Ruby Fever EPB, page 13
I dropped my hold on their minds, and the world reeled, my mind unable to adjust.
My mother was right there, in the open, against the car. Spikes hammered into the metal around her. She screamed, a short guttural sound.
I dashed into the open.
A cloud of bats dropped from the sky swarming between us and Xavier. Magic sputtered and nails sank into the swarm. Little furry bodies dropped to the ground.
I sprinted to Mom. She sagged against the SUV and grunted. I slid on broken glass, caught myself on a car, and landed by her. “We’ve got to move . . .”
A two-foot spike protruded from Mom’s right thigh, pinning her to the SUV. Blood drenched her leg, soaking through her jeans. Her hands were red.
I gripped the spike and pulled. It didn’t move.
“Leave me,” Mom snarled.
My hands slid on my mother’s blood. I grabbed my shirt, wrapped it around the spike, and pulled with everything I had.
“I said leave!”
Cornelius charged around the car. He saw the spike.
“I can’t!” I told him.
He tossed the shotgun to me and gripped the spike. The muscles on his forearms bulged. Mom gasped, sucking in air.
The swarm of bats had thinned and through the gaps, I saw the glow of another magenta circle sliding upright.
Cornelius planted his foot onto the car and pulled, his back swelling, the muscles in his neck cording.
“Leave me! Go!”
Cornelius growled like an animal. Gus dashed next to me and bared his teeth.
I had a shotgun and a dog. We were too far to do any damage. The moment Xavier saw Mom, she would die, and Cornelius would die with her.
Magenta magic crackled.
The bat swarm scattered. Xavier grinned in the glow of his circle, Gunderson next to him, gripping his arm with a bloody hand. His face was a mask of pain. A car hung suspended in midair above them, poised to fly through Gunderson’s magic screen.
It would land on top of Mom and Cornelius, and it would explode like a bomb. They would die. In an instant, I saw my mom’s lifeless body fall to the ground, Cornelius crumpled next to her, his blue eyes glassy and blind.
No. No!
I lunged into the row. Xavier saw me, his grin turning brighter.
All of my frustration and fear exploded inside me, burning into fury. Black wings burst from my back, their edges burning with red and I screeched. It wasn’t a song. It wasn’t a scream. It was a screech, a terrible, awful shriek that cut like broken glass. Magic tore out of me in a dark torrent, guided by my voice like a laser and smashed into the two men. The circle around Xavier went out like a candle snuffed out by a hurricane. Gunderson’s eyes rolled back into his head. He dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face. The magenta screen vanished.
Xavier stumbled back, his face bloodless, and cried out. The car in midair wobbled, dancing back and forth.
The circle around Xavier reignited. It had protected him against most of my shriek. He stumbled inside it and straightened slowly.
The tower of the Office of Records was right behind me.
Xavier was a coward, and nothing scared him more than me gripping his mind.
A surprised telekinetic throws in a catenary curve.
I sucked in a deep breath and spread my wings, my black feathers erect, their tips glowing with red like hellish coals. I thrust my arm at him and opened my mouth.
Look at me! I’m about to scream again. Look!
Xavier howled. The car dipped, swooped down, and flew at me at an insane speed. He’d swatted at me like I was a flying cockroach about to land on his face. He’d barely even aimed, and the car was coming way too fast and way too high.
I dropped to the ground. It hurtled over my head, across the parking lot, swooping up in an arc, and smashed into the Keeper’s tower, three stories up. Dark glass exploded. The car vanished into the building, leaving a ragged black hole.
Thank you, Connor.
Darkness boiled out of the hole, like the tentacles of some great nightmarish beast. Michael emerged from its center and halted at the edge of the gap. Blue lightning, too dark to be natural, forked behind him.
Xavier took a step back. Gunderson remained on his knees, oblivious. The glow of his mind was gone, its light diffused.
