“No,” he said, and I was jerked back as someone pulled me away from the desk. “We’re seven stories down. They can’t reach a ley line from here.”
“Trent can!” Landon exclaimed.
I flung my head back. The sudden crunch of cartilage and the cry of pain raced through me, fueled by adrenaline. My grin widened at the cry, and I yanked my arm free, spinning and jamming my palm into the man’s jaw for good measure. He fell back, but I was already turning. “You will not take Lucy from him . . . ,” I panted, almost crawling over the desk to get at Cormel.
“Down!” someone yelled, and I heard Trent’s voice raised loud in elven chanting.
Ta na shay swirled in my thoughts, making my heart pound and my lips pull back from my teeth. “You!” I snarled, and Cormel dodged out of the way, his eyes black in fear as he saw my desperate confidence.
I feinted, then scrabbled the other way, ducking his reach for me and spinning to slam my foot behind his knee.
He dropped. I could hear crashes behind me and Landon shouting spells. Someone shot one of those stupid guns. “Trent!” I shouted, turning.
Cormel’s fist slammed into my head. Dazed, I did nothing when his meaty hand fastened on my neck, yanking me up with the strength of a wolf with a kitten. “You think you can best me?” he snarled, and I screamed under the pressure. Tears born in pain pricked, and I hung there, seeing Trent struggling under two vampires. I could smell ozone and gunpowder. A woman screamed for help in the hallway.
“Let go!” I exclaimed, the last of the energy in my chi sparking between us.
Cormel jerked, his hold coming back all the stronger. With a sudden tug, he yanked me to him, an arm wrapping around my neck. “God help me, how does that vampire bitch resist you?” Cormel murmured, his breath in my hair. “Do you know how long it has been since anyone has been able to hurt me?”
From somewhere, ever-after energy burst from me, and with an angry cry Cormel flung me away. I hit the wall, sliding down and rolling to stay out of his reach.
“Corrumpo!” Trent raged as I tried to find my feet, failing. Just as well, as a pulse of force exploded from Trent, knocking everyone down. The windows shattered into the hall with a loud pop, and frightened cries filtered in. Cormel was on his hands and knees. His men were disoriented.
I ran for Cormel, scooping up a gun as I went. Energy zinged down my pathways from an unending spool in my head. Trent must have given me more than I realized.
“Cohibere!” Landon bellowed from the floor, and I ducked even as Trent set a circle and the magic was harmlessly deflected.
I skidded to a halt behind Cormel, dropping down and wrapping an arm around his neck and shoving the gun to his head. “Give me Ivy. Now!”
Cormel moved, and I stung him with a pulse of ever-after. “You want to live forever?” I shouted, gun pressed against his head. “You need your brain intact! Tell them to back off! Now!”
It had gone silent. Landon was flat on the floor, a haze of energy in his hand. Trent was standing over the two vampires he had downed. He had a red mark on his forehead, and his eyes were angry. Whispers came from the hall, and I tightened my grip when six capable-looking vampires edged through the glass in the hallway. Each one of them had a gun pointed at me.
Cormel began to laugh, pissing me off. “Shoot her,” he said to his men. “Try not to hit me this time.”
My eyes widened. Shit, he had called my bluff.
“Rachel!” Trent cried out, and he went down under two vampires.
My breath came in. I could see everything. Landon on the floor, the court papers strewn before him, a scrap of Trent’s pants showing from under the pile of guards, the scent of excited vampire stinging my nose.
The bang of the handgun seemed too small, and I knew before the bullet left the muzzle that it was going to be true. I had no time. My eyes closed and I wished it had happened some other way. Energy tingled, but I couldn’t set a circle. Not without being connected to a line. He’d won. The bastard had won.
With a familiar furp-ping, the bullet glanced off a bubble and buried itself in the wall.
I tensed, feeling nothing but the sensation of tingles over my skin. My heart thudded in the new silence, and I opened my eyes. Someone had saved me. Trent?
But it hadn’t been him. My lips parted. Cormel tried to move and I instinctively tightened my grip, shoving the handgun into him harder. A faint haze hung before me like a bubble, but it wasn’t the expected red-tinted ever-after with shades of an aura, but a milky white.
