by T. G. Ayer
Chapter 3
I honed in on the vibrations deep within my solar plexus, and sank into the pulsing thread of energy, gently opening my eyes using my ethereal vision.
The astral plane held its own dangers, and it paid for any traveler, no matter how powerful, to ensure they have a solid hold on a feedback thread.
When I tracked a person, I would use one of their possessions, something that could link me to the feedback energy of my target. More often than not, I needed something biological—preferably blood—but hair was also a good vessel for a person’s life-thread. The energy a soul emitted remained attached to the physical form, long past death, and it was the feedback of the thread that guided me as I searched the astral plane.
But today, I was traveling, and likely projecting, using my own life-thread feedback. As long I maintained a solid hold on my link, I’d be safe no matter what. Which was why I drew a magical link tether around my connection to my life-thread. With thoughts of Samuel who’d been lost in the astral plane, projecting his essence to planes I was as yet ignorant of, I was all too aware of how easily that link could be broken. He’d taught me a long time ago how to command the magical elements within the astral plane, and to form a solid, binding ether.
Once the magic was secure, I surged up along the energy that was my essence, and slid into the astral plane. I ignored the pulsing light show that was the ethereal dimension, filled with energies of sensations, light and electricity, and sped toward the access point in the Veil that would lead me to the Chicago PD precinct where Fake-Kailin—otherwise known as Cassandra Monteith—was waiting to be taken away to a maximum security women’s prison.
Good thing I’d chosen that moment to check on Cassie because, just as I slipped into Kai’s holding room, I sensed a concentration of energies outside the door.
I sank deeper into the Chief’s fancy interrogation room to find the ShapeChanger pacing up and down on the carpeted floor, the loosely braided dark hair down her back uncannily Kai-like.
So weird seeing Kai and knowing it was Cassie; I was still wrapping my head around it, that’s for sure.
Just as I was about to give her the heads up on incoming, the door opened—without the courtesy of a knock. Two police officers entered, expressions so serious that I was almost convinced they knew nothing about the whole charade.
Chief Murdoch following them inside, tugging on his unbuttoned jacket in what was his habit; a failed attempt at masking the rounded belly he was seemingly unable to get rid of. His expression was dark and severe, his brow knitted so severely that his bushy eyebrows converged, one long furry black caterpillar lounging above his eyes. He too was keeping up the act.
Despite the trickle of trepidation that ran through me at what Cassie could be facing in her role as the decoy, I couldn’t help chuckling. Understandable, given that I was faced with the difficult decision on which looked more threatening—the Chief’s unibrow-caterpillar or his thick mustache-caterpillar.
I struggled to focus as I watched the chief, my heart warm with a fondness for the large man who’d had my back since I was twelve. For a human, the Chief seemed to possess the kind of power that spanned races, agencies, and even planes.
Despite the stern, almost threatening persona he displayed to his subordinates, I’d found the man to have a heart of gold, and I found it heart-warming the way he appeared to care for Kai.
I was so glad she had him in her corner.
Although, given that she worked for the Elite Agency herself, she likely had any number of strings that would be pulled on her behalf if need be.
Still, the plan had to go ahead as discussed, too many variables in a still-unknown situation.
I hovered in the corner of the room, watching as the two uniformed cops prepared Fake-Kai for transport, grinding out stern instructions and clamping on handcuffs—from which I was pretty certain she knew how to escape when the time came.
Once ready, Fake-Kai was led out of the interrogation room and frog-marched through the precinct as dozens of heads turned to watch her departure. A range of emotions flickered on their faces, and for the first time, I was privy to what Kai faced on a regular basis.
Though her life as a shifter was lived in the shadows, her public human persona appeared not as popular as I would have expected. Saleem had mentioned that he, along with Logan, both received regular doses of contempt from the policemen that worked with agents Sentinel and Omega, and now the Elite, often placed within the various law-enforcement departments in order to foster interdepartmental relations. The agent functioned under the mysterious banner of a black-site department of the FBI, though more often than not they were seen only as interlopers.
And it seemed Kai was on the receiving end of the same attitude.
As I watched the detectives and officers stare at Fake-Kai as she headed toward the exit, the Chief following closely, I considered more variables to an already complicated situation. There were so many forces at play that it was often hard to identify who was supernatural and who wasn’t.
All too often, supernaturals succeeded extremely well at living below the radar, and even mages often went with their talents latent and untapped. Though curious, I didn’t have time to linger and study the aural feedback of each of the cops who watched the silent procession.
I made a mental note to whisper a word or two in the Chief’s ear; it would pay to somehow have the department screened, especially now with Division 7 seeming with its hands elbow-deep in all the wrong supernatural honey-pots.
I kept watch, following the exiting party outside the building toward a rear garage facility where the security van had been backed up to the bay, rear doors open. Murdoch hovered as the officers walked Cassie into the back of the van that would take her to the high-security facility outside of Chicago.
