by Mandy Rosko
“And Soren?”
“He can go back to testing blood samples. I might even decide to forgive him and take his shackles off. They will need to come off eventually if I’m to gain the trust of the public with a few respectable paranormals, after all.”
“Soren lives, and I live. That’s your offer?”
Markus nodded.
Jessica didn’t believe him, but just because she had nothing else to do, no other way to stall for time, she nodded to the square cement wall, the part that was hiding a sliding door. “That was how he was going to get me out.”
She didn’t know for sure, but ever since Soren told her he’d be getting her out before she got put onto the Proxy Project, it had become her main target, the only thing she could think of for how he would get her out of there without a tracker on her.
Markus frowned and turned around. He didn’t seem to get what she was suggesting, that his secret escape hatch might be the issue. He seemed to be looking for something else entirely. “What? What was he going to use?”
Jessica rolled her eyes and pointed. “Your secret escape door. That’s how he was going to get me out.”
Markus’s eyes widened, and then he burst out laughing.
Jessica didn’t like that.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. No, that’s impossible. You must be lying.”
Jessica clenched her teeth hard enough to send shots of pain into her gums. “You asked me how we were getting out of here. That’s how.”
Markus walked right up to the wall itself, as if he could prove the strength and integrity of his escape door by putting himself next to it. “Very well. Tell me how Soren, who is a brilliant doctor, would hack into my security system? He works with blood, not with computers.”
Jessica kept pointing. “You opened the little glass door and pulled out a USB key. There’s a flaw in your system, and you don’t even know it!”
Markus frowned at her, as if he was finally starting to believe she might be telling the truth.
But then the wall behind him flew apart in an ear-destroying explosion that sent cement rocks flying forward, a blast so powerful the force of it knocked her off her feet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Every movie Jessica had ever seen that involved an explosion of some sort, followed by a far-off droning ring, was apparently accurate, because that was exactly what she was experiencing in that moment.
Nothing but that ongoing noise in her brain, and the feeling of thick cotton stuffed inside the tubes of her ears and skull.
It wasn’t even just that. Her entire equilibrium seemed to have been completely thrown off. Like when she’d been a little girl and she’d spun around faster and faster until the world beneath her feet started to tilt and twirl. She tried to rise, hoping to find Soren, make sure he was all right, and to see if the two of them could get the hell out of there. But she was still working on the part where she got to her knees. The floor wouldn’t stop tilting beneath her.
The world was moving too fast, yet somehow, there were people around her who were already on their feet, running around and shouting orders as if nothing had happened at all.
They wore dark clothes. The recruits? Holy God. They were going to go far in this industry with that kind of recovery time.
Someone shouted at her, but she couldn’t hear through the stuffing that clogged her ears, her brain, and even her sinuses, though that could’ve been the dust flying everywhere. Jessica could barely see anything farther away than four inches from her face, and all the voices sounded like they were shouting at her through a heavy blanket.
The hands that grabbed onto her were real, however, yanking her to her feet before she had the chance to get used to being so high off the ground.
Everything swayed and spun, and even though not being able to see any details around her helped, thanks to the dust, she still wanted to throw up.
Jessica dragged her feet as they took her away. Her lack of strength and the fact that these people were moving her so fast made it nearly impossible for her to properly get her feet beneath her.
She would’ve dragged her feet anyway, ringing in her ears or not. She wanted to find Soren.
She wasn’t taken very far before she was stopped, and then more shouting, closer and closer.
Sounded like, mast off?
More shouting. Last omal? Blast oval?
No, that made no sense. She shook her head. The ringing quieted down to something more manageable. Even though it was still there, and the dust made it hard to see, she could finally make out what was being said to her.
“Blast the wall! Ice it! Jessica!”
Ethan. Ethan was holding onto her. She could finally recognize him through the haze of smog. Then she looked down at her wrists, which someone else was holding up, pointing her hands to the gaping hole in the wall.
She was on the other side of Markus’s escape door, and her shackles were off.
People on the other side, in the hidden basement, were starting to get to regain their balance. Many were already on their feet and blinking blearily. She guessed she had less than two seconds before they realized what they were looking at.
“Soren—?”
“We got him! Close the hole!” That was Jack’s voice, Jack who shook her wrists, trying desperately to get her attention.
Jessica didn’t need to hear any more. She let the ice inside her loose and pushed it outward, letting the cold fly to the hole that had been made in Markus’s escape hatch just as guns started to go off.
For the first two seconds, her ice wall was weak and thin enough that some of the bullets penetrated. Someone grunted and went down. A bullet flew by Jessica’s ear like a wasp on steroids trying to win the world cup for speed or something. Then her wall got to be so thick that the only noises she could hear from the bullets were the faint clunks on the other side of her wall as they were stopped. They maybe made it a few feet deep into her ice wall before stopping, not even putting any cracks in the foundation she’d set up. The guns the guards and handlers carried around weren’t exactly powerful. They were small, weak, and the bullets were designed so they wouldn’t penetrate flesh very deep. She was pretty sure in that moment that a couple of Markus’s men were even firing their tranq guns, as if the needles would have better luck. Stupid idiots.
