Lethal Engagement

by Teyla Branton

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” The seriousness of Keene’s tone pulled my attention back across the room.

  “Yes,” Cort said. “The Emporium is behind this.”

  Jace jumped up from the couch and paced in their direction. “How do you figure?”

  “First the sniper rifles,” Keene said, “And now because of the toxin used. Not something the average antivenom could counteract. Hunters may be determined, but so far they have mostly just tried to shoot us and then cut us apart. They have no clue that we typically carry antivenom or what kind of toxin to use to get around that.”

  “But the Emporium would know poison couldn’t kill Patrick, if that’s who they were trying for,” Jace said. “I mean, it might, but he’d just regenerate.”

  “Exactly. It was only intended to immobilize.” Keene tossed a handful of spent syringes into the first aid kit. “That means they’ll be going to the house to clean up. We have to get back there now.”

  I rose and stood next to Jace, already reaching mentally for the numbers. Was it easier now? I thought it might be. The more I practiced, the more naturally shifting came to me, but this last time with Keene seemed to have taught me more in one shift than a dozen on my own, despite the accompanying exhaustion.

  “Just a moment more. You’ll need all of us.” Cort finished an injection. “Okay now. The drugs seem to be counteracting the poison nicely.” He stood and glanced at the screen where Dimitri still watched silently. “Thank you, my friend. Without your suggestions, I probably would have killed her before I got the right combination.”

  Dimitri inclined his head. “Deaths like that happen more than you want to know. But she needs further medical attention. If you’re going up against the Emporium, you better get her to a hospital. Write down the meds we used.”

  “Good idea.” Cort hurried to a small table, pulled a pad of paper from a drawer, and began writing.

  “I’ll take her to the emergency room,” Noah said.

  Patrick began gathering Lucinda in his arms. “I want to go too.”

  “Too risky.” Keene shook his head. “You’ll be recognized, and we can’t protect you. Better stay here. We have no idea what we’ll be facing at your house, and we need to get back to see what we can do for the Secret Service agents.”

  I was glad everyone agreed on that. Because the Emporium certainly wouldn’t be worried about the fallen agents, except maybe to help them into the next world with a knife across the throat.

  Patrick’s jaw firmed. “I’m not leaving her. I’ll wear a disguise. No one will know. Besides I’m armed.”

  “So am I,” Noah said.

  “As if that helps,” Jace mumbled under his breath.

  Patrick motioned to me. “Mari and Keene can join us as soon as you finish at the house. Or isn’t that the way it works?”

  Everyone looked in my direction, waiting. Because that wasn’t the way it had worked previously. I couldn’t shift to a place I’d never been before unless I knew someone there really well, and neither Noah nor Patrick should qualify. But that was before Keene had enhanced my ability. I knew Patrick’s color number now, even without Keene’s help.

  “Yes,” I said. “I can find him.”

  “She can take us back to the house and then join him in the car on the way to the hospital,” Keene said.

  Shifting to a moving car would be difficult, if not impossible, but I could wait for a traffic light. There were enough of them in DC and the traffic often forced everything to a torturous crawl. I should have been happy at Keene’s trust that I could protect Patrick alone, but it seemed more like getting me out of the way. Still, Patrick was my job, so I’d choose not to take offense.

  Cort said to his brother, “And you can go with her if it’s not bad at the house. Let’s go.”

  “Patrick?” Lucinda opened her eyes.

  “Right here, sweetie,” Patrick soothed. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  Keene came close to me, his hand on my right elbow. Jace grabbed my left elbow and Cort my left shoulder. Everyone held their weapons ready.

  Power filled my body as Keene’s synergy enveloped me. For an instant, the euphoria was almost too much, but after a few moments, my brain adjusted. Some part of me was aware of Noah opening a suitcase full of makeup, wigs, and other disguise options and plopping a long blonde wig onto Patrick’s head. “You can do the rest in the car,” she said, her voice faint to my ears.

  “Where shall I take us?” I asked.

  “The stairs off the main hallway.” Keene spoke without hesitation.

