Strength & Power: Dark Paranormal Tattoo Taboo Romance (The Chronicles of Kerrigan Book 10)

by W. J. May

  Molly was right. Rae acknowledged it at the same time that Angel caught her eye from across the grass. She gave a curt nod, which Angel returned before silently striding forward.

  “I love you, Luke,” Molly said again, with tears in her eyes. “I can’t let you walk in there.”

  His eyes flashed, completely oblivious to what was going on behind him.

  “I love you, too, babe, but unfortunately you can’t stop me—”

  His voice cut off suddenly as Angel rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. Every muscle in his body froze up at once, leaving him a beautiful statue in the morning sun.

  “No, she can’t,” Angel murmured, giving him an apologetic grimace as she stepped back to survey her work, “but I can.”

  Molly rushed forward and jumped up again on her toes, pressing her lips against his frozen ones. “I’m so sorry, babe! I’m so sorry! But this will wear off in just a bit, and then I’ll meet you when we’re through. With any luck, we can still make that movie you wanted to see…” Her voice trailed off doubtfully at the look of fury darkening his eyes. “…or not…”

  “Molls,” Julian grabbed her by the wrist and started pulling her away, “we’ve got to go.”

  She flashed him one more look of goodbye, before joining the rest of them by the curb. “So how are we going to get there?” she asked glumly, glancing back at Luke. “The Council knows all of our cars. What if we pass them as we drive away?”

  This time it was Angel who blushed, flashing Julian a quick look of apology before she lowered her eyes to the ground. “I…have a car we can take.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “When did you get a car? How did you …” he hesitated nervously. “…how did you get money to buy a car? I thought all your finances were tied up with Cromfield.”

  “Now, Julian,” she began rationally, “when you said ‘what’s mine is yours,’ I took that to mean monetary compensation as well—”

  “There’s no time,” Rae cut them off. “Deal with it later. We have to move.” She shuddered, scared none of them were going to make it out alive this time. Her gut was telling her she should be worried—no, she should be terrified.

  * * *

  No one could fault Angel for style. That being said, as they raced down the freeway the five of them didn’t exactly blend in.

  “You got a Porsche.” Julian closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat. The seat that he had unknowingly paid for.

  Angel beamed back at him, completely unapologetic. “They call the color ‘lipstick red.’ It was the fastest one they had!”

  He shook his head with a soft groan, but Gabriel patted him consolingly on the shoulder from the backseat. “You got off easy, man. On her seventh birthday, she stole my credit card and skipped off to town to buy herself a horse. When she couldn’t decide which one, she ended up getting three.”

  “Which I had to return, if you recall,” she defended herself, swerving around traffic.

  He grinned. “What did you expect? That they would sleep in my room?”

  “Well, actually—”

  “There’s the off-ramp!” Rae pointed, and Angel flew up the side toward the exit.

  As their car rocketed down the country road, it struck her as suddenly strange that Angel wouldn’t know that, because Angel had never come to their school. In fact, the closer they got to the sweeping grounds, the more Angel peered around with wide eyes. It made Rae suddenly feel sorry for her. This should have been Angel’s school, too. She should have known the off-ramp exit.

  “Okay…where do I go?” she murmured, lowering her voice as they neared the parking lot.

  Julian pointed to a side road up ahead. “Go there. It’s a maintenance entrance. It’ll be the last place to get checked.”

  The car slipped discreetly behind a dumpster—well, as discreetly as a fire-red Porsche could—and the five of them got out.

  There wasn’t a sound on campus. The school year wasn’t set to begin for another few weeks, and for a few remaining days of summer Guilder was at peace.

  Not for long… Rae thought as they walked silently up the grassy hill. It felt too quiet, making Rae uneasy. She’d never been at Guilder with it super quiet, or at least not unless it was the calm before the storm.

  “Just remember,” she cautioned in a low voice, “no matter what happens, we stay together. Jules is right: With any luck, there will only be one or two guards, and…”

  All five of them froze in a line.

