Demon Leap: an Urban Fantasy (The Specials Book 1)

by Tricia Owens

  She surged up and snapped her fingers. I threw myself backward, frantically meddling my gun into a shield. But the gun had been made of steel and the shield was no different. When Calia's electric bolt struck it, the metal conducted the electricity straight into me. The volts blasted through my body, hurtling me through the air. I hit the carpet hard.

  I was literally stunned, my thoughts a big, blank sheet. My heart labored, struggling to regain a normal beat. Were it not for my healing factor I would have been dead. I was pretty sure that, as I gasped for breath and tried to regain my wits, I teetered on the brink of it still.

  "Metal isn't your friend," Calia said from somewhere at the edges of my frazzled consciousness. "Not while you're playing with me. But if it makes you feel better, you're the fastest IMT specialist I've ever seen. Too bad you'll soon be the deadest."

  “Calia, you can’t do it!” Elliott cried.

  “I do what I want, sweetie pie.”

  Her shadow fell over me, but I had no defense. My shield had spun out of my hands when her electric bolt struck it. I spread my hands flat on the carpet beneath me. What the hell…it’s worth a shot.

  I meddled the carpet.

  Calia shouted. I sat up with a pained grunt and watched the carpet liquefy beneath her and then crawl up over her stilettos to grab her ankles. While that held her in place, I rolled over to the nearest wall and pressed my palm flat against it. I’d never attempted to meddle anything so large, but if there was a time to try it was now. Calia, realizing the carpet was my doing, raised her hand again, fingers poised to snap.

  “Watch…your head,” I muttered.

  I meddled the wall to collapse on her.

  That had been my plan, anyway. It was derailed when the hallway began shifting.

  The Architect had arrived.

  Chapter 13

  I pressed my back to the same wall I had intended to meddle, hoping to ground myself against the hallway’s jittery movement. Elliott had frozen where he stood and stared with trepidation at my end of the hall. I turned my head to look at how Calia fared. She remained gripped by the carpet, but she, too, had stopped moving to gape at our shifting surroundings. Her elbows lifted as she tried to maintain her balance.

  “What the hell is happening?” she demanded. She looked at me accusingly as the walls and floors appeared to jump back and forth around us. “Are you doing this?”

  “I do IMT. This isn’t that.”

  I still didn’t know what this was, but I was excited by it. I found that by letting my vision go unfocused I avoided motion sickness, a tip that Elliott could have used if his pale green tinge was anything to go by. Before I could tell him, The Architect appeared.

  He slid into the hallway shifts like he’d been inserted into one frame of a movie reel midway through its playtime: instantly appearing. This time he didn’t shift with the hallways. He remained static, a single point of stillness amidst the constant movement of the hallway. He was an oasis for my overloaded senses.

  I was closer to him this time. I could see his face clearly. The feeling that I’d seen him before increased. Yet I didn’t think that explained my unexpected fascination with him. His narrow face and scruffy chin, the glasses and the focused green gaze—all gave him a studious air which until now I’d never been particularly attracted to. Sunny, surfer boy Jasper has been my usual type. Or maybe just Jasper.

  The Architect was his opposite, the sort of pale, thin man I expected to be locked up in a supernatural hotel, if that was indeed his fate.

  “Who are you?” I asked hopefully.

  Calia, who at my question had twisted around to look behind her, inhaled sharply. “It’s you! It’s finally you. You are alive.” She sounded borderline reverent, as though her favorite religious leader had deigned to visit her.

  “With little thanks to you,” he said in a low voice.

  His tone took me aback. I noticed the firm set of his jaw and how his hands, empty of the ledger this time, curled into fists beside his trim hips as though he were on the brink of exploding into rage.

  “What are you doing?” he growled at Calia and me. “Why are you fighting when there’s a real danger out there?”

  I had to shoot a quick look at Elliott, hoping he understood what was happening. By Elliott’s cringe, he most certainly did.

