Nick pulled out his phone. “We’ll get someone else to go with her. We need you for the transfer, man,” he reminded Sam as he dialed.
“Hey, John. Nick. We need a guy.” He briefly explained.
Riley listened tensely. The Protectorate had been stretched thin since she first connected with the Society, so she was surprised when John apparently offered someone to Nick.
“I don’t know him,” Nick said. “You’re sure he’s cool?” He listened skeptically, then nodded. “All right. We’ll meet him at the airport.”
Nick hung up as they spotted Quinn moving slowly toward them, supporting herself with one hand on the brick wall of the building. He dashed over to her, and Riley braced herself.
“This is wrong,” Sam said through a tight jaw.
Riley was less certain of her plan now that she was going to be left alone with a stranger, but she couldn’t let Sam see that. “I’ll be okay.”
He caught her shoulders and made her look at him. She tried to hide her conflicting emotions. If Sam thought she had a single moment’s trepidation about this, he’d never go with them. And he was hurting almost as much as Quinn was. The sooner he got through it all, the better.
“I can stay with you,” he said. “They can fly up, and she can rest. We can do the transfer when we get there.”
Riley shook her head. “You need to be there and ready to do it as soon as she’s able. You don’t want to miss a window, and what if we hit traffic or something?” She patted the roof of the car. “This baby is pure steel. I’ll be invincible. And you know John wouldn’t give us someone we couldn’t trust.”
He smiled, the one-sided quirk of his mouth that flashed a dimple and charmed the hell out of her. Her heart thumped hard once, fluttered twice, and settled back into rhythm.
“Promise me,” he said, “that you’ll be careful. Keep in contact. Take some back roads—be unpredictable. There’s no reason anyone should be able to track or follow you. But just in case—”
“I get it. Don’t worry. I’ll be there before you know it.”
He hugged her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll miss you,” he murmured.
Half an hour later, she sat behind the wheel with a steely military type named Tom sitting next to her, watching them all disappear into the airport and fighting the melodramatic feeling that she’d never see any of them again.
…
After landing in Providence, Sam, Nick, and Quinn got a hotel room so Quinn could spend a few hours recovering. Sam called Riley just about every hour until Quinn insisted she was well enough to make the transfer. Her color was better, and she was moving more easily, though she still got out of breath quickly. But they couldn’t argue when she said it was the best she was going to get, and there was no point in waiting.
Chloe fed them a late lunch while Sam and Nick set up the beach chairs and Quinn’s notes. She fussed over Quinn like a grandmother, but excitement vibrated in her voice.
“You know,” she told Sam when he went inside for another of her melt-in-your-mouth orange muffins. “I thought I was glad to be free of it.”
“I remember.” He broke the still-warm muffin in two and popped half into his mouth. When she’d been leeched, Chloe had seen only the silver lining, an opportunity to open her own bakery, which had been a raging success. “God, that’s good.”
She beamed. “That’s exactly what I wanted. I needed to be free for a while, to concentrate on my dream. But I’ve missed it.” She looked out the window to her source, the Atlantic Ocean. It was a perfect day outside, high sixties with the slightest of breezes, the water rolling in long, smooth swells onto the soft sand. “It belongs in me,” she almost whispered, her unnaturally pale gray eyes gleaming in the reflected sunlight.
“Then let’s make you whole again.” Sam ate the rest of his muffin and led Chloe out onto the weathered cedar deck at the back of her little cottage, all raised eight feet off the sand with stilts. The private beach was deserted, and they were shielded from sight by scrubby bushes on either side of her property.
“Sit here,” Quinn said, indicating the chair closest to the water. She nodded at Sam, and he settled into the other chair. Quinn stood next to Chloe and settled her hands on her. “Ready?”
First she healed Chloe as she had Jennifer. Sam and Nick both watched carefully, but the effort didn’t seem to tax her at all. Chloe clung to the sides of her chair, and her jaw flexed as if she grit her teeth, but after a couple of minutes she loosened her grip and relaxed. When she opened her eyes, they held the same wonder Jennifer had displayed.