  No sooner spoken than the stairs shimmered in front of us, looking like a desert mirage. I pulled it toward us.

  “Awesome,” Jace murmured.

  As we shifted, I saw Patrick carrying Lucinda to the door.

  SHOUTS AND THE WHOOSH! OF silenced gunshots warned us immediately that someone else was in the mansion. The blast of an unsilenced shot from the kitchen sounded too loud in my ears.

  Keene kept hold of my arm, his ability still active, which was a good thing because I felt as if I’d been hiking up Mount Everest for two days straight. “Looks like Agent Chance is holding out in the kitchen,” he whispered. “You guys take them from behind. Mari and I will protect the agents.”

  His power flared, threatening to suffocate me until I remembered to absorb oxygen instead of trying to use my lungs. Then I was soaring on an impossible high, the exhaustion fleeing. For the briefest second, the coordinates in Venezuela appeared in my mind. I pushed them aside and shifted us to the kitchen instead.

  We appeared in front of the stove, ten feet from where Special Agent Chance crouched behind an overturned table near the door leading to the hallway. With him was Susan, the cook. Next to the back door were four EMTs, three working on the fallen agents, and one with a gun pointed at the heavy back door, which was shut and locked tight.

  Chance’s head and gun whirled in our direction. “We’re here to help!” I said, raising my hands, one of which held the gun Keene had given me in the bedroom. I couldn’t reach very high because of my wound, but it showed our intentions. “We brought backup.”

  “How’d you get in here?” cried the EMT with the gun, now aimed at us.

  “Point your weapon at the door!” Chance roared. To us, he added, “Mr. Mann?”

  “He’s safe.”

  The agent practically wilted. He was bleeding from at least two different gunshot wounds, and from the amount of blood, it was a miracle he was still conscious. “They came from two sides,” he said. “I managed to shut the back safety door, and the bars and bulletproof glass on the windows have held so far, but I don’t know how much longer I can prevent them from coming in.”

  “You’ve done great.” I grabbed a food trolley and moved it in front of me for cover. Or maybe it was more for support, because without Keene’s synergy, my strength had vanished again. I sank to a crouch.

  Keene hurried to the EMTs, tossing down a large package of drugs he’d brought from the other house. He handed one of the men a piece of paper. “This is what they need. And how much. Well, actually that was for a woman who weighs a hundred and thirty or forty. We may have to give them more.”

  A volley of bullets shattered the kitchen door, the hits themselves louder than the bullets. One of the EMTs sobbed in fear. We glimpsed someone through the gaping holes, and Susan fired a gun at them, her face stiff and frightened. I hadn’t known she was armed, but apparently Agent Chance no longer thought her responsible for the poisoning.

  But if she wasn’t working for the Emporium, then who was?

  The rest of the door fell from its hinges, and I glimpsed an Emporium hit team of at least four. They came toward us firing their silenced weapons, and we blasted back with our unsilenced ones. The smell of gunpowder and smoke filled my lungs, choking me. My ears rang. Two Emporium agents fell toward us through the doorway, hit in front and from behind with bullets. That meant Jace and Cort were doing their job. The ot
her two Emporium operatives had disappeared from my view. I hoped they were out of the game for good.

  “Hold your fire!” came a shout that I recognized as coming from Jace.

  “Hold fire!” I repeated to the others. “That’s our man.”

  We stopped shooting and watched as Jace came into the kitchen pushing an unarmed man ahead of him. “We got all of them out there. Cort’s just tying up the last—”

  His words were drowned in an explosion that rocked the back door, sending it and one of the EMTs flying across the room. I shifted to get out of the way. Instinctively. Faster than I ever had before. Thank you, Keene. He wasn’t helping me now, but I’d learned something from before. Shifting had become more than breathing; it was like the beating of my heart.

  I reappeared outside in the garden, behind a pair of Emporium agents, one who was about to throw a grenade inside the kitchen. I lifted my gun and fired four times, two for each, ignoring the fiery pain in my right arm. They both went down.

  I guess guns had their uses.