Shit. The mystics.
Panicked, I looked at Trent. His face was pale as he struggled in the grip of two vampires.
“How . . . !” Landon sputtered, the papers scattered before him forgotten. “You don’t have a familiar!”
I swallowed hard, my grip on Cormel tightening. “Yeah, how about that.” Everything I’d been working for to get the demons to survive was gone. Even they wouldn’t listen to me now. Not with mystics swarming through me.
“She must have taken a familiar,” Cormel said. He had me on weight, but the gun beside his eye kept him still.
“That’s right,” I lied, and Trent shook off the goons on him. “You there. Put the paperwork on the desk.”
“This won’t change anything,” Landon said. He was right, but I wasn’t leaving without Ivy.
“Get Ivy in here!” I shouted. “Now!”
No one moved. “You’re just going to have to kill me, Morgan,” Cormel said, and it was starting to look like a good option.
Trent tensed as my finger tightened. It wouldn’t take much. The world would be a better place. “Rachel! Don’t!” Trent called out, and I looked at him, unbelieving.
“Why not?” I asked, watching Cormel’s eyes dilate in fear.
“This isn’t who you are,” Trent said, shaking off the hands holding him.
“How do you know?” I shouted, and the whispers from the hall grew loud. “I already let one sniveling excuse for a person live because you asked me to. Maybe this is who I am! Huh? Maybe I’m just a murdering bastard and you don’t know it! Why should I be any different from you? Why!”
I swear I saw a drop of sweat trickle down Cormel’s neck. He wasn’t breathing, terrified.
For three long seconds Trent thought about that. Head dropping for an instant, his eyes rose to find mine. The enormity of the past two days was on him, heavy and thick. “You’re right,” he said softly. “Do what you want.”
Cormel’s eyes closed to hide the fear and hope that I might shoot him dead and end it all.
Son of a bitch, this isn’t who I am. Crying out in frustration, I shoved Cormel away from me. I never saw him hit the floor as someone flew at me, tackling me around the waist and sending me down.
“It’s yours, it’s yours!” I shouted as one sat on me and spun my arm around behind my back and another wrenched my wrist until I let go of the handgun.
“Get her off the floor!” Cormel bellowed, and I was yanked to my feet again. Like a huge cat, the master vampire paced before the desk, his fear just under the surface. Landon was a hunched shadow gathering his precious paperwork as if it was diamonds in a mine. But I couldn’t look away from Trent, strapped and standing with a defiant gleam in his eye and a cut under his cheekbone. His suit was rumpled but the only fear in him was directed at me. He knew the mystics were working in me. I was a loaded gun.
“You going to kill me now?” I said. “And you wonder why you walk into the sun when you find your soul.” The soft sound of Landon shuffling papers almost made me sick, and I stared at Cormel defiantly when he jerked to a stop.
“Don’t harm her,” he said, pointing, and my arm was wrenched back until I saw stars. “Put her in a box. One that has holes so she can breathe. Kalamack . . .”
His voice whispered to nothing, and my breath caught when I realized Trent didn’t have the same value I did. My lip curled and I pulled the mystic energy together enough to make my hair begin to float. If he made one
move to hurt Trent, it was going to start back up, and this time I wasn’t going to hold back.
Cormel’s lips were pressed tight as he looked from me to Trent and back again. “Put them both in a box,” he said. “Kill his horse, though.”
Trent didn’t move as two vampires literally lifted his feet from the floor.
“Which one is his?” one of them asked, and Cormel looked at me in disgust.
“I don’t know. Kill them all.”
“Cormel—” Trent said, his voice cutting off when one of the vampires hit him.
Cormel turned his spilled coffee cup upright. “I’ll get my soul, Morgan. One way or another.”
“Yeah?” I managed before we were pushed into the hallway, my boots and Trent’s dress shoes clinking among the shards of safety glass. We had two vampires each holding us, and though I could do magic, Trent would suffer if I did.
“Hey, Trent,” I said as we were shoved past the onlookers and to the elevators again. “Was this about what you wanted?”
