by Alisa Woods
The few coaches or support crew that filled the staging area lurched toward her, but when they reached her, they came to a sudden stop, as if frozen in place. They stood like statues in her wake. What the fuck? She ran straight at the jumpers, but the noise of the wind and the crowd and the countdown was too much to hear anything—
3… 2… 1…
They leaped.
Mercy reached the platform a split second later, hands reaching to hold them back. The ribbons unspooled with a crack, surrounding her in a high-speed release of fabric, dangerous lines hurtling out into the sky. She gazed in terror at them, as if she was going to grab them, for fuck’s sake. He reached her just in time to snatch her hands away.
“You can’t!” he yelled in her face to be heard over the whipping wind and cracking ribbons. Then the ends snapped from the spools and fluttered out into the sky.
He and Mercy both peered over the edge, barely able to see the ribbons below, straight like rods, attached to the competitors. There was no artful swooping to the sides. No showboating of magickal, gravity-defying Talents. Nothing but a straight arrow pointed at the ground. He couldn’t watch, but he could barely tear Mercy away. Back from the edge. Back from the precipice. He had a sudden terror-filled thought that she might go over herself. He dragged her, bodily, hands on both wrists, back into the staging room.
The look of horror on her face matched the cold terror in his heart.
The screen behind them, big as life, tracked the jumpers… all the way down.
The collective gasp in the room, the horror of a hundred people, screamed in Swift’s head.
Mercy’s loudest of all.
The camera cut off.
Mercy slumped against him, and he barely could remain upright himself.
The sound pounding on his head was insane.
The room erupted in chaos, people from the lobby surging in amongst the stone-still statues of the ones who had tried to stop Mercy. What the hell was happening?
But he had only one real thought: he had to get Mercy out of there.
Chapter Nine
Too late.
Mercy was too late, too slow, not smart enough, not fast enough.
Four people.
They died horrible deaths for no reason. No reason. No… they died for a madman’s twisted idea of science. And power. And control.
Mercy knew all about controlling people—and the evil of it.
Swift was hauling her across the floor, practically carrying her, because, for a moment, it all hit her so hard—hard like concrete from a hundred story drop—that she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stand. Couldn’t believe she had been just a second, a half second, a fraction of a second away from telling those people…
Don’t jump.
They would have listened—they would have had to. It was the first time she might have actually used her Talent for good… and she was too late.
She pushed away from Swift and stood on her own two feet. Then she turned to the gray-bearded guy who stood to her left, frozen by her command. Stop, she’d told him, and he had. Probably hadn’t breathed since she’d said it. His face was turning red with the effort to countermand the order she’d given him, but of course, he couldn’t.
She dropped her voice into that soft tone she never used, never ever, she would rather not speak than to whisper…
“Go.” Her whisper magick unlocked him, and he slumped to his knees, gasping for air.
Swift stepped back, staring at the fallen man. She strode to the next one who had tried to stop her.
“Go,” she whispered to that one, and the next, and the next after that. Six altogether. Swift trailed behind, watching, but what was the use of hiding it now? He’d seen it all. The rest of the room was a madness of screaming and crying and people running and kneeling by the fallen crew and coaches, and no one was paying attention to her and her whispers.
She walked like a robot marching over a field of fallen warriors. Not that she didn’t feel… it was that she couldn’t let herself take in any of it. Not now. Not yet. Not until she was safely away…
Swift was back at her side, grabbing hold of her arm, urging her to move faster through the crowd than her mechanical, lifeless steps. He got her to the elevator. She couldn’t look at him. She just stared, dully, at the warped, silver image of herself in the polished walls. Onboard, the elevator dropped the bottom out of her stomach, rushing her down, down, down… she couldn’t get a breath for the entire time, imagining the terror, the unholy terror, of the competitors on the way down, when they realized… they weren’t going to make it…
When the door open, she gasped in air, struggling to breathe.
Swift’s hand clamped her arm again, marching her forward through the chaos on the first floor. Mercy thought, This is where they’ll stop us, but they didn’t. The security staff were dashing about, but she and Swift walked right through the screening arch, back out onto the street. Swift held her close and shielded her view so she wouldn’t see them… wouldn’t see the bodies and the blood and the smashed bones under those yards and yards of ribbon fabric spilled like blood all over the pavement… but she saw them anyway. Then Swift moved her past the barricade, into the crowd. It was like watching a time-lapse movie where they just glided through, silent, everything a blur, nothing slowing them down, until suddenly… they were alone.
She blinked, finally looking up. They were in an alley. She could hear the crowds, crying and sobbing. The shuffling of a thousand feet. A hundred murmured voices. And there, in the distance, the wail of an ambulance. It was too late.
Too late.
She looked up at Swift, who had the oddest expression—of course, why wouldn’t he, he’d seen what she’d done. What she’d been too late to stop. And then his face went blurry through her tears, the ones that suddenly forced their way out.
“It’s okay.” Swift’s arms went around her, pulling her into his chest. “It’s all right.” His voice was muffled, in her hair. His hands were on her back, holding her tight.