  Keene was on top of them in an instant, checking each pulse before coming to me.

  “You saved my life,” I said, letting him peel my fingers from the pistol.

  “What? You just saved the day, not me. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yes, you did. I have more control now. More . . .” It seemed stupid to say power, but that’s what it felt like. “Whatever you did with your ability, it’s a part of me now. I learned from it.”

  Keene laughed. “So I didn’t blow us up.”

  “And I didn’t send us to Timbuktu.”

  His hand went to my back, and all my senses urged me to step closer, to do something about his proximity. Just adrenaline, I told myself. If my adrenaline hadn’t kicked in, I probably would have fainted from all the expended effort. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s help sweep the house. You can give me back my gun now. Er, your gun.”

  Minutes later, we were sure no one else was there, mostly due to the lack of shooting. The house was so large that searching it thoroughly would have required more time than we had. I was still anxious that more Emporium agents might show up, so we headed outside, using a side door that would keep us from the prying eyes of neighbors who must have heard the shooting and the explosion.

  Something prevented my pistol from entering my holster completely, and investigation had my fingers scraping the rubbery bacon toy. I almost laughed out loud, but Keene’s eyes were on me, so I palmed the toy calmly and slid the gun into place. When had he put it there? Maybe when he’d joined me in searching the house. I distinctly remembered him touching my back.

  “Perimeter secure,” Jace called from the garden. “No sign of more Emporium agents.” He put on the speed and was at my side in an instant. “You okay? Nice shooting, by the way. Ritter would be proud.”

  “Ritter proud of my shooting? That really would be a miracle.”

  “We’d better get to Patrick,” Keene said. He looked at Jace and added, “You got it from here?”

  Jace nodded, his hair glistening gold in the sunlight. “Cort and the EMTs are finished with the Secret Service agents, though that Secret Service agent had to threaten the EMTs with his gun to get them to use our drugs. The patients should be ready to transport soon. The ambulances are still out front. The Emporium didn’t touch them.”

  “You’ll have to get out of here fast,” I told Jace. “The Emporium will send more.”

  Jace gave an elaborate shrug. “We’ll be okay. Someone called the police. Hear those sirens?”

  I did now, though I hadn’t before. Jace’s combat ability made his senses better than most.

  Jace continued with a grin, “Cort made a call to the Secret Service to come as well, just in case the police here have Emporium spies within their department. But we’ve told everyone that Patrick is in a secure location, so I doubt the Emporium will send more men. Cort and I are about to make ourselves scarce. You’d better report in once Patrick really is secure. No doubt they’ll want to bury him under more Secret Service.”

  “No way,” I said. “We can’t have more deaths on our hands. Look at those men in there.”

  Jace’s levity disappeared. “I agree. I don’t know if they’ll make it.”

  The woman Agent Chance had found in the pantry was already dead, but I didn’t know where her body was now or who had killed her. Maybe one of the poisoned agents was working for Hunters or the Emporium. At this point, nothing would surprise me. The Emporium didn’t care about rewarding mortals even for their loyalty, any more than they felt inclined to reward a stray dog they’d sent on a suicide mission.

  “Well, have fun,” I said to Jace, mentally pinpointing Patrick’s location.

  His grin was back. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

  I rolled my eyes. Patrick’s location wasn’t changing, so I hoped that meant they’d gotten Lucinda to a hospital. I fished out my cell and texted him to see if he was alone. No response. “Patrick’s not responding to tell me if it’s safe to shift there. Maybe he’s busy with Lucinda.”

  “What about Noah?” Keene said.

  I nodded. “She’s nearby. Not with Patrick but close.”

  “I have her cell number.” Jace pulled out his phone and texted faster than I could follow with my eyes. After a few seconds, he said, “She’s clear.”

  I nodded at Keene, taking his hand, and the increased clarity of my numbers was notable. I might have eventually learned enough to shift someone without Keene’s help, but I wouldn’t be able to do it now, not with how weak I felt.

