She steeled herself, the cold, dark muzzle of the gun ready and waiting in front of her eyes. Maybe she could be a hero? She’d had no control over the circumstances of her actual death, so why not choose a brave ending in this life? Be remembered for making a selfless choice. Go down in spectral history—was that even a thing?—for being the girl who saved Sleeping Beauty.
Carolyn swallowed. Raised her chin as if daring Rico to shoot.
Anger washed over Rico’s face. “Get the girl,” he told his henchmen without turning around.
The crowd broke free, flanking Rico as they made the short walk across the room.
Carolyn turned to run to her aid when a smattering of bullets sprayed from the Tommy gun and caught her in the back of the head.
She went down. Fast.
Her face met the carpet, and all she knew was black. She wasn’t dead; she knew that much. But she had lost control of her body.
The last thing she saw on the way down were the henchmen circling the girl like vultures, and Feng Mian sitting like a statue, his eyes fixed on her sleeping body.
Liberty Island, New York City
Desperate hands reached out of the fire, specters clutching Jennie’s sleeves like sailors drowning at sea, grasping at Jennie as though she were a lifeguard there to pull them from their pain.
Spectral fire was a substance unto itself. She had witnessed the effects of fire on specters on several occasions throughout her history, and it never got any easier to deal with.
For a start, they ignited like dry kindling. The moment a specter felt the lick of fire, it was already too late. The flames were a hungry beast, and they ate whatever spectral energy they touched until they could eat no more, jumping from specter to specter until everything was consumed.
Not only that, but specters didn’t help themselves in these situations. Spectral fire was rare, and something that usually only occurred when a specter had been birthed in flames. While the mortal body disintegrated, an ember or spark could sometimes carry across into the spectral world, and then it was hard to contain.
Which begged the question, how did Tom have the ability to cast fire?
Jennie looked at the chaos, eyes narrowed as she shoved specters off her and looked through the crowd for any sign of Tom or Baxter. Occasionally a gunshot would sound and a scream would follow, but that didn’t quiet the noise.
Flames licked at Jennie’s feet, and she knew there was only so much time she could avoid the fire before she was burning like the rest. She passed back into her mortal form and ran across the chamber, taking brief solace in spots where the flames had yet to reach.
It was as she craned her head and fired a shot with the Big Bitch at a nearby specter who had dived at her that she felt the arms on her waist. She was picked up from behind and carried across the chamber toward the fire.
Jennie kicked her legs, her arms pinned by her side. The specter’s grip was strong.
“Will you stop kicking?” Baxter called. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
Jennie breathed a sigh of relief but was alarmed to see that Baxter’s legs were now alight. If this sudden bonfire was somehow to end, they would need several gallons of spectral water to douse it all.
Or a freezing cold river to jump in.
The idea hit Jennie as quickly as the flames had spread.
“Baxter, to the ladder.”
“Sure?”
“Do it!”
Baxter craned his head around Jennie and avoided specters who barred their way. Jennie called down through cupped hands, “Lupe! If you can hear us, meet us at the bottom! Run, run, run!”
She didn’t wait for a response. “Now, Baxter, toward that wall!”
She pointed to the nearest section of stone, flickering with the vibrant spectral glow of the flames. Baxter hissed as his skin heated and the flames bit his legs.
“But…the fire?”
“Just fucking do it!” Jennie shouted.
Not wanting to question Jennie’s judgment, Baxter ran toward the wall. When they neared, he began to slow.
Jennie’s eyes narrowed. “Keep running—”
“But—”
“And prepare to jump!”
Jennie could see Tom tearing toward them around the outskirts of the chamber like a boulder. To Jennie, it looked as though his entire body was aflame, but not in the same way the other specters were. It was as if he were harnessing the fire for his own purpose.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Tom was a few feet away when Jenny latched onto Baxter. In her spectral form, she could feel the fire streaking toward her like a candle to cotton. Baxter’s legs were powerful, and they now soared through the air, the chill juxtaposed with the heat and causing their bodies to sweat with cold perspiration.
Baxter gave Jennie an extra shove in mid-air, ensuring her trajectory would lead her to the water. The fall would have been exhilarating had it not been for the searing pain of fire, yet the air quickly sucked away the flames and left nothing but stinging coolness where the flesh had melted.
The river came up to meet her faster than she would have liked, then her body hit the freezing water, and Baxter’s followed swiftly after.
The water stole her breath even as she felt the sweet relief of cool water on her skin. Fighting her way back to the surface, Jennie breached the water and took a big lungful of air.
High above, she could hear the spectral screams of the burning ghosts.
The Plaza, New York City
Light flared off the girl’s body the moment Rita touched her. She recoiled, shaking her hand as if she had just been electrocuted, and tried again.
All she needed to do was put her arms around the girl, fling her over her shoulder, and run from the room, yet another flare of light appeared, as though an invisible forcefield was keeping the girl contained. It appeared in blue waves, some kind of magic she didn’t understand.
Rita looked back at Rico for help.
“Grab her!” he snarled. “Let’s go!”
Rita shook her head. “Why don’t you give it a go? It hurts.”