For a tiny moment, she tried to hold back, then she grabbed his leather coat, bunching it in her fists. She buried her face in his t-shirt and screamed. His body muffled her wide-open mouth. Her primal anger. He held her tighter, crushing her face to his chest, in case she might let loose again. In case someone might hear. But she only had the one good scream in her. One, bitter, horrible, scream. And nothing more, nothing left to give. She struggled out of his hold, pushing herself away, but she was backed up against the wall of the alley with nowhere to go.
His face was full of soft concern. Some kind of sweet pain, just looking at her, holding her while she cried, while she screamed.
“I couldn’t…” Her words were mangled.
“I know.” He came closer, putting his hand on the wall by her head, leaning in, comforting her with his eyes. “You couldn’t stop them in time.”
“I tried.” Why was he looking at her that way? With kindness. Why? Her head throbbed. She blinked through wet lashes.
He touched her cheek. His hand was warm. “I know.”
He had to know. He saw the whole thing. So why was he standing here in an alley, comforting her instead of running away in terror?
He was the same as her.
She jolted with that clarity of knowledge, here in this instant, but she’d known it intuitively from the first moment. He was dangerous. All her alarm bells had wrung, the ones that knew—that felt—that special danger, the kind that came from hidden and illegal Talents. And now, in the lobby, and even with the police officer before, she’d seen him use it.
Mental magick… just like her.
Not the same, but close. Something. Some… influence. She didn’t know what, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because…
He was the same.
She reached out and grabbed his jacket again. His eyes lit up with surprise. But when she pulled him close, this time, she went up on her toes… and kissed him. His lips were cool and slack
with shock and just as she decided this was a horrible, horrible mistake—
He kissed her back.
He pushed her back up against the wall, put his hands in her hair, his tongue in her mouth—devouring her—holy gods, was he kissing her. Every moment of lust she’d had over the last two days came raging back, sizzling her nerves, heating her face as she drank him in, pulled him against her, even tighter than he was fisting her hair in his hands.
Then he suddenly released her, stepping back, wild-eyed and breathing hard. Her blue lipstick smeared his face. He wiped at it with the back of his hand and stared at it with amazement.
Then he shook his head, minutely. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
It stabbed into her. Did he think she’d controlled him into kissing her? “It’s not illegal to kiss.” Unlike the magick she had—they both had.
“No. It’s not.” He was still breathing hard. His gaze had dropped to her lips. That he might kiss her again was lighting her on fire. He stepped closer, but it was gentle. Not an urgent pinning to the wall, just a soft touch of his thumb at the corner of her lips, which had to be painted with the smeared passion of their kiss. “It’s just not smart.” But he passed his tongue over his own lips like he was tasting her there. Thinking about it.
She almost grabbed him again. Instead, she said, “I know what you are. We should… talk.”
His gaze left her lips, where it had lingered, and jumped to meet her eyes. He seemed to make a hundred calculations in response to those words, then finally said, “Not here.”
She nodded, and when he took her hand and led her out of the alley, the shock of everything came back full force, like a door had suddenly opened and blasted an arctic wind, tearing away any thoughts of kisses.
People had died. They had killers to catch. They had hidden Talents that had to remain hidden… Swift was right. It wasn’t smart to grab hold of each other in an alley and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. But that didn’t stop her from thinking about it—about how not smart it was to be in Agent Payne’s arms—all the way back to the car.
Chapter Ten
I know what you are. Mercy’s words were still chilling his spine.
Fuck, this was so messed up.
Why had Swift taken her into the field? On a rescue mission, no less. Had she knocked him so completely off his game he didn’t see the disaster that would be? The answer to that was hell yes what the fuck are you doing pinning her to the wall of the alley with your mouth.
Dammit.
To be fair, he hadn’t seen the mental magick coming. Holy shit, what kind of Talent did she have? She literally whispered those people into freezing. And then unfreezing. And she would have stopped the jumpers if she’d been there in time. He was a thousand percent sure of that.
The street around the competition area was in a complete panic, and people were emptying out in all directions. It was lucky they had double parked. The car was still there, so they just hustled in and drove away from the scene. The crime scene. There was no question in his mind Mercy had been right—someone had flipped that Talent switch and killed the contestants—but how? There were a thousand people inside and outside the building. There had to be surveillance video the FBI could use to search for someone suspicious, but what would they even look for? A magick box with a big label that said On/Off for Talents? Probably not. And the woman with the most knowledge about how all this could work was sitting next to him, staring forlornly out the window, her usual complicated mess of emotional states even more frenzied.
And attraction was still blaring loud and clear.
“Where should we go?” He flicked a look at her while taking a turn onto a less crowded street, still escaping the press of the event.
“My apartment’s just up ahead.”
Oh, shit. Everything in him tensed. Her apartment? What was she planning with that? He’d assumed they would go back to her office. A fast scan of the mess of her emotional state showed surging lust, guilt, a basketful of anger and rage and all of it overlaid with… fear. Was she afraid of him? Or herself? If she whispered him into her bed…
Holy fuck, why was his mind even going there?
