by Jaime Rush
She peered in the window while strands of her hair wafted in front of his nose. He brushed them away, so it looked like he was playing with her hair when she turned to him. She gave him a stern shake of her head, but he wasn’t sure if she meant Stop playing with my hair or I don’t see the kid.
She bumped into him, forcing him to back up. “I don’t see anyone,” she whispered.
“I’m going in.” Whether Jonathan was in there or not, Hayden was going to find some answers. His fingers clenched. And if he had to smash some heads to do it, fine by him.
“You take the right hallway, I’ll take left,” she whispered.
He carefully pulled the door open, relieved to find it unlocked. No one was expecting an intruder this far up. He scanned the main living room as he veered to the right, spotting a half glass of milk on the coffee table. Ahead, double doors looked like the entrance to a master bedroom. In the other hall, he heard a door fly open. A wall of Light slammed into him, making him stumble back. A man appeared behind the Light, wielding a sword. He was older and in excellent shape. Talbot, he guessed.
Hayden dodged arcs of Light as he drew his own sword. Their “blades” clashed, sending sparks that burned Hayden’s skin. Talbot tried to advance and force Hayden into the open space. But Hayden whipped the sword in frenzied arcs, sending those sparks shattering over his opponent and pushing him toward the end of the hallway. Talbot obviously thought he had more room, because he looked surprised when his back hit the wall. Hayden lunged forward and thrust the blade into the man’s abdomen.
He clutched the hole in his stomach with his glowing hand, already working on healing it. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’ve come for the boy. Where is he?”
“There’s no boy here.” But the man’s expression betrayed his surprise. “You’re the Vega who’s been sniffing around where he shouldn’t. Masters, right?”
Hayden hoped Mallory had found Jonathan. Why hadn’t she come out of the back hall yet?
Talbot Leaped, ending up right behind Hayden and plunging forward with his sword. Hayden moved, but not fast enough. The blade sliced him across the side, sending a searing pain through him. When Talbot thrust forward again, Hayden threw him to the side with his Light. The force of it sent him hurtling toward one of the upholstered chairs, toppling it.
Hayden heard a thump down the other hall. That wasn’t good. As Talbot bounded to his feet and came at Hayden, he maneuvered toward the opening of the hallway. No sign of Mallory or anyone else. Since she hadn’t come to assist him, Hayden had to assume she was dealing with someone, too.
As confirmation, she let out a scream of pain. Hayden ran down to the open doorway on the right, driven by instinct. Immediately he realized he’d trapped himself. Talbot was advancing, his jaw rigid as he wielded his sword.
Mallory burst out of the bedroom backward, hitting the wall hard. She held her footing, bringing her sword up to deflect a hot beam of Light coming at her. She sliced it in half, sending each side arcing away from her to hit the wall.
Hayden faced Talbot, meeting his advancing sword with an upward thrust of his own. Talbot’s gaze riveted on Mallory. “So that’s how you got into the Tower. A clear violation of the rules, Muse.”
“So is kidnapping kids,” she muttered, slicing her blade down the other Caido’s arm and taking off an inch-wide swath of his skin.
He reacted with a lunge that barely missed her neck.
Talbot didn’t seem concerned about his minion, not affected by his scream of pain in the least. He circled Hayden, his voice oddly calm. “I do not kidnap children.”
“No, you buy them from the Bend, which is nothing more than a black market baby farm. One that I’ll be shutting down.” Hayden pushed Talbot back with another series of frenzied moves.
“That will be hard to do from beyond the grave. You may have wheedled your way in here, but you will not be leaving in one piece. The barriers are set to lock-down mode. Though I would like to know how you did get into my unit.”
There was a pounding at the door. “Father! Father. Let me in. There’s trouble.”
Kevin.
“Use your key, idiot! I’m dealing with the trouble right now,” Talbot yelled, lunging at Hayden with his sword.
