"Oh, thank God," one of them said under his breath.
"Are you sure?" another asked. "We're under orders-"
Grant conjured up a smile for them. "We're here now. Go get some rest. I insist."
This was met with a chorus of grateful nods and a couple of thank yous.
He turned toward the stairs and saw that Alex stood right at his side, as always. But she was facing away from the subway.
"Okay, guys," she said to their two trainees with a mischievous grin. "Class is in session."
Underground, pandemonium raged. Over one hundred men and women battled with fists and feet and packages and purses and whatever else they could get their hands on. It was like a free-for-all at an Old West saloon; no one seemed to be fighting for any particular reason, nor did they care to find one.
It was pure, unbridled aggression. Most likely further reaction to the world spinning out of control of late, Grant guessed. The real question was how it had started.
The fighting filled almost the entire station, spilling over across the tracks to both sides of the platform. A few dozen crazed souls even fought down on the train tracks, oblivious to any oncoming danger.
He sensed Nora was right in the thick of it on this side of the platform but made no move to intervene on her behalf.
"Do you mind... ?" said Grant. He remained near the bottom of the stairs and crossed his arms, resting his fatigue against a side wall.
"Getting old and feeble on me?" Alex teased.
"Hey, I got shot today," he retorted.
He had no idea what powers these two possessed, but despite his weariness, he was curious to find out.
Alex faced Henrike and Wilhelm. "Gentlemen. You have just walked into a highly dangerous situation involving a hundred or more pedestrians, and a member of your team is located smack-dab in the middle of it. You need to put a swift end to this situation without doing permanent harm to anyone, and you need to pull your teammate out of danger. How do you handle this situation?"
The two men merely looked at her.
"That wasn't a hypothetical, guys," Grant offered, unmoving from his spot against the wall. "Step up and show us what you've got. Now."
Eager to please, Henrike moved forward first, at the edge of the stairs, and spread his bulky arms wide. His brow came together in intense concentration and focus, and his muscles flexed and rippled all over his body.
Grant waited for something to happen but saw nothing. Had Henrike tricked them somehow, perhaps weaseling his way onto the team with a fake ring?
He was just about to tell the big man to give it up when he felt it.
Cold.
The temperature had dropped inside the station. And despite his earlier feeling that whatever Henrike was doing was taking a long time, once Grant saw his own breath he realized just how fast Henrike had worked.
There was no blast of arctic wind, no tangible signals of what had caused the change. The temperature all around had simply lowered to a frigid state. In moments, the room had been rendered an enormous meat locker.
The fighting slowed as the cold spread throughout the station. Momentarily, everyone stopped, searching for the source of this drastic climate change.
"Not bad," Alex said.
Henrike smiled, as pleased as if he'd just gotten a gold star from his favorite teacher. "And it is not merely cold I can induce. I can cause the temperature to increase also."
"What you can't do," Alex noted, "is talk and still hold onto your concentration." She nodded toward the station.
Henrike turned, horrified, realizing that by explaining his abilities to Grant, he'd broken off his meditation. The room was already returning to normal temperatures.
Punches flew once more, and the fighting resumed as if there had been no pause.
"No!" Henrike cried. "I'll do it again-"
"That's okay, you did fine," Alex said, placing a hand on his shoul der and pulling him backward. "Let's give someone else a try."
The small man, Wilhelm, stepped forward timidly, arms hanging limp at his sides. "I don't know if I-" he said softly.
"Don't worry," Grant said reassuringly. "This isn't a test. We just want to see what you're capable of."
Wilhelm registered a worried expression on his face and still never quite met Grant's eyes. He turned slowly to face the fighting crowd. But unlike Henrike, he never screwed up his face in concentration, never bore down on anything or even raised a finger.
Without warning, a bright blue bolt leapt from one of his hands hanging at his side and jumped down to the nearest human body on the ground level. From there, it branched out instantly, from body to body, connecting them all in a blinding electrical current. It arced down onto the metal train tracks and surged up into the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, which instantly exploded and went out.
And then it was over, nothing more emerged from Wilhelm's hand, and the room was dark. Emergency floodlights came on throughout the station, but all other sources of electricity were dead from electrical overload. All the people who had been fighting now lay on the ground, awake but in shock.
All of it happened in less than three seconds.
Grant kept looking back and forth between the small man and the crowd on the ground below him. His jaw hung open, but he couldn't form words.
"What just happened?!" Fletcher cried into their earpieces, his surveillance equipment no doubt going haywire. "What did he do?"
"How . . ." Alex stammered, registering the same shock as Grant. "How did all of that come from a mental ability?"
"Thoughts are just electrical impulses traveling through gray matter," Wilhelm said quietly, and then he stepped back, again trying his best to become invisible.
It was a futile effort, for now nearly every eye in the structure had turned to look upon him.
"What was that?" called out a voice from below.
Like everyone else, Nora was on the ground but was slowly recovering, getting back to her feet. She moved toward Grant and the team, while they moved toward her.