The darkness splayed out of the hole, streaking across the parking lot in black twisting currents. The streetlamps flickered and went out one by one.
The currents surged above us, and I felt their magic. It was horrible and ravenous. It wanted, it needed, it sought its prey. Gus whined next to me, cringing. I wrapped my arms around the dog, trying to shield him. If the darkness wanted us, it would take us. There was nothing I could do against it. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how to fight it.
Michael stared at Xavier. The currents twisted toward the telekinetic.
The circle around Xavier died. He spun and sprinted away, running for his life.
The currents bit at Gunderson like striking snakes. He made no move to evade. There wasn’t enough left of him to recognize the danger. They whipped around him and streaked upward.
A man-shaped sculpture made of grey dust knelt where Gunderson used to be. It collapsed and scattered into nothing.
The darkness turned toward Xavier. He was almost to the end of the parking lot. The currents shot toward him, pursuing him like a living thing, indifferent and hungry.
Xavier jumped onto a motorcycle at the edge of the parking lot.
The darkness was almost to him. The last set of lamps died.
The engine roared, and Xavier tore out of the parking lot at a reckless speed.
The darkness swirled at the edge of the lot, impacting into an invisible boundary, and streaked back to the building, withdrawn as if sucked back in. It churned around Michael and slipped behind him.
Michael looked at me. The power in his stare gripped me. I didn’t know if it was a warning, irritation, or a “you’re welcome.” I just couldn’t move.
He turned around and disappeared back into the building.
I sat in a small private waiting room just inside the ER. Gus lay by my feet. Cornelius had taken a chunk of shrapnel in his back while he was pulling the spike out, and the ER personnel adamantly refused to allow the Doberman into the room with him.
As soon as Michael had left, we pulled the spike out. Cornelius picked up my mother, and we hurried across the street to the Woman’s Hospital. They took Mom first, then Cornelius a few seconds later. I called home from Arabella’s emergency cell phone. The call connected and I gave them a thirty-second summary. That was all I had time for because the medical staff grabbed me and nearly dragged me into the room in the back. I didn’t even get to ask about Alessandro.
At some point during the fight, broken glass had punctured my legs. My pants hung in shreds and my legs had been drenched with blood. A few fractions of an inch deeper or to the side, and I would have bled out in that parking lot. I lay there as they cleaned and irrigated my wounds and prayed that Alessandro had survived.
I couldn’t lose him. I just . . .
I had this fear. It lived deep inside me like a small animal with sharp claws that had burrowed into my soul ever since I saw the recording of Arkan killing Alessandro’s father. I had been afraid before, I’d been anxious before, but this fear was a whole new beast. Whenever Arkan’s name was mentioned, it woke up from its hibernation and scraped me with its sharp hot claws.
Once they removed the glass and patched me up, I left the room in my hospital gown and underwear. I couldn’t stay in there. The walls were closing in. The brief brush of Michael’s magic kept reverberating through me, as if I had been stained by it, and that stain was now slowly fading. I needed to be somewhere in the open, where I could see people, so I’d come back to the private waiting room and found it empty except for Gus.
We’d almost died. Xavier could have killed us. Mom was hurt. Cornelius was hurt. It was a miracle that all three of us survived. A ghostly echo of Michael’s magic swirled around me. I hugged myself, trying to banish it. I was at my limit, and I’d been gripping all my emotions in a tight fist of my will for so long, they were choking me.
Gus rose to his feet and put his head on my thigh. I looked into his brown eyes and almost cried.
Not yet. We weren’t safe yet.
The door swung open, and Alessandro marched into the room. His expression was terrible. He looked like he would murder anyone who got in his way and not even notice.
I hugged Gus. If this was an illusion mage, Gus would know.
Alessandro saw me and stopped.
Our eyes met. There were so many things in his eyes: fear, fury, relief, and love. Not an imposter. Alessandro. My Alessandro.