“Key,” Hayden muttered as he dodged the blade. “We could have looked for a key.”
Mallory pushed back the man she was fighting, who was now trying to grab her. “That would have been boring.” She brought her sword up between the guy’s legs, and with a scream, he leaped backward. His pants were scorched all the way to the crotch, but he’d managed to save his junk. So far.
She pushed open one of the closed doors and peered inside. “I haven’t seen the boy. He’s not in either of these rooms.”
“I told you, there’s no boy here,” Talbot said. “Whatever heroic quest has you both addled enough to break into my home is for naught.”
Because he’s in that Hummer. Hayden didn’t want to alert Talbot that they knew about the Hummer, so he kept that to himself. Hopefully Kye and Kasabian were following it.
The man Mallory had been fighting came out of the bedroom once again, more cautiously this time. The scent of burned fabric filled the hallway.
Hayden lifted his hands. “You’re right. We’ve made a mistake. We heard you had kidnapped a boy. The lead was obviously wrong.” He snatched Mallory’s hand, yanking her closer. “I apologize.” It was time to pound in some heads, but Hayden wanted the men off guard. “We’ll leave now.”
Just as he came even with Talbot and readied his Light, something circled his ankles and held him in place. Black vines sinuously wound up his legs, his hips. They were doing the same to Mallory. What the hell?
She screamed and yanked out one of her wing feathers, using the dhagger it became to cut at them. The knife worked differently than Light. It held a super-concentrated charge of power and was more precise. The vines mended as fast as she cut them. Others circled her arms and pulled them tight behind her. The dhagger fell from her fingers to the carpet, gleaming silver in the light. Hayden was just as bound, and it happened in seconds. His magick faded, and his wings sank into his back. Her wings did the same.
Wraithlord magick. Talbot was one, too.
Kevin burst in at last, panting. He took in the scene and pointed to Mallory. “She set me up!”
Talbot looked at the open French door. “So that’s how they got in.”
“I’m a member of the Guard,” Hayden said in his most authoritative voice, struggling against the confines. “I command you to release us.”
“The Guard has no say where I am concerned.” Talbot’s eyes flashed as black as smoke, and his smile was just as eerie. “Please, don’t rush off,” he said in a hospitable voice. “I’d like to chat with you about your source of information. Allegations of kidnapping are very serious, you know.”
“Let her go, and I’ll talk.” Hayden wasn’t promising to talk about anything specific. “I coerced her into helping me.”
Talbot scratched his chin. “She didn’t appear to be coerced when she tried to castrate my associate.”
“That’s because my informant alleged that you had something to do with her niece’s disappearance. He used her concern about the girl’s safety to fire her up.”
Talbot walked closer to Mallory. “And this informant connected your missing niece to me? Interesting.” He grasped her chin in his grip. “Have you met this font of information?”
At the sight of his fingers digging into her skin, Hayden jerked toward her. The vines held fast.
“Only over the phone,” she lied, but that wouldn’t protect Kasabian. All Talbot had to do was check with security to see who had been to visit Mallory.
“Since he misled you, I assume you’ll be cooperative in telling me all about him.”
“I don’t know anything.”
The vines pulled Hayden and Mallory together so hard that their bodies collided with a loud whump. H
is chin fit over the top of her head, filling his nose with the ginger scent of her shampoo. Her face was smashed into his chest, and she turned so that her cheek pressed against him instead of her nose.
Kevin edged in closer, reminding Hayden of a hyena circling its prey. “Let me have her.” He bared his teeth. “She owes me gratification.”
Hayden felt her body stiffen at the same time that his did. That he was helpless to do anything to protect her raged through him.
Talbot moved his hand, and the vine followed the motion, pulling them off their feet, and they crashed to the floor. He walked to the balcony, trailing them along behind him. “Since you like hanging out on balconies so much, you’ll enjoy this.”