She pointed to a towering building full of luxury apartments. “Parking garage with the sign, right there.” Then she did a double take at the look on his face, which had to be a blinking mess. “I’m not going to hold you prisoner, Agent Payne.” She was scowling, but there was a deep—deep—woundedness that sprang to the surface and drowned everything. She stared straight ahead. “We just need to… regroup. Make a plan.” She swallowed, and her lip trembled in a way that twisted his gut. She turned her face away to stare pointedly out the window. “My office is too public.”
“Mercy.”
“You’re safe with me.” She refused to look at him.
He’d reached the parking garage, so he swung inside and took the first spot he could find. The instant the car stopped, he covered her hand with his—hers was tightly gripping the top of her leg. He didn’t think she was even aware of it, but when he touched her, she whipped her head to him.
He cut her off before she could say anything. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Her mouth worked, but the tremble was gone. So was the static screech of fear—only in its place was a surge of attraction. Not lust, softer than that, more like an ardent desire for something she hadn’t tasted in a long time. Holy shit, that was what undid him the first time. That hunger as she pressed her lips to his in the alley. It wasn’t the lust-filled thing he’d encountered so many times before in so many ways. He was immune to the cravings of women everywhere. Partly by intent, but also because it all thrummed the same tired beat. This… this thing with Mercy was… raw. A deep need that was more than just physical. And it lit up everything inside him in a note of recognition he was desperate not to think about.
“Let’s go inside,” she finally said, and it was so breathless, all Swift could hear was Take me to bed, and holy magick, they needed to not do that now. Or probably ever. But definitely not now.
“Okay.” He swallowed and worked hard to reign in the feelings boiling inside him. They got out of the car, and he didn’t take her hand again—touching was not a good idea—and she strode straight ahead to an elevator. When she arrived, she looked down at her clothes and cursed.
“I left my purse at the office,” she muttered. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Then she took off, striding through a glass door that said, Lobby Stairs.
He waited.
Now that the complex torment of her emotional symphony was out of range, it was much easier to think. This was a complete disaster. He’d have to report to Dalvi later today—he’d used his Talent repeatedly to get into the event—but how could he keep Mercy’s Talent a secret? And their kiss? He had no fucking clue. Meanwhile, these jackasses who had just murdered four people—and a whole lot more before that—had just field tested their magitek. And it was an unmitigated success, not only in killing the contestants but inspiring a huge public panic. Which he was sure was part of their intent, even as they were going about all this secretly. That had to mean they had big plans for these bioweapons in the future. Maybe the near future. The FBI was right to send him in on this job, and he needed to stay on it. Mercy as well. Neither of them could be sidelined by some fucked-up rules in PsyOps or Dalvi’s suspicions about his objectivity. Not until they figured out who was behind this—although all signs pointed to Tobin Raine and his pet researcher Violet Thorn.
Mercy reappeared, a new keycard in hand.
He lifted his eyebrow.
“The doorman knows me,” she said, brusquely. “He keeps a spare.” She swiped them into the elevator.
Swift said nothing as she punched the button for the top floor. They rode up in silence, Mercy’s gaze everywhere but him, her fingers drumming against the card until she noticed and stopped. The chaos mix of her emotions was mostly nervous now—she’d stuffed away the fear and hungering need, bolstering u
p a light touch of attraction, almost like it was forced. It was an emotional shield—he could see that now. The dress, the makeup, the tasty attitude and biting tongue… all of it was to cover up the fear and the need.
He’d tasted that tongue. He didn’t have to force himself to be attracted to her. But was she truly not attracted to him? In spite of the kiss? Was it just part of the act, the shield—
Stop it. He ground his teeth as they reached the top floor. Focus, Swift.
He followed her out of the elevator into a wide foyer with white wood flooring and giant black-feathered things hanging from the ceiling. Swift stared, open-mouthed at the suspended balls, wondering if they were sculpture or lighting, then he noticed the same massive black feathers covered the wall leading into the apartment. Mercy had gotten ahead of him, so he picked up the pace. The foyer opened into a large living area with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, flooding the room with light. She had a spectacular view of the lake and downtown, and the inside was just as opulent but doubly bizarre. What looked like spiderwebs of light served as chandeliers. On the floor were more black feather things only now it was carpet laid over the white wood. A collection of trim black couches with white pillows were arranged in sets around the large, open space. A dozen people could sit on these couches, and at the far end, an elaborate dining table carved of black wood could seat all twelve.
Swift had forgotten Mercy was ridiculously rich. Of course, he knew she came from a High Magick family who owned half the med-magick companies in the country. The Stranges had been wealthy and powerful for a long time. But the woman he’d spent time with was always buried in her work and buttoned up in her black lace dresses and eccentric makeup.
Hiding something.
Only now he knew what it was.
Mercy paced in front of the couches. As he drew closer, she stopped. Her hands fisted at her sides, and her mouth worked—her pretty mouth with the blue lipstick mostly kissed off. “You can’t tell anyone.” Her distress was ramping up again, humming the air and pinching her blue-shadowed eyes in. “Please. You’re the only one who—” She looked away, blinking.
