“If you’ve got what you want, then why not leave now, before they catch you?”
“Because it’s not enough.” Criten approached her, his steps graceful, his body swaying as he tilted his head at her. “I want what’s inside that vault, and I want the Seers dead. Only then will my mission be complete.” He shoved her into the sandpit with a hand to the chest.
She screamed as she stumbled backward onto the sand, then froze, bracing herself for laser beams or whatever. But nothing happened.
“As I suspected,” Criten said, his fingers clenching around the stone. “You mated with that mongrel Seer, didn’t you? His energy is all over you. The boundary recognizes you as one of them.” He narrowed his eyes. “Now go open the vault, and maybe your stepbrother gets to live.”
Her spit dried up at that look. He intended to kill her. Probably Danny, too, when they no longer needed him. She was no match for the two of them, she had no weapons and Danny was in la-la land. All she could do was drag things out long enough for Rafe to find them.
She turned to face the vault and started forward. She could see from here there was a keypad and a hand scanner of some kind. How the heck was she supposed to get past that? She passed the stone pillars without incident and reached the other side. Now that she was closer, she spotted the eye scanner, too. All John Montana’s best toys. Dandy.
She glanced back at Criten. He watched her with an obsessive intensity that made her hair stand on end. He waved her onward. After one quick glance at Danny to reassure herself, she walked up to the vault and studied the security devices.
“Open it!” Criten barked.
She was going to die. There was no way she could open this door, no way she could save Danny or herself. But she could buy some time. Maybe Rafe had gotten her message. Maybe Tessa had seen something wrong or Darius had felt her terror. Maybe Mendez had gotten suspicious when Murray didn’t answer the radio.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. No guarantees, just like life.
She inhaled deeply to calm her thundering heart. She should have argued with Rafe’s decision to end their affair. Fought for him. God knew she loved him enough.
Stalling for time, she let out a long, slow exhale, then punched the digits of her birthday into the keypad with trembling fingers. She put her hand in the hand thing and looked into the eye thing.
The lock clicked, and she jumped.
“I knew it!” Criten crowed. “I knew you would be the one to open the door!”
Cara took the handle and started to pull the heavy door open. After just a few inches, she stopped, her eyes widening as she glimpsed what was in the vault.
“Hi,” Rafe said. His blue eyes had turned nearly all black, his face the hard, edgy mask of the Hunter. “You’re going to want to get out of the way.”
She stepped back, and he exploded from the vault, racing across the sand for Criten. Adrian Gray surged out behind him, Mendez and Harmon hard on his heels, weapons drawn and aimed across the room. The rest of Rafe’s family poured from the vault.
Cara fixed on the weapons. “Wait!” she shouted. “He’s got a gun! He’s going to kill Danny!”
Too late. Adrian charged forward at the same time Mendez and Harmon fired at Criten and his goon. The bullets stopped halfway across the pit, as if they had lost all momentum, then dropped harmlessly into the sand. Seconds later the crystals on the pillars hummed, and energy darted from column to column, forming a wall of power that shot forth, slamming into Adrian’s chest and flinging him backward to the edge of the sand. He gasped for breath and struggled to sit up, then fell back. Tessa flew to his side, casting an urgent look at Cara. Grasping him under the arms, she and Cara dragged him out of the pit to safety near the vault door.
Cara swung to Mendez. “They’ve got a gun to my brother’s head, damn it!”
Criten’s laughter carried to them across the room.
* * *
Rafe got to Criten in seconds, the bloodlust of the Hunter flowing through his veins. He’d opened it up as much as he could without losing control. He reached Criten and punched him in the face.
The instant his fist connected, the power of the Hunter drained from him, cutting off like a plug pulled from the outlet. Criten still fell backward. His lip still split open. But Rafe stood stripped of his power, just a man. He reached for the Hunter again. No response.
Criten got to his feet, a crafty smile curling his mangled lip.
Superpowers were gone. No more Hunter. And Criten knew it. But Rafe still had his fists and years of experience chasing scumbags. And if that’s what it took to stop this nutcase, so be it.
“Problem, Seer?” Criten swiped his bloody lip with his thumb and held up his other hand. A ruby-red pyramid sparkled in the sunlight. Criten grinned and licked the blood off his thumb.
“Won’t be once I beat the crap out of you.”
Rafe grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the stone and twisted as hard as he could. Criten howled in pain, his fingers springing open. The stone went flying and hit Danny in the chest before clattering to the floor. Rafe nailed Criten with a blow to the jaw and another to the cheek. The president fell backward, but then stopped, floating in midair. Smiling, Criten straightened as if by invisible strings, raising glowing red hands that sparked like live wires.
