Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  It was so hard to remember that this Jack was not really her Jack. When he pulled away from her, almost shoving her back, Lydia was hurt and confused for a moment before she remembered that this Jack had no reason to trust her. All he really knew was that she knew Whitney.

  The rain was pouring down all around them, but Lydia scrubbed the water from her eyes, so she could see Jack better. She grabbed him by the shoulders again. “You have to trust me,” she shouted to him. “I know that you don’t have a good reason to, but I’m trying to get you back to your world where you belong. I want my Jack back, the Jack who is my friend. If we work together, then we can take Whitney down, and we can send you back.”

  “Without Whitney there is no back,” Jack shouted. “Quentin told me—he said that you don’t know how to create the portal without Whitney. Without her, I’m dead.”

  Lydia shook her head fiercely. “No! We’ll create a portal ourselves. We’ll find a way. Whitney can’t help you, Jack.”

  “I hate her,” Jack said, and she could see how much he did despise her. “But maybe she’s my only chance in staying alive through all of this. And maybe—maybe if I show her that I’ll be loyal to her, she’ll take better care of me. Maybe I’m nothing without her.”

  “Jack,” Lydia said, grabbing his hands. “Please—think about what you’re saying. I promise Quentin will help you.”

  Behind them, the sorcerer and dragon shifter battled on, throwing their powers back and forth at each other and dodging the other’s effort with ease. It was the kind of battle that could go on forever with two evenly matched people who had desperate motivations. Lydia could feel the heat of fire on the back of her neck, mixing with the rain, and smoke began to rise up from the ground as the fire and the water collided, hissing against each other.

  She had to shout to be heard, but she still pleaded with Jack. “Trust me. Please trust me.”

  “Quentin told me I wasn’t his priority,” Jack shouted. “He said that if he had to choose between you and me, he would choose you. Whitney will save me every time. I’m staying with Whitney.”

  Lydia started to speak, but he grabbed her without warning, dragging her up with him as he stood. He wasn’t all that strong, and his hands were shaky, but Lydia was caught by surprise, and she didn’t resist him at first. The way that he yanked her up twisted her bad ankle even further, and she cried out in pain, feeling dizzy for a moment.

  Jack grabbed her in his arms and began to haul her towards Whitney again. Lydia clawed and screamed, but she couldn’t get the leverage to push him off her. She tried wriggling away from him, and she tried falling into a dead weight, but nothing stopped Jack from pulling her into the midst of the clearing and the battle that was raging there.

  “Whitney!” Jack shouted. “Whitney, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ever fought back against you. Here! She escaped, but I brought her back to you. I’ll fight for you, Whitney. I’ll stay with you!”

  Whirling from Quentin, Whitney locked eyes with Jack and then with Lydia. A twisted grin came over her haggard face, and she dropped her hands, the rain slowing for a moment, as she became distracted.

  “Jack—my darling,” Whitney said. “Come to me—bring her to me. Come to me, Jack!”

  Lydia fought back against Jack, desperate not to return to Whitney’s clutches. But she didn’t have to be any closer for Whitney to take hold of her. The same binding force fell around Lydia, and it seemed to fall around Jack, too. Both of them lifted into the air, floating towards Whitney, as she drew them in with her hands, beckoning them closer and closer.

  Quentin roared, flying towards them at full speed, and Lydia waited for him to crash through the spell and snatch her from it. But when his wing reached out to swoop her up, it bounced back as though having encountered a shield. Quentin thrashed his head in fury and reached for her again with his wing, but the shield remained in effect.

  Lydia couldn’t cry out to him. She couldn’t do a thing but stare back into his yellow eyes and hope that he could read in her mind just how much she loved him and how much she believed that he would be able to free her and Jack both from Whitney. But as she stared at Quentin, her chest began to constrict. Her breathing became rough and ragged, and she couldn’t draw in enough oxygen. Lydia began to panic, but her body wouldn’t move, and her voice couldn’t release the scream that welled up within it. Only her eyes could betray her panic, and she could see on Quentin’s face that he saw that she was suffocating. He saw that she was dying.

