“What’s happening?” she demanded as he bent over her, unfastening her wrist.
“Armageddon.” In the dim light coming through the blinds, she saw a mix of alarm and fury in his eyes. “This is King Rith’s doing. Ten bucks says he’s found those stones.”
Chapter 6
As Harrison freed Ilaria, the handcuffs slipped out of his unsteady hold, hitting the floor behind the bed with a clatter. His heart pounded from being awakened so suddenly, so horrifyingly. And from the fear that this was just the beginning.
Ignoring the fallen cuffs, he straightened and yanked up the shade of the nearest window as the princess rose to stand beside him.
It was like looking at a scene from a disaster movie. Below, streetlights cast their eerie glow on a patchwork of car accidents. Though the sun had yet to rise, the commuters had begun their early morning treks to work. Treks that had ended disastrously. Vehicles were overturned, smoking, piled into one another in every which way. As if no one had tried to stop. As if every one of the drivers had fallen asleep.
Cold chills raced over his skin while his ears buzzed with a harsh white noise. He suspected they had.
A few blocks away, fire glowed orange against the night sky even as another explosion rocked the night in the distance, a fireball erupting in a red glow over D.C. Something had crashed. A helicopter? An airplane?
Good God.
Distant sirens broke through his shock, but close by, nothing stirred. No screams or shouts broke the unnatural quiet. Nothing moved. The only people visible were lying on the street or hanging half out of cars, unconscious. Or dead.
He’d seen this kind of mass enchantment before, six months ago when the Esri, Baleris, found the lost gate into the human world while following the magical scent of the draggon stone. The stone had been doing time as an artifact in the Smithsonian until Baleris stole it.
A sick knot fisted in Harrison’s stomach, a headache began to throb between his eyes as the memory of that day at the Kennedy Center blasted its way through his head. Baleris had sung his tuneless song and everyone—everyone—had instantly blacked out, falling unconscious before rising like zombies. Everyone except for his kids and him. And Larsen.
Every instinct he possessed screamed that it had happened again. King Rith or one of his minions had sung a song of enchantment so powerful that drivers had fallen asleep at the wheel and pilots and their craft had fallen out of the sky. Would those who’d survived rise, enchanted? His flesh crawled at the thought of an entire city of controlled humans.
Or would they remain like this…asleep? He didn’t know. All he knew was that the stones had been hidden in two different places—the draggon stone and three of the green stones in the water off Ft. McNair. The remaining three green stones in the water off Bolling Air Force Base. The two bases were just across the water from Crystal City. Within two miles of where he was now.
Had King Rith knocked out everyone within a two-mile radius? Heaven help them.
“You idiots.” Ilaria’s quiet exclamation wrenched his attention away from the window. She hit his arm with a small fist, her face a mask of fury. “You foolish, arrogant humans—so certain your paltry efforts to hide the stones from Rith would be adequate, while you chained me, the rightful queen of Esria, like a beast!”
Teeth clenched tight, she turned back to the window, staring at the destruction. “You will get me to the gate and you’ll get me there at once, Harrison, for I’ve no doubt Rith means to escape back to Esria before anyone can stop him.” She whirled back to him. “The moment he reaches the Dark Mountains and the Temple of the Ancients, he’ll raise his terrible, unnatural power.” Her eyes flashed green fury. “And when those walls come tumbling down, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself!”
Harrison didn’t interrupt her tirade. He didn’t argue at all because, dammit, she was right. He couldn’t deny a thing she said.
He turned toward the door. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“The gate.”
The old feeling of being caught in the middle of a tempest swirled up from deep within the recesses of his bones. The feeling that his world was once more being upended, as it had been when he was thirteen, nearly swamped him—that sense that everything was being ripped out of his control.
It was a feeling he despised.
Crossing the living room, he grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table. As they waited for the elevator, he tried to call Charlie, but the call wouldn’t go through. He had a bad feeling the streets were going to be impossible to travel. What they needed was a helicopter.
Then again, if King Rith sang a second time, they didn’t want to be in the air. The thought of it turned his blood to ice.
The elevator came quickly and he realized they were almost certainly the only ones in the building awake and walking.
Harrison held the elevator door, letting her enter first. “King Rith may not have found all seven stones, Ilaria.”
“What do you mean?”
“The stones weren’t hidden in one place. They were split up. Could he have pulled this much power from just a few of them?”
A thoughtfulness entered her eyes. “I don’t know. To my knowledge he’s never had his hands on any of them before. My mother guarded the stones carefully.”
“Except from you.”
“Yes. To her eternal regret.”
They took the elevator down to the garage beneath the building. As the doors slid open, the blare of a car horn tore through his eardrums. Harrison held Ilaria back, pushing her behind him. But he saw no movement and heard nothing but the horn.
“Let’s go.”
Together they made their way across the garage toward the space where he’d parked his car a few hours before. As they rounded the corner, he saw the source of the racket. An old minivan had crashed into one of the concrete uprights, and crashed hard, by the looks of it. The driver, a young woman, lay across the steering wheel, a trickle of blood running down her cheek from her temple. In the backseat, a toddler slept, or lay unconscious, in her car seat.
