I didn’t know how to deal with the pain. It kept getting worse. I blindly gripped the arms of the chair, determined not to fail. I would not let my family and friends down. Not now, not ever. I could do this. Just a few more seconds.
I reached the point where I felt swollen and overfull, yet the magic kept coming. What should I do? Did I have enough? Could I release what I had as the field continued to fall apart?
I couldn’t risk it. Once the binders shut down, the uncontrolled leftover magic would wreak havoc. I couldn’t risk Patti, Taylor, Arnow, Ben, or the waitstaff. I wouldn’t. I had to direct all of the magic or none.
I think I moaned as I took another look at the unraveling null field. I’d barely made a hole in it. If this was a marathon, I’d run maybe a third of a mile and I still had twenty-six to go.
I wasn’t going to make it.
I had to.
I’d heard somewhere that the definition of insanity was to keep repeating the same action and expecting a different result.
I had to shift gears.
Flickers of ideas scattered like light from a mirror ball. Nothing I’d ever done offered any hope of a solution. Once I’d started unraveling the spells, I’d opened a floodgate I couldn’t close. No turning back. That was another rule of magic.
Use the Force, Luke.
As if it were that easy. I was the force in this equation, and the threads of my control were snapping one by one.
Was this what it was like for Price? Power so overwhelming he didn’t know what to do with it? All he could do was try not to let it rise up inside him.
The only way to win is not to play.
Screw that.
I dug deeper inside myself, gripping my shredding control with all my might. That’s when a very simple, very stupid idea struck me.
I just had to speed things up. I could hold the magic for a few seconds, couldn’t I? Sure I could. A few seconds was nothing.
If I survived, I’d have to see a psychiatrist. I appeared to have gone over the edge of insanity. Far, far, far over the edge.
I opened myself wider to the inward flow of magic and drew down on it as hard as I could.
It flooded through me in a torrent, pushing and tugging at all the sinews that held my body together. My spirit was another kettle of fish. It felt like acid eating through silk and leaving behind tattered rags. I snatched at bits of myself that tore off and tried to float away, only to lose more. Little rainbow moths that fluttered toward escape.
Even as I started to panic, another part of me grabbed me by the throat and shook me. My own schizophrenic wake-up call. A self-applied slap in the face.
I didn’t have time to die today. I told myself to get my shit together and straighten up and fly right and get to work. I needed to tell Price we were a team. I needed to find Arnow’s people. I needed to take over Savannah’s syndicate. I needed to do a lot of things yet, starting with finishing the destruction of my nulls and pulling myself together. Literally.
What I didn’t have in strength, I made up for in sheer stubbornness. Imagine the null field is Vernon attacking you again, I told myself. Are you going to let him win? Are you going to let him keep fucking with you? No? Then shut him down. Grind him into dust.
A vague idea suggested itself. Probably stupid, definitely dangerous, but then I was already in the middle of a stupidly dangerous idea, so what did I have to lose?
I took hold of the inward flow of magic. I began wrapping it around myself. Feet, legs, hips, torso, arms, head. I turned myself into a mummy of magic. I did it again. And again. I contracted the layers, pulling them into my flesh, into the marrow of my bones, and wrapped again. After the first few times, the pain actually started to diminish, almost like the layers acted like actual bandages with healing salves and soothing balms, except for my magical self instead of my physical self.
Cool.
I didn’t know how many times I rinsed and repeated. By the time the inward flow of energy dwindled and stopped, I glowed incandescent in trace sight. Not only that, instead of feeling like I’d fallen into a woodchipper, I felt good. Better than that. Like I’d just touched the sun. Like I’d climbed Mount Everest. Like I’d flown to the moon and back.
I conducted a mental inventory of myself. Ripples of energy slid beneath my skin, washing over my muscles and warming me to my core. Sparks floated through my veins and danced in my lungs. It felt exhilarating and intoxicating.
All the magic I’d wrapped around myself and drawn inside remained. More than that. It had melded with me. I pulsed like I was one big magic battery. The biggest plus was that my magic no longer seemed like it wanted to kill me.
Time to finish the showdown.
I rose back to awareness. The room was far too quiet. The Seedy Seven were staring at us, looking expectant. I was pretty sure they’d said something I was supposed to respond to.
“Threats?” Taylor sneered from beside me. “It’s a fair deal. We both get what we want.”
“What you want doesn’t matter,” Wright said imperiously. “Miss Hollis will conduct the trace or watch the other three of you die a horrible, painful, and very slow death.” He smiled smugly.
“Think again, asshole,” I said, and then dumped all the collected energy out of myself.
I felt the moment when the binders stopped working. My loosed magic crackled in the air. I drew it back in, almost without thought. Nice.
“Binders are down,” I said casually, like announcing dinner was ready.
The Seedy Seven didn’t seem to grasp what I’d said. Taylor, Arnow, and Patti did. They leaped into action. Which is to say, all hell broke loose.
Chapter 21
Riley
MY THREE COMPANIONS lunged up, sending their chairs flying. Patti was fastest. She’d almost reached Flanders when an invisible force pushed her back a few feet. Several of the Seedy Seven shouted, and the doors burst open, bodyguards pounding inside.