  And it made his yellow eyes turn red with rage.

  Chapter 34

  Quentin

  Quentin had seen Lydia make a break from Whitney. He had seen her run over towards Jack, and he had breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that she was on his side of the clearing—knowing that he stood between her and Whitney. It was more than he could have hoped for, and he should have known that it would never be so easy to get Lydia back from Whitney’s clutches.

  But all he had thought of at the time was ending Whitney. He had Lydia. He had Jack. It was time to end the woman who would gladly kill all of them to secure just a bit more power for herself.

  Then it had all fallen apart. One minute he was locked in battle with Whitney, and the next, he was watching Jack drag Lydia back towards the woman who would gladly kill her. Jack was begging Whitney to take him back—he was giving himself over to her. And Lydia, too.

  Quentin didn’t hesitate as Whitney began to draw Lydia back into her possession. He flew towards Whitney as fast as he could, ready to snatch her from Whitney’s clutches and fly her far away—let Jack and Whitney have each other if that’s what they both wanted. He wouldn’t risk Lydia’s life to save a man who threw himself into the arms of the enemy.

  He got a glimpse in his mind that showed him he would be unable to touch Lydia, but that didn’t stop him. Quentin reached out for her all the same, but he couldn’t break through the invisible barrier that surrounded her. Quentin threw himself at her again and again, seething with frustration when she remained so close yet so out of reach. He stared into her panicked eyes, and he felt ice move through him when he saw the moment that she stopped being able to breathe. Another image flashed into his mind, this one of her eyes closing. It panicked him, and he didn’t know what the image meant. Did it mean she would never wake up again?

  No! His thoughts were frantic in his head, and for a moment all he could do was watch her as she suffered. But that was only for the briefest of moments, and then he turned on Whitney, his mouth opening to rain fire down on the sorcerer, even though she had blocked his fire time and time again. He hurled himself at Whitney, bowling her over, so that she tumbled to the ground beneath him. He gnashed at her with his teeth, and he could see that she was trying to cast a spell on him. But she couldn’t. Nothing landed on his person. That was her weakness. She could control the world around him, but not him. Not the way she wanted to.

  Quentin opened his mouth to bite her clean through when he suddenly got a flash of a tree falling. He rolled in the air, moving to his left, but despite his dodge, a tree fell across his back, making him arch with shock and pain. He threw the tree off him, but another fell in its place. Then another. The trees were heavy, the weight of the water on their leaves only accentuating their heaviness. Quentin tried to find traction on the ground, but they were both sinking into the marsh. A tree fell across his head, knocking him to the side, and he quickly realized that she was going to pin him down completely if he didn’t stop her now.

  She’d wriggled away from him, and she was running towards Jack. For a moment, Quentin thought she would wrap her arms around him like a lover, but she didn’t. She clawed at Jack’s skin and pulled at his hair. She ripped his hair right out of his head, shoving it into her mouth in gulps. Quentin watched her, surprised, and disgusted, and confused all at once, though he could be none of those things as much as Jack was.

  Jack pushed at her, despite having pledged his life to her. He surely hadn’t expected Whitney to be
gin trying to ingest as much of him as she could.

  All the while, Lydia was still suffocating, floating in the air, unable to move.

  Quentin roared, as he pushed himself upward, struggling against the weight of ten or twelve trees now. He strained, using all of his strength to break out from beneath them, flailing and struggling as the rain poured down around him, making everything slippery and blurring his vision.

  He couldn’t afford to fail, so he threw off the trees and got to his feet again. He charged towards Lydia, seeing her still gasping for air. She was starting to turn blue, her body vibrating with stress and anxiety. She looked so terrified, even though her eyes were all that moved. They tracked back and forth, pleading with him to save her.

  Quentin turned on Whitney, who was struggling with Jack, down in the marsh.

  “Help,” Jack called, sounding frantic as well. “She’s insane! She’s eating my—God, she’s trying to bite my flesh off. Help me!”

