by Kelly Meding
“I don’t hear an ‘I promise not to hurt them,’ Grandpop.”
“You have my word that if they leave me in peace, I shall leave them in peace.”
“Okay.” I met Mom’s eyes and mouthed, “I love you.”
She blinked hard and more tears trickled down her cheeks. The gag made it impossible for her to return the verbal gesture, but I knew. I’ve known my entire life how much she loves me.
I looked at Jaxon, whose confidence outweighed my own, before meeting Damian’s smirking gaze once more. “How do we do this?”
“Simultaneously,” Damian replied. “I will ask you a question, and if you answer in the affirmative, those collars pop off and their lives are spared. Your friends can collect them and go on their way. I will not stop them.”
“Will anyone else from this building stop them?”
Damian’s eyebrows furrowed. “No. They will not. You have my word.”
Your word doesn’t mean shit to me, crazypants.
“Then let’s do this,” I said.
“Excellent. Shiloh Harrison, daughter of Iblis, granter of wishes, will you bond your magic to mine of your own free will, to serve me henceforth, forsaking all others for the rest of your days?”
I inhaled a deep breath, then let it out slowly so I didn’t lose my lunch with it. Looked Damian dead in his dark eyes, and said, “I do.”
Three things happened at the same time. First, the collars around Mom and Gideon fell away, and Kathleen dashed around me to collect them.
Second, the wish tether binding me to Jaxon flared to life as his voice in my ear began to speak. My third and final wish is to . . .
And third, a new tether reached across the space between us from Damian to me, glowing with an oily blackness that terrified me. But as it slunk its way toward me, my ingrained djinn instincts had me saying, “Wish granted,” despite not hearing exactly what Jaxon asked for—all my magic knew was it adhered to the Rules.
Damian’s black tether altered direction, and I watched in horror as it latched onto Jaxon instead of me. He fell to his knees from the force of the binding as Damian roared in anger. “What did you do?” Damian snarled.
“Jaxon?” I reached for him, but a layer of black magic covered him now, and I jerked away from the electric pulse that zapped my fingers.
Through my earbud, voices shouted orders. Kathleen had both dispatched Hiller and was fleeing the building with my mother, while Gideon shifted. He and Novak attacked Damian at the same time. I was too frozen with shock to do anything other than stare at Jaxon, whose entire body trembled under the terrible force of his bond to Damian. Then the magic around Jaxon pulsed. He let out a distressed scream as his own magic sparkled.
Uh-oh.
Novak growled behind me, and Gideon snarled like a beast possessed. The entire building shuddered as all sorts of magical forces collided at once, and I knew my team was coming through. Liberating the pack wolves and tearing this place apart.
Jaxon’s mighty stag form stared at me with crazy eyes, one big foot pawing at the ground like a beast about to charge. With Damian’s aid, his deformed antler grew to match the other, and then they grew more, blackening into something even darker, more deadly. He lowered his head to charge.
Strong arms whisked me out of the way as Jaxon charged with a roar. Tennyson’s power crackled around us, but he wasn’t alone. At least a dozen other vampires swarmed the lobby and entered the fray. Damian was strong, and he was holding his own.
Do not kill the deer, Tennyson said, and I hoped he was broadcasting to all his vampire pals.
“He wasn’t supposed to do that.” I shoved at Tennyson, who’d taken me all the way outside. “Let me go!”
“You are who Damian wants, so I’m removing you from the immediate situation.” He carried me around the side of the building, all the way to the rear, where the unexpected sight of more vampires, and a few werewolves, shifted and not, were swarming the back exit.
Backup was here.
But the clinic wasn’t going down easily. Some sort of protective ward had cast the doorway in a glittering pink glow, keeping us out, and also trapping others inside. From the crowd, Rosalind strode toward us with an unexpected guest star: Danu. Danu had lost the emo-Goth look and traded it for full-on biker chick leather. And she looked pissed.