Rico looked down at the young woman he had shot, then stepped over her and rapidly crossed the room. The Chinese man was still sitting quietly in his chair, so he was no problem whatsoever. If he began kicking off, then he’d be in trouble.
Rico shoved Rita aside and made to pick the girl up when another flare of light pulsed and zapped him several feet backward.
“What the…”
“It’s him, boss,” one of the executive women exclaimed, her eyes fixed on Feng Mian. “He’s doing this somehow.”
Rico couldn’t understand how it was possible, but he knew she was right. Feng Mian hadn’t moved since they had arrived, and even now, his concentration was unbroken. Was he somehow pouring energy around the girl and creating a protective shield?
Rico trained his gun on Feng Mian’s chest. “You’ve got one chance to stop what you’re doing, old man.”
Feng Mian didn’t respond.
Rico sighed. “Fine. Two for two, it is.”
As he made to pull the trigger, Feng Mian sprang out of his seat and took hold of the gun. He forced the weapon out of Rico’s hands, and it flew across the room and hit the floor. Rico was taken aback by this sudden flurry of movement. He felt Feng Mian’s hands on his wrists and a sharp tug.
Feng Mian twisted, throwing Rico over his shoulders.
Rico landed on his back and felt something pop. “Get him!”
The other specters came at him. Feng Mian stood in the center of the room and welcomed their attacks. The woman with the rosy cheeks and black teeth hurled herself at him, whipping her arms in a flurry of punches.
Feng Mian matched her pace, blocking each blow as it came. He planted his feet, and the neutral expression on his face made Rico believe he’d been doing this for all of his existence. There was nothing he couldn’t block.
The power executives flanked old Rosy, and then he was fighting
all three of them at once.
But not for long.
With a series of carefully placed chops and pinches to key nerve areas, old Rosy was sent to the floor, the final blow a sharp, severe pinch in the crook between her shoulder and neck that momentarily paralyzed her.
A punch from one of the executives knocked Feng Mian off-balance, but only for a moment. He recovered a second later and kicked her legs from beneath her. She toppled backward, crashing into the worktop of the kitchenette, where she slid down onto her ass.
Rico watched all this as he struggled to get up from the floor—the impossibly fast movements of the old man, the controlled, trained attacks. Whoever this man was, he clearly had a mastery over his body to be envied, and his other powers made him a dangerous enemy.
The good news, Rico thought. As long as he’s distracted, he can’t be casting his shield on the girl, right?
His thought was confirmed a moment later when Rita scooped the girl into her arms and cradled her to her chest. “Rico, quick. Let’s move.”
Rita and Rico raced for the door when the last of their posse, the mobster from the fifties, charged into the fight like a raging bull and attempted to grab Feng Mian by the waist and knock him off-balance.
Feng Mian made to chase them, but the executives and old Rosy were back on their feet. The four of them created a spectral barricade, and even though Feng Mian was holding his own, he couldn’t make it past them in time to stop the pair from running off with the girl.
Rico and Rita melted through the door. Feng Mian threw punch after punch until the four specters went down. He raced through the door, out into the corridor, and stopped at the elevator doors.
It was too late. They were gone.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Plaza, New York City
Jennie fell through the door a short time after the specters had left. Remaining immaterial, she didn’t bother to unlock the door.
Her heart had leapt into her throat when she swept in and saw the devastation that had followed her departure from the apartment. The girl was gone, half of Carolyn’s head was missing, and Feng Mian was sitting staring stoically out of the window.
“They tricked us.” Jennie opened the liquor cabinet, foregoing her usual withdrawal of cocktail ingredients in favor of pouring the hard liquor directly down her throat. Vodka burned, but it was nothing compared to the tequila which came next.
Tonight had been a shitstorm, and for more reasons than Jennie cared to admit. Not only had they been blindsided by the fake intelligence given to them by the specter in Hell’s Kitchen, but then they had also been ambushed at the Statue of Liberty by the fire-crazed specter hell-bent on killing them both.
Jennie had expected to find the crown’s new US ambassador in their hideout. Maybe have been able to cut off yet another head of the hydra before the whole faction had had a chance to regroup.
But instead, they had fallen for the distraction, and they had lost the girl, too. She wasn’t even sure why the girl from the rock was important at this point, but if the loyalists were interested in taking her, then there must be something more to this than Jennie was aware of.
And the worst part of it all? The part that made Jennie’s blood boil and her rage come out in sharp, hissing breaths?
The seats of her brand new Mustang were sopping wet.
She had hesitated outside the car after they had swum the final stretch of the Hudson, realizing that spectral or not, she was going to drip river water all over her seats.
Her ass had squelched, and now her thighs chafed, and she daren’t look at the marks or damage the water had left on the seats as she sped through the city, gave the car to the valet, and ran to her hotel room.
“I did what I could,” Feng Mian told her apologetically. “They outnumbered us.”
Baxter rubbed the back of his neck as he examined the large hole that ran from the back of Carolyn’s head all the way through to her left cheek. The shot had taken some of her eye, but already the wound was beginning to heal.
