Both men drank.
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” Vernon said, eyeing Gregg over the rim of his cup.
“Didn’t have what?”
“The stomach to do what’s necessary to get the job done.”
Gregg swirled his whiskey-laced coffee in his cup. “I love my brother more than life itself, but I’ve a responsibility to the people of the city and I can’t let personal feelings get in the way of driving the vermin out once and for all.”
“Some might say you’re one of the vermin.”
“Some would be right, but I’m also the only one capable and willing to do the job. Maybe one day someone like me won’t be necessary, but that time is not now. Anyway, Clay isn’t stupid. He’s going to take care of himself and Riley. I’m not worried about him.”
“I’d better get going,” Vernon said, setting aside his cup and rising.
“What about my new bodyguards out there?”
“I took care of them. They won’t cause me any problems.”
Gregg frowned. “When?”
“First thing. I don’t want Tyrell knowing I’m involved quite yet.”
“So it doesn’t matter now if they see you?”
Vernon shook his head. “They’ll know they’ve seen me before, and they’ll know I’m familiar and a friend, but they’ll forget about me as soon as I’m out of sight. Next time they see me, it’ll be the same.”
“And if they decide to contact Tyrell while they still have eyes on you?”
The corner of Vernon’s mouth quirked. “They won’t.”
A chill ran down Gregg’s back. God, but he hated dreamers. They had their uses, but the fact that they could reach through walls and fuck with someone’s brain made his blood run cold. He’d made sure he was nulled up tight before Vernon arrived. All the same, he should probably have Cass scan him again sooner rather than later.
Vernon rose. “I look forward to hearing about your success on taking over Morrell’s compound. If I might make a suggestion . . . ?”
Gregg nodded.
“You might want to think about putting Riley somewhere safe. For her own good. She’s one of a kind. Eventually you will want to find the rest of the Kensington artifacts. She’s the only one who can trace down his workshop. I understand this could cause a rift with your brother . . .”
“I told you, personal feelings can’t get in the way of saving the city.”
Vernon nodded, satisfied. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said and left. In the outer office, an escort waited to guide him out.
Gregg sat a moment, tapping his fingers thoughtfully.
“That went well,” he said out loud to no one at all. “We’ll need to make sure Brussard doesn’t scan you, though. He’s very good. One of the best. He could really throw a wrench into my plan. Now, time for you to report to Jackson. He’ll be waiting. We don’t need him growing suspicious of either of us.”
Gregg reached for his phone and dialed.
Chapter 26
Riley
“KISS FOR LUCK?” I asked as Price and I prepared to start our invasion.
“We aren’t supposed to need luck.”
“We don’t. I want you to kiss me.”
He frowned. “You don’t have some ridiculous idea that you want to kiss me in case you don’t make it, do you?”
That busted the mood. “I hadn’t thought that, but thanks for putting it in my head. Realistically we are going after a psychopathic serial killer,” I said. “One of us could get shot or knifed or something.”
A shudder ran through Price, and his expression went taut, his nostril’s flaring. A sharp wind picked up, scraping powdery snow into the air. “Don’t remind me.” He shook himself, twisting to face ranch yard. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Hey, I’m not going to let this nut job do anything to me,” I said, grabbing his arm.
He lifted my hand off his arm and linked his fingers through mine. “You can’t promise that, Riley,” he said soberly. “Don’t pretend you can. We’re doing this because we’re the only ones who can. I’m here because I don’t want to be anywhere but at your side. But don’t pretend you’re superwoman. You aren’t bulletproof, any more than I am, any more than your stepmother Mel was. Death is out there and in this business, we court it every day.”
“I know that. But if I remembered it too well, I’d never get out of bed in the morning. Bad things happen. They hurt.” I thought of Mel, of the makeshift funeral we’d conducted. Hurt was an understatement of epic proportions. Tears burned my eyes. I swallowed the ache in my throat. “We all have to keep going, and we can’t let the evil people win. We have to make our sacrifices worth it.”
I sniffed and straightened my shoulders. “Time’s wasting. Let’s get to work.”
A whirling wall of white had grown up around us. I couldn’t see the ranch yard. My luck, I’d start walking and end up end up in Kansas. I looked at Price. “Lead the way.”
He held me snared in his gaze, tugging me around to fully face him. “Don’t let yourself be one of the sacrifices,” he ordered softly, then dropped a fast kiss on my lips. A moment later, he led me into the storm.
I dropped into trace sight almost immediately. Magic poured off Price. It filled the air like an indigo aurora borealis. His body glowed, veins of magic writhing over and through him. They covered him so thickly he might as well have been made of magic.
The pressure shifted, and my ears popped. Price cleared a path for us to walk on, the freed snow whirling into the air.
We stumbled downhill toward the ranch yard. A thick web of spells wrapped it—for more than just security. Multiple rings nested inside one another: nulls, binders, more nulls, more binders, more nulls. Inside those were bands of other magics. I’d guess something malignant and painful if intruders made it through the exterior rings. Inside the innermost ring was something else. Probably a reinforcement of the split rail fencing to keep the animals from blundering into the dangerous spells.
