Spiders were so icky.
Spots danced in front of her eyes as she realized Xander lay on top of her, and she couldn’t breathe. Not a bad thing if it wasn’t under these circumstances.
“You’re heavy,” Mina wheezed. She blinked as he moved off of her. Oxygen filled her lungs in a whoosh even as a hard hand on her arm hauled her to her feet. He didn’t let go.
She hadn’t been in this office for years. A room of warm wood and built-in bookshelves with natural nooks was the perfect place for a child to explore. He had items begging to be touched—globes infused with magic played out stories when shook. There were ancient texts in languages even she didn’t know. It was the art she loved. Thomas Voda collected small paintings and sculptures from around the world. Nothing much had changed, except there were more books and a table or two.
When she was young, she’d come here to read his strange books and listen to stories of the past. He’d give her toffee and butterscotch candies—she could still taste the caramel sweetness on her tongue. Thomas Voda delighted in showing her his newest art pieces, the tiny portraits and odd ancient toys. It was after the death of her Aunt Isabelle that he’d grown distant, as if she’d been the only glue holding them all together. The space was still filled with the mustiness of old paper and rich colors of red, blue, green, and ochre. The memories she associated here were good ones.
It was a room she loved, but the energy in this room felt wrong.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” A sharp, familiar voice drew her attention to a medium-sized man with thinning gray hair and neatly trimmed goatee standing next to an ornate desk. Thomas Voda. He held a leather briefcase in front of him like a shield.
Thomas was the source of the strangeness.
“Are you insane? One of the Chairman’s security team is here, and only a lowest level mute would miss the display of magic and breaking of my wards.” His voice was angry but held something else.
Mina tilted her head; the emotion was off.
There was excitement, bright sparks of lemon mixed with the darker, coffee-flavored emotion of craving. It was as if she were near the Chairman, with power rolling off in a distorted wave.
“What have you done, Thomas?”
Mina’s question was ignored when Xander answered the Board member. “Insanity is one way of putting it.” The ever-present edge to his voice became pronounced, sharp prickles of peppery energy traveled up her arm—the arm he still held in a death grip. Crap. He was more pissed off than before, if that was possible. “I take it you were about to leave when we interrupted you?”
“Yes, but now you’ve made it almost impossible.” Thomas thumped his briefcase on the desk. “I practically drained a Tri to manage it. Now it’s all for nothing.”
A soft whimper, more a soft keening, made Mina look around for the source. Scattered books lay all over the thick woven carpet, glittering with shards of glass from a lamp and statuary they’d broken when they’d forced themselves through the ward.
There. Lying curled up in a ball behind a table was a young Tri-elemental. The energy signified the Elemental was dangerously low, near burn-out levels.
“No.” Mina tried to jerk her arm out of Xander’s grip.
His hand tightened. The burning of his anger made her squirm, but he didn’t let go.
“Be still.” His order was delivered in his tight, not-very-nice voice. Even when he told her to leave earlier, he’d had an undercurrent of something else. This emotion was murderous and tasteless.
She knew when to be still.
“Voda, we can both say we didn’t plan our actions well,” Xander bit out. “But I can give you enough time to get out of here. I’ve already fucked myself, might as well make it worth it.”
Mina knew the harshness of horseradish, his bitterness at being here and not thinking things through. Once again—her fault.
“At least I know whose side you’re on,” Thomas said, nodding to him. “There aren’t many allies at this time.”
“I’m not on your side. I’m on mine.”
“Don’t be a fool. Do you have any idea what is going on here?” Thomas turned his head. A wave of energy crashed over the wards on the door. Mina and Xander may have broken through one part of the Board member’s wards, but the rest of it held.
“That we’re both screwed. Now, who is this idiot the Chairman sent?” Xander turned his head to look in the direction of the door.
Mina tested Xander’s hold on her arm by twisting it. Nope. He wasn’t letting go. For once she didn’t speak. When he was in a mood like this—the edge of anger, loathing, and desperation—she couldn’t predict his actions. But she needed to get to that boy lying on the floor.
“One of his new security team, hired by that colorless bastard, Rousseau.” Thomas couldn’t hide the tremor of unease in his voice.
Mina couldn’t help her shudder at the mention of the name. Rousseau was a Mage with a very special ability—he could blend into the background, making him impossible to see. Even she’d been fooled. He was a cruel man who tried to kill her friends.
“Rousseau is not known for hiring clever people. This one is probably some thug from the lower Mages wanting an in.” Xander turned to Mina. “Go; get the kid out of the way. Don’t interfere. You always interfere.” He didn’t let her go until she nodded.
She didn’t interfere; she intervened. Big difference.
Freed from Xander’s iron grip, Mina hurried over to the inert boy. His skin had a curious gray cast to it. The iron around the Elemental’s neck hissed where it touched skin. The more energy siphoned from a Tri, the less they tolerated the collar.
“Thomas, get out of here. Since I’m going to be stupid, I need to finish this in style.” Xander turned to face the doorway, preparing spells.
“And they call Darks monsters,” Mina muttered as she undid the spell binding the collar around the youth’s neck. Some of the grayness in his skin receded. She didn’t think. Jumping up, she grabbed Thomas as he began his transportation spell.