Like so many of the Loci, Nora was unique. Aside from her wellknown power to render normal humans unconscious, she was equally known for her unpleasant disposition. They'd taken a gamble in letting her onto the team, as she'd had a criminal record before the Shift, but that was ancient history. Morgan vouched for her, and that was good enough for everyone else. And she'd proven a valuable team member in the field, even if Grant and Alex often found her hard to handle.
Most of the other Loci whispered amongst themselves that it was best not to get on her bad side. (Grant thought they would soon be adding Wilhelm to that list as well, after what he'd just witnessed.) Strongwilled and defiant, Nora had no inclination to avoid confrontations. Instead, she seemed to thrive on them.
Displeased, she cast squinty eyes on Grant. "Did you do that? I was just gettin' warmed up!"
"Who started this fight?" Grant asked in a tone that implied, It better not be you.
Nora pointed to one of the men on the floor nearby. "His girl mouthed off at him and he laid into her with both fists flyin'. Couple a' Good Samaritans tried to bail her out, and it turned into a free-for-all from there. Ask me, people just needed to work off some aggression."
Grant raised his voice. "Everyone go home. Now," he ordered. "This is over."
The crowd slowly rose from the ground and dispersed, no one daring to argue with Guardian. But Grant held the man who'd instigated the fight pinned to the ground.
"I have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to abusers," he said slowly. "I've seen too many of you, and I'm running out of patience with it. So you're going to pack your bags, you're going to leave your girlfriend alone, and you're going to get out of Los Angeles. I don't care where you go from here, but stay out of my city. I ever see your face again, I'll remove it from your head."
As Grant released him, the man cast a nasty look in his girlfriend's direction. But he exited as ordered.
"What were you doing here?"
Grant rounded on Nora the minute they were alone after returning to the surface above.
"Julie said she sent you to Dodger Stadium," Alex added.
"Contact got twitchy, called and asked to move the meeting to someplace with more people. Jerk stood me up anyway, though. What's the big?"
"You're supposed to notify Fletcher of any change in plan, and you know it," Alex replied forcefully.
"Hey, big G here knows everywhere I go, every move I make, anyway," Nora replied, cocking her head at Grant. "Nothing I do can change that, right?" She walked away toward the SUV.
Alex and Grant turned to one another and shared a look of frustration. Alex became pensive. "Do you really think that was wise, back there? Sending that man off to someplace else, outside L.A.? Won't he just find someone else to victimize?"
Grant was tired of talking. Why was Alex questioning his decisions? And why now? Couldn't she see how exhausted he was? "What should I have done, Alex? Can't turn him over to the police-local jail cells are bursting at the seams already after today. Should I have just killed him and removed the threat from society?"
"No! I don't know," she replied, waffling. "But I don't believe you're in the position that you're in for the benefit of just one city."
"The whole world is too big a place for us to fix. We're a small group-"
"-of superpowered people-" Alex interjected.
"-who have limited means and resources. And L.A. keeps us plenty busy as it is. Who has time for international travel? Our faces are famous; how would we be able to leave the city without being mobbed? Or even arrested? Just because LAPD appreciates our efforts doesn't mean the rest of the world would. It's too much for me to stop it all-"
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Then we do what we can. And we inspire the rest of the world to do the same." With that, she joined Nora and the two men at the car.
Women, Grant thought.
As he stood there on the well-lit street corner in front of where the Wagner Building had once been, his phone vibrated.
"Yeah."
"Hello, Grant." It wasn't a familiar voice. The guy spoke with a South African accent, sounded very refined, upper-crust even. "I've waited a long time to make your acquaintance."
"Who is this?"
"My name is Devlin, though you will find that piece of information unimportant. What will matter to you is that I am the Keeper of the Secretum."
Grant didn't respond. He couldn't think of anything to say.
"I infer from your silence," Devlin went on, "that your grandfather told you to expect another to be appointed to take his place."
Grant found his footing and remembered how tired he was. He wasn't the same person the Secretum was used to dealing with; he had no use for their games anymore and saw no reason to put up with them.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Merely to introduce myself. I think you saw me earlier today, at the nursing home fire you handled so readily and sacrificially."
The man in the tailored suit, standing on the roof...
"You've been watching me," Grant stated. He's probably watching me right now.
Grant spun in place, taking in his surroundings. He observed the pedestrians strolling the streets on all sides, the nearby office buildings with a few lights still on here and there, the cars passing by. There were rooftops so high in the darkness that any number of people could have been on one of those buildings, watching him right now.
He could be anywhere. Anyone.
"Of course I have," Devlin replied. "That's why I'm calling. I knew you'd spotted me this afternoon, and I feel you deserve to know who you're dealing with. It's important to me that you know that though I am officially the Keeper, I am not your grandfather. Your relationship with me will not be as it was with him."
"We aren't going to have a relationship."
"I noticed you don't wear his bracelet anymore," Devlin said in a mildly curious voice, not an accusational one.
Grant glanced down at his empty wrist.