Taylor halted her charge, twisting to face down three guards. She moved fast as a flame, flickering forward and back, kicking and spinning and punching. For every four or five blows she struck, one of her opponents landed one, mostly glancing.
Patti went after another four. She had multiple black belts, and with every touch on her opponents, she locked down feet and hands with binding magic, allowing her to subdue them quickly.
The Seedy Seven stood and clustered behind the table. They looked confused and more than a little irritated. More guards charged through the doors.
I managed to get to my feet, but my body felt awkward, lagging behind what I told it to do. I caught my balance against the table. A guard made a swipe for me. I succeeded in dodging, but my feet tangled and I ended up on the floor. I rolled under the table and out the other side, finding my feet again. Only now things had taken a turn for the bizarre.
Out of nowhere, Matokai started throwing green ceramic bowls of something gooey and orange. Then every object in the room grew a pair of yellow bat wings and started bumbling around into walls and whatever else got in the way. The wings weren’t large enough to launch the chairs or tables, but they shook and bumped, hitching a few inches in random directions.
A bowl flew at me, dumping its contents down my shoulder. I yelped and jumped up, expecting acid or molten lava. Instead I smelled sugar and . . . butterscotch? The big bad Tyet lord was flinging bowls of butterscotch pudding?
I swear to God, I was in an Animaniacs fight.
Flashes of bright strobing colored lights swarmed around Taylor and Patti. I blinked and squinted, barely able to see anything with the spots dancing across my vision. The table beside me flipped sideways on its own and skidded forward, stopping dead after four feet. Patti didn’t notice it as she took several steps back to line up her next attack. She bounced against the wood and tilted side
ways. A bowl of pudding hit her in the side of the head and she staggered, swiping the gooey stuff away from her eyes and shaking her head. Two more bowls followed in rapid succession, one hitting her jaw, the other flying wide.
I leaped at Matokai with every intention of breaking his arms. He stood on the other side of Flanders. The blocky man caught sight of me and turned to face me squarely. He took several fast steps forward, closing the distance between us. A guy his size shouldn’t move that quick. I was too late to halt my forward momentum. If he got his hands on me, he’d wrap me in a bear hug and break all my ribs, or put me in a choke hold.
I dove low at his legs. Hooking his left leg with my arm, I landed on my belly and pulled myself in a sharp circle, using his leg to twist myself onto my back. I let go, stopping slightly behind on his right. I’d pulled him off balance and now jammed my foot against the inside of his left leg. He oofed and toppled toward me. This wasn’t my first takedown, and I’d already scrambled backward out of the way of his falling bulk.
I rolled to my feet, avoiding Flanders’s meaty hands as he grabbed for me. I kicked him in the jaw, and his head snapped back. He slumped facedown on the floor. One down.
Someone snatched my shoulder from behind. Wright. I twisted and his hand slipped and grabbed a fistful of my hair. What there was left of it, anyhow. Wright jerked me back. I turned under his arm and jammed my shoulder into his stomach. He grunted, letting go of my hair and clamping down on my neck with his arm. Before he could slug me with his other fist, I punched him in his family jewels. His arm around my neck contracted, and he made a high-pitched sound.
I shoved him and he let go, staggering backward, his thin face screwed tight with pain, one hand cupping his genitals. I kicked his leg and drove an elbow into his kidney. He dropped to his knees, and I snapped a kick up under his jaw. He dropped to the floor.
I spun around and stopped. Taylor stood panting beside Patti, who wiped away the blood on her chin with the back of her hand. Arnow had a choke hold on the bristle-haired woman who’d frisked us. As I watched, the woman went slack. Arnow held her another thirty seconds, and then dropped her. She bent to retrieve the pumps she’d kicked off during the fight. Everybody else was either unconscious or caught in metal shackles, or both. Jamie and Leo stood in the doorway, faces tight with concentration and fury.
Dalton shoved between them and stopped, his gaze going straight to Taylor. He visibly relaxed when he saw her. Interesting.
The strobe lights continued to pop.
“Whoever is doing that, stop it now before I do something you’ll regret,” Taylor snapped. The lights vanished.
Though the strobes had stopped, dark spots continued to hop across my vision. Not a very useful talent, but certainly distracting.
Just then the bands circling Vasquez’s feet and arms popped free and jumped away from her. She must have been responsible for throwing the table, too. She clearly had distance limits on her talent. Better than conjuring bowls of butterscotch pudding, though. I wondered how many people Matokai let in on that humiliating secret. A whole lot of talents weren’t particularly useful, but I’d have thought these seven would have something more potent to work with. Clearly, I was mistaken.
I eyed Vasquez. What did she think she was going to do now? But she just righted a chair and sat gracefully, crossing her legs and adjusting her bow tie before folding her hands and resting them on her knee.
“I believe you’ve made your point,” she said to me.
I glanced at the rest of the conscious seven. Their expressions were more thoughtful than angry.
“I hope I have. I’ve heard that slower children need more than one lesson.”