The interior held an array of magics. Most were probably helpful spells—warmers for the barns and water troughs, fire-suppression systems, mouse and rat deterrents, and who knew what else. The main house was another story. It glowed like a small sun. I couldn’t begin to say what sort of magic it held.
Price’s breathing roughened as we drew closer to the security wall.
“How are you holding up?”
His hand tightened momentarily. “Managing.”
This was a larger storm than he’d had to control before. He could easily lose hold of it. Manipulating weather on a small scale was tough enough, but Price needed to cover the entire ranch yard and farther. That meant moving a lot of air, dealing with changing high and low pressures, keeping the wind rotating, and who knew what else. The bigger the storm, the more difficult it was. Plus he had to keep the road clear for Arnow.
The only thing I could do to help him was to tear through the security wall as quickly as possible.
I let go of his hand and reached into the trace dimension, taking hold of his burgundy-blue trace and wrapping it around my wrist. I could feel his emotions—elation, worry, determination, love, and an all-encompassing element of protectiveness. There was also an underlying wildness akin to the wind blowing outside. Like he was out there flying with it. Or it somehow sang inside him.
That’s right. My boyfriend is part wind. But not a blowhard, or an airhead.
Good thing he couldn’t hear me. He’d have groaned in pain at my idiocy.
I slogged as fast as I could through the snow to the edge of the first null wall. The noise of the storm made it impossible to hear Price if he yelled anything at me.
This was going to be a little bit of braille, a little bit of art, and a whole lot of luck, all wrapped up in muli
sh stubbornness. If you looked it up in the dictionary, I’d be the poster child for mulish stubbornness. Well, me and Leo. I was going to go out on a limb and say his picture came first.
I didn’t have time to do the summon and release I’d done at the diner. I was going to have to do something far more dangerous and dig in claws and tear the magic apart. I was counting on the layers of the wall being linked. Most times they were to make them both easier to charge and more effective overall. Unless someone with my level of trace talent attacked. Then the connections became a liability, because I only needed to shred the outer wall apart to cause a chain reaction. Price’s storm could speed the process, since wild weather had the effect of short-circuiting magic, requiring regular charging and spell maintenance.
The real trouble would come when everything broke apart. A lot of wild magic would get released in an enormous explosion of power. I wouldn’t be able to collect it the way I had in the diner. It would come too fast and too hard.
My main goal was to survive, and keep Price alive.
I sent off a little prayer for whatever extra help God or the angels could give, and then I went to work.
With no ceremony at all, I raised my hands and skewered as deep as I could into the null wall, clawing and tearing as hard as I could.
Power slammed me. If I hadn’t been anchored to the null wall, I’d have been thrown into the air. Crushing pain smashed into me. Instinct alone kept me going. I kept yanking and tearing the outer null wall until I felt it lose cohesion. It exploded, and this time, nothing stopped me from being flung away like a rag doll.
I fell through a whirl of frigid snow, landing hard on my back, my breath bursting out of me. Magic exploded, one after another, a chain reaction of spell failure, each one burning brighter and hotter. I couldn’t breathe. Somehow I was connected to the magic and power coruscated through me. Instinct had me winding it around myself like kite string around a reel. Globs of it clung to me like giant cancers. All of it burned. All of it ate away at me, at my body, at my soul, and there was nothing I could do but endure. I sure as hell didn’t plan to die.
I’m pretty sure I went on an acid trip. Literally. I was swimming in the stuff. Drinking it. Every thought I tried to have melted to nothing. Pain mowed me down like a runaway freight train and just kept pummeling me, one endless car after another churning me under steel wheels, slicing and dicing and crushing. I couldn’t catch my breath or regroup.
My brain finally kicked into first gear and notified me that I should take control of my own magic. No duh. It whirled and churned inside me. Loose brambles of it lashed me, cutting and biting. That hurt. Not as much as the acid or the freight train, but supremely unpleasant all the same.
Nothing worth having ever came easy. Right. Whoever said that was an idiot. Except that seemed to be the story of my life these days. I was so tired of being out of control. All. The. Time.
Anger boiled up in me, giving me a thin cushion against the hurting. I wanted to kick something. Hard. Kick my own ass, maybe. Taylor would tell me to do it instead of just wallowing in pain. Leo and Jamie would just grab popcorn and hunker down for the entertainment, offering catcalls and an unhelpful advice. Brothers.
I imagined all three and felt a wave of warmth roll through me. Joy at having such a family. They’d always love me no matter what, always have my back. I’d dragged them into an insane life, and they’d come along merrily, like their own lives hadn’t been upended and turned inside out. Normally I felt guilty about that, but the warmth washed it away. Or maybe it just turned up the lights so I could see that all three of my siblings were there because they wanted to be. Sure, I was the catalyst, but I hadn’t dragged them anywhere they didn’t want to go. Not only that, they were actually excited about this insane adventure. I’d discounted those feelings, thinking they were pretending just for me, or it was like Christmas and that excitement would pass, but now. . . . They had a purpose. Something bigger than themselves, and it felt good. For me, too.