“Take him with you,” Mina ordered the older man. The unnatural energy he’d taken from the Tri rolled over her as if she’d taken a deep breath in a port-a-potty. She swallowed back her nausea. “You nearly killed him; you can’t let him die.”
“Mina, I have to go. He’ll be safer here.” Thomas tried to pull away from her, but she held fast to his arm. Xander wasn’t the only one with a death grip. Behind her, energy built and paused as Xander turned toward them.
“What did I ask you to do?” His voice was clipped again, but it wasn’t devoid of emotion. So, she pretended not to hear him. A power spell hit the wards, and Xander turned back to deal with it.
“You’re going to Mikhail Petrov’s for protection,” Mina hazarded a guess. It was only logical. “He’s bonded to Laurie, and they have the power to protect you from the Chairman and my father.” Thomas tried to hide his surprise, keeping his face expressionless, but she caught the slight dilation of his pupils. “Take this boy you drained. You owe it to him.”
“I don’t owe anything to an Elemental,” Thomas told her, and for once, she wondered why she’d liked him. It was this attitude she never understood. In any species.
“Why did you give me candy and books?” Mina startled the Board member at this change of questioning. She still didn’t let go of his arm. “Because you’re not that nice.” She wanted to know how he could hurt someone so badly for his own gain.
“I gave them to you because…” Thomas stopped himself. “None of us are nice, Mina. Let go of my arm.” He tugged at her grip. “If I don’t get out of here and arrange talks with your father, we’ll all die in this civil war.”
“Just like this Elemental. Didn’t you give a speech about how Tri-elementals needed to be preserved because less and less of them were born? Now that Mikhail and Laurie set their boundaries, even less are given to you Mages.” She tilted her head to look closer at him. The movement must’ve been a bit too quick and unn
atural, because he tried to take a step back. “Take him, because he’ll be handed over to the Chairman and be made to talk about where you might have gone.”
Ah. Thomas hadn’t thought of that. Mina tasted his uncertainty, like salt on her tongue. She pressed her advantage.
“He’ll know, and he will talk. He’ll also tell them where your family is.”
“You should’ve been a Mage, Mina,” Thomas said. With a furious shrug, he managed to finally get out of her grip. “You think like one, and you were born one.”
“What?” Mina blinked her eyes rapidly—maybe it would change the scene. Thomas brushed passed her, picked up the youth, and cursed as he saw the collar was off. She tried to grab his arm. “What do you mean I was a Mage?”
Thomas moved away from her. “Just what I said—you and Xander were experiments who lived. You just didn’t make the cut and turned Dark.” With those parting words, he uttered the transportation spell and, with the extra power, disappeared with a soundless pop.
Before Mina could process the information, the door blew inward—not by magic, but explosives. The percussion threw her to her knees, the noise hurting her ears, bits of wood digging into her skin. Xander turned and grabbed her in a bear hug and used the rest of the power he had to utter his own transportation spell.
Shutting her eyes, Mina felt herself explode emotionally like the blast that had taken out the door. Everything she’d known was shattered.
Chapter Nine
THE RUBBER SCENT FROM THE RESPIRATOR and Tyvek suit made her nose itch. Worse, the heavy whoosh of air as she breathed reminded Poppy of Darth Vader’s respirations from Star Wars—a movie she’d loved as a child and despised as an adult. It represented fantasy in a world where there wasn’t a place for it. Only fact and truth ruled.
What was lying in front of her on the gurneys made a part of her shrink with fear, the tiny part of her who still wanted to believe there was some truth to the stories her abuelo told her as a child. Luckily, the analytical part of her overrode her emotive instinct and refused to believe there were such things as monsters. These could’ve fit the bill. But she knew there was a scientific reason for what she was seeing.
Seven bodies lay on separate gurneys, guarded from sight by carefully hung opaque plastic screens. Three of the forms looked human, but their skin was crisscrossed with fine lines of cracks and brittle as porcelain. Transferring or touching the bodies made parts of them crumble into dust. Significant sections of the hands and feet were gone. Two were male; the one female wore a shredded and bloodied purple velour suit, but her face wasn’t there. All that remained was a burned out cavity of a skull, blown outward by an internal force. Poppy expected blood and brain matter splattered everywhere, but there wasn’t anything. The skull was charred as if a bomb had been placed in the center of it.
The other four things were humanoid. Three looked vaguely male and one female. All were gray-skinned with the same fine cracks, except they had rows of serrated teeth and sharp claws straight from a horror movie. One male had four arms, long and jointed oddly. Another had a snout similar to lupines. The third one had slits for a nose; the eyes were double-lidded and milky in death. The fourth, a female, could’ve passed as a human with her long, black, braided hair and broad cheekbones, but her fingers were larger, with an extra joint and long sharp nails filed to a point.
Interesting.
“Dr. Delacruz, what’s your take on these?” A man to her left moved to stand beside her. John Bradford was old school and didn’t believe in hellos. As current Director of Internal Counter Terrorism, a sub-group of Homeland Security, he didn’t appear to struggle with moving in the bulky suit like she did. She tried not to hate him for that.