“How do you feel?” Quinn asked her.
Chloe rolled her shoulders and smiled. “Good. Really good. Full of energy. You know, like healthy.” She settled back in her chair. “I’m ready for the next bit.”
Quinn eyed Sam. “You ready?”
He nodded but tried to hide his trepidation. Quinn closed her eyes, but he kept his open, watching her, ready to stop her if things went bad. Her hand in his grew cold, then warmed, and something wriggled inside him. The residual power, responding to what was coming?
Quinn’s hand tightened, and the conduit opened. Sam had a sense of space, of connection. He braced himself for the onslaught of pleasure.
But the power slid forward into him, cold and sluggish, jagged. It pierced, as if resisting by digging thorns or claws into him. Sam gritted his teeth against the pain. His mind tried to cringe away, to close the conduit, but he forced himself to stay open, not to resist. Quinn tensed. Her brow wrinkled, and Sam sensed her driving it through, into him.
“Quinn.” Nick’s voice came from far away, but his urgency was obvious. “Quinn, stop.”
“I can’t,” she ground out, and Sam tried to open more. He wanted the slight bit of power he already had to reach out and draw in the new power, but it only churned restlessly. This was a far cry from the smooth flow of the other day.
Fear spiked. They’d screwed something up. They had to stop. He tried to pull his hand out of Quinn’s, but she clutched him tighter, her hand sliding up to his wrist and her other closing over his fingers. He lay helpless while she pushed, and the power slowly filled him like a big, icy blob. The pain increased steadily, raking along his insides and coalescing in his consciousness more than any physical spot. The pain seemed disconnected from his body while wholly contained within it.
Quinn gasped and broke the connection as the last trailing tendril slid into Sam. “Chloe, grab Sam’s hand,” she croaked.
“No,” Sam groaned. “Wrong.” He couldn’t communicate, couldn’t explain. He felt like someone had beaten him up.
“You have to, Sam. It’s okay. She’ll be okay.”
He closed his right hand into a fist and tried to pull it close to him. He couldn’t give this to Chloe. She’d go insane. But she reached and curled her fingers around his fist, her nails scratching his palm as they pried up his fingertips.
The power went wild. In seconds the ice seemed to melt, and it whirled and spun like an excited puppy. Sam recognized Chloe’s capacity, felt the affinity. He relaxed and let go, and the energy flowed out of him into her. It sliced as much going out as it had coming in, but the pain stayed behind. Chloe inhaled deep, the sound welcoming, pleased. Slowly, as the energy left Sam, the pain faded, leaving only a raw fatigue.
Chloe let go of him, but he couldn’t move. He heard the rhythm of the ocean across the beach, and his blood seemed to surge and ebb along with the waves. But he felt none of the euphoria he’d felt after Jennifer’s transfer. Only nausea and a pounding headache that also, unfortunately, emulated the crashing of the waves.
“Sam.” A voice penetrated the pounding and surging. Not Quinn’s. Another woman. His heart rate picked up, as did the nausea. “Sam, honey.” The woman speaking was older than Quinn, and her voice was accompanied by a soft hand on his forehead. Chloe. He grew slowly more aware, but as the world around him solidified, his insides churned even more.
“Oh, shi
t.” He shoved Chloe aside and scrambled to the steps off her deck, stumbling, falling down the last few and landing on his knees in time to retch in the sand. He heaved until his stomach was empty, then heaved a few more times for good measure.
“Come on, buddy. You done?” Nick half helped, half hauled Sam to his feet. “You all right?”
“Quinn,” he managed, collapsing onto the steps and watching Nick kick sand over his mess.
“She’s okay. Chloe’s helping her.”
He couldn’t raise his head to see Nick’s face. “Did it work?”
“Yeah. Chloe seems okay. She’s not like you two, anyway. How are you feeling?”
“Like crap.”
“Yeah, you look it.”