The vine slithered up the wall and anchored on the ceiling formed by the balcony above, stringing Hayden and Mallory upside down. They swung with momentum for several seconds, the outer arc flinging them over the edge of the railing to look down eighteen stories. Hayden’s cell phone fell from his pocket and landed on the tile deck.
Talbot snatched it up. “I have an important meeting with people who will be very interested in learning about this new development. Perhaps you’ll be willing to share more when I return. Watch them, Brian.” Kevin started to open his mouth again, but Talbot cut him off with, “It was your need for gratification, I presume, that led to this invasion of my privacy? This could have been disastrous. Go home and marinate in your idiocy.”
“Can I have her?” Brian grinned as Kevin trudged toward the door. “My own personal slut, bound and gagged, legs tied to the bedposts spread-eagle.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Hayden said. “You don’t talk about her like that.”
Talbot punched Hayden, sending the two swinging again. Pain rocketed through his jaw as Talbot swung in and out of view with an amused expression. “And they say chivalry is dead.”
Brian hadn’t taken his eyes off Mallory. Or specifically, her body. “If you leave her bound with your magick, she won’t be able to do a thing but lay there and look at me. I can do anything I want to her.” He laughed and looked at Talbot. “Ever heard of someone being fucked to death?”
This time Hayden heard her soft intake of breath. Hayden wanted to kill the guy just for saying it.
The corner of Talbot’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t smile. “No, can’t say that I have. I want to spend some time with them, find out everything they know. When I’m finished, you may have your way with her. And since the male seems bothered by the prospect, I say let him watch.”
Chapter 16
Kasabian followed the Hummer across the causeway. “I’m not sure if they’ve made us yet. I’m going on the assumption that they have, which means we need to be ready for anything.”
Kye was working on one of those spy orbs, having lost the original one when they Leaped. Using her long, graceful fingers, she coaxed her magick into something that looked like a solid object. “Good boy,” she whispered, then rolled the window down and released it. “If you’re adept at making orbs, you can do this remotely. Unfortunately, I’m not.” She narrowed her eyes in concentration, and the orb zigged and zagged in the draft of the cars speeding by. It flew into the next lane and was hit by a car.
“Damn it.” She flattened her palm and tried again. “If I knew I’d need these things, I would have practiced more.”
“We do have the vehicle in sight, you know.”
She gave him a duh look. “But if we lose them, or rather if they lose us, we’ll still know where they’re going.”
“Brilliant.”
Her smile at his admiration turned into a thoughtful look. “Why didn’t you go with Mallory? I was surprised when you sent Hayden, since you and she are, well…you know.”
“We’re what?” He wanted her to say the words.
“Involved. Attached.” She shrugged, but there was nothing casual about it. “You have a history.”
She’d surprised him by suggesting that he and Mallory get together. Kye may have lost her abilities—temporarily—to sense people’s sensual feelings, but surely she knew that she was the only woman he could think of in romantic terms. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d made that pretty clear. Or, as he suspected, she was trying to build a protective distance between them.
“I chose you because you can make spy orbs,” he said, leaving it at that. “What if I did get romantically involved with Mallory? Would that break our bond?”
“Maybe.” The word popped out, hard and cold.
She released the latest scry orb out the open window. It bounced around on the drafts again, but she held it under better control. Still, she had trouble directing it to the bumper.
The Hummer suddenly shifted lanes and slowed down, dropping behind them.
“Shit. We’re definitely made,” Kasabian was able to say before it slammed into his car and sent it into the short guardrail.
Kye screamed as the huge vehicle started to ram his much smaller one again. He gunned the gas and slid out as the Hummer’s bumper made contact. The Lotus shimmied until Kasabian got it under control again. The Hummer was coming up behind him fast.
“Get your seat belt on,” he said, maneuvering around another car.
“Kasabian, watch out!”
The Hummer rammed another car, sending it spinning toward them. The cars collided, smashing the headlight and sending a spray of glass into the air. His foot jammed on the gas, but the other car involved in the crash was blocking forward movement. The short concrete guardrail blocked them in on the right. And on the left, the Hummer barreled at them.