Poppy shrugged, but realized he couldn’t see the movement. “Too early to tell,” she said. “I need to take some samples to examine.”
She leaned close to peer at the skin of one of the human looking bodies. She’d have to make it quick, because the deterioration was steady and rapid.
“Do that. I need to know how I can detect these things.” His tone hardened. “If this blast site is any indication, we are severely outclassed.”
Poppy pressed her lips together. The scientist in her was excited by what she was looking at, but this wasn’t her lab. It was government owned. John was making sure she knew this. He wanted results, she wanted the truth, and sometimes they didn’t mix.
“No problem. I’ll get you what you need,” she promised. And if some of the extra DNA ended up her possession, she wasn’t going to say anything. Sure, John’s goal was to eliminate this threat, but hers was to find out what they were. Birth defects? Her mind started to sift through possibilities as she bent over one of the bodies and began collecting samples.
The faded scent of old linseed oil, dust, canvas, and wood, normally a comforting thing to Xander, sent his sense of self-preservation into overdrive. In an effort to get both of Mina and himself out of the reach of the Chairman’s security team, he’d cast the transportation spell in haste. The trick for a quick exit was focusing on some place one knew well. He’d half expected to land them in front of the Chairman, but his instinct landed him in the one place that had been his solace, but now served only as a reminder of his weaknesses.
His old art studio in his childhood home.
The slender girl in his arms twisted and slid out of his embrace as he staggered. A wave of dizziness made him blink. The floor-to-ceiling windows lost focus. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the time of day—sunset—or if his energy levels were extremely low. He’d expended everything to get them to safety. He needed rest to regain some of his power back.
The rattle of brushes in a can hit the floor, followed by other objects landing with thuds and hollow echoes. He blinked. His vision still blurred.
“Mina?”
She didn’t answer, and his eyesight cleared in time to see she’d opened one of the built-in cabinets under the counter running along one wall. She’d tossed out the contents, unconcerned with where they landed. She pulled out the shelf inside and flung it to the side; the piece of wood hit the floor with a crack. She shoved herself into the small space, knees tucked under her chin. In seconds, there was no sign of her but the tips of her black boots and faint outline of her body in the shadows.
Bending one knee next to the cabinet, Xander peered in.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said. Mina’s midnight eyes glittered as she stared back at him, unblinking. His chest tightened at her blank look. He couldn’t afford concern. “We can’t stay here.”
Silence. Xander wrestled with the frustration clawing up his insides, hooking in and dragging up a call for movement—to get out of there before discovery. With conscious thought, he relaxed his muscles and swallowed the instinctive get the fuck out that danced at the edge of his lips. Instead he managed to soften his tone.
“Älskling, talk to me,” he pleaded.
For a long moment he thought she’d decided to remain mute, when her words came out in a rush.
“Did you know?”
He leaned closer to hear her. “Now’s not the time to talk about this.” He couldn’t stop the creep of irritation as it bled into his words. “We need to get some place safer.”
“There isn’t any place safer,” she told him and pushed herself further back into the small interior of the cupboard. “Did you know they experimented on us?”
Another moment passed, this time from him, knowing that the more he wrestled with his anger and exasperation with her, the more obstinate she’d become. He allowed the emotions in and let them dissipate. A meditation technique, one of the few he’d managed to acquire when he didn’t have access to his other outlets.
“No.” He watched as she stilled. “But I’m not going to take the words of a desperate man, even if I did respect him. Thomas would say anything to elicit a reaction; his head was up on a chopping block.” At this moment, what he’d like to do was get his hands on his former mentor and let hi
m know exactly how displeased he was.
A rustling sound, and Mina’s head poked out, her eyes wide.
“But I saw the truth in him. His emotions can’t lie,” she said. “He was angry, but there was genuineness to them. I was a Mage.”
“Is this what you’re upset about?” Xander lifted his head at the sound of a creak out in the hall. He turned back. “All Darks come from Mages; of course you have some of us in you.”
“You are so stupid sometimes,” Mina shot at him in disgust, withdrawing back into the cupboard.
Damn it.
He reached down into the cupboard, found a handful of cloth, and yanked her out. He ignored the look of betrayal on her face as he set her down in front of him, but didn’t let go. No, he’d learned a long time ago she’d bolt. He wasn’t going to go chasing her. She twisted trying to loosen his grasp.
He gave Mina a small shake. “Stop it.” This time he didn’t keep his irritation in check. “We don’t have time for this.”
She stopped moving, but he caught the liquid shimmer of tears in her eyes, and his temper increased. Part of it was his frustration at her response; another was his own castigation of his actions. He was being an ass. He parted his lips to say something when the door to the room opened.
Xander’s head snapped up as he called up a spell, but he swallowed it, and the burn of the incantation rolled across his tongue. The effort pulled more from him, and sheer will kept him from sitting down. Soon, he’d be as weak as any collared Elemental, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to show it.
“Mother.”
A tall woman, her faded blond hair up in a neat twist, wearing a navy pantsuit, entered the room. Rings decorated her fingers, and she wore gold at her ears and throat. It must be a special occasion.
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