He cleared the distance between us in half a second, dropped by me, and gripped my shoulders. “How bad are you hurt?”
I put my arms around him and stuck my face into the bend of his neck. His skin felt scalding. I was a Prime and the Head of a House. I should have maintained composure, but I had nothing left.
He hugged me to him, his arms strong, but his hold careful.
“Catalina, talk to me.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words to explain it. I’d thought he’d died. I almost saw my mom die. I had felt everything, Xavier’s volatile power, driven by pure hatred; Gunderson’s deranged glee; Cornelius’ desperate song that made me want to throw myself on the ground and cry until my eyes ran dry; and, worst of all, Michael’s indescribable darkness that still clung to me.
He kissed me, his lips hot on mine, and pulled me closer. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Sono qui con te, I’m here . . .”
I squeezed myself against him and held on.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay, love, it’s okay . . .”
My mouth finally worked. “I thought you were dead. I thought Gunderson and Xavier killed you.”
“Not in a million years. I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you.”
The fear clawed me.
“It’s okay. I’m here . . .”
“We need to go home. We all need to go home.”
“We will, angelo mio.”
My mind finally started, like a rusted water mill forced to turn by the current. “Konstantin set us up.”
“I know.”
“There is a mess in front of the Office of Records.”
“Leon is handling it.”
“Mom’s security detail . . .”
“We found them. They are alive and being treated.”
He kissed me again and cradled me in his arms until Cornelius returned and the nurses wheeled my mother out in a chair.
Chapter 8
Alessandro had brought the Vault Bus.
From the outside, the massive vehicle resembled a heavily armored truck, but inside, instead of cargo space, the bus featured two rows of seats along the walls, each with an individual harness. It could seat twenty-five, if you counted the four seats in the cab. It also weighed upward of forty thousand pounds, about the same as a fully loaded sixty-foot bus. Even Connor would need an amplification circle to lift it off the road.
As soon as Mom was done, Alessandro and our guards loaded us into the Bus, and we were off.
I rode with Alessandro in the cab while one of our guards drove.
The night outside of our windows was so dark. Deep and stifling despite the streetlights and the glow of storefronts and windows.
Alessandro took my hand. I held on to him. We rode in silence for a long time.
“Talk to me,” he said finally.
“It’s my fault.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I should have told you about Konstantin as soon as it happened.” He would have known instantly whose skin Konstantin was wearing and would have anticipated the shitstorm that would follow. “Failing that, I should have identified his disguise. I’m supposed to be smarter than this.”
“You were in the middle of an interrogation with an unstable mental mage. I, on the other hand, abandoned you and left to run a political errand. Had I stayed, the outcome of tonight would’ve been much different.”
“What happened with that?”
He shook his head. “We went to the school. Gunderson had mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared by a post office. We went there. He was gone again. Then came a sighting half a mile away. Again, we were too late. I checked the surveillance footage at the post office. The camera should have caught him according to eyewitnesses, but it didn’t. I realized I’ve been chasing an illusion mage, and not a very powerful one at that.”
A Prime would have shown up on the security footage as the person he was mimicking, but a lower-level mage didn’t have enough juice.
“I tried to call you and got voice mail. Then I tried the Compound, and the call wouldn’t go through. I borrowed Matt’s phone and called the Compound again. No answer. I called Linus’ house, then Bern . . .” He shrugged. “Finally, the light dawned. I shut off the phone and went home. I was pulling into the driveway when you called from the ER.”
“Arkan got to Gunderson?” I guessed.
“Most likely. Nothing in our background on either Gunderson or Arkan shows a link between the two. Arkan saw an opportunity, and Xavier must’ve taken it for him. The way Gunderson got out of the lockup suggests a telekinetic interfered.”
“Did Bern restore the phones?”
“Partially. He got the Compound landline working. He was still working on the system when I left. Leon got home about the same time I did. The FBI agents were hit on their way from Cabera’s house to their office.”