Sam reached for the banister and dragged himself back up the steps to the deck. He leaned on the rail and stared at the ocean. His blood still followed the rhythm of the waves, but the sluggishness remained. He had no compulsion to test his abilities this time. Hell, he was barely compelled to keep from collapsing into a heap again.
“That didn’t go so well,” he told Nick.
“I noticed.” He climbed the steps and settled his hand on Sam’s shoulder, and for some reason, it steadied him.
“Are you sure they’re okay?” He wasn’t convinced Chloe hadn’t been damaged the way he had.
“Yeah, you seem to have gotten the worst of it. Quinn’s tired but actually better than she was before. And Chloe said it felt like she was normalizing, like she’d been sick for a long time and now she’s suddenly healthy again.”
“She didn’t have any pain?”
“No.” Nick dropped his hand and shoved them into his pockets, leaning with his back to the water so he could see Sam’s face. Sam looked down at his hands braced on the rail.
“How bad was it?” Nick asked.
Sam shrugged.
“Come on, I could see it. You looked like something was slicing you up inside.”
“That’s how it felt. Like the power was full of needles or barbs. It resisted until I connected with Chloe. Then it flowed into her.”
“Did it—was it—dammit.” Nick hunched his shoulders. “Did it feel malevolent?”
Sam shook his head. “It’s hard not to put human terms on it, like firefighters do with fire, but no. It’s just energy. There’s no intent or emotion to it. It’s what we’ve made it.” He drew a deep breath, the salt and sand scents easing into him and relaxing some of his muscles. The stomach cramping had passed, and his headache eased a little.
He heard Quinn’s footsteps crossing the deck, and she came to stand between them. “How are you?” she asked Sam.
“I’m fine.”
Her eyebrows lowered. “Tell the truth.”
“I’m getting to fine.”
“That’s better.” The frown eased, though she still looked concerned. “I heard what you were saying. It was Marley’s power.”
“What? You put the wrong power in—”
“No, no. I mean the problem was Marley’s power. I had trouble separating them, and it wouldn’t let go. The resistance you said you felt—I think that was it.”
“Great,” Nick said. “What’s it going to do when you try to take Tanda’s out?”
Quinn didn’t answer.
“How about you?” Sam asked. “Did it hurt you?”
“No. I’m feeling much better. Honestly,” she said. “Like when you throw up, everything feels better for a little while.”
“Thanks, I just lived that metaphor.”
She grimaced. “Sorry.”
“What was it like from your end?”
She sighed. “Like a too-tight bolt on an engine block.”
“Hey, I get that one!” Nick joked, making them all laugh.
“Why do you think it was so different?” Sam asked Quinn. “Jennifer’s went so easily.”
Quinn glanced back to the house, probably making sure Chloe wasn’t in earshot. “Jennifer didn’t have as much capacity as Chloe did, for one thing. She’s younger, too, so she hadn’t developed the same ability to draw power.” She shifted toward Sam but reached back to take Nick’s hand and hold it tight against her thigh.
“When Marley gave Anson some of her power, and then he leeched power from the rest of the goddesses, he created something new. Like putting milk and sugar into tea. There are methods for separating those items from each other again, but they won’t separate cleanly. That’s why you’re so important for this.”
Sam gripped the smooth, weathered wood of the rail and held in the rest of his questions. He wanted to know how much the filter was catching and holding. How much of what wound up in him was damaged and what that would mean for the next transfer. And after. But he didn’t want to reveal his fears or make Quinn think she had to stop now—it was more crucial than ever that they keep going.
He focused on her. “You’re suffering from the effort of separating the energy, aren’t you?”
She smiled ruefully. “I think you’re suffering more this time.”
“Nah.” He released the rail and flexed his hands to ease the cramps in his fingers. “I just lie there. Easy as pie.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Anyway, we need to get to Tanda faster than we got to Chloe. I’m losing the moon.”
Sam didn’t like the sound of that. “You didn’t say this was contingent on the moon.”
“It’s not, but I don’t want to head into my weakest point at the end of this. I mean, I will anyway, but having the last quarter will help my equilibrium. I should have planned this better,” she said with sudden anger. “I should have known time would be a factor and had everyone together.”