  “We’re sorry,” Elliott mumbled, head ducked low.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “Why are you called The Architect?”

  “When are you going to do your job?” he retorted icily. “Deaths are racking up.”

  I sat up straighter. “How do you know about that?”

  “Who do you think ordered you to stop it?”

  I was stunned. “But—but why?”

  “You shouldn’t waste your time with her,” Calia blurted. Her upper body was still twisted around so she could face the figure backdropped against the jerkily shifting hallway. “Architect, I’ll complete the job immediately. You can trust me. I’m an Electr—”

  “I know what you are.” He looked her over, but not as a man would a woman. More like someone gauging the usefulness of the hired help. “This has nothing to do with trust. I care about results. The leaper needs to be stopped before it causes any more damage. Setting it loose was a mistake Tower won’t repeat if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Leaper,” I echoed, testing it for meaning. The name for the shadow killer fit, completing another part of the puzzle. “You’re saying Mr. Tower is behind all the killings?”

  The Architect merely stared at me. It was an intense experience. He radiated a strange hostility. In a way that was personally uncomfortable, I realized he reminded me of myself.

  “Why can’t Mr. Tower stop the leaper himself if he’s responsible for it?” I asked, refusing to be intimidated into silence. I would demand answers until I was blue in the face.

  But he didn’t give in to my pressure. “I thought you would be up to the job, Arrow. Apparently you’re not. Therefore, the job is now open to all Specials,” The Architect declared, sweeping his gaze over Elliott and Calia. “Whoever kills it first receives the bounty.”

  It was my turn to fist my hands.

  “Why can’t Tower stop it himself?” I repeated stubbornly.

  He took a step toward me and I tensed up. I didn’t know what his power was. He could have been a cohab, able to shift into a vicious black bear. Or he could have been a vampire, though I strongly doubted it. With his imperious attitude, he would have used his thrall on me by now.

  “He set it to eliminate certain witches, but it was never meant to hurt those two teenagers. The leaper has mutated beyond Tower’s control.”

  “Why the animosity toward witches?”

  “Witches have been attempting to tear down this hotel since the day the war supposedly ended. If they succeed,” he told me, “your family’s sacrifices will have been for nothing.”

  I gracelessly clawed my way to my feet and used the wall for balance. “How do you know about my family?”

  “I know more about them than you do.”

  The hall juddered and suddenly he and I stood inside a room I knew very well.

  “This is my home,” I gasped.

  I was standing at the foot of the stairs. The Architect walked wordlessly across the living room to a specific point. He stopped and turned to look at me from behind his glasses.

  Déjà vu struck me hard.

  “You were here,” I whispered. “During the war. When I was six. You were here and you looked just as you do now. How is that possible? How have you not aged?” A horrible thought struck me. “Are you—are you with them? Are you connected to the Closure Committee?”

  He said softly, “I would sooner die.”

  The scene shifted, and abruptly we were back in the shifting hallway in the Sinistera, with me sprawled against the wall and him standing apart.

  “What happened?” Calia demanded of me. “Where did you go?”

  I ignored her. “That doesn’t
tell me enough,” I insisted to The Architect. “I want to know what this is about.”

  He was an enigma, his expression utterly unreadable to me. “Trust that one day, I will be extremely important to you.”

  A shiver raced through me, though I couldn’t say it was out of discomfort or foreboding. For a fleeting moment, I saw beneath his hard, angry veneer. I saw a man fighting a tremendous fear. But a fear of what? The oligarchy? This strange magic that had trapped him inside the hotel? The leaper?

  I had no hope of figuring it out at this point.

  “I’ll do everything you ask of me,” Calia said quickly as she looked between The Architect and me. “I know the stakes. I’ll give my life for you.”

  But he only sneered at her. “If you’re that eager to throw your life away it must not hold much value.”