“Apart from his killing my horses, yes. Cormel now realizes he needs me.”
We were at the elevators, and I looked at him, wondering how big this box was going to be. “Needs you? For what?”
His eye was beginning to swell, and he smiled as the doors opened and they muscled us in. “To keep you from killing him, of course.”
Chapter 21
As cells went, it was one of the more spacious lockups that I’d been in. I didn’t think it was one of the usual I.S. cells, though I could be wrong—it would be a mistake to lock the undead in a standard bar-and-cot five-by-eight. The fifteen-by-fifteen room had a toilet behind an opaque screen and a pedestal sink. There was even a mirror over it, cemented into the flat gray walls. I hadn’t decided yet if it was a two-way or not, and by now, I didn’t care.
There was one cot, which Trent was stretched out on with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. One gray blanket and a thin, sad excuse for a pillow was all they had given us. I didn’t mind sharing such a tight space with Trent, but I was beginning to have issues with us being down here at all, even if it was nicer than that damp HAPA cell under the museum, or the soft gray nothing of the demon lockup, or even the rat cage Trent had kept me in for a few days.
Frustrated, I looked at him, his green eyes fixed on nothing as he took slow, careful breaths. He was irritatingly relaxed, with his shoes neatly arranged under the cot and his slim feet in their gray socks just begging for me to come over and run my finger up the arch of his foot to make him jump.
His jaw tightened when I sighed impatiently, and I put my ear to the door, listening. It was soundproof, but I tapped it anyway. I still hadn’t seen Jenks. Ivy was down here somewhere, too, and I hit a knuckle again, straining to hear an answering knock.
“What are you doing?”
I couldn’t tell if the irritation in his voice was real or me projecting. “If we’re in a cell block, then maybe Ivy’s next door.”
“Well, could you do it a little quieter?”
Not believing what had just come out of his mouth, I spun slowly on a heel. He was right where I’d left him, eyes closed and his neck muscles tight. “You want me to be quiet?” I said, and he cracked a single eye. “We’re locked in a box and you want me to be quiet?”
Trent’s eyes opened all the way, and he looked at his watch. “Not bad. Most people would be at my throat in forty minutes. It’s been almost three hours.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re impressed!” Hands on my hips, I watched him swing his feet to the floor and stretch. “Landon not only gets control of the dewar but he also gets Lucy. Because of me. Because if not for me, none of this would be happening! Forgive me for being a little upset.”
He eyed me as he finished his stretch, elbows on his knees. “Why do you think everything is your fault?”
“Because it usually is.” Ticked, I gestured wildly. “If not for me you wouldn’t be in danger of losing the girls, the dewar would listen to you, and you wouldn’t be broke. And Tulpa.” My face scrunched up in sudden worry and my anger fell flat. “Trent, what if they kill him?”
“Tulpa will be fine.” He shook his wrist to spin the zip strip to a more comfortable spot. “I’ve had rival stables try to break into the grounds, and you were the only ones to make it.”
“Still, with one Uzi and a parachute—” I started, and he held up a hand.
“Second, I’m not broke.” Trent reached for his shoes, wiggling one on, then the other. “Third, Landon doesn’t understand what makes Lucy important. Having her doesn’t ensure a following. Stealing her does. Landon didn’t steal Lucy, he used the law, and it won’t bring him as much political power as he thinks.” He hesitated, bringing a foot up to retie a shoe. “And last, if it wasn’t for you and Jenks, I never would’ve had Lucy in the first place.”
“Even so.” Somewhat calmer, I came closer, wishing they had a chair in here. “They’d listen to you if it wasn’t for me. Because of who I am and who I protect.” Glum, I sat beside him as he laced up his shoe. Smiling, he put a hand on my knee. Crap on toast, how does he make everything seem so easy?
“Demons?” Trent patted my knee. “It’s admirable. The vampires are simply afraid.”
My breath came faster as I flexed my hand. That hadn’t been ley line energy that had spooled from me to make that circle in Cormel’s office, it had been straight from the mystics I had stolen from the Goddess. “They’re right to be afraid,” I whispered, uneasy. “I don’t know why the demons haven’t started turning the people in front of them at the grocery store inside out. Where do you think they are?”