His stomach clenched, his fatherly instincts leaping. They needed to reach the Dupont Circle fountain as quickly as possible, yet no way could he walk away from a child in need. He started toward the minivan, surprised to find Ilaria right beside him, her face set in worried lines.
“I have some healing skill,” she said, as if reading his thoughts…or sharing them.
He glanced at her, seeing a startling compassion in her eyes, and nodded. “We can’t help everyone who needs it. There are too many.”
“We can help these two.” Her quiet words held a thread of steel. Their eyes met. For once they were in complete accord.
“Get the child,” he said as they reached the van. Ilaria would never have the strength to lift the woman out.
As she reached for the back door, Harrison wrenched open the front. He pulled the woman off the horn, the night turning blessedly silent, then pressed his fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse. Nice and strong. He unfastened her seat belt while Ilaria climbed in the back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her pulling ineffectually at the car-seat straps that pinned a dark-haired little girl.
“The belt release should be between her legs,” he told her. “Press the red button and lift the straps up and over her head.”
He pulled the woman free from the seat, lifted her out and laid her on the pavement. As Ilaria backed out of the car and turned, the child in her arms, he stilled. For one horrible moment, the child was Stephie, the pale hands holding her, Baleris’s.
Stephie’s screams tore through his memory, echoing over and over as his stomach clenched with cold fury. For one tense moment he nearly lunged at Ilaria, the need to rip the child out of her pale hands almost more than he could control.
Ilaria froze, the girl cradled tightly against her. Protectively.
“Harrison?” the princess asked softly.
His gaze lifted to hers, t
o eyes filled with neither malevolent intent nor cruelty, but warm with compassion, and the fury inside him drained away. Something inside him shifted. Ilaria. Not Baleris, not King Rith. Not pale, homogeneous evil. They weren’t all alike any more than humans were. He knew that. Kade had shown himself to be good and honorable, even when ordered by his king to kill the Sitheen.
He supposed he hadn’t been sure exactly where Ilaria stood on that line between good and evil. Perhaps he still wasn’t, but he was a damn sight closer to understanding her. No one who insisted on saving a child could be all bad.
With a last wary look at him, Ilaria laid the child beside her mother, then moved to squat at their heads. As she lifted her hands, she eyed him with question.
“I can help them.”
He stared at her, unsettled by his momentary lapse of control. But as he looked into her eyes—into Ilaria’s eyes—he trusted her to do what she could. He trusted her.
He nodded and she placed a pale hand on each of the pair’s foreheads, the color difference startling.
“How badly are they injured?”
Ilaria’s brows drew together. “The child not at all, but the woman hit her head. I feel a trauma.” Her gaze widened, a startled, almost wondrous look on her face.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded.
“Nothing. They’re not Sitheen. Touching them allows me access to their memories, their knowledge. I understand your world, finally. Incredible. The things you’ve accomplished.”
“It doesn’t hurt them when you do that.” It wasn’t even a question because he already knew the answer.
She frowned slightly as she watched him. “No.” Closing her eyes, her face became a mask of concentration. “There. The trauma is gone now.”
“You healed her?”
Her lashes swept up. “Yes.”
He nodded, a warmth engulfing him. “Good. Thank you.”
She studied him with enigmatic eyes, as if uncertain if his attitude toward her had really changed. Slowly, her mouth kicked up in that impish smile, her lips parting as if to speak. But whatever she was going to say was silenced as the mother-daughter pair began to stir.
The woman blinked groggily, struggling to sit up. “What happened?”
“Mommy?”
The woman’s hand reached for the child, pulling her against her. Beyond the parking garage the sound of a scream rent the air. Shouting and cries and confused voices soon followed. Everyone was starting to wake. And not as enchanted zombies, thankfully.
“You’re safe,” Harrison assured the pair. “You had an accident. A lot of people passed out. We’re not sure what happened.” Which was true enough.
“You look like a princess.” The little girl’s wide eyes were fixed on Ilaria.
A genuine smile spread across Ilaria’s face, sending Harrison’s pulse throbbing. “I am a princess, little one.”
“A fairy princess?”
“Yes, indeed. A real one.”
A fairy princess. Good God.
“I’m Princess Ilaria from the land of Esria.” She placed her hand on the child’s head and smiled. “Be well.”
He stared at her, feeling like everything he’d ever understood of good and evil had just been flipped end over end. Humans had once thought them angels, she’d said. And, heaven help him, in that moment he understood why.
Without thinking, he held out his hand for her. “We need to go.”
The light still dancing in her eyes, she placed her hand in his and allowed him to help her up.
As his fingers closed around hers, their gazes locked, awareness arcing between them. And a deep, surprising warmth. Once again, he felt himself falling into that green gaze, right through the door to her soul. A soul untainted by darkness or evil. He felt encompassed in a brightness that drew him on the most fundamental level.
Her lips curled upward ever so slightly and it was all he could do not to pull her back into his arms. But this was neither the time nor the place. With a shake of his head, he broke eye contact and led her through the garage to where he’d parked his car. But a glance at the entrance disabused him of any thought of driving out of there. From where he stood he could see three vehicles, including a delivery truck, blocking the entrance in one impressive tangle.