  They had just reached the pathway that led to the Oratory, except they could hardly see the laneway.

  They could hardly see it because every single agent who worked for the Privy Council was standing in their way. No one was heading to their houses, they were all waiting for them here.

  The five of them were only given a second—a single second to acknowledge the trap.

  Then the gates of hell opened and it was every man for himself.

  With a chorus of screams and shouts ringing in her ears, Rae did the only thing she could think of. Bringing her hands together, she slipped into Camille’s tatù and sent a wave of kinetic energy blasting across the lawn.

  For a split second, it worked.

  As the ground below their feet trembled and shook, the Council agents fell to the grass, giving her people enough time to dart through them towards the Oratory. But there were simply too many, and Rae looked on in horror as one by one, agents started to recoup. One by one her friends were going to fall. There was nothing she could do to stop it. She saw it unfolding before she had time to react again. Maybe it was Julian’s tatù, maybe it was just reality.

  She sure as hell wasn’t going down with a fight, but she wasn’t going to be able to save all of them—or any of them. She ducked as a large, burly look agent took a swing at her. She swung around and dropped down, kicked her foot out to take the giant down by his knees. He grimaced as his legs collapsed and he hit the pavement pretty hard. Rae spun around trying to see what was happening to her friends as she sent a shock into the guy. Not enough to kill him, but plenty to knock the guy out.

  The first to go down was Angel. She was too far away for Rae to help.

  Angel was firing a sea of tranquilizers into the crowd and freezing anyone who got to close. She had a damn good shot, but her ability was defensive and when a guy came up behind her and knocked the gun out of her hand, she didn’t have time to react.

  The man holding her was instantly frozen, as were the next five agents who tried to take her down. But it was the seventh agent who broke through and bashed her upside the head, sending her sprawling to the grass.

  “ANGEL!”

  Rae didn’t know who shouted. Was it Gabriel or Julian? She was terrified, unsure if Angel could survive that kind of blunt-force trauma. It was a hard hit. Rae took down two agents as she watched Angel from where she stood.

  Angel looked strangely peaceful—minus the trail of crimson leaking over her white hair—as if she’d simply fallen asleep. Then a heavyset man lifted her into the air and Rae could see her no longer. He was carrying her off somewhere.

  They needed to prove to the Council what was going on. This was crazy. Rae charged forward with a guttural cry, flying towards the Oratory with everything she had. The only way to stop this is to get the proof. The only way to save us all from a lifetime of incarceration is to break into that office. Fight or flight. She sure as hell was going to fight.

  She shifted her weight and kicked full force into the head of a woman who was running towards her who simultaneously grew spikes all over her body. The spikes disappeared the second the woman fell unconscious, but Rae barely had time to run before she heard another piercing scream.

  A shudder ran through her whole body as she recognized who it belonged to. She froze another agent coming for her and then sent another two agents flying back to the trees with a gust of wind, she spun around just in time to see Molly’s body crumple to the ground.

  The ground around Molly
was littered with the smoking bodies of a dozen or more agents. The woman who’d taken her down was kneeling behind Molly now, rolling up her sleeve as she gave Molly some sort of injection. Molly’s body twitched suddenly as the drugs instantly hit home, and then went still. The woman picked Molly’s limp body up and heading in the same direction the other agent had taken Angel.

  Tears were pouring down Rae’s face and it felt like she was moving in slow motion. It was just her, Gabriel, and Julian now. Against another fifty or so other agents that were still standing. So help me, if you guys kill any of them, I’m going to unleash hell on you all. Somehow she knew the PCs wanted them all alive, especially the hybrids.

  USE MOM’S FIRE! USE IT NOW!

  It was all Rae wanted to do. Her entire body ached for it. One wave of the blue flames, and everyone on the lawn would be simply swept away.

  Except…it would also kill them.

  And while she may be fighting to take down their very organization, killing them wasn’t something she was willing to do. Unfortunately, that mentality was beginning to cause problems.

