Boreal and John Grey Season 2

by Thoma, Chrystalla

  Fadhir’s energy was angry and sharp, all edges. Modhir’s was bright and warm and pulsing like a heartbeat.

  And Ella knew this, knew how Finn felt in a world where everyone had a signature of magic and he went without — different; crippled. Not real.

  He clutched her leg harder as fadhir stepped closer, raising his big hand with the glinting signet rings. Modhir reached around and pushed Finn gently backward.

  Away.

  He stumbled at the sound of a hand hitting flesh and then modhir fell, sprawling on the floor, her magic flickering.

  Finn’s breath caught. He bent over her, tugged on her arm, as fadhir’s shadow fell over him.

  But it was too late and Ella couldn’t move or speak, couldn’t help. Couldn’t save him.

  Finn straightened slowly and looked up at his father. He stepped in front of his mother’s fallen form. He’d protect her, just like she always protected him — until she gave up on him and let him fall.

  Ella woke with a gasp, arching off the hard mattress.

  Just a memory.

  She blinked up at the glowing numbers of the clock on the wall; they told her it was four in the morning. A glow filled the room and she rolled on her side, rubbing her eyes.

  Finn was curled on his bunk and seemed to burn in a white bonfire, the flames catching his hair and silvering his face. In spite of the dream, he looked peaceful.

  A ripple in the air caught her eye. Standing up quietly, she stared at the form of the luminous woman hovering in front of Finn.

  Not a Gate or a rip in the Veil. Another memory caught in a mirror.

  That was his mother, and she was smiling.

  Ella sat back down, her heart clenching with bittersweet pain, and watched Finn for a long while as he slept.

  ***

  “Through here,” the bodyguard said, ushering Finn through an open door. He stopped Ella with a raised hand, and man, that guy was built like a fridge. “David Holborn said you should come with me. He wants to talk to you.”

  Ella hesitated. “Sure.” Dave had brought them some of their stuff from the apartment — including her belt with her gun and knives. It was like a reunion with old friends.

  Finn turned, his brows knitted. He wore a black hoodie with the hood drawn up to hide his ears. The words ‘Don’t mess with me’ were emblazoned in crimson on the front.

  Through the door a table and chairs were visible — like a police interview room. Where the hell were they?

  Someone waved from inside and Ella leaned around the doorjamb, unfazed when the guard glared at her.

  Trained by Finn, my man.

  Norma sat at the table, wearing a big smile on her lined face. She looked good, a far cry from the deathly pale and sickly woman she’d been last Ella had seen her. Her short white hair gleamed and she wore large pearl earrings and a red frilly blouse.

  Finn brushed by and entered the room, going straight to Norma. He knelt at her feet and put his arms around her waist. Norma’s eyes widened, but she put a hand on his fair head and swallowed hard.

  Suddenly Ella was grateful for Dave’s summons. The moment felt too private and for Finn to insist so much to see Norma, it meant he had something important to discuss with her. Ella somehow didn’t think goodbye was the only thing he had to tell her, though the way he was hugging her carried the same desperation she’d often felt in him in the past days.

  Another guard gestured for Ella to follow and she hurried after him, rubbing her chest. Damn premonitions and signs — what was the use of the headache if you couldn’t prevent anything bad from happening? And how could you tell abstract fear from real foreboding?

  They walked along an endless corridor with swaying lamps that reminded her eerily of the Bureau, and then turned right and entered a conference room with a long black table and a projector screen hanging in the back.

  Dave looked up from a document he held and squinted at Ella. He had folders stacked on the table and a mug. His jacket was thrown over another chair. He looked cozy.

  “What, you moved in here?” Ella muttered, sliding into a hard-backed chair. “Not very comfortable. Of course, you with your ass of steel wouldn’t notice such things.”

  Dave’s brows lifted. “Ass of steel?”

  “Yeah.” Ella propped her booted feet on another chair. “Talking of which, whose ass do I need to kiss for a cup of tea around here?”