Though Jessica’s power didn’t feel drained, her body did. She was buzzing with so much inner energy that it actually started to snow. Big, fat flakes of snow, looking like stretched cotton balls, fell from the ceiling around her. She could see her own breath.
That was a different kind of energy than the sort her body needed. The blast must’ve done something to her, because she still felt the floor swaying beneath her feet.
Someone grabbed onto her; she couldn’t even tell if it was Ethan or Jack. Either way, the area around her moved and swayed even more as she was forced to run.
“Where’s Soren?” Jessica asked, fighting not to throw up with every word she said.
Too many voices were speaking. Someone might’ve answered her, but she couldn’t hear a thing over all the noise, as strange as that was.
She was pulled into something that felt strangely like a small car. Was she passing out? Shit. No, that wouldn’t do. She needed to stay awake and keep herself aware of everything. She wasn’t out of danger yet.
A low rumble, and then they were moving. Yeah, she was in a vehicle of some sort. It felt and looked something like a golf cart.
Then Soren was there. His lip was bleeding and he had a scratch on his face—where had that come from?—but otherwise, he looked all right. He seemed perfectly fine. His eyes were worried, though. Jessica wasn’t. She smiled at him. “Are you hurt?”
Soren’s hands were gentle as he took hold of her head. The touch of his fingers against her hair was wonderful. Even the quickly building, pulse-pounding pain of the thudding inside of her skull wasn’t enough to drown out how nice and pleasurable it was just to have his hands on her.
“A rock must’ve hit you on the head,” Soren said. His hands left her for a few seconds, and she was aware of the rustle of cloth, even with the sound of wind whistling around her. Then he was pressing his white coat against the back of her head.
Ethan’s voice was right there, sounding so loud it hurt even more than the noises of everything around her. “Is she all right? Is she bleeding?”
“A little.”
“Can she make the snow stop?”
She didn’t recognize that voice. Where had Ethan gotten all these people from?
“Jessica? Can you stop the snow?” Ethan asked.
She blinked a couple of times, processing the request, and then trying to do something about it, trying to do as he asked. The cold was intense; it was even starting to bother her.
“She’s been in shackles too long,” Soren said. “It might’ve caused a buildup of her power. She has to let it out.”
“That can happen?” Jack asked.
“To some people,” Soren replied. “Some people have trouble containing what’s in them. They can’t just shackle it.”
“Incoming, guys!”
The little vehicle Jessica was on came to an abrupt halt. The tires screeched, and there were lights flashing everywhere. Not just the yellow lights of the tunnel, either. Flashlights. Then there were shouted commands.
“You all in the buggies, put your hands on your heads and step away from the carts!”
She didn’t know who it was calling out the orders. It could have been hunters, collectors, guards, maybe even handlers, though she doubted that last part since they were usually inside of the building.
It had to be someone, however. Markus might not be able to get in there, but he still knew where this thing led. All he had to do was get some people inside so they could cut off Jessica and the people who’d come rescue her.
The snow picked up around them. Jessica couldn’t stop it.
More shouting. More noise that went right to her aching skull, making her even more tired, maximizing the pain. “Stop with the blizzard!”
Not only could she not stop, but she wouldn’t have even if she could. If it was making trouble for the hunters and collectors, then good. She wished she could control her power so her cold and frost wouldn’t blindly go after everyone, though. She only wanted the people working for Markus to be cold and uncomfortable in the wind.
“Can she turn that off?”
“Don’t worry about her, let me handle it,” Soren said.
Uh, what?
Jessica looked over at him just as he started removing his clothes. He looked at her, a sad smile on his face. “Make it as cold and foggy as you need to, baby. If they see what I’m about to do, they’ll shoot me before I can get out of my pants.”
Jessica’s eyes widened. She nodded. Her body was tired, but it was stupidly easy to call on a North Pole-quality blizzard. People shouted. Soren smiled.
“I said stop that! This is your last warning!”
His body seemed to shimmer and started to change, but then the whiteout was too much, too thick for Jessica to see more than the dark outline of his shape as it grew and changed. His body expanded and stretched as he released the beast inside.
With the explosion still making her slow, it took her a couple of long seconds to realize what he was doing, what he was becoming.
A dragon. He’d said he was a dragon.
“Open fire!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The gunfire was quick and a lot closer than the gunfire that had come from the men in Markus’s arena. The pop, pop, pops didn’t come from automatic rifles. They were once again from the standard smaller weapons that were handed out to guards and collectors. They probably weren’t even real guns, just more tranq guns and other firearms that were so small the only way they could kill anyone would be if someone was shot in the face.
But that didn’t mean those fuckers didn’t aim high. They did. Someone dropped hard to the floor, and another man cried out and went down.