Maybe that was what changed. I felt a little bit like the Grinch, my heart growing three sizes. Only the change was far more than that. It was like I’d suddenly grown-up, like that moment when you realize for the first time that you’re an adult and you’re responsible for your life. Not only are you responsible, but you’re actually capable.
Anyhow, something changed in me. Suddenly everything stopped seeming so overwhelming and impossible. Something inside me unfolded, and I just knew what to do with the magic, with this enormous talent that flowed in my blood.
I quit thinking of it as separate from me. I quit thinking of it as something I had to be afraid of. Birds weren’t afraid of flying; whales weren’t afraid of diving deep into the ocean. They’d been born with the ability to make use of their bodies. Magic was my body. I was made to handle all that I’d been given.
That realization let me let go of my fears and just let nature take its course. Innate intuition took over. I nudged my power into flows and skeins. I let it slide around and over and through me, tugging it back and into a kind of chaotic order. Arnow probably would have had it regimented, sorted, and no coloring outside the lines. That wasn’t me. I was wild and silly and impetuous. I liked things unpredictable. I liked living on the edge.
My magic’s personality mirrored mine. Knowing that, I realized I didn’t have to fear it. It couldn’t be stronger than I could handle. Not if I embraced it and let it be what it needed to be.
I gathered the torrent of escaping magic in, smoothing out the edges and clumps. The pain began to fade. I still felt like there were a couple dozen balls covered in steel spikes spinning around inside me. Old habits, old fears, old ways of dealing with my talent. I grabbed them one by one. They dissolved, flowing through my mental fingers like silk. Power layered around me, wrapping me around and around the way it had in the diner. It felt right, not constricting or suffocating. It was light as foam and warm as sunshine on a July afternoon. I wondered if I could teach Price to stop fighting his talent.
Soon I didn’t even have to tell it what to do. A part of myself that was as automatic as breathing took over. I swelled with power. By the time I held it all, I felt like a giant ball of gleaming ribbon. I hadn’t tried to take all the magic inside and tuck it away—something that had nearly killed me too many times before. A person could only hold so much. Instead, I’d wrapped it around me. Without the terror and desperation I usually felt, I’d been calm and confident. The power responded the way the rest of me responded. My heart slowed and became evenly paced, my muscles relaxed, the knots in my stomach loosened and fell apart. The flailing brambles of magic turned to silk and smoothed over me in a soothing cocoon of warmth and electric ripples.
I came back to myself slowly. I’d been so lost in my task, I’d lost track of Price. A spike of fear drove through me. How had he fared?
I realized then that he held me in his arms on the ground. He was saying something, though I couldn’t make it out. My head still sang with notes of power. Around us, a storm raged, but we stood in a bubble of calm, permeated only by the howl of the wind.
I wriggled and sat up, putting my arms around him and burrowing my face into the crook of his neck. His heart thudded frantically in his chest as his arms tightened around me.
I put my lips next to his ear, speaking loud enough to be heard over the storm. “The key is to enjoy the ride.” I started laughing. I couldn’t help myself. I’d finally come into my own.
Chapter 27
Gregg
“GIVE ME THE UPDATE,” Gregg ordered as he finished typing out a text. Stupid how most of his time in this surge against Savannah’s old operation was spent behind a desk like some bean counter. He felt more like traffic cop than a general. Nevertheless, someone had to make sure that all the balls stayed in the air and sent forces where they were needed. The military would call this a time-on-target attack, where al
l the weaponry hit at the very same time. Except he’d had to rush the planning and implementation and now had to call up and redirect resources as needed. That meant sitting in front of the computer and a half dozen phones with a dozen assistants scurrying about like tweaker mice.
Kinsey stood behind the chair opposite Gregg’s desk. He didn’t speak, and after a moment, Gregg looked up. Kinsey’s expression was stupefied.
“What happened?”
“Dimitriou and Castillo are dead.”
It took a second for the words to register. Gregg thrust to his feet, his chair rolling away to crash into the wall behind him. “What? How?” He punched down on his desk. The wood cracked from the force. Pain told him he’d broken knuckles, maybe bones. A snarl peeled his lips from his teeth. “Tell me what happened.”
Kinsey shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and rock hard. “Snipers. Simultaneous head taps, both. Professional job.”
“It’s time I got out there,” Gregg decided. He glanced at his secretary sitting at a small desk on the opposite side of the room. “Karen—where’s Mason?”
The middle-aged woman started at his bellow and tapped quickly on her keyboard. “Midtown. At Morrell’s Boreal residence.”
“Get him for me.” Gregg tapped his fingers impatiently on his thigh.
“With assassins out there, you shouldn’t expose yourself,” Kinsey said. “You’re the one they really want.”
“I’ll go into half-travel mode. Right now, I need a firm hand on the wheel up there. My people need to see me and know I’m still in charge. If we don’t take Savannah’s compound down before a competitor gets entrenched, we’ll be in for a long siege and I don’t have time for that.”
“He’ll be on the line in the moment, sir,” Karen said.
Gregg answered when one of his cells rang. Each was set up to receive calls on the same number, but instead of someone getting a voice mail or busy signal when he was on the phone, the next cell in the linked lines would ring; if Gregg was busy, an assistant would pick it up.
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