  “I—I didn’t mean it that way! I’m powerful. I can stand by your side!” Calia snapped her fingers and electricity zigzagged down the shuddering hallway. Elliott yelped and ducked, barely avoiding being struck in the head. The white bolt sizzled down the wall opposite of me, setting the wallpaper on fire and leaving a veined, black scorch mark down the wall before the bolt snapped out of existence. The damage appeared in all shifting versions of the hallway.

  “Do not ruin my hotel,” The Architect growled.

  Calia blanched and her proud smile fell away. “I’m sorry. I only wanted to show you what I can do.”

  “I know exactly what you’re capable of. What you’re all capable of. Why else would you be here? You’re all misfits who belong in prison.”

  “That’s by design, isn’t it?” I said. “You think we have nowhere else to go, that we have no choice but to obey you. But that’s not true of me. I didn’t take this job to be insulted and conned into committing crimes without a good reason.”

  “You’ve committed crimes for much lesser reasons, I assure you.” He narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. “Stop asking questions and do your job, Arrow. Prove to me you deserve to know anything…and then you’ll learn everything.”

  He began to shift then, the sudden jerk of his body startling a gasp from Calia. One moment he stood in the center of the hall. A second later he leaned against one wall, the ledger in hand. Next, he was pacing, then sitting cross-legged on the floor. Shifting, shifting, always occupied with the ledger as though he had left us mentally as well as physically and was caught in the grip of the hotel’s mechanism once again.

  The hallway jerked to a stop a few seconds later, sending The Architect into the great unknown.

  “Where did he go?” Calia asked, twisting this way and that.

  “Somewhere in Time, I guess.” I looked to Elliott. “That was completely frustrating. I need answers.”

  She twisted back to regard me with suspicion. “Wrong. You shouldn’t care anymore since you lost the job.”

  “That’s what you think. He gave it to me, first.” If The Architect had intended to trick me into wanting to do this, he’d found the perfect way to do so by opening it up to Calia. I shouldn’t have felt possessive of an assassination job, but she rubbed me the wrong way. Or is it that she wants to rub him? I prayed I wasn’t motivating myself via jealousy.

  I touched the carpet with my fingers, meddling it back to normal so it released Calia.

  To Elliott, I said, “Did you know he was like that? So…charming?”

  He laughed uneasily and took a quick check of our surroundings to make sure no part of it shifted. “I’ve never spoken to him before. But, I guess it’s understandable given that he’s been trapped in here for over a decade.”

  I guessed around fifteen years, ever since the war ended.

  “What kind of magic does that?”

  “It’s for his protection.” Calia walked up to us, arms crossed. “Don’t you know anything? The Architect’s father wanted to make sure one of them survived to take over the Sinistera.”

  “I’m aware of that. But he’s not here so why doesn’t The Architect take over right now?”

  She acted as though my questions were idiotic. “Conditions aren’t optimal yet.”

  “That’s an answer that tells me you don’t know anything, either,” I scoffed. “Can you at least tell me why he’s called The Architect?”

  Calia shared a look with Elliott. “Because he’s constructing a plan to win the war.”

  “A war which is over?” I challenged, just to see what she’d say.

  “Oh, sweetie pie.” Calia gave me a look full of pity. “Only the suckers believe that.” She placed her hands on her cheeks and affected surprise. “Don’t tell me you also believe that Dr. Febrero is dead!”

  My heart stopped, then spasmed into a frenetic beat. Even though I had no reason to trust Calia I believed her about this. It made perfect sense. Dr. Febrero was alive. He was the man in the hood. It all made sense. The city’s greatest enemy had been taken alive. But what had been done with him, and why had the military leaders captured him when they’d ruthlessly killed others who’d had nothing to do with the mad scientist’s crimes?

  “We need to take a break,” I told Elliott.

  He gaped at me. “But we just started the shift.”

  “Sorry. Perk of being the boss. I say we’re taking a break. Come on.” I headed for the elevators.