“Ethan!” Jessica screamed, at the same time a loud roar pierced the air, like the kind that should’ve come from the T-Rex in every Jurassic Park movie. It drowned out any noise Jessica could have made. It made the walls shake, and it jarred Jessica enough that her blizzard, without warning and without her even trying or telling it to, came to a sudden and complete stop.
The fog melted away quickly, and there was a split-second of shock from the hunters and collectors as they realized what they were looking at.
A dragon, the size of a fully grown elephant. Bigger than that when she took its wingspan into account.
Soren. That was Soren, staring down at the men with their weapons that probably seemed a little on the puny side right about then.
He’d told her he was a dragon, but to actually see him as one…
His scales were ocean blue with frost-colored edges. They even glimmered in the pathetic yellow lights of the tunnel. He looked just like every medieval painting she’d ever seen of a dragon, all the way down to the spikes on his face and the horns on his head.
He was gorgeous. Without a doubt the most magnificent thing she’d ever laid her eyes upon, and her body heated with all kinds of new lust, and something else. Admiration for his amazing strength. Okay, yeah, the female side of her brain was incredibly turned on and impressed. So sue her.
She was reminded of her brother when, from the corner of her eye, she spotted him on the ground, gripping his shoulder. Jack was beside him. They were both wearing white body armor, something similar to what the stormtrooper guards wore, but not quite. It was likely meant to throw off anyone who happened to see them, but the bullet that hit Ethan got him right in the joint, the sweet spot where the armor was at its weakest.
Jack was trying to put pressure on the wound, but it was difficult because of the armor. There probably wasn’t much pressure on there at all thanks to that damned outfit, and from the sounds Ethan was making, Jamie was hurting him more than he was helping.
“Fuck! I need to get you out of that!”
“Don’t even think about it!” Ethan snapped. “I can’t take my armor off here!”
He was right. As much as Jessica’s head was spinning, she pulled herself out of the cart, or buggy, or whatever the hell the tiny vehicle actually was.
More gunshots sounded as she made her way to her brother. The bullets struck Soren’s scales, and it was interesting yet terrifying to watch the way they bounced off, tiny grey lines zooming back at the men and women who were shooting in the first place. Or the bullets would just ricochet and hit the walls and ceiling, making tiny bits of concrete chip off.
Soren spread his wings and sucked back a harsh breath. More than half of the hunters and collectors started to make a run for it. Those who didn’t followed suit when Soren released another roar that shook the walls. More cement dust fell. The hunters and collectors ran for their lives, vanishing down the long hall and through doorways like they thought Soren was about to breathe fire at them or something.
It was kind of what Jessica had been expecting, but it was still incredibly impressive to see so many running away from something they were supposed to be trying to catch, instead of toward it.
Jessica was sexually attracted to an oversized lizard. The word dragon was all kinds of erotic, but the facts were the facts. In that form, he was a giant lizard, and she thought he was hot. The sight of him made her hot.
Okay, she was ignoring that for the time being. Her brother was still bleeding all over the ground.
Jessica went to him, quickly dropping to her knees.
Ethan hissed, then bit down on his lips. He looked like he was in major pain. “Fuck, it’s burning. Can you please do something?”
“Yeah.” Jessica put her hands over his wound.
“You’re a healer, too?” Jack asked, eyes wide as if he really thought that was a possibility.
“No.” Jessica swallowed hard,
summoning more cold.
She focused it in her hands, but it started to snow again around her. Lightly that time, but it was still there.
Ethan let out a hard breath when the cold hit his wound. She was gentle with it, wanting only enough to numb the area without damaging the flesh. It was the one useful thing she could do for people in pain. She’d learned that after growing up with her brother, who had been notorious for getting hurt on his bike, or his sled, or from falling out of trees. He’d been a klutz as a kid.
“Okay, that’s good, that’s good,” Ethan said, pushing her back a little. Jessica immediately pulled her hands away from him.
“What are you both doing here?” She looked up at the faces all around her. She recognized none of them. “Who are these people?”
There was another man bleeding from the stomach on the floor, and another person—she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman with the armor—lying dead on the ground. The people nearby picked up the body and quickly brought it to one of the buggies.
If the dead person was a friend of anyone there, then it only made sense these people didn’t want to leave him, or her, behind.
“We had someone on the inside,” Jack said, and Ethan grunted loudly from the pain when Jack quickly pulled him to his feet. “He told us where one of the tunnel entrances was and we got in.”
“Soren?”
He shrank in size, melting into something that looked a little more human in shape. More like Soren as she knew him. He was naked, but he walked tall like he was in a tailored suit as he moved to his clothes and started putting them back on. His confidence was beyond attractive.
“Not me,” Soren said, shaking his head at her as he pulled on his pants first, doing up the button and fly. “I didn’t know where this tunnel led, remember?”
“Then who?”
“Me.”
Jessica jumped back to her feet at the shock of Charles’ voice so close to her ear, which was a huge mistake because then the floor tumbled and tilted before flying up to slam her in the face.