Jennie filled her mouth with tequila, set the bottle back on the counter, and swallowed. She winced as it traveled through her body and warmed her up, fighting her freezing cold exterior by heating her interior.
“I know,” she assured Feng Mian. “I trust you did all you could. That doesn’t make this pill any easier to swallow.”
Jennie grabbed the neck of the bottle and crossed to where the others were sitting in the living area. They exchanged their versions of what the night’s events had thrown at them.
Carolyn and Feng Mian asked questions about the attack at the torch, and Jennie didn’t know how to answer. “I’ve got no information on Tom except for a faint recollection of reading his name. I don’t know how he came to possess his powers, nor do I truly believe he was fully in allegiance with the crown.”
“It’s like he was hell-bent on destroying everything he could,” Baxter agreed. “The minute the flames began, he reveled in it. You could see it in his eyes. He didn’t care who he destroyed; he just loved inflicting pain through fire.”
“Perhaps the torch is spectral entrapment for him?” Feng Mian suggested.
Jennie arched an eyebrow. That was something she hadn’t considered.
Spectral entrapment was a new world to her. Over in England, the process was simple. You lived as a mortal, you died and became a specter—unless, of course, you chose the eternal void at the moment of death.
But over in a land where witches and magic were believed to exist since the 1600s, how many people had found ways to contact the dead and find ways to encase them in rocks and other artifacts, indefinitely?
Jennie had never believed in witches, of course. Yet, as someone who had spent over a century living among the world of specters and witnessing the impossible, who was she to say something didn’t exist? Perhaps there had been some truth to the paranoia and fear of the Salem Witch Trials, and the world of magic was real.
Nothing seemed to be impossible.
“So, not only can specters be contained in artifacts and items of someone’s choosing,” Baxter mused, scratching his chin, “But now you’re suggesting specters can be restricted to particular rooms and areas? Like, geographical borders that limit where a specter can go? How would that work?”
“I don’t know,” Jennie admitted. “But if a specter can be trapped in a small container, who’s to say that’s not true? Maybe that’s why he’s still up there. There has to be a reason he didn’t follow us.”
They sat in quiet contemplation. Jennie occasionally poured another shot of tequila into her mouth, not even offering any to her spectral friends at this point. So lost in her own thoughts that the idea didn’t even occur to her.
“What’s so special about the girl?” Baxter asked at last.
Carolyn shrugged. When she spoke, her words were slightly muffled from the hole in her cheek. “Maybe she has powers they’re aware of? Stuff they could use against us?”
“I don’t know.” Jennie sighed. “In all honesty, I think they just don’t want us to have what we’ve found. Think about it. The specters loyal to the paranormal court are scattered. They’re desperate, looking for any way to regroup and gain power again. If they’ve seen us chasing after specters and freeing them from their entrapment, they’re bound to want to take what we’ve hunted down.”
“How would they have seen us?” Baxter asked. “No specters were around when we found the girl.”
Jennie held up her phone, the screen displaying a still image of an explosion of light in the museum, and several silhouettes stood holding hands around the rock.
Baxter groaned. “Oh, I always forget about social media. Shit.”
“So, what can we do?” Carolyn asked. “How can we find whoever stole the girl and get her back?”
Jennie considered this a moment. Her eyes darted around the room as she voiced the thoughts turning over in her head. “Okay, we need to think about this. First, we found a faction of the queen�
��s court that has been turning over specters like they’re popping corn. Next, we’re lured over to Hell’s Kitchen due to an increase in spectral activity and meet a specter who dropped clues to the whereabouts of the other specters—”
“Before blowing his brains out,” Baxter added.
“But he deliberately misled us and sent us into an ambush, while the rogues took advantage of our falling for their shit by breaking into the apartment and stealing the girl to take…somewhere.”
“That about covers it,” Baxter concluded.
Jennie stood up and began pacing the room. “It’s my fault.” She grabbed the bottle and took a swig, the neat tequila burning her tongue again. “The minute Worthington showed his true colors, I should’ve moved. Of course, he knew where I lived.”
“Who’s Worthington?” Carolyn whispered.
Baxter leaned in close. “Her old specter. A Beefeater.”
Carolyn chuckled. “Oh, the dude with the ridiculous hat?”
“That’s the one,” Baxter replied.
Jennie continued as if they hadn’t spoken. “And now we have a city divided into three—the rogues who have been working the side mission for the queen, the specters who are genuinely loyal to the paranormal court, and the Spectral Plane.”
“Not that that’s going to last for long,” Baxter pointed out. “It doesn’t matter if they’re rogues or not; they’ve all sworn an oath to the Queen. The minute they unite under one banner is the moment we’re fucked.”
Jennie crossed over to the window and stared out at the city. A warm palette of colors was breaking across the sky. The city was beginning to move, commuters on their way to work, parents taking their children to school. Soon the city would be abuzz with the activity of millions of mortals, all unaware of the conflict currently taking place in the spectral world.
“Then we best not let the two sides meet,” Jennie stated. “Whatever we do, we have to warn the other side. The ones who took their vows in good conscience and would hate to see the corruption happening within their precious court.”
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 28