Chief Murdoch’s expression was dark, the muscles in his jaw tight. He didn’t like it one bit, that much was clear—which was comforting. It meant he’d be doing everything in his power to ensure things went according to the plan, which included Cassie’s mysterious disappearance after being signed over to the prison’s security.
Soon, doors slammed shut, and the van’s engine rumbled, and then the officers drove off, taking Cassie away without incident. I let out a silent breath of relief, still a little unsure of what I’d been expecting to happen. As the van made a left at the intersection beyond the CPD garage, I projected into the back of the vehicle, and hovered beside the ShapeChanger.
She wouldn’t know I was there, not unless I found a way to let her know.
I drew closer and moved myself partly from the astral plane, projecting a physical manifestation of my hand, which I used to gently tug on her sleeve.
Cassie glanced slowly down at her wrist where my fingers and wrist were still visible. Thankfully, she refrained from freaking out. She shifted in her seat and smiled, the expression grateful and relieved.
I curled my fingers around her wrist and gave her hand a brief squeeze.
Hang in there, Cassie.
With everything regarding Fake-Kai’s transport to prison appearing to be in order, I gave Cassie’s hand a second squeeze, then retreated from the van to leave her to complete her part of the ruse.
Chapter 4
Satisfied that Cassie was okay and that the plan was going off without a hitch—so far—I returned to join Kai in the back of her minivan.
By now, the van had made it to the outskirts of the city, and I didn’t have to be outside of the vehicle to know where we were. Though the driver had kept a safe distance from the area, the sensation of nothingness still permeated the Chicago air. And it reached into the astral plane with hungry grasping fingers, almost as though it ached to share its immense vacuum of power.
The Dead Zone.
A neighborhood in the Eastern Sector of the city, the Dead Zone was noted for being a nexus of non-power.
Which was somewhat of a running joke among the supernaturals.
Where a nexus wa
s usually a conflagration of immense power, usually existing along a ley line, the Dead Zone was true to its name—impressively dead.
The neighborhood was said to have been one of the Conflagration locations around the Earth-World where the blackest most poisonous of magical power had accumulated and simply exploded its way through the Veil into the Earth-World.
Nothing worked there, no electrical device, no magic, no energy whatsoever. The utter emptiness of the zone appeared to have a repulsive effect on non-supernaturals, and it wasn’t surprising that many magical and ethereal beings hid out there, in a place where they would be safe, even from their own magic.
The area around the Dead Zone also received a thick blanket of a secondary vacuum. Though not as strong as the non-energy of the Zone itself, it tended to interfere with smaller devices and low-level magic. The officer up front had given the area a sufficiently wide berth for good reason.
I settled in beside Kai, waiting for her first communication. She held the notepad I’d given her, her tight-fisted grip covering the paper and making it impossible for me to initiate a message.
Other than that, she sat very still, staring straight ahead into the shadows. Her aura was calm, cool, which I supposed was a clue to her alpha heritage, the ability to remain ultra-calm under pressure. She’d make a fortune if she bottled and sold that ability—I’d be elbowing my way to get to the front of the line.
I smiled to myself as I thought about mentioning the potential cash cow to Kai. Then, for a moment, I considered using the same method I’d employed to tell Cassie I was with her.
But, almost as if on cue, Kai glanced down at the notepad in her grip. She released it slowly and flipped it open, scribbling a message with the little pen.
The letters were a little too large for my liking, but there was no way to tell her to keep them small in case someone was able to observe her actions. Instead, I watched the message appear.
Is Cassie doing ok?
I reached around me, into the astral plane, and harnessed some of the pulsing energy that encompassed all of this ethereal dimension. I gripped the energy within my mind, formed it into a rod, honing one end until the energy simmered like a tiny flame.
Directing the rod—or rather my astral pen—toward the notepad, I hovered it close to the surface of the paper. As I ran the harnessed energy along the notepad, ozone filtered around me as the electricity sizzled, and a thin trail of heat singed a single letter onto the paper.
Y.
I snapped a glance around to check on the driver, wanting to be certain he wasn’t paying too close attention to his passenger. But he had his eyes on the road, his aura a complicated web of blues and purples displaying his tension and focus.
Drawing my attention back to Kai, I watched as she scribbled out a second question.
Have they left yet?
Kai’s message made me smile. Even here, holed up inside the back of a getaway minivan, she was still trying to manage everything, still attempting to keep an eye on every step of the mission. I understood that need, and would likely have done the very same had I been in her position.
I repeated my electrically charged method of writing, responding only with a second tiny Y.
Kai responded almost immediately with a rapidly scribbled instruction.
Let me know if anything happens.
Shaking my head at the large letters, I responded with the smallest check mark that I could fashion with my stream of astral energy.
Kai’s smile told me she was at least somewhat relieved that all was going to plan.
I watched as she proceeded to go over her weapons, her bow and the knife in her boot. And then she checked her watch for the time. I knew how she felt—caged, and not in control.
The state of powerlessness wasn’t the easiest thing to deal with.
I was about to retreat into the astral plane and check on Cassandra when my awareness picked up two things.