  It was convenient that the man wanted help now, when he’d realized that he’d gambled on the worst of two evils. Quentin would normally have left him to lie in the bed he’d made for himself, but saving Jack was an unintended consequence of saving Lydia. He grabbed Whitney with his teeth, pulling her off Jack and threw her into the air. Lightning flashed all around them, lighting her up as she flew upward, screaming and flailing.

  Quentin caught her in his mouth, as she came rocketing back down, shaking her back and forth. Her death was the only way that he knew to break the spell that she had on Lydia, and he had only moments left before it was too late for Lydia. He had to kill Whitney first, and he didn’t hesitate.

  His jaws crunched through her, and he spat her out of his mouth, tossing her onto the ground. She shuddered and twitched, lying there in the marshy water, and trembling as the last force of her life left her. After so much buildup, it seemed like her death came so swiftly. So suddenly.

  “I won’t ever leave …” Whitney rasped, gasping a breath into her lungs as her body twitched. “I’ll never go. You can’t …” Sparks flew all around her, as she shuddered again. She glitched, vibrating in the water. If she was bleeding, he didn’t see it. It was almost as though there was no actual life force in her body—only a poor excuse for flesh and bones which were now decaying before his eyes. Her body became skeletal, and her eyes went hollow, and she stopped moving, lying there in the water and staring through blank eyes at the sky.

  The rain stopped, and the wind died down. The sky began to lighten as the clouds dissipated, and there was no more sound of thunder or flash of lightning. The day began to break back in, sunlight streaming down on them.

  Quentin shifted, running towards Lydia and grabbing her up into his arms, as she fell to the ground. She was pale and lifeless, her eyes closed and her lips dry. She sagged in his arms, her head lolling to rest against his chest. When he gripped her hand, she made no acknowledgment of it, and when he called her name, she didn’t flinch.

  “Lydia,” Quentin whispered, rocking her back and forth. “Lydia!” He searched his mind for some glimpse that would show him the future, so that he would know that she would open her eyes again and look up into his, but nothing appeared. Everything was blank, and he felt helpless. He sat down and laid her across his lap, performing CPR to force air into her lungs. He had to be careful not to hurt her with his strength, but he was so desperate to see her breathe, that it was difficult to restrain himself.

  “Lydia, please,” Quentin whispered, over and over again. “God, look at me. Please.”

  “Quentin?” It was Jack’s voice. “Uh—Quentin?”

  Quentin ignored him, continuing to perform CPR.

  “Quentin!”

  Quentin whipped his head around towards Jack, furious. “Shut the hell up! She’s not breathing!”

  But as he shouted at Jack, he saw what Jack was staring at. Whitney’s corpse still lay on the ground, but above it was a shimmering curtain, like the one that Quentin had first seen in the apartment that Lydia had rented. Had it just been the curtain, he would have ignored it, uninterested in portals, while Lydia was in his arms, not breathing. But Whitney came walking out of the curtain, live and in the flesh. She narrowed her eyes at Quentin, and for a moment, he stared at her, stunned.

  Then it all began to click together for him. Whitney could create portals between this world and the other world she had created, but of course, she was the ultimate portal as the creator. When she’d died in this world, the portal had opened and brought in the version of her that remained in the other world.

  And from the look in her eyes, this version of Whitney was every bit as determined to kill him as the first one was.

  Quentin turned his back on Whitney, looking down into Lydia’s face. Her eyes were still closed, her skin still pale, and her lips were still parted, with no air passing through them. Frantically, Quentin compressed her chest, trying to force air inside of her lungs with the few remaining seconds he had before Whitney was upon him.

  “Come on!” Quentin yelled, using both hands to press down on Lydia’s chest. He covered her mouth with his, breathing air into her. She didn’t respond. He did it again. She still didn’t respond.

  Quentin pressed his forehead against hers, desperate. “Please don’t leave me,” he whispered, cradling her to him. “Please.”