Head cocked, Trent gazed about our small cell. “I think they’re sitting on a beach terrorizing sand crabs. That’s where I’d be if I’d just escaped from prison.” Rising, he stretched again. His dress shirt had come untucked, and it pegged my attraction meter.
Wrong time, wrong place, I thought glumly. “How long do you think they’re going to make us sit down here?”
Trent’s eyes met mine through the mirror as he finger-combed some continuity into his hair. “Oh, sunrise tomorrow, I think, when every vampire who gets his soul tonight suncides.” He arched his eyebrows at whoever was behind the glass before he turned to me.
“Then you think Landon will get enough support to bring the undead souls back?”
“Fear will push them into it.” He was tucking his shirt in. It looked like he was getting ready for something. “It won’t be long now,” he added as he looked at his watch. “I’d probably feel the charm down here if I wasn’t strapped.”
Frustrated, I got up. “I flinched. I was so worried about you being hurt that I wasn’t paying attention. And then, when I get Cormel where I want him, I chicken out.”
Eyes serious, Trent held both my arms to my sides, making me look at him. “I like you when you’re good.”
I pulled away and flopped down on the bed. “Great, that’s great,” I said sourly.
Trent hesitated for a moment, and then, with an odd, determined pace, he went to the sink. “Why don’t you take a nap. Just lie there and be quiet for a minute.”
My head turned and I stared at him. “Quiet?” I almost snarled. “You want me to take a nap? Ivy is somewhere down here . . .” My words faltered as he ran his fingers across the tiny lip over the mirror. “And you want me to take a nap,” I finished. “What are you doing?”
Trent’s shoulders stiffened. As I watched, he turned the water on full force, and steam billowed up, misting the mirror so I couldn’t see his face. “Washing up. Why don’t you just shut up? Your bitching isn’t helping anything.”
I’m bitching? “Excuse me?” I exclaimed as I sat up. “I seem to remember you in Cormel’s office, too. This was one of the dumbest ideas—” He wasn’t even listening to me, and my eyes narrowed, not in anger, but understanding. He was looking for bugs, the mirror eclipsed by steam. “One of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever let you talk me into!”
He smiled a
s he shook the water from his hands. “Will you shut up and go to sleep?”
I hesitated, and he made a motion for me to say something. “Go to hell, Trent,” I said, then kind of pushed on the bed to make the springs squeak as if I was rolling over.
Trent gave me a thumbs-up, and I carefully sat on the edge of the bed, not moving when he waved for me to stay. Crouching, he reached under the open sink, wedging out a tiny buttonlike object. Saying nothing, he carefully set it on the sink, next to the running water. There was no stopper, and the water continued to flow, filling it halfway up.
Immediately he crossed the room, fingers on his lips as he went right to the back-left corner of the bed and found another stuck to the frame. This one went next to the sink as well, his eyes full of satisfaction. “That’s the last of them,” he said, his voice hushed.
“How did you know where they were?”
His shoulders rose and fell. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the last three hours.”
I pressed my lips. “You’ve just been lying on the cot for three hours.”
“I’ve been listening, trying to find them.”
I shifted down a smidgen when he came to sit beside me. “You can hear the circuitry? Damn, you’ve got good ears.” I knew that Jenks could hear circuitry, but elves?
“Given enough time.” He looked at his watch, grimacing. “It’s more like feeling the waves coming off them, like reverse sonar. I didn’t want to move until I found them all. Thanks for being so quiet. You really are something, you know? I was serious when I said most people would react badly. Thanks for that.”
“Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been in a cage,” I said saucily. “Got any carrots?”
He chuckled at the reminder of his once keeping me in a ferret cage. “God, I was stupid,” he said, shaking his head, and I touched his face, liking the feel of his bristles.
“We both were.” Grinning, I leaned in for a kiss, jerking back when the lights went out. “Was that you?” I said, my flush of good feeling gone.
“No.” His fingers found mine, and we didn’t move. “I guess they figured it out.” He sighed, and I gave his hand a squeeze.