  Dave sighed and waved at the guard who’d brought her there, presumably for said tea and not for a gag.

  You never knew.

  “Feet off the chair,” Dave groused and she ignored him with the ease of long practice.

  She grinned. If she tried hard enough, she could pretend they were back in the days before the Gates and the attacks, before Finn arrived to town, Simon died, and her whole world turned upside down. Just herself and her grumpy boss, bickering like old women over scraps of gossip.

  But she didn’t really want to imagine a life where she hadn’t met Finn, regardless of the baggage.

  The guard returned with a plastic cup of steaming — coffee?

  Ella took it, making a face. “I’ll start climbing the walls. Fair warning.”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” Dave said, unperturbed. “Climb to your heart’s content.”

  Bastard. “Or I can go back to Finn. Unless you wanted to tell me something?” She sipped her coffee and tried not to spit it out.

  “I see Finn’s magic is finally getting stronger,” Dave said.

  “Hm?” Ella wondered if pretending not to hear would work.

  “Something has happened you’re not telling me about. Again.” Dave’s hands tightened on the document and it began to rip.

  Ella sipped more coffee to buy some time.

  “He glows all the time,” Dave bit out. “And he seemed to lose control of his magic at the Council meeting. Did you share dreams?”

  “You make it sound dirty,” Ella muttered.

  Dave shook his head. “You’re evading the question.”

  “My specialty.” Oh god, the coffee was kicking in. It was like a tequila shot to her brain. “Hey, did you give me coffee to get me talking?”

  “Babbling, more likely.”

  Ella set the plastic cup on the table. “Clever, Guardian.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  Ella eyed the cup. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, caffeine made her crazy and she’d be likely to spill the beans if she drank more.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Ella.” Dave steepled his fingers in front of him, one of his nasty humanoid habits. “Can Finn open Gates now?”

  “God no.” Ella struggled to calm down. She tried to think of the sea and whales singing. “No such luck yet.”

  “Did you share dreams or not?”

  “It’s getting better,” Ella said. “I was able to talk to him in the dream. I bet we’re getting closer to the real memory.”

  “And the red dots Chang mentioned?”

  “No sign of them yet. But you know, I’m sure he knows his stuff and that I’ll see them sooner or later and—”

  Glow. Threads. Pulsating.

  She flinched back, her chair screeching on the floor.

  “Ella?” Dave was blurry, hidden behind the threads — red threads, her threads, whining like chords strung taut. “What is it?”

  She pushed to her feet, this time knowing what it meant. “Danger.” And the next logical question was, “Is Finn safe?”

  Chapter Six

  Tracking

  They raced through dimly lit corridors that felt eerily familiar. They passed a couple of offices and turned into another passage.

  “This way.” Dave took the lead, the gun in one hand, his cell phone in the other. “Mathews,” he barked into the cell. “Did something happen?”

  It turned out Mathews was also heading toward the interview room to investigate.

  “Is the entrance to this building secured?” Ella checked the magazine of her gun as she ran. “Tell me nob
ody could have walked in and grabbed or killed Finn.”

  “Entrance is protected. How could anyone know he was here?”

  “You tell me.” Because there was something off in Dave’s tone. “Did anyone know?”

  Dave was barking orders into his cell again. “Secure the interview room. Where’s Harowitz? What do you mean you don’t know?” He clutched the cell as if he wanted to smash it against the wall. “Dammit.”

  “Talk to me.” Ella had to run faster to keep up. “There’s a breach in the security, isn’t there?”

  “It’s impossible,” Dave said.

  Translated, “I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Where the hell are we?” Ella asked. “Who knows we’re here?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Cut the bullshit. How about the Council?”

  He slowed down. “They wouldn’t do something like that.”

  God, she wanted to punch his face in. “Don’t stick your head in the sand, Dave. You have moles and you know it. Jefferson was one, even if in the end he wound up dead, and there must be more.”

