Two stories of steep, still steps loomed above them. Whatever had made her think they might be operating? Looking up into the twisted metal and the thick carpet of broken glass, despair ate at her belly. Lan would never make it up that many stairs.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the carpet over by the stairwell door sprout a garden of flames. She’d never seen anything like that. Or a building collapsing, or people who could cause pain just by looking at you, or…
Get a grip. There was no way she was going to die here in some abandoned conference center in the middle of Las Vegas. Or let Lan die either.
She looked around. A grinding noise sounded behind her. She wouldn’t look. She had a nasty feeling she knew what it was.
Then she saw what might be salvation; a service elevator stuck off in a corner. You were never supposed to take elevators in an emergency. But what choice was there? Would it be working? The grinding sound was getting closer.
“Come on, baby,” she said to Lan, who rolled his head up, panting.
“You go on,” he said.
She dragged him, limping, toward the elevator. “I am not going anywhere without you, so get your lazy butt in gear.” His jaw was clenched but he was doing his best.
The grinding noise was right on their heels when she slapped the elevator button. She didn’t look back. God, if there is a God, just let the damn doors open.
And they did. She and Lan stumbled into the car. Lan sank to the floor. Greta turned.
Through the slowly closing doors, she saw the entire floor of the lobby collapsing. Flames licked the walls through clouds of dust and debris. The place looked like it had been bombed. Had…had Lan done all this?
She lunged for the control panel and hit whatever button was at the top.
“Please work,” she whispered as the doors thunked shut. The elevator was lighted by a bare industrial bulb. Hadn’t she read that the elevator shaft was always the strongest part of the building? That’s where you were supposed to run to in an earthquake.
The car moved up. The whole thing shuddered, but they continued to rise. Greta realized she’d been holding her breath only when she let it out in a giant sigh. Not out of the woods, but not on the floor below that was collapsing in on itself.
The car came to a jerking halt.
So close! She banged on the ‘Door Open’ button. To her surprise, the doors actually moved, but only about six inches. They revealed the wall of the shaft about chest high. Above that was only orange light and dust and noise. Greta felt tears rise.
Damn tears. She wasn’t giving up yet. She went to the doors and pulled.
Nothing.
“Sorry, Lan,” she whispered.
She tried again. This time the doors, after initial resistance, moved smoothly open about three feet, seemingly on their own. She looked up. Michael and Tris were each pulling on a door.
Tris reached down a hand. “Come on. Not much time.”
“Lan’s hurt,” she protested.
“I got him,” Michael said and jumped down into the car.
Tris hauled her up like she weighed no more than his little boy, Jesse. Her feet scrambled for purchase and then she was standing in some kind of equipment room. It was on fire. The fire was closing in.
Below her, Michael lifted up Lan. Lan stretched up an arm and Tris leaned down and grabbed it. Michael got him under his butt and pushed. Pretty soon, Lan was lying on the floor of the equipment room. Michael heaved him up in a fireman’s carry, while Lan protested weakly.
“Faster this way, kid,” Michael said gruffly over the crackle of flames around them. “Move out, Tris. I’m right behind you.”
Tris handed her a wet cloth to put over her nose and mouth. The place smelled like wet charcoal. Tris took her hand and led her through a maze of equipment, most of it on fire. She was dizzy, coughing from the smoke, but there was a door ahead, and then they were out.
Most of the Tremaine family lunged forward to greet them. Michael gave them no time for a reunion. “Back to the truck,” he shouted.
Drew gathered her in on one side and Maggie on the other. Her senses were overwhelmed. Sirens blasted through the air. People were screaming. The thirty-story pyramid ahead of her was bathed in gold light. From its point, a channel of incredibly bright blue-white light cut the sky. Visible behind it was a bigger-than-life-size Sphinx and beyond that was a huge green neon-striped monolithic tower. In the distance were the ramparts of a brightly colored medieval castle by way of Disneyland. But the hypnotically flashing lights of many, many police and fire vehicles roaring up eclipsed the Las Vegas faux-grandeur.