  To my aggravation, Calia followed, too.

  “Where are you kids going?” she asked with a sickly sweetness that tested my patience.

  I’d re-meddled my gun and kept my hand near the holster now in case I needed to draw on her again. “I don’t care what The Architect says. This is my job and I’m finishing it.”

  “This isn’t about your ego, sweetie. It’s all about him and this freaky hotel. You couldn’t do the job so now the professionals are taking over.”

  A bolt of electricity struck the carpet ahead of us.

  “Stop that,” I snarled, spinning to face her. She jerked to a stop, her eyes lighting up at the confrontation. “I’m Head of Security and if you make this place unsafe then you’re out, you got that?”

  But she only laughed. “You really think this place needs or cares about a security guard? The guests do what they want, when they want. They don’t need you and the staff doesn’t need you. You’re only here for The Architect’s purposes. If you defy him then someone else needs to take your place.”

  “Why are you so hung up on him?” I asked.

  She shrugged and studied her nails. “I’m attracted to power. Whoever The Architect is, he’s powerful. Maybe the most powerful in the city.”

  “The most powerful what?”

  “Does it matter?” She rolled her eyes at me. “You should just be happy that someone’s willing to go to all this trouble to fight the system and put our corrupted government in its place. The freedom fighters might have done it. They were strong enough. But they were just as dirty as the rest. They took their victory money and left, laughing. They’re the truly despicable ones.” Her smile seemed sly, though I didn’t know why. “So it’s up to The Architect to do what they were too craven to do.”

  Her words infuriated me, but another fight would do neither of us any good. Calia was ignorant. That was her loss. I had an advantage over her because I knew what had really happened to the freedom fighters after the war. At least, I thought I did.

  “Someone told me you’re only doing this for the money, Calia.” Elliott flinched beneath her glare, but he didn’t take the words back.

  “Screw you,” she shot at him. “I want the money. Of course, I do. I’m not stupid. We can make a fortune here if we’re good. But I’m not a mercenary. I’ve got good reasons to want to see this city burn.”

  “So tell us,” I challenged. “Prove we can trust you.”

  As I’d hoped, her face darkened. “I don’t owe you anything. You’re nothing to me. Walk out and don’t look back. You’re obsolete.”

  She turned on her heel and stormed off in the other direction.

  “She attacked me before knowing I was a
Special,” I murmured.

  “I…may have told her.” Elliott cringed apologetically. “I didn’t want to. But she killed my squirrels and—”

  I put up a hand to stop him. “You don’t need to explain, Elliott. She would have found out anyway.”

  We paused at the elevators, which opened a few seconds later. He and I got in.

  “Let’s talk to Sheridan.” I punched the button for the lobby. “I think if we press the witch connection we’ll get somewhere.” I watched the numbers above the door change. “Did you know about Dr. Febrero?”

  Elliott fidgeted beside me. “I’d heard rumors he might still be alive. It’s a scary thing to believe. I mean, I know the government lies, but that’s one of the biggest lies they could tell. They told us he was dead.”

  “They told us that so we’d move on like they wanted and not question how he did what he did or try to understand why he would betray us like that.” The numbers above the doors flashed steadily. “That’s the biggest thing, isn’t it? If they took him alive that means they questioned him. They learned things, like how he managed to melt the ice caps in twenty-four hours and how he controlled the demons. They have those answers and they haven’t told anyone, Elliott.”

  The depths of their secrecy chilled me. If they would keep those things secret, as well as the drugging and destruction of the freedom fighters, what wouldn’t they hide from us?

  “So what do we do?” Elliott asked me.

  The answer was clearer than it had been before. “We help The Architect and see what information he shares with us.” One more floor. “That means we kill this leaper and get on The Architect’s good side, but we have to do it before Calia does.”

  A final ping. We’d reached the lobby. The doors slid open and an entire ocean’s worth of saltwater flood inside the car and filled it to the ceiling.