  Dave slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a dent. Wow, he and Finn were two peas in a pod. “I’ll kill them.”

  Ella tugged on his arm. “Keep running. Maybe it’s not all over yet.”

  Dave turned and set off again.

  It struck her again how familiar the layout and the degree of decay were.

  Too damn familiar.

  “Oh fuck it, no.” Ella let out a soundless scream. “You wouldn’t be so stupid, Dave.”

  “What?”

  Son of a bitch. Of course the swaying lamps in the endless corridors looked familiar. Of course Dave was at home here.

  “We are at the Bureau, aren’t we? Maybe a level below our offices.”

  “So what?”

  You stupid fucker. Ella kept running because there was nothing she could do but run, and yet she knew even before they were in view of the interview room that Finn would be gone.

  Only Dave would think that bringing them to the Bureau would be the safest option — because he didn’t believe his own hand-picked people would betray him.

  So he’d brought them to the worse place ever.

  Right into the viper’s nest.

  ***

  The interview room door was open. Bodies were sprawled outside. The guards.

  Stench of blood and feces. The smell of death.

  Ella recoiled, then forced herself to move. She entered the room. Her pulse roared in her ears as she stepped over a body, her pistol held in both hands, ready to fire at any sign of threat.

  Then she saw her. Oh god. “Norma.”

  The old woman was slumped back in her seat, her mouth open, her face slack and white. Her chest wasn’t moving.

  There was a neat little hole in the middle of her forehead.

  Oh fucking hell. Ella leaned against the table, lowering her gun. Her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest. So sorry, Norma.

  Finn, I’m so sorry.

  At least it had been quick, Ella told herself as she pushed off the table, swallowing bile. Her eyes stung but she had no tears yet; adrenaline heated her back and her face, and her legs shook. She was too wired to break down.

  Wired and dazed. Time slowed down. Every heartbeat was like a cannon blast. She stared down at Norma and felt nothing; it was as if she wasn’t there at all, as if she was watching someone with her own face standing, a gun in her hands, moving among corpses.

  “Ella!” Dave roared from the door.

  She flinched. “What?”

  “Snap out of it. They’ve taken the aelfr. We must find him.”

  Finn had been kidnapped.

  Hell.

  Ella shook herself and tried to gather her thoughts. “Have you called the lobby? Have they seen anything?”

  “Nobody’s answering. Come on, let’s go.”

  He grabbed her arm and it wasn’t before they were halfway to the elevators that she jerked it free.

  “Didn’t I tell you we have moles?” she hissed as more agents joined them, guns in hand, and they entered the massive elevator.

  “It’s not like I didn’t look into it,” Dave bit out. “We’re still going over everyone’s records. What was I supposed to do, fire everyone?”

  “You’re the one who said I didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation, but maybe you were talking about yourself.”

  The agents gave them strange looks and Ella snapped her mouth shut. Yeah, not everyone got to chew Dave out in public and live to tell the tale — but she was pissed. And above all, she was terrified. This wasn’t anything like the time Dave had shot Finn and she’d wandered the streets looking for him.

  Someone had Finn and she had a feeling she knew what they wanted with him. It made her sick.

  The doors opened and they stepped out into the first floor lobby.

  Mayhem. Destruction. Chaos.

  People cowered behind desks and counters. Bodies littered the floor, blood pooling around them and streaking the walls.

  It didn’t seem real. All this time she’d thought they were in danger from the Shades and the elven queen, the breaking of the magical seals and Finn’s dreams and memories.

  When she should have been more afraid of the people around her.

  “The tracker,” Ella breathed as she marched between the bodies. They reached the end of the lobby where the huge doors stood ajar. “We can track Finn.” She was suddenly grateful they hadn’t been allowed to remove the device from Finn’s leg. “Find him.”

  “We’re on it,” Dave said. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Dave drove and Ella rode shotgun.