Most startling of all, the gardens that covered the underground conference center were collapsing like a rug that had been shaken, creating a huge hole. Michael took off, skirting the edge of the growing crater, Lan slung over his shoulder like a rag doll. Lan must have finally lost consciousness. Greta didn’t dare think about how much blood he’d lost. Even now she could see a dark, dripping trail as they crossed a cracked cement walkway.
Emergency personnel fanned out, directing the people now pouring out of the casino in the bottom of the pyramid and running toward the sphinx. Fire trucks continued to pull up on both sides of the huge property. Paramedics vehicles, too.
Greta slipped from between her ‘escorts’ and ran forward to Michael. “Paramedics,” she shouted. “They can help Lan.”
Michael didn’t stop or switch directions. “Looked like a bullet wound to me. Was it?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Tough to explain.”
“We’ll just tell them about the Clan, and how…”
Michael shot her a severe look.
Yeah. Not happening. She could hear herself say, ‘Well, there are these bad guys and they’re magic and Lan had to collapse the building with his flute, so he got shot.’ Looney bin for sure.
“I can stabilize him with stuff we brought. That’s why we’re going back to the truck.”
“Okay,” she panted. Truck it is. Everybody else had faith in Michael. She’d just have to swallow her fears and get with the program.
In the chaos, no one stopped them. One EMT pointed to one of several areas just being cordoned off by the emergency personnel, who were setting up equipment like mad. “Take him to the Red Tag area,” he yelled, and moved on without checking to see that they actually did.
They finally reached the truck. The engine block was a smoking mess. It wasn’t going anywhere. The smell of gasoline hung in the air. The loading dock had mostly disappeared. A limo about a hundred feet away was canted into a hole, its trunk jutting into the air.
Kemble rolled up the back panel door of the truck. “Everybody in.”
Michael slid Lan off his shoulder and laid him down on the deck. The others started to scramble up into the cavernous back. Were they just using it for temporary shelter?
“Tris, get us to the warehouse where we stashed the cars,” Kemble ordered.
Tris nodded and jumped into the cab. They were planning on driving away in this thing? Not a chance. Its engine looked damaged, and all that gasoline must have drained from its tank.
Devin pulled her up into the back. The scene in the palm garden was still chaos, but the ground didn’t seem to be collapsing anymore. And at least Lan’s sound waves hadn’t reached the casino. She shuddered to think of the loss of life that would have entailed. As it was, most of the Clan had to be dead. All those people underground as the place had collapsed…
Kemble startled her by rolling down the panel. He flipped his flashlight onto Lan as Michael crouched, rummaging in a red duffle bag. Devin pulled out another flashlight. Jane knelt on Lan’s other side and began to unbuckle his belt. Blood was everywhere. His jeans were soaked, and now the bed of the van was staining too. Could someone lose that much blood and still live? She felt so helpless, standing there in the semi-darkness, watching Lan bleed. At Jane’s direction, Dev handed his flashlight to Kee and went to pull off Lan’s soaked boots.<
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The engine of the truck roared to life. What? It lurched backward and everybody who was standing either knelt abruptly or braced themselves against the sides. Greta gave a yelp. Kemble steadied her.
“How?” she asked.
“Tris can send power to machines.” Kemble helped her sit on the floor of the truck. “So he doesn’t need gas.”
“But the engine…?”
“Good enough to turn over when he forced power through it, thank God. I wasn’t sure.”
Jane had Lan’s pants unbuttoned and unzipped. She motioned Dev to pull off his jeans. Michael pulled out a thing that looked like a big blood pressure cuff from his red duffle and put it around Lan’s thigh. It was connected to a thing that looked about the size of a phone that immediately lighted and displayed numbers. It was a tourniquet!
“Won’t…?” She cleared her throat. “Won’t he lose his leg if you use a tourniquet?”
Michael spared her a glance as he ripped open a plastic packet that said, ‘combat gauze’ on it. “Not if we loosen it periodically. They did a study that showed correct use of tourniquets doesn’t result in morbidity.”
Wow. He sounded like he knew what he was doing.