“Thank you for that. The stone was suppressing my abilities. But not anymore.” He fired a burst of red energy toward Rafe. “The vortex … such a rush!”
Rafe braced himself to be hit with a blast, but instead flames burst up without any tinder, encircling him, consuming the very air around him. His breathing seized as the oxygen bled away. He could see Criten’s grin on the other side of the wall of fire.
He struggled to understand. Atlanteans couldn’t use their powers on one another directly. But indirectly … setting fire to particles in the air instead of Rafe himself …
He reached for the Hunter again. This time his focus stone heated as expected, pulling power for his use, thinning the force of the flames. His breathing eased.
“Now, now,” Criten said. “None of that.” He stretched out his hand and snapped his fingers closed into a fist.
Rafe’s crystal cooled as quickly as it had heated, his power draining into the wall of flames, flaring them higher and hotter. Impossible.
Criten laughed, his hands glowing red, his eyes impossibly green. “I’m a Channeler, you fool. We command the energies of this earth!”
Rafe struggled for breath. He could not let this madman kill everyone he loved. His parents. His siblings. Cara …
He couldn’t let that happen. No matter what it took.
* * *
Criten was killing him.
Cara charged across the sandpit, ignoring the shouted warnings of Darius and Rafe’s parents. She could see Rafe’s face through the wall of fire, see him trying to gulp air, his throat working.
She launched herself at Criten, ducking under the red glow of his hands and tackling him around the waist just like Danny had taught her during his football phase. Criten went down, his power shooting toward the ceiling, his curses ringing in her ears.
A bellow of rage echoed through the room. She glanced up to see Gadi turning his gun on her. She caught a glimpse of Danny’s face—the alarm, the awareness—before he knocked the bodyguard’s arm to the side. She dove to the ground as the gun fired. The bullet pinged off a planter, shattering it. She chanced a look back just as Gadi backhanded her stepbrother, sending him flying across the room. Danny slammed into the wall with a horrible thud and slid to the ground, motionless. Cara scrambled to her feet, ready to defend herself against Gadi, Criten, whomever.
But Gadi had stopped. He stood staring across the sand, his face white, his eyes wide with terror. His whole body shook, and he dropped the gun, clamping his hands over his ears and whimpering like a child lost in the dark.
Cara followed his gaze across the pit … to Darius.
Rafe’s brother stared at Gadi, unblinking, his focus unnervi
ng in its intensity. She had no idea what he was doing, but she could sense he had somehow taken Gadi out of the mix.
Criten stirred behind her, and Cara glanced at Rafe, imprisoned in a box of fire. She had to get him out of there before Criten got his bearings back. Running to the sandpit, she scooped up sand in her cupped hands and ran back to throw it on the flames.
The sand hissed and sizzled as it hit the fire, but it did nothing to douse the flames by so much as a flicker.
Don’t let him win, Rafe, she whispered in her mind. Fight! Do whatever it takes, but don’t let Criten win.
* * *
Don’t let him win.
Rafe seized on Cara’s mental whisper, clinging to it. He wouldn’t go out like this. His stone was ice cold, but still he tried to run power through it, jump-start it. He searched for the Hunter. For something … anything that could free him. And touched … a mating bond.
Where everything else had been taken from him, the mating bond shone silver in his mind, glimmering, entrancing, leading him straight to Cara. Leading him home.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her, in the vision at Sal’s. Come with me. Let me make you whole.
He reached for the mating bond and, through the flames, saw Cara’s eyes widen as she felt it. Then she smiled as she gave him full access to everything she had.
Power surged into him, his crystal flaring with dazzling strength, feeding his body a steady stream of white-hot energy fueled by his bond with Cara. Sounds sharpened around him, smells. Smoke from the flames, his own sweat. He saw his parents running across the boundary, his mother running to Danny’s crumpled form, his father pointing a gun at Criten.
Criten laughed and with a wave of his hand, turned the gun into a bouquet of flowers before flicking his father aside like a toy with a surge of power.
Criten turned toward Cara, his hands glowing red as blood.
Rafe opened to the Hunter almost all the way, holding on just enough to keep himself in the picture, and leaped at the wall of fire.
Only to bounce back, his hair singed and his skin stinging, his lungs about to burst as the oxygen burned away. I’m not strong enough.
Cara’s voice slipped into his mind. We need the Hunter now, Rafe.
He could see her, backing away from Criten. It’s too dangerous. I can’t control it.
Trust yourself, Rafe. We need you. Take what I have and use it to kick this jerk’s ass!
The surge of energy and love that flooded to him through the mating bond nearly buckled his knees with the force of its power. Did he really have a choice? The Hunter was the only thing that might stop Criten, might save his family.
Or kill all of them.
Now you decide to be all cautious? Darius