Nick stroked her hair. “You didn’t know it would go like this. And you wanted them to be near their main sources. Ohio wouldn’t have provided any of them.”
Her shoulders relaxed. “That’s true.”
Chloe came out of the house carrying a basket of muffins and croissants. “Anyone still hungry?” She stared down at the basket she held in both hands, levitated a muffin, and flung it through the air. Nick caught it one-handed.
Chloe beamed. “God, that feels good.” Before she could pitch any others, a familiar rumble reached their ears.
“Riley’s here!” Sam straightened and strode toward the front of the house. The Charger came into view, and he froze, his heart leaping into his throat.
“Son of a bitch!” Nick flew past him, fury in every line of his body.
The side of the car was wrecked.
Before Sam could take another step, the driver’s door opened, and Riley spilled out onto the ground.
Chapter Thirteen
Success can be measured in many ways, and one is the range of partnerships made available by status and authority. Never hesitate to seek partners in unusual places, even in spheres that might seem opposed to our aims.
—Numina manifesto, revised
Driving with Tom was like driving alone. He never talked until Riley asked him a direct question, never requested a rest stop, never offered an opinion on where to get food or sleep for a few hours, even when asked. On the plus side, he didn’t seem to care what kind of music she played.
She merged onto I-95 near Mystic, a few miles from the route they’d take to Chloe’s, and Tom offered to drive. He hadn’t offered to do that at any point along the trip, not even during a major traffic jam outside New York City or when they were almost sideswiped by a gray sedan that changed lanes too quickly. Weird.
“We’re nearly there,” Riley demurred. “I’m okay to make it the rest of the way.”
“You must be tired, though. You can navigate.”
“No, thanks. There’s GPS.” She motioned to the unit, which beeped obediently and told her to drive one point four miles and then take the exit right.
Riley took inventory of the cars around them. She’d studied everything around her intently for the first hundred miles, cataloging dents and scratches and bent antennae and anything else that would help her keep track
of followers. The longer they drove the harder it became to remember everything she’d seen, but she hadn’t been able to stop trying.
Like that gray sedan passing them now. It didn’t look any different from the dozens of similar cars on the road, except for a slight curve in the edge of the hood, like something had bent it a little. She’d swear the car that almost hit them yesterday had the same curve.
“Tom, look at that car up there. The one that just passed us. Did we see it yesterday?”
He glanced at the other lane, not even moving his head. “No.”
“Are you sure? They all look similar. But that one has a dent that—”
“It’s not the same. Trust me. That’s what I’m here for.”
Riley frowned at him, but he didn’t react. That was the most he’d said at one time since he got in the car. She sped up to get near the sedan again, trying to figure out why she had this low-burning anxiety, despite Tom’s dismissal of her concern. She’d missed something—she could sense it.
And then she felt it, too. The prickling, like in Anson’s office.
She was cruising in a pack—I-95 was one big pack most of the time—but could still pinpoint the origin of the sensation. The gray sedan, now a couple of cars ahead of her in the left lane. Son of a bitch.
There was only one way they could have found her.
She stole a quick look at Tom, who crossed his arms over his chest and watched the passing landscape. She tried to keep her breathing even and quiet.
With her exit coming up, Riley didn’t have much time to formulate a plan. She slowed gradually to let the sedan get far enough ahead that they wouldn’t be able to get over fast enough to follow, but they must have been watching her closely. They smoothly dodged cars and switched lanes until they were two cars behind her. Riley debated her options for a few seconds. Stay on or get off? Taillights flashed ahead, so she hit the ramp to Route 234. Maybe she could lose them down there.
“Something wrong?” Tom asked, eyes now narrowed on her. He shifted so his left arm was across the back of the seat, his hand uncomfortably close to Riley’s head, and rested his right hand on the dash. Good placement to grab the wheel…
Heavy Metal (A Goddesses Rising Novel) (Entangled Select) Page 19