Damn it. “Is he hurt?”
“He says he isn’t.”
Knowing Leon, that meant nothing. His arm could be cut off and he would tell you he was “fine.”
“Are Wahl and Garcia okay?”
“They are alive, but according to Leon, ‘not happy.’”
Ugh. “Why go after the FBI?”
Alessandro gave me a dark look. “He’s trying to cut off access to Smirnov.”
“He isn’t sure if the FBI knows anything, so he tried to kill them just in case?”
“That would be my guess.”
“They’re federal agents. He doesn’t strike me as a stupid man.”
“Smirnov must know something. Something so big that Arkan is desperate to keep it quiet.”
I looked at him. “What could it be?”
“It concerns Konstantin. I’m following a trail of bread crumbs.” He faced me. “Catalina, I promise you I will find out.”
“I know.”
I leaned back in my seat. We’d gotten hit on every front. The buck stopped with me.
“Blaming yourself is the easiest thing,” Alessandro said. “Coming up with a plan is much harder.”
I knew he wasn’t telepathic, but sometimes I had my doubts.
“I got complacent.”
“We. We got complacent. Do you understand how cybersecurity works? Could you write code to deal with a network security breach?”
“No.”
“That’s Bern’s job. A job he is very good at. I had an even simpler job, one job, to protect the Acting Warden. I left that job because I judged that doing a favor for Lenora Jordan was in our House’s best interest. You can’t micromanage everyone. You must delegate. You have done that. All of us knew what we had to do. We got outclassed.”
“Not for long.” I gritted my teeth. Magic stirred inside me. Normally it was like a clear geyser bubbling up to the surface any time I lifted the lid. This time it felt different. Vengeful. Vicious.
He leaned over, brushed a tear off my cheek, took my hand, and kissed it.
“I’m not sad,” I told him.
“I know. You’re crying because you’re angry.”
I leaned against him. “Are you angry?”
Orange sparks flared in his eyes. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me to him. His magic wound around us, violent and charged with power. It didn’t feel like anger. It felt like wrath.
“Very,” he said.
I laid my head on his shoulder. “Good. Let’s be angry together.”
The hill around the Compound was pitted with large holes, as if someone had tossed a handful of grenades about. A crushed metal wreck that might have once been a vehicle smoked slightly on one side of the road. On the other side, three other wrecks, crumpled and smashed like discarded Coke cans, formed a modern art installation dedicated to House warfare—one on its side, one upside down, and a third torn in half.
Arabella must’ve been furious. There was plenty of that to go around lately.
Patricia met us at the main house, flanked by a medical team and my younger sister. The moment the Bus doors slid open Arabella bounded inside.
“Mom!”
“I’m fine,” Mom answered. “It’s minor. Don’t freak out.”
“You smell like blood and smoke!”
I turned to Patricia. “Casualties?”
“None on our side.” She turned and pointed to the left.
A row of bodies lay on the ground, sealed in body bags. One, two . . . Nine. An enormous metal club, covered with dark stains, rested next to them. Connor had given it to Arabella for her eighteenth birthday. That explained the ruined vehicles. Good. I was afraid she might have stomped on them. The last time she went on a stomping spree, she cut her monster foot, and after she reverted to human form, we had a devil of a time making her get the tetanus shot.
“Arkan deployed a pyrokinetic and a psionic, backed by a few professional killers,” Patricia reported. “Your sister informed me that she would handle it. She did.”
It would have taken a better psionic than anyone Arkan had to panic Arabella. When she raged out, there was no room in her for anything except fury. Trying to induce fear would have just pissed her off more.
Alessandro finished helping my mom out of the Bus and handed her off to the medical team. His phone rang.
His face snapped into a harsh mask. He took the call and walked away. Italian again, too low for me to hear clearly.
The dead bodies lay in a neat row, like matchsticks in a box.
“What about the three guards who went out with my mother?” I asked.