“The most important thing is to stabilize the bleeding. Thank God the bullet missed the femoral artery, or only nicked it. Or he’d be dead.”
Greta felt her head swimming and gasped for breath. Okay. Amputee was better than dead. Get your priorities straight, girl.
As the truck gears ground and they picked up speed, everybody sat on the floor of the truck. Michael stuffed gauze into Lan’s wound and just kept stuffing. Greta felt her stomach roll.
Lanyon moaned and rolled his head. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay,” Jane soothed.
Now Michael sat back and pulled out of his magic red duffle a canister and a plastic mask. “Jane?” Jane fit the mask over Lan’s nose an mouth, while Michael turned a valve. He set the canister in the crook of Lan’s arm to keep it from rolling. Lan seemed hardly sensible at this point. Maybe that was good. Or maybe it meant he’d lost so much blood he was dying and not even Michael and his magic red duffle bag could keep him alive.
Greta started to shiver.
Michael glanced over to her then around the truck. “Kemble, jacket to Greta.”
Kemble took off his sports coat and put it around her shoulders. Funny, he seemed to always wear sport coats or a suit. “I’m okay, she protested. Her voice was a wavery thread.
“Shock,” Kemble murmured to her. “You need to keep warm. Speaking of which…” He took a packet out of a grocery bag she hadn’t noticed sitting next to a little cooler. He ripped it open and shook out a very thin blanket which he now put over Lan’s right side, the one that was undamaged.
Michael looked up. “We likely to have Clan after us?”
He was asking her? She swallowed, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Think. “Uh, no. I don’t think so. Lan collapsed the building on them. I…I think they’re all…dead.” Her voice cracked a little as images of falling ceiling and crumbling walls ricocheted around her brain. They’d killed all those people.
“Good.” Kemble said. “At least it will take Morgan time to bring them all back.”
“What?” Greta asked, feeling as though she might not quite have heard that right.
Jane scooted over to her and put one arm around her shoulders. “Morgan’s power is bringing people back to life,” she said, her soft voice kind. “They aren’t really dead. Well, they are, but she’ll bring them back like nothing happened.”
Greta wasn’t sure whether the sound that came out of her chest was a laugh or a sob. “I should be glad. Or not?”
“Just be glad we’re safe for now.”
“Hey, how did Lan…?” Devin asked from the other side of the truck.
“Time for that later, Dev,” Jane said firmly.
The truck skidded around a corner and everyone slid over to one side. Michael braced Lan though, and reached for the cooler. Lanyon made a distressed sound of pain.
“Will he be okay?” Greta asked in a small voice.
“Kid’s healthy as a horse in spite of all his hard living,” Michael growled. “We just need to get him home to Dr. Tanet.” He took out a plastic bag filled with dark fluid and a needle attached to what looked like a catheter. “Hold up the bag,” he ordered, handing it to Devin, who scooted over and got to his knees. Michael ripped Lan’s sleeve to expose the inside of the elbow and inserted the needle carefully into the vein. Blood, for that’s what it was, flowed into the catheter. “Squeeze the bag, Dev, very gently. He needs fluid bad right now.”
“Wow,” Kee exclaimed. “I’m surprised you’d try that in a lurching truck.”
“At least there aren’t any bombs falling,” Michael said absently. Greta blinked. She knew he’d been Delta Force from his conversation with Luc Marrec, but that statement brought it home to her. Michael pulled out a plunger from a little case. When the blood bag was empty, he disconnected it. “Get me another one,” he ordered Devin. In the meantime he pushed the content of the plunger into the catheter. “Ten milligrams of morphine should take care of the pain when we move him.” He turned to Greta, looking her up and down in the light of the flashlights. “You hurt?”
She looked down at herself. Her knee was scraped and one of her elbows. She put a finger to her cheekbone. That hurt some. A bruise probably. “Uh, just some burns and a head-ache where the guy knocked me out.” She held up her forearms.
Michael grunted. “Burns get infected like crazy. We’ll need to clean those and get some antibiotic salve on them. And you’ve probably got a concussion.” He rummaged in the magic bag and came out with some packets of antiseptic pads and a tube of salve. “Jane, can you help out?”