  And not just for her.

  She suddenly leapt backwards as the metal siding of a wall went flying past her. She looked around in shock to see Gabriel use it to knock down six or seven guards with a twitch of his fingers. But he tempered the force so as not to cause permanent damage, and a second later when they all got up again—charging towards him.

  “Rae! Whatever you’re going to do—do it now!” he shouted, bracing himself as they leapt upon him. He struggled against them, knocking one off before another managed to kick him. It didn’t stop Gabriel, he’d been through a whole lot worse in his life than this. Pain wasn’t something to slow him down.

  “No!!” Rae couldn’t believe this was happening. When had everything gone so wrong? Rae came upon another two guards; one apparently had the ability to flick his tongue out. He tried to wrap it around Rae’s neck, only to find Rae freeze it with Angel’s ability. It looked like it hurt a lot. “Dickhead,” Rae hissed. Gabriel had cleared the way for her and she needed to take advantage of it.

  Rae found the other guard, knocking him out a little too easily. She switched to Jennifer’s tatù as she watched Julian.

  With his uncharted ability to see the future, taking him down in a fight was virtually an impossible thing to do. The only problem was that in the chaos of the moment with a dozen bodies flying around, people didn’t really make rational decisions. They tended to act on blind instinct.

  With a strength Rae didn’t know Julian had, he leapt up into the air, spinning around in a vicious kick that left three agents knocked senseless. He grabbed another by the throat, and was about to take down a fifth when Hank Montgomery, Guilder’s head of security, jumped up behind him and grabbed him by the wrist.

  Even across the lawn, Rae heard his arm snap. He was still doubled over when he was kneed in the face, and swept right back up into the waiting arms of the Privy Council.

  A steady stream of blood poured down his face, and from the ashen color of his skin it looked like he was about to pass out. But right before he was blocked from sight, he looked up across the grass and saw Rae watching him.

  For a frozen second, their eyes met. His lips moved and Rae was able to make out a single word. Run. Then someone shoved a bag over his head.

  Without stopping to think, Rae sent a blast of electricity toward the guard she was fighting and then barreled over the people running towards her. She took off flying towards the Oratory again. Using Jennifer’s leopard tatù to give her strength and speed, she sent anyone who touched her flying back into the trees. The bronzed double doors gleamed in the bright sun, finally there within reach. But the leopard didn’t have the unparalleled senses of her fennec fox.

  There was a sudden impact right behind her, and she whirled around in time to see Gabriel fall to the ground with a painful cry. Her eyes lifted up in horror, and fifty yards away she saw an ammunitions expert slowly lowering his gun to reload.

  “Gabriel!” she shrieked, darting forward. A dark stain was slowly spreading across his shirt, blossoming out from his chest. “Don’t move, I’m—”

  But the second she reached him, he shoved her away, pointing behind her to the Oratory doors—just six or seven paces beyond.

  “Rae,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath, “you have to lock the doors behind you. The president’s code—” he broke off with a sharp cry of pain, “—the code is obiectis. Carter told me. The others, they won’t be able to get in.” He gasped, swallowing as his face contorted with pain.

  “No!” she cried, trying to help him once more. “I’m not leaving you here to—”

  “It’s not your choice,” he said softly, hand trembling as he tried to stop the flow of blood. In true Gabriel fashion, he managed a small smile—even at the end. “Go.”

  Her eyes locked with his, memorizing his face before she turned on her heel. “Don’t you freakin’ die on me!”

  “I won’t,” he whispered. “I’m much too pretty.”

  She grinned despite herself and finally tore away, still hearing his words because of Devon’s tatù ability. A few seconds later, she reached the Oratory. No one was able to stop her as she raced, almost flying over them as she ran. She jumped up the steps and skidded to a stop in front of the familiar Oratory doors she’d gone through so many times.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She tried the password, spelling obiectis wrong as she tried the door. She redid it again, oddly wondering when they’d changed the code from just numbers to a keyboard. It didn’t matter. She punched in the “s” of the passcode just as a final flood of agents poured towards her, obscuring Gabriel from view.

