this how it ends? Not with a bang, but with a whisper? You toss me around a little until I’m too broken to stand, and then you drive my own knife in me?”
“This is how it ends.” She didn’t like his flat voice. “To
think I ever loved such a disloyal little bitch like you. You knew what would happen if I caught you with the IMPO again.”
“Ha. Like you have the capability to love,” she snorted. “You sure as fuck never loved me. I was your property—a tool that you could manipulate to do your bidding.”
He cursed and tossed her again. She nearly landed on Felix, who kicked her while she was still in the air, so she landed away from him. That actually hurt.
“You murdered your son and then your brother. You think you have the ability to love?” she hissed to Axel in Italian as she stood up again. “The fucking arrogance of that astounds me.”
She couldn’t breathe, but she kept her glare on him. He released his hold after fifteen agonizing seconds, and she was thankful she didn’t fall to her knees. Axel was never going to get her on her knees again.
“Come here,” he growled. She raised her chin. She straightened her spine and met his eyes. Her body screamed in rebellion at her actions, but she didn’t care.
“No.” She narrowed her eyes on him. “I want a duel by the Second Law of the Old Ways.”
Axel’s eyes went wide for only a second, then he smiled viciously. Felix and Toni were both chuckling. Missy was laughing from behind Sawyer. Sawyer heard other Ghosts laughing around the hangar, but she wasn’t embarrassed. She knew Axel would give her what she wanted. If she was going to die, she was going to take one of them down with her. The Second Law of the Old Ways meant that magic couldn’t be used, so Sawyer had a fighting chance against anyone she was pitted against. It wasn’t binding, but she knew that Axel had a perverse sense of humor. He would force his little posse to follow the rules for the entertainment factor alone.
“Fine.” Axel threw her blade, and Sawyer saw it bury itself into the concrete two feet in front of her. “Missy, handle her. Leave her alive, though. I want to kill her. Who’s ready for some entertainment?”
Sawyer jumped for the dagger as Missy jumped for her. Sawyer heard cheers come from different corners of the hangar bay, but she couldn’t worry about them just yet. Missy first. Of course, he chose Missy. She didn’t need magic to fuck someone up.
Sawyer got her hand on the blade and spun as Missy threw a punch. Sawyer barely ducked in time to avoid it and slashed upwards, leaving a thin red line across Missy’s thigh.
“You bitch,” Missy hissed.
“Let’s go,” Sawyer snarled, dodging Missy’s grab. She could not let Missy get her arms around her. She was strong enough to pop Sawyer like a balloon, and Sawyer didn’t want to die like that.
Sawyer and Missy circled in the center of the room. Missy had always been a difficult opponent for Sawyer. She was just fast enough to react to Sawyer’s blinking, and she was strong enough that it only took one or two hits for Sawyer to be out of the fight. She’d already cracked several of Sawyer’s ribs, and Sawyer knew she couldn’t get hit a second time.
Missy darted forward, and Sawyer shot to the right, going low, and sending her blade towards Missy’s ribs. She didn’t get it buried in the way she wanted, scraping Missy’s ribcage as Missy spun to knee Sawyer away.
Sawyer took the knee, unable to escape it. It hit the same cracked section of her own ribs and sent her flying.
“You’ll pay for that.” Missy stomped over to her, and Sawyer pushed herself up, knowing that one of her ribs was about to puncture a lung. Sawyer coughed and spit at Missy’s feet.
“People keep telling me that,” Sawyer growled. She didn’t like the blood she had just spit out, but there was nothing she could do about it, either. She was going to kill Missy. It would be one less Ghost for some future IMPO agent to deal with. It would be Sawyer’s last good deed, even if it killed her.
And it would.
Missy charged, and Sawyer didn’t back down. She let Missy wrap her arms around her and knee Sawyer again in the same spot. Sawyer couldn’t stop the scream of pain, but she had what she wanted.
She slammed the knife into Missy’s gut. There wasn’t a healer in the hangar bay. None of the Ghosts would be saving Missy’s life today.
She staggered back, pulling the blade out as Missy began to stumble around, holding her gut.
Sawyer didn’t waste another second. She grabbed Missy’s hair, wrenched her head back, and shoved the dagger into her heart while she looked the Doppler in the eye.
“I’ll see you in the next life,” Sawyer snarled.
She wasn’t playing nice anymore. Missy was the eighth person she’d killed, and Sawyer let herself fall into that dark place at the sight of Missy’s blood pouring out onto the white suit she wore. She yanked the dagger back out and met Axel’s shocked stare.
“How’s that, Axel?” she hissed. “Thanks for that. I’ve been hoping to get my hands on her for years.”
“You…” Axel watched Missy’s body fall to Sawyer’s feet.