One, that we’d left the Dead Zone about half a mile behind, and two, a large concentration of electrical energy was surging through the air, heading straight for the minivan.
A sizzling blast of power hit the van broadside, not a few feet from Kai’s face. Even before I could transition to a physical projection, intending to grab hold of Kai, the minivan tipped over in a roll, and she was sent tumbling across the walls of the van, her body slammed around like a puppet in a tornado.
My mind buzzed, an odd electricity pinging my brain as I finally pushed through and formed a physical projection, if only a partial one. I tried to grab a hold of Kai’s arm, but her essence felt slippery against my fingers, against my mind, as though every atom in her body was vibrating at a speed that rendered her no longer in a physical state.
No matter how hard I tried, I just wasn’t able to get a fix on her long enough to grab on. A small part of my brain whispered a second question—was it possible that I too was suffering from that same inability to achieve a solid state?
But the thought flitted away as a pulsing energy surged through my skull with such unparalleled intensity that I was seriously worried that my brain was about to explode.
Black magic curses and evil demonic spirits had nothing on this electrical torture.
Warm liquid dripped onto my upper lip, and I almost groaned. I’d had about enough nosebleeds to last me a lifetime.
But my physical reaction to this energy posed a real problem. Back on the bed, secure in the room at the Elite HQ, I was bleeding profusely, with no means of stemming the flow.
Unable to latch onto Kai, my only option was to jump my physical form to her and get her out. But there were too many variables. I had no idea what could possibly be messing with her energy so all-encompassing that her physical state had been bypassed.
What was this power that possessed such a level of intensity, that it rendered me near helpless, rendered my astral projection ability null and void?
And even as those thoughts ran through my mind, I quashed them, and my doubts along with them, and shifted my focus in order to pull my physical body along the link toward me.
A normal, run-of-the-mill process that I’d done more than a million times in my life, like blinking or breathing.
But it didn’t work.
Even though I felt the physical pull back on the bed, knew this was the moment when I’d have teleported right beside Kai, it didn’t work.
With the force of an explosion, electricity surged through the back of the van again, so powerful now that my ears rang and I tasted ozone.
Something unimaginably powerful was outside the van. And whoever they were, they had only one intent—to abduct Kai.
And the sickening cold of fear in my gut taunted me—I was damn near powerless to stop them.
Chapter 5
The electric power pulsed within the back of the van, slamming into both Kai and myself, and flinging us in opposite directions. Then, as though an invisible hand had reached out and scooped her up, the force lifted Kai off the floor even as it sent a burst of electricity into her body.
The same voltage coursed through my veins as sparks flared in my vision. The energy tugged at my essence, thrusting me back onto the astral plane and then, just as easily, snatching me back out into the minivan.
White lightning flashes zig-zagged inside the small confined space, the metal around us vibrating so fast that it let off a low thrum. And within that maelstrom of energy, was the woman I was meant to be protecting.
Kai hung within the grip of the energy, but as terrified as I was for her safety, I couldn’t remain focused on her. I stared, horrified, as I raised my fingers in front of me, panicking as they vibrated so fast that my projected form began to dissolve. Kai was still caught inside a web of pulsating energy, but at least she’d now begun to make little movements, a spasm of a finger, a twitch of a lip. She was regaining consciousness which I took to mean she was no longer being electrocuted. Still, she’d be unable move much else given the effect of thousands of volts of elec
tricity coursing through one’s body; alpha or not, she’d feel like she’d been pulverized.
I hated that I couldn’t just get her out, but I forced myself to put those feelings aside. Unable to help Kai, I had to at least find out what the hell was going on, and now that I was in control of myself, I had to take the chance before our attackers came in for a second strike. I drifted away from Kai and slipped through the metal wall of the minivan, hovering above the overturned vehicle, its wheels still spinning, scorched rubber redolent in the air.
Surprisingly, the street was empty, not a car in sight, no howl of sirens in the distance. The scene of the accident was hidden from view by a three-story abandoned apartment building on one side, and a half-demolished parking garage on the other.
Along the sidewalk, the line of half a dozen street lamps flickered on and off, as though something interfered with their connection to the grid.
Two men had approached the minivan, likely from the vehicle that had T-boned us. When the attackers approached the cop in the front of the vehicle, I made my decision. I had no intention of standing by and watching them get away with Kai. Taking her was their end-game, no doubt about it.
At that moment, Kai let out a low, frustrated moan and I sank back into the minivan and drew close to her. From the dark sparks of her aura, I recognized the signs of some form of inner struggle. Given her panther species, I determined that her panther must be struggling just as much as she was. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the animal side of Kai was stressed out enough to force her way through right this minute.
Which would be a very bad idea.
But the field of electricity was currently holding Kai firmly, the grip on her likely tight enough to keep her feline form in check as well.
The field of sparks pulsed and I shifted through the van and turned my attention to the two men who had approached, one of who held a hand out toward the minivan, almost nonchalantly sending a constant stream of electric energy into the van, and most assuredly into Kai.