  His time was up. A force hit Quentin from the side, sending him flying to the left. He landed with his back slammed up against a tree. Pain exploded along his spine, and he growled low in his throat, anger, and ache, and anxiety all spinning together in his gut, fueling him as he got to his feet.

  Wasting no time, Quentin jumped into the air and shifted again. He flew straight at Whitney, toppling her over into the water. He opened his mouth to breathe fire down on her, but she threw a shield up and his fire exploded around her, never touching her. All he could think about was Lydia, lying there, dying. It consumed his thoughts, and as he battled with Whitney, trying to break through the barriers that she kept throwing up at him, he knew that he was only half-heartedly focusing on the fight at hand. His glimpses of the future were all centered on Lydia, and in every single flash of the future he received, she was still lying there, lifeless, where he had left her.

  The rain was back, slicing down over him. It felt like poison rain, and it burned his eyes and slipped between his scales, scalding his flesh. His throat began to dry, and he couldn’t breathe fire. All that came out was sputters as he coughed, the green, poisonous rain that was suffocating him. Quentin whirled around, using his enormous tail to swipe at Whitney instead. He knocked her to the right, sending her flying into a tree, and she bounced back from it, shooting herself into the air and toppling the trees around them, so that they fell across him. The ground began to burst upward, sending sludge flying into the air. A tree pinned him to the ground, which cracked beneath him, part of the earth pressing upward, so that his body was stuck without leverage to push himself upward.

  Rain burned his eyes and his nostrils, and Quentin struggled against the power that Whitney was pouring out of her. His only hope was that she could hardly keep this up for long. Her power would diminish. The version of Whitney that had come through the portal was filled with a kind of power that the version of her he had already killed had never possessed. But she was not infallible, and he was not going to give up.

  Quentin strained with all of his might, using his tail to thrash at the ground, until he could push himself up enough to get a footing.

  Incoming.

  Accompanying the word was a flash in Quentin’s head. Four dragons flew through the trees, cutting through the chaos and the rain to bring reinforcements to the fight.

  Shit. What the hell is in this rain? Carbon monoxide? Jordan asked. Where’s Lydia? Does she need help?

  Quentin almost went weak with relief, knowing that his friends were close. Jordan—go straight to Lydia. She’s on the ground. Whitney suffocated her. She’s not breathing. She needs help—now.

  Jordan
’s voice echoed in his head. I’m on it.

  Coming in from the south, Barrett said. Ryan, pull up the other side. Hannah—where are you?

  There was no answer from Hannah, but Quentin couldn’t focus on that right now. He got another flash of the future in his head, and he saw Whitney going for Lydia’s body. That created enough adrenaline in Quentin that he was able to break away from the trees and the broken ground that had him pinned. He dove towards Whitney just as his friends broke through the trees, headed straight for Whitney at the same time.

  The sorcerer, no matter how powerful she was, couldn’t hold them all off. Her shield was all that was left to protect her—her shield and her power over Lydia. Whitney grabbed Lydia, taking the woman’s head in her hands. She started to jerk Lydia’s head to the side to snap her neck clean through, eliminating any possibility that Lydia would live through this battle.

  But Quentin knocked Lydia from Whitney’s hands with his tail, and Jordan caught Lydia up, shifting and dragging Lydia away from Whitney. Quentin breathed easier knowing that Jordan was with Lydia, but the sight of Lydia’s lifeless face still haunted his mind.

  He used that fury to fuel his renewed attack on Whitney, and this time when he snapped at her with his teeth, he broke through her faltering shield. Ryan breathed fire around her, and Barrett flew in front of the falling trees, preventing them from falling against Ryan or Quentin.

  I’ve got Jack, Hannah’s voice said in Quentin’s head. He was running. I’ve got him here. Take him to safety or to you?

  Bring him here, Quentin told her in his head. Then he looked into Whitney’s eyes one last time, as she stood there in front of him, bleeding from her teeth and burned from the fire that had broken through her shield. She screamed at him at the top of her lungs, but he barely heard her. All of her power was sapped from her, and he could see the shield she’d erected flickering lamely. All she had left was her anger and her bitterness.