  The sound of the door unlocking had her pulling at the door before it unclicked. She wrenched the heavy wood door open and slipped inside, pulling it tightly shut behind her and hitting the code on the inside wall with her free hand. The doors locked into place just as the first of the agents raced up the steps and banged on the door to get in. Rae sent a bolt of electricity at the code, killing it; sealing her in, and them out. This was either the most brilliant plan ever, or the stupidest.

  After the deafening noise outside, it was suddenly whisper-quiet.

  Rae turned around, her breath coming out in silent gasps as she hurried down the hall to the grand room of the Oratory. She glanced around the empty seats in the domed pavilion; it felt more like a funeral parlor than the room in which she had learned to use her tatù.

  She shook her head, thinking about her friends who were risking everything outside to help her. She needed to help them. If one of them… She pushed the thought from her mind and ran across the room, the same room where she had fought Kraigan and nearly lost everything. She scoffed. She could really use his help right now. Running her hand along the familiar carved walls, she found the latch that would open a hidden door to take her into the bowels of the Privy Council chambers.

  Angel, Molly, Julian, … Gabriel. Images of them as they succumbed to the PC guards tore a sob from her throat. They’d all be physically hurt badly. What if the guards killed one of her friends?

  She couldn’t allow herself to think like that—or stop moving, otherwise all her emotions would catch up. She also couldn’t think about her friends outside, or she would be overcome.

  She had to keep her eyes on the target and keep moving.

  Always moving.

  She had a horrible feeling this was what the rest of her life was going to be like. Forever running away, always trying to prove herself. “I won’t let that happen,” she hissed to herself.

  With the speed of the comic character, the Flash, she raced down the underground halls that led across the fields to the PC buildings. As she glided through the empty halls and corridors, down to Mallins’ darkened office door, she couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that she’d been this way before. That this was all following some sort of plan, somehow.

  A plan not of her making.

  She knew wh
ere Mallins’ office was without needing to think about it. She straightened in front of his door and tried the doorknob. It was locked, but for the life of her Rae didn’t have time. She stepped back, switched back into Jennifer’s ink, and kicked it clear off its hinges.

  It was a simple room. Not a lot of decorations or frills. Just a portrait of a stern-looking man mounted on the wall, and a plain desk sitting in the center.

  Rae made a beeline for the desk, ripping open every drawer before she came to one that was locked. Then, with great relish, she ripped that one open as well.

  …and stopped cold.

  There were no files. There was no stack of evidence to exonerate her and her friends. There was nothing she could hold in her hand and use for their rescue.

  There was just a computer connected to the desk that turned on when the drawer pulled open. A tiny computer with a blinking passcode.

  “DAMN IT!” she screamed aloud, picking up the desk chair and throwing it to the corner of the room. It cracked and broke, all the pieces falling to the floor like wooden rain. She slumped down on the floor.

  She would never get the passcode. Mallins would never give it up. The Council would never know the truth, and all of this—all of this—had been for nothing! They were all going to die… Trapped forever in a prison, never allowed to see each other again. Devon would never forgive her. What would her mother think? Maybe they would lie and say that they’d been killed or gone AWOL. The PC would probably blame Cromfield.

  Her head fell back against the wall as a silent stream of tears ran down her face.

  Well, sorry, Dad. Guess I’m not as invincible as you thought after all.

  …Wait…

  Her dad.

  Her DAD!

  Reaching into her pocket, Rae pulled out a tiny stone. The one she’d found along with the final piece of the brainwashing device beneath the Japanese maple. The same one she’d been carrying around ever since.

  For the hundredth time, her fingers ran over the tiny inscription carved in the stone.

  ‘Vetitum’

  A familiar ink hummed suddenly in her skin… One that allowed her to understand all languages—courtesy of the future Queen of England.