  Which was pissing her off. “Let me drive, Dave,” she said again.

  “No.”

  Damn.

  Evening was falling and mist softened the edges of things. Though she felt as though a jagged shard was lodged inside her chest; it hurt whenever she breathed.

  Everything was wrong. She should be driving and Finn should be sitting beside her, with his familiar scowl, his ice-blue eyes glaring holes into the dashboard.

  Instead, Dave drove in his usual jerky way, squeezing the car through any gap opening in the traffic, and there were two bulky guys sitting in the back seat, wearing back holsters and dark frowns. Two gorillas.

  Gorillas in the mist, Ella thought. Oh god, I’m going crazy.

  A red dot pulsed on Dave’s GPS which was attached to the dashboard.

  Now she saw red dots everywhere.

  Maybe this wasn’t real.

  But it had to be. It was too horrible to be a dream.

  “Moving uptown,” Dave said and rolled down his window to slap a rotating light on the dash. He started the siren. “We’ll find him.”

  “Go faster. We’re running out of time.” Ella rubbed her throbbing temples. “Dave... Better tell your Council buddies not to harm the dragon if the tracker goes offline.”

  Dave glanced at her, his mouth pressed into a thin line. They both knew it was going to happen.

  Whoever had taken Finn would know about the tracker and would find a way to deactivate it.

  “Let me drive,” Ella said for what had to be the tenth time.

  “Sit tight.” Dave lifted the cell back to his ear to bark more orders as he weaved through the traffic. “You’re not fit to drive.”

  “Sure I am. What the hell do you mean?”

  “You’re in shock. Your hands are shaking.”

  Ella looked down at her hands. “It’s the adrenaline.”

  “And you’re white as a sheet. Typical symptoms.”

  Dammit. She listened to Dave instruct whoever was at the other end of the line not to touch the dragon and inform them that John Grey had been abducted.

  Abducted.

  God, she was cold. Her hands were like ice.

  How did you disconnect a device inside someone’s leg, attached to their bone? Fuck, she didn’t even want to imagine — but her mi
nd had other ideas. Image after image of blood and gore flashed before her eyes, blades slicing into Finn’s flesh, cutting, maiming, hurting.

  A glance at the GPS showed the red dot still flashing, moving north. Dave overtook a pick-up truck, but they were moving way too slow, crawling along in the traffic.

  She slammed her hand against the car door. “I’m going on foot. I can run faster than this.”

  “Don’t you dare leave this car,” Dave growled. “If there’s any chance of catching them before they try something—”

  “Oh shut up.” Ella reached for the door handle.

  “Stop trying to do this alone,” Dave snapped. “When will it get through that thick skull of yours that it won’t work? You need my help.”

  “I can’t trust anyone,” Ella shouted back. “None of you care whether Finn is in pain or in distress or if he’s damn near dying — you don’t give a shit. You all have your agendas and your missions and your schedules. What about him? Huh?”

  “I wouldn’t hurt him,” Dave said through clenched teeth as he drove on, turning into a side street and racing through quiet neighborhoods, his eyes on the GPS. “You know that.”

  “Really? Was the bullet you put through him a gesture of affection?” She was practically yelling by now, and at last the ice in her chest was thawing. “Or capturing his dragon and hurting her?”

  “I wasn’t the one hurting the dragon,” Dave muttered. “I told you, some things I can’t control.”

  He looked contrite. He could get flaming pissed, could care for his step-daughter. Damn robot did seem to have feelings.

  Fucker. What did Ella care when he wouldn’t protect Finn?

  She was about to open the door and get out, to hell with them all, when Dave cursed long and loud. He slammed his hands on the wheel.

  The car slowed down.

  “What is it?” But even as she asked, Ella knew exactly what was wrong. She checked the GPS.

  The red bleep had vanished.

  She stared, so stunned she couldn’t think. The inside of the car darkened.