Something black streaked toward the Lotus and split off like two tendrils. One snaked into the car, right through the glass, and wrapped around his arm. Kasabian couldn’t see where the other one went, because the Hummer slammed into his car and sent them over the rail. Kasabian’s arm automatically shot out to grab Kye and Leap them out. But he couldn’t. Like in his altercation with Silva at the estate, Wraithlord magick had paralyzed his Caido abilities. He didn’t have time to figure out how to use his own dark abilities to get them out. The blue water came up fast, and they hit nose-first and plunged into the water. The windshield shattered, obliterating his forward view. He slammed into the steering wheel.
The car sprang to the surface, throwing him back into his seat. His head was still spinning, pain radiated throughout his chest, but his gaze went to Kye. Not in the passenger seat. Slumped down, nearly folded in half. Not moving.
“Kye!” he screamed, and blood spurted from his mouth. His lip was cut so deep, it bled when he called her name.
Water sluiced into the car through the vents and broken windshield. He reached over and gently rubbed her back. “Kye, wake up.”
Gods, there was blood all over her legs. The door. The seat. The car was sinking fast. He thought he had to let the water equalize the pressure before he could open the door.
Or he could Leap. The dark vine was gone, its job to keep them in the car done. The pain of Invoking paled in comparison to everything else. He put his hand on Kye and Leaped, through the barrier and into her living room. The cat let out a yowl as he launched off the back of the couch.
“Sorry to startle you, Vlad,” he muttered, his gaze on Kye as she slumped onto the floor. She was unconscious, her body slack, but he sensed life in her. He would not let her go. Fear clutched him at the sight of blood pooling from a gash in her head and soaking her hair. The skin of her cheek was torn, and he thought the bone might be shattered. At the moment, he was more concerned about any internal injuries.
“Hang in there, love,” he said, and more blood poured from his lip.
He waved his hands over her head, sensing swelling in her brain. His breath left him, the absence of it crushing his chest in a dull throbbing. Taking in another breath increased the pain to excruciating. Damn, broken ribs again, but this time probably paired with a side of punctured lung. He sent healing energy to her, feeling the lesions mending, the brain returning to normal size. He moved down her body, readi
ng the numerous injuries: broken collarbone, bruised kidney, torn tendons, and general trauma. He pulled from his deepest resources and triaged.
You have to leave enough to heal yourself, a voice whispered.
Her first. Have to…
Lastly, he returned to her cheek and mended the bones, tissue, and skin.
Her eyes fluttered open, dazed and heavy. She met his gaze and then must have seen the span of his wings, because she whispered, “My beautiful angel.”
He brushed his trembling fingers across her cheek. “Sleep, love.”
“Love,” she repeated, her voice slow and thick. “I like when you call me that.”
“You shouldn’t.” Despite his pain, elation filled his heart.
She frowned. “I wanted you to kiss me, too.”
“You’re delirious, love.” Damn, the word had slipped out again. What do I know about love? Except that he shouldn’t be feeling it for her because they were supposed to be keeping a chaste distance. “Close your eyes. You need to rest.” His lip split with his speech, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore.
“Like you did with Mallory when she helped.” Her eyes drifted closed. “On the forehead.”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he did neither. “You shouldn’t want me kissing you anywhere.”
She mumbled something, but sleep finally claimed her. He wanted to lie there and watch her, but his strength was waning fast. Even covered in blood, she was achingly beautiful. He knew he was looking at her the same way she’d been taking in his wings—with awe. Hell, she’d caught him in the Thrall, and it wasn’t supposed to work that way. He’d never loved someone before. Never thought he could. He wanted to think it was all lust. That he understood. But with his Dragon Shadow quiet, this felt like much more. That was scarier than the Shadow had ever been, because he wanted to be a man worthy of her. And he was far from it.