“After all these millennia,” Danu said, “Cailleach is still trying to murder my children. She should have stayed off this earth and away from my people.”
“Can you get us inside?” I asked.
“Our guiding laws prevent me from interfering directly in the actions of men. However, Cailleach threw down the gauntlet by allowing her symbol to guard this residence, so I’m going to tear it down.”
Danu strode toward the pink barrier, put both palms on it, which made the ward sparkle like static, and she said something in a language I’d never heard before. The barrier wavered and burst.
Goddesses were handy in a fight.
“Where’s Chandra?” I asked Tennyson.
“She went inside with the first wave,” he replied. “A few were able to enter before the barrier appeared.”
“Then let’s get our friends out of there.”
“Indeed.”
I led Rosalind, Tennyson, and others inside, where a gremlin stood near the elevator with a joyful look on his face. Gremlins loved to fuck up technology, but despite how they appeared in most movies, they weren’t ugly green monsters. They looked more like Keebler elves: short, fat, and kind of innocent—until they opened their mouths and showed off rows of razor-sharp teeth. And this one seemed to have broken into DM’s security, giving us free rein of the elevators.
“You guys really did plan this out,” I said.
Tennyson smiled.
The elevator dinged, and the car doors slid open. Instead of familiar faces, six men with automatic rifles, and also wearing lab coats, barreled out and opened fire. The noise combined with surprised screams. I lunged for the nearest man, grabbed his rifle by the barrel and punched him right in the nose. He yelped and fell to his knees. A stray bullet struck my hip, but I ignored the pain and swung that rifle like a club. I took out a second shooter, while Rosalind and Tennyson dispatched the other four.
“Guess these guys do double duty as guards and techies,” I said. Between getting shot and Jaxon’s sacrifice, my temper was reaching peak nuclear levels. The Quarrel started bubbling up, tempting me to unleash it, and I was very fucking tempted. “Have someone tie them up.”
We cleaned out the elevator of bad guys, and then filled it back up with as many of us as would fit, including Danu. Rode up to the werewolf floor, only to find more of those pink wards over every doorway, as well as the elevator exit. Chandra, a man I didn’t recognize, and several shifted wolves paced the corridor in front of us.
“This happened a few minutes ago,” Chandra said, indicating the wards.
“Well, we expected they’d have security measures in case of emergency,” I replied. “Lucky us, we have a key.”
“You do?”
Danu shouldered her way forward. “Hello again, daughter of Brighid.”
Chandra blinked hard. “Hi.”
As before, Danu placed both palms flat against the energy and zapped it out of existence. She stepped out of the elevator, and the werewolves pacing by Chandra went immediately to their haunches, and then flattened their heads to the ground. They knew their goddess.
“Don’t be afraid,” Danu said. “You came here seeking answers and these humans stole from you. The only vengeance I want is against your captors. Be well, my children.”
Her words went over well, because the wolves stood and eagerly filed into the elevator. Danu spread her arms above her head, and a rush of power surrounded her like an orange mist, swirling and swirling into a small cyclone only a few of us seemed able to see. The walls and floors vibrated, as if struck by an earthquake. The cyclone blew out, smashing through the remaining pink barriers on a thunderclap of n
oise.
“Much better,” Danu said smugly. “Cailleach’s magic has been neutralized. I always was stronger than her.”
“Thank Iblis,” I replied.
“Thank Danu,” Rosalind said.
“Right. Chandra, get the werewolves out of here.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“The floor where the experiments are being held. They deserve freedom, too.”
“Is that wise?” Tennyson asked. “You do not know their state of mind, or if they’re a danger to you. And you’ve been shot.”
“It’s a flesh wound.” I’d had way worse, and my hearty djinn half kept the bullet from penetrating my flesh too deeply. I could still see the bullet, so I plucked it out and dropped it to the floor. “Besides, you’re coming with me.”
He arched one eyebrow.
I turned to wait for the elevator, only to find what appeared to be doors to a lab. “What the—?”