“What do we do now?” Ilaria asked, her gaze following his.
“I’m not sure. We could try the metro, but God only knows what kind of mess this caused underground. We’ll have to walk until things open up.”
“How far is the gate?”
“Miles from here. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a cab or a ride, at some point.”
Together they made their way out of the garage, past the wreckage, and into a scene of confusion and terror. Some of the people who’d been lying in the street or in the cars now stumbled, injured and confused. Others screamed or shouted, or ran, seeking help. Others remained where they’d landed. Not everyone had regained consciousness. Some never would.
In the distance the flicker of flames licked at the night sky from a source he couldn’t see.
“Ilaria…” He glanced at her to find her staring at that distant fire, too. She didn’t seem to have heard him. “Ilaria, I need to ask you something.”
She shook her head, as if shaking herself loose from some dark thought, then glanced at him.
The words caught in his throat. “My daughter…Stephie…”
“You’re mated…married?”
“No. Not for years. But I have two kids, a nine-year-old-son, Sam, and a seven-year-old daughter.” Why was he telling her this? If the Esri figured out, rightly, that his kids were Sitheen, they could all the more easily hunt them down. But he knew why he was telling her. Watching her with that other child, something had changed. “Baleris touched my daughter…all he did was touch her head. I was there. I saw it. But she started screaming and when she stopped…” His jaw clenched tight. “She’s not there anymore. She’s alive, but…not there.”
“You’re wondering if I could help her.”
“Yes.” Good God, could he really let another Esri touch her? Would he honestly ask Gwen to bring her down here, to risk her life? Hell, what life? “Yes. Could you heal her? If I brought her to you?”
“I don’t know. I have some healing skill with simple things. It depends on what Baleris did to her. But I’ll try, Harrison. Of course, I’ll try.”
He nodded once, a perfunctory move as his fatherly instincts rose up, shouting at him that he was out of his mind. But what if Ilaria could help? What if she could give him his daughter back?
He sure as hell couldn’t ask Gwen to bring her down here now, not the way things were. Not with King Rith on his rampage. But they’d get that bastard. He had to believe they’d stop him as they had the other Esri before him. And once they did, before Ilaria left, sealing the gates behind her, he’d bring Stephie to her.
A truck rumbled by, inching through the wreckage. Harrison took Ilaria’s hand, pulling her with him down the sidewalk. In the distance, the sirens grew louder, making him think the entire area hadn’t been affected. Those outside the war zone were coming to the rescue. But with the mess the roads were in, they wouldn’t be making progress very fast.
As a car approached, Harrison held out his hand to flag the guy down, but the driver ignored him. For once, he wished he carried a gun. He had a bad feeling it might take that to get a car. Especially paired, as he was, with a woman who in no way looked normal.
“We might have better luck if you use a little glamour,” he told her.
“Who would they stop for? A child? An injured woman?”
He hadn’t even thought about that. “A cop.”
As the next car approached, Ilaria held out her hand and the car came to an immediate halt. A middle-aged man with a significant bald spot rolled down the window. “What the hell happened, Officer?”
Ilaria went to him, touching the hand that rested on the open window. “You’ll leave your car and go to help the people who
are injured.”
The man’s eyes glazed over. He opened the car door and the car started to roll.
Harrison grabbed Ilaria’s shoulder. “Put the car in Park, first!”
Ilaria repeated the words and the man slammed his foot on the brake and did as she commanded, then climbed out and walked away, leaving the car idling.
Ilaria ran for the passenger door as Harrison climbed in the driver’s side. “Good work.” He pushed the seat back to accommodate his longer legs. “I never thought I’d see the day when I was glad to have an Esri for a partner.”
She glanced at him with enigmatic eyes. “Just get us to that gate, human.”
Harrison smiled grimly.
For the next hour, they worked their way through Crystal City, driving when there was an open space in the road, walking when they had to, then enchanting another driver into helping them again. He kept looking for a motorcyclist, but so far, they’d been in short supply. Time after time, they passed a person in need of help, but he forced himself to focus on the thing that mattered most, on the one thing they could do that would make the biggest difference. They had to reach Dupont Circle before King Rith opened that gate.
They were on the 14th Street bridge when his phone finally rang. He grabbed it.
“Hello?”
Charlie’s voice came through strong and clear. “King Rith attacked Fort McNair. He found the three green stones we’d hidden there and apparently knocked out everyone nearby.”
“I’m fully aware of the last part,” Harrison muttered.
“You got hit, too?”
“Looks like the end of days in Crystal City.”
“Kade talked to Autumn. The Adams Morgan area is fine. Best we can figure, he took out everyone within about a two-mile radius of Fort McNair.”
“You think he did all this with just three stones?”
“We’re ninety-percent sure he didn’t get the others. The only way to be one hundred percent certain is to pull them out and look at them, but that will just give him a lock on them. We’ve talked to the Sitheen recruit posted at Bolling. There’s been no sign of Esri over there.”
Warrior Rising (Harlequin Nocturne) Page 7