  We appeared close to Noah, almost materializing inside a grouping of chairs, until I changed numbers at the last moment. She blinked at us as we turned up on her other side instead. “Wow, that takes some getting used to.”

  “How is she?” We were in a waiting room of some type, with a TV blaring and surveillance cameras whose footage I’d have to ask Patrick or Stella to track down so we could erase evidence of my shift.

  Noah frowned. “If all that lovey-dovey jabbering on the way here was any indication, Luce is going to be just fine. She even felt well enough to respond to a few texts.”

  “I’d better get to Patrick.” I started for the door.

  “They won’t let you.” Noah sank into the chair behind her. “Only family.”

  “I’m his fiancée.”

  “Actually, he said he was her fiancé. It was the only way they’d let him go back with her.”

  Right. Lucinda was the patient not Patrick. “I’ll shift to him then.”

  “He should be right back.” Noah glanced at the time on her phone. “She was really worried about going by herself. It’s the only reason he even went with her.”

  A tingling of unease hit me. “She’s safe now and feeling better, but she still wanted him to go with her? That’s odd. She’d know it’s safer for him to stay with you.” I glanced at Keene, feeling suddenly nauseated at the suspicion crawling into my mind.

  Noah nodded. “Yeah, but no one knows we’re here. I thought it was safe.”

  I reached for Patrick’s location as I said, “Susan was firing at the Emporium back at Patrick’s. She didn’t poison anyone. And it certainly wasn’t Agent Chance, and everyone else is unconscious. Something doesn’t add up.”

  “Lucinda,” Keene whispered.

  My thoughts exactly.

  Noah didn’t have much combat practicality, but she understood what we were saying. “No, not her. Luce loves Patrick.”

  “Then a tracking device or something. Or maybe Patrick and Lucinda were followed to Europe. We need to get to Patrick now.” Keene took my hand, his synergy pushing me. “Go!”

  I shook my head, panic flooding into my speech. “I can’t find Patrick. He’s vanished!” I didn’t see how it was possible. I was the only Unbounded I knew with the ability to shift, much less take someone with me. He couldn’t be gone that fast. I had the horrible feeling that Patrick’s missing signal might mean he was already dead.
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  “Here I’ll give you—” More intensity leaked from Keene. I felt dizzy, sick, ready to fly to not one but maybe a billion different locations. At the same time.

  I squeezed his hand. “Stop, or you really are going to blow me up.” I tried to keep my voice light, but I felt I was only holding my atoms together through sheer will.

  Keene nodded and the pressure backed off. “Keep it ready, though,” I added. Once more, I searched for Patrick’s number among the many that filled my mind. Nothing.

  “He’s not here in the hospital. Or anywhere nearby.”

  “But he was just here!” Noah catapulted from her chair. Her hand went inside her jacket, reaching for her gun.

  “Wait. I see Lucinda.” That white with the dark edges stood out clearly. I pulled her numbers closer. “She’s still in the hospital, I believe. Maybe a different wing. And she’s moving. Or someone’s moving her.”

  “Could something be blocking you from Patrick?” Keene said. “Like how the electrical grid at the Fortress prevents you from shifting outside when it’s on?”

  “You mean maybe the hospital equipment?” His words gave me hope.

  “I was thinking something more along the lines of the Emporium.”

  “Either way, he might still be here, and Lucinda should know what happened. We’d better alert Jace and Cort.”

  Keene raised the cell phone in his hand. “Just sent the emergency signal. They’ll be tracking us.”

  His synergy flared again, and with his help, I pulled Lucinda’s numbers towards us. An image rippled into existence. I blinked to see Lucinda walking alone, if somewhat shakily, down a hallway. Her gray pantsuit was rumpled and her short hair was tangled worse than when I’d seen her last. She looked dazed but determined as she placed one foot in front of the other.

  “Let’s go!” Noah urged.

  I was tempted to leave Noah behind, but something definitely wasn’t right here, and although she wasn’t good at combat, she was trained. We had no clue if we were going up against just Lucinda, Hunters, or the Emporium, but one more body might mean the difference in a battle for Patrick’s life.