I bent and gathered up the bags of ping-pong balls that had scattered during the fight, then glanced at my watch. Almost ten o’clock.
“At three a.m., we’ll be setting off the null at Savannah’s compound. It’ll stay active for less than a minute and kill all active magic in a ten-to fifty-mile radius.”
Probably wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. As soon as it was activated, its power would rush from ground zero as far as it could, gobbling magic as it went. The equivalent of a magical nuke.
Ignoring the startled gasps elicited by my announcement, I continued. “Once it exhausts itself, we’ll need to move and reestablish the security grid before Touray or anybody else can strike. They won’t be expecting the null, so their magic will get knocked out. As long as our team’s ready, we should be able to pull it off long before they get their shit back together. You’ve got five hours to get your people in place.
“Once the compound is secured, your priority is to dig up information to help me trace the hostages. I expect you to guard my people like they’re your own family. They are in charge.” I pointed to Arnow and Taylor. “You run everything through them. You’ve got questions, you’ve got problems—you check with them. They are the central command. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“Where will you be?” Vasquez asked.
“Tracing the hostages. With luck, they’re in the city or nearby. If not, I’ll be taking a road trip. I’ll still have to follow their trace on the ground. But going east could lead me to Baltimore or Cincinnati or Denver. If you can dig up a more targeted location, I’ll find them faster. I can fly in to a spot rather than driving. If they are overseas, specifics become crucial to a timely rescue.”
I faced them. Flanders had regained consciousness and struggled to sit up on the floor. Wright still wasn’t moving. “So that’s the plan. Are you in?”
“If you say yes, you’re agreeing to the terms we laid out,” Taylor said. “No exceptions, no deviations.”
I nodded. I didn’t want them coming back later and saying they only agreed to work with me until I got the hostages back for them.
“We agree,” Blaine said. She scowled at the others. “All of us.”
“What about Wright? Is he going to go along?”
“He will,” Fineman said. “He won’t have a choice.”
The rest nodded again.
“Good,” I said, clamping down on a mix of stunned surprise, elation, and terror. “I’ll tell you again—take it as gospel—Touray has unlimited resources now. Money, man power, magic. He’s going to come fast and he’s going to come hard. He’s probably already begun his assault, so you’d better get going.”
“Let everybody go,” I told Jamie and Leo.
When the seven were loose, I told them to call off their goons outside the building. They made the calls, and then we headed for the door. I stopped and gave a half turn. “One last thing. You’re responsible for cleaning up and repairing the diner, for covering lost revenue, and for keeping it secure until I can reestablish a null field.” I walked out before they could respond.
Bodies littered the front area of the diner, where my brothers and Dalton had plowed through. Ben stepped between the prone guards carrying a couple of heavy-duty meat tenderizers, ready to play whack-a-mole if any got frisky.
I grabbed him in a hug. “Sorry about all this. Are you okay?”
His hug was just as tight. “I’m fine. No worries.”
Patti hugged him next. “I’m going with Riley. It may be a while.”
Ben shrugged, shaggy brown hair falling across his eyes. “Kitchen needs a spring clean, anyway. May as well get on it now.”
“They’re going to keep this place secure and get the necessary repairs,” I said. “If you’ve got renovations you want to make, may as well do them, too. I’ll cover the cost.”
Both Patti and Ben snorted disgust at that. “As if,” Patti said.
“It’s a good idea, but we’ll cover it ourselves,” Ben said.
“Damned right,” Patti added.
“I ought to contribute since you feed me for free and I live here half the time,” I protested.
“You also put up a top-notch null field for nothing and we’re not taking any money so just shut up now,” Ben said with his crooked grin.
“I guess this means you’ll be looking down the barrel of huge Christmas presents, then,” I said.
“Buy me an island in the South Pacific,” he said. “Or a castle on the Rhine.”
“Won’t you be surprised when I do just that?” I asked and then sailed off before he could reply. My mike-drop exit was ruined when I stumbled over the outstretched hand of an unconscious bodyguard. I sighed and kept moving. Arnow, Patti, and I retrieved our coats and weapons and headed out the door.
Once outside, I halted. “That went better than expected.”
“How the hell did you shut down the binders?” Jamie asked. “That was epic.”
Arnow saved me from answering.
“You don’t really think they’ll just let you take charge, do you? For a year? If you do, you need a trip to the mental ward.”
I sighed exasperatedly. “Of course not. But I also don’t think we’re going to give them any choice.” I said it with a lot more certainty than I actually felt. Like ninety-eight percent more.
She gaped. “You’ve got to be kidding. We’re way outclassed here. We don’t have the weapons, the money, or the army to take over.” She pointed back at the diner. “They are humoring us until they get what they want, and then we’ll end up at the bottom of a deep mineshaft. These people don’t have integrity. You can’t expect them to keep any bargain they make.”
“You don’t think I know that? I’m not actually the brainless idiot you think I am.”
I ignored her muttered “could have fooled me.”
I put my hands on my hips. “All right. What did you want me to do?”
She glowered. “You should have punished them, demonstrated that there’s a price to pay for double-crossing you.”
“And what do you think that should have been?”
Shades of Memory Page 29