Devlin kept talking. "Your grandfather's methods may have gotten results, but they were not without controversy within the Secretum. Many of us regarded his tactics as barbaric and extreme. He repeatedly placed your life in danger, and that is unacceptable."
"I'm in danger every day. It's what I do," Grant replied smoothly. "So why am I still talking to you?"
Devlin laughed, once. "I think you know why ... The game is still in play."
A cold feeling Grant hadn't felt in a long time slinked down his spine. "Not for me, it's not. I'm done with you people. And you have to know you'd be a fool to try anything against me now."
"Believing our own press these days, are we? Yes, I do recall hearing one of them say recently that you are `afraid of nothing."
"Not nothing," Grant replied. "Just not you."
"Nor should you be," Devlin said encouragingly. "As I said before, I've no intention of harming you in any way. But it is my function to finish the work your grandfather started. I will complete preparations for you to fulfill your destiny."
"I've chosen my own destiny. You're not in it."
"Don't be obtuse, boy. You are the Bringer. You will bring into being-" Devlin's voice trailed off, as if he wanted to say more, but held back.
"What? I'm supposed to bring something? Bring what?" Grant demanded.
"In a matter of days, all will be known, and all will be fulfilled. I'll see you then."
Click.
Grant stared at the phone in his hand. Call terminated, it read.
Swell.
All thoughts of sleep jarred from his consciousness, he speed-dialed a number stored on his phone. It rang for a few moments before Morgan answered.
"If you're not at the warehouse, get there now," he said.
It was after one in the morning and the overhead lights were out in the warehouse when Grant and Morgan settled into a quiet corner. Even Fletcher's workstation was dark, though at least one light was still on upstairs in Daniel's lab.
Grant and Morgan found some folding chairs and arranged themselves so Grant could see any late-night lingerers.
"I had a phone conversation with the new Keeper today," Grant said without prelude.
Morgan was just taking her seat as he said the words, and she sat far back to fully process what he'd said. Her eyes grew slightly, but she made no reply, only waited for him to continue.
"His name is Devlin. He thinks I'm still going to become the Bringer and ... bring ... something."
Morgan looked away, her eyes darting to and fro, betraying wheels turning inside of wheels in her mind.
"You're not surprised by this, are you?" he asked, coming to a realization.
She glanced at him as if considering lying, but finally said, "Not at all. We always knew the Secretum was bigger than your grandfather. He himself told you their work would continue without him. Though it would seem you've been outside their sphere of influence for many weeks, it would be foolish to assume that they were inactive during your respite. One must conclude that their plans for you extend far beyond the reach of Maximilian Borrows."
Grant was silent as he allowed her time to ponder this. Morgan had always been a woman of many secrets. Grant often found himself wondering just how much was going on inside that perfect mind of hers that no other living soul would ever know about.
"There's something else," he said softly. "Devlin led me to believe that events are going to be coming to a head very soon. And there was an old man I met at the nursing home. Very strange. Unsettling."
"In what way?"
Grant took a deep breath. "He seemed to think that there were going to be three acts or events that would take place, as a countdown to something."
Morgan eyed him gravely. "Three acts?"
He nodded.
She looked away again, trying to hide an intense shock.
"Why do I feel like you know what he was talking about?"
She regarded him carefully, cautiously.
Forming her words with deliberation, she replied, "It could be a reference to the Three Unholy Markers."
Grant was incredulous, wondering if he'd heard her right. "What are `Unholy Markers'?"
"Disruptions of the natural order of things. Perversions of physics, or of the way the world works. A passage on the Dominion Stone referred to Three Unholy Markers that would take place in the days of the Bringer."
Stunned, Grant leaned forward. "If you knew this was on the Dominion Stone prophecy, why haven't you ever mentioned it before?"
"Grant, the Dominion Stone prophecy is over three thousand words long. I had no way of knowing which passages were of greatest significance until you came along and fulfilled them. Even now, there are parts of it that seem completely nonsensical to me."
"Did it tell what the Three Markers are?"
She nodded and swallowed. Grant recognized the gesture. She was about to recite something from her perfect memory.
These Markers shall serve as a sign to those with eyes to see:
"The first one has already come true!" Grant cried, doing his best to whisper to stifle his shock. "The sky turned to fire the day we defeated my grandfather!"
"Yes," Morgan replied, already aware of this. "And I take no pleasure in making the connection, Grant, but I believe it is of utmost importance to point out that you caused that `unholy' act to occur."
"You think I'll be the cause of all three Markers."
"The Secretum thinks so."
"I still can't believe you never told me about any of this."
"Even if I had, would you have been interested in hearing it?" Morgan retorted. "I've warned you many times that nothing about the prophecy changed just because your grandfather died. But your focus has been elsewhere of late."
What do your eyes see?
Grant looked down, realizing his frustrations were more rightly pointed at himself, not Morgan.
"In any case, this confirms my findings of late," Morgan continued.
"Findings?"
"Yes. I'm afraid we must wake everyone at once. As of this moment, time is too precious a commodity to waste on sleep."
Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2) Page 8