Before Jane could do anything, the truck lurched to a stop. As everyone scrambled to their feet, Tris rolled up the back door of the van. “We’re good,” he said. “Into the SUVs.”
Greta hopped down into an empty parking structure. Or maybe a warehouse. There were white uniforms and towels scattered everywhere. She hardly had time to get more than an impression of concrete floors, harsh work lights and some equipment shoved into a corner. Devin and Michael managed to slide Lan out. He was blinking lazily. They loaded him bodily into one of the black SUVs, Michael giving orders the whole time.
Someone herded her into the back seat of the other vehicle, sandwiched between Tammy and Jane. Michael and his red duffle got into the other SUV with Lanyon, Devin still holding the new bag of blood Michael had attached. “Tris, you’re driving the ambulance.”
“I’ve got this one,” Kemble said, and slid into the driver’s seat of Greta’s SUV.
The engine roared. The work lights slipped past, and they were out into the desert night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
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Greta watched the desert stream past the windows of the SUV as it sped away from Las Vegas. She roused herself to turn and make sure the car with Lanyon in it was behind them every once in a while. Of course, she couldn’t see anything but headlights in the dark, but she always seemed to forget that. One of the Tremaines would tell her not to worry, that Lanyon was going to be fine, even though they looked worried and she wasn’t sure they quite believed that. And she would sink back into her seat. What choice did she have? But her mind wasn’t quiet. In fact she felt remarkably clear, in spite of the pounding in her head. Clear wasn’t a good thing.
This whole situation was both unreal and incredibly, horribly real. She had a magic power for God’s sake. She could make light into a laser that came out of her hands. And Lanyon could shake down an entire underground conference center, killing a lot of people. Somehow that was supposed to mean that they were destined to love each other.
How unreal was that? She did, of course. Love him. She hadn’t seen Lan’s funny side, the one his father said he’d once had. Wry once or twice, but not funny. Maybe she never would. He’d probably lost that. Who wouldn’t in these
circumstances? But he was brave and kind and brilliant at music. He’d sold out everything important to him, to his family, maybe to the world, not because they tortured him, but because they’d hurt her. And then he castigated himself over it because, in spite of all his rebellious cynicism, he was an honorable man. He pretended nothing meant anything to him, but his core of honor said that was a lie. How much pain would he have taken before he told them anything if it had only been his own mind and body at risk?
Did this whole genetic stuff mean that he loved her as well? See above…he’d given up everything that meant anything to him just to protect her. Or maybe he didn’t do it just for her. Since he was honorable, maybe he would have protected anyone. She had to admit it would be an honor to be loved by a man like Lanyon. He deserved the best.
And—damn the clarity that seemed to come with almost dying—the best wasn’t her.
She’d decided that she loved him. But did she know what that even meant? Talk about your life flashing before you. Hers was screaming its revelations. She’d never been close to anyone, not after her break with her mother. Mothers were supposed to love you and protect you and put your best interests over their own. And her mother hadn’t. So Greta had taken control in so many frigging ways. And control meant never taking any risks.
It was fine that Jax wasn’t really a friend, because then Greta didn’t have to give Jax anything in return. Greta moved from dating one guy to another easily. No regrets. Move on? No problem. She hadn’t let anyone come within five blocks of her heart. Hell, the closest thing she had to a pet was her telescope, an inanimate object. She couldn’t even let a pet into her life.
So the tragedy here was that, even if she thought she loved Lanyon, she was probably wrong. She wasn’t capable of love. Not anymore. Maybe that was why she’d been attracted to him in the first place. Striding into that club that night, he sure didn’t look like he’d commit to anyone or require commitment in return. She’d had to be sure he’d never ask her anything she couldn’t give.
But now they might be tied together by this Destiny thing. That didn’t mean everything would turn out fine. Even if she tried to make it work with him, she’d fail. She was an emotional cripple. She’d end up hurting him. She’d never be happy like the rest of the Tremaine family.
The Magic's in the Music (Magic Series Book 5) Page 29