“It’s a hidden elevator,” the man with Chandra said. “Believe me, we had the same reaction.”
It kind of made sense, since this elevator led to the outside and freedom. And we couldn’t exactly get the werewolves out via the regular elevator, because I had no idea what was happening in the lobby between Damian and the others. A flash of grief tried to wear me down, but I couldn’t think about Jaxon right now. Mom and Gideon were safe, and I had a fucking job to do.
“Tennyson and I will use the other elevator to check the rest of the floors,” I said.
“Take Hanson with you,” Chandra said, gesturing at her companion.
“Why? What can he do?” I didn’t sense any real magic in him, and he appeared human. But not everyone with abilities had them because they could manipulate the magic coursing through the world and its inhabitants.
“Try to punch me,” Hanson said.
Why not? I was in the mood to hit something, so I wound up and aimed for his chin—only to pass right through him. I spun around, and Tennyson caught me before I fell.
“Intriguing,” Tennyson said.
“Now you punch me,” Hanson told Tennyson.
He looked at me, and I shrugged. Tennyson stepped toward Hanson, and this time, he connected. Hard enough to make Tennyson gasp, but Hanson’s head didn’t move a centimeter. Tennyson shook out his fist, his eyes sparkling with annoyance.
“I can control the density and vibrational speed of my molecules,” Hanson said. “So I can pass through solid objects or stop a speeding car, depending on the situation.”
“I like you,” I said. “How do you know Chandra?”
“We dated a few years ago.”
I can only imagine how that would have gone over if Novak was here. “Cool, let’s go.”
The other elevator was on the opposite end of this floor, so we ran. The sea of waiting werewolves parted for us to pass. Whatever the gremlin had done to the system, I pushed a button and a few seconds later, the elevator arrived. Two shifted wolves had joined us, as well, and I wasn’t sure if they were former residents or Rosalind’s backup, and it didn’t really matter if they were willing to help.
We went up one floor, and as the doors slid open, braced for a fight. Instead, we walked into a chaotic scene of scientists stabbing away at computer keyboards, while others ran huge magnets over storage systems. A woman noticed us and screamed, which led to others drawing guns on us.
Never a good idea.
We took out the researchers before they could fire a single bullet, leaving them all unconscious and/or bleeding—the werewolves had a little too much fun—so they couldn’t hurt us or escape. I didn’t care so much about stopping them from destroying their hard drives, because that information couldn’t see the light of day either way. Once this group was contained, we checked the first cell. The half-man, half-wolf inside was convulsing, white foam leaking from his mouth.
“Shit, they’ve been poisoned,” I said.
Tennyson ripped the door off its hinges, while Hanson vibrated through the door of the next cell down. But the test subject was dead before we got to him. A black-furred wolf stepped inside, sniffed, and then gave a mournful whine.
Every single hybrid was dead in his cell, and the horror of it made my stomach turn. “Who are these fucking people?” I asked, mostly to myself as I tipped closer to completely losing my grip on the Quarrel. “First they experiment on other human beings, and then they murder them when they’re found out?”
“Cowards who cannot face their enemy head-on,” Tennyson said, “so they attempt to cheat.”
“And destroy lives in the process,” Hanson added. “When Chandra called and told me about this place, I had to come take it apart.” He spoke with such passion and anger, I silently wondered how he’d come into his abilities in the first place.
“We need to secure the rest of the floors in this place,” I said. “According to a source, the top floor is where the scientists lived, so anyone who hasn’t already tried to leave is probably cowering up there.” And they did not deserve to be arrested gently, not after destroying so many lives in the name of science. Or whatever.
I closed my eyes.
“Shiloh, what are you doing?” Tennyson asked.
“I’ll get in touch with Chandra and get teams sent out,” Hanson said.
“You may wish to hold off on that a moment. And perhaps move farther down the corridor.”
“Why?”