“Yeah,” she gloated. Her lung was punctured, but she wasn’t done. Cold wrapped around her heart. He had made her a monster; not through training, but through pain. She could live through the pain; it only made her stronger. And she wasn’t ready to die yet. Not yet. Shadow wanted to kill as many people as possible before they ended her. “Anyone else?”
“Toni,” Axel snapped. “Kill her.”
“Yes, sir,” Toni snarled, stalking over to her. She gave Axel a disgusted look. He wouldn’t fight her, even without her magic, the fucking coward.
She prepared herself, spreading her legs shoulder-width apart. She braced and brought her hands up, the dagger in her right hand, ready to go into the chest of another victim.
“SAWYER!”
She turned towards her name. Vincent was running in, the team behind him. Elijah, Jasper, Zander. No Quinn, but wolves. The wolves darted ahead, and Shade jumped on Karen before she could even react. Scout went for her neck, and Sawyer watched the wolves tear the Magi apart while a third wolf ran for her.
They were alive. They looked like shit, but Sawyer didn’t hold it against them. In that moment, they might as well have been fucking angels. They were alive, and she suddenly had a chance to see the next sunrise. The next sunset. Charlie and Liam.
“Kill them,” Axel roared.
Sawyer didn’t have much time to move as Toni clapped his hands, causing a sonic boom. It knocked things over and nearly sent her flying. She held her ribs and could barely take a breath as she ran for the guys. Goddamn sound manipulation. Her ear drums burst, and the world began to ring.
The third wolf, a gray and tan monster leapt for her. She went to dodge, but didn’t have the speed. She found herself in Quinn’s arms, and a wall of earth stopped a wave of fire from cascading over them.
Jasper was limping as he used his control over the air to whip the fire back around. Zander threw shields over them as he also burst water pipes under the floor and put other fires out.
In mere seconds, Sawyer realized she was in the middle of a warzone. The hangar was getting destroyed. Elijah was practically in flames, throwing out balls of fire and stopping others from hitting them.
“Sawyer,” Vincent gasped, reaching her and Quinn. “You need to run. We’re here but you have to get out. Save yourself.”
“No.” She jerked back and winced in pain.
“Yes,” Vincent whispered. “Sawyer, Axel’s never going to stop. If you go now, we might defeat him, and you’ll have freedom. If we don’t, you’ll have a head start.”
“I can help,” she growled.
“You’re just a thief with a good right hook,” Vincent growled. “I’m not letting-”
“No, Vincent,” she cut him off. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him close, their chests colliding with each other. “I’m not just some thief. I’m not a pawn. I’m Shadow. That’s why he wants me dead. I am the mess he’s failed to clean up, the killer he created that broke free. I know he’ll chase me to the ends of the earth. Give me this. Let me help you take him down.”
She watched his eyes fall to the dagger in her right hand and then his olive-green e
yes came up to her face. She’d thrown her cards on the table; now it was time to see Vincent’s move. She watched confusion and knowledge dance in those eyes. She was his brother’s monster.
“Shadow is dead,” he whispered. She watched him figure it out. The game they had played. No one knew Axel better than them. When she had died, there were people all over the planet who were able to rest easy, happy someone like her, with her abilities, was gone. Vincent was clinging to a reality built on the lie.
“She’s going to be if you don’t give her the ability to fight back,” she growled. He grabbed her left wrist and released the enchantment that wouldn’t let her remove the inhibitor. He slid it off her wrist, and Sawyer gasped at the rush of getting reconnected to her magic.
“Prove it,” he commanded grimly. She grinned viciously and saw him go a little pale. “But leave Axel to me.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going for Colt and Talyn,” she snarled. “Talyn is a Vampyr. He’s borrowing Axel’s powers right now, so he’s a major threat. Colt is an air manipulator, so Jasper’s got three people against him. Those two need to go, if you want a real chance at taking down Axel.”
“God damn,” Vincent gasped. “You really…”
“Later,” she growled. She might actually have a later now.
She blinked into the fight and grinned at Axel. He saw her and for the first time since she’d known him, she saw fear in his eyes. She didn’t go for him though. She found Colt fighting directly with Jasper and blinked closer, bracing herself for the small tornados those two had started making as they fought for dominance over their element.
“Colt,” she called softly. She watched him pale and turn towards her, but only for a moment. She blinked behind him. He tried to blow her back, but he didn’t have the concentration for it while he was also fighting Jasper. She shoved her knife into his back and let him fall when she yanked it back out. She met Jasper’s eye, then shifted into her smoke form and drifted into a dark section of the warehouse.
She had an excess of magic after not being able to use it for so long. Chaos was her enemy. It was also her best ally in this situation. It gave her plenty of cover to sneak up on Talyn, who was helping Axel, but it forced her to drain her power more quickly to avoid becoming collateral damage.
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 26