A rush of air around me was probably Tennyson whooshing Hanson and the other two wolves out of the way.
Every ounce of rage, fear, horror, and grief rose up from deep within me and spread across my skin in a hot flush. I pushed it up, unleashing the Quarrel on the men and women above me, the enemies I couldn’t see but hated nonetheless. As my magic pulsed, I imagined those cowards suddenly turning on each other, fighting each other, beating each other senseless through a fit of unexpected rage.
I definitely felt better afterward, and I turned to face the four people I’d come up here with. The two wolves were flat on their bellies, while Hanson simply gaped at me. “What was that?” he asked.
“Special trick of mine,” I replied as I strode toward them. “Now you can call Chandra about picking up the other scientists. They might be a little black and blue, though.”
Hanson gave me a funny look, then headed off with the two wolves, already speaking into his earpiece.
“Your power is quite impressive,” Tennyson said. “I’ve never felt such chaotic magic before.”
“It’s not something I use often, because it can really hurt people, but those bastards deserved it.”
“Indeed. What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going back downstairs to face Damian. But first, I need a favor from you.”
“Name it.”
I swallowed hard, not only because of what I was about to ask, but because of the way my body already craved it simply from his nearness. “I need some of your blood.”
Tennyson tilted his head to the side, his blue-speckled eyes searching mine briefly, before he sliced his forefinger open on a fang and held it out to me.
Without hesitation, I took that offered finger into my mouth and sucked.
Chapter 19
The first time I drank Tennyson’s blood, I did so because I was slowly dying of a magical spider bite, and I didn’t have much choice. I’d gone a little bloodlust-crazy and tried to kill my mom, but I’d also had a lot of blood that day. The second time I drank because I was, yet again, dying, and I’d come so close to it that I’d spent the post-drink time unconscious, with only a lingering bloodlust in the days since.
This time I wasn’t dying, but I also moderated what I took, the bitter liquid coating my tongue and mouth as I drew more out of the puncture wound. The power in Tennyson’s blood sizzled down my throat to my stomach, where it radiated from my core to every part of my body. My toes vibrated, my scalp itched, and I felt strong enough to flip a car with a single finger.
And I knew sharing his blood again
would change me a fraction, just as I’d changed after the first two times. We were already telepathically linked, and as I charged my battery on his life force, I pushed my thoughts toward his. Not tangible thoughts, only the whisper of them, and images from Tennyson’s mind flashed into my own.
Me as he saw me now, holding his finger between my lips. Me on the stairs at headquarters, sobbing over the deaths of his vampires because he’d wished for me to take over the emotional strain so he could try to track them telepathically. Me dying in his arms in the necromancer’s lair as he ripped his wrist open to save my life. Me standing up to Brighid in her own home. I searched, but all I saw was myself.
How did I crowd the thoughts of a vampire so old and with so much history?
Didn’t matter. I left his mind and returned to the task at hand. Just when my instincts were edging toward biting so I could get more blood, I yanked myself away. Tennyson’s energy crackled around us both as we shared a small amount of space, so close we nearly touched. I met his eyes, which now glowed green, and when I licked my lips to draw the last of the blood in, his gaze dropped.
For one split second, I was positive Woodrow Tennyson, Master of his Line, was about to kiss me.
And I would have let him.
Thankfully, my earbud sparked to life. “Shiloh, where are you?”
Kathleen’s voice.
“I’m on the fourth floor with Tennyson, why?” I replied as I took a full step back from him.
“The werewolves have been evacuated and the rest of the floors are being swept. However, a problem still exists in the lobby.”
“Yeah, I know, I’m heading there now.”
“Copy.”
“I’m coming with you,” Tennyson said.
“Might not be a good idea,” I replied on my way to the elevator. “This is a family fight.”
“Family?”
Oh yeah, he hadn’t been in the lobby to hear the good news. “Damian is my maternal grandfather. He’s related to Cailleach’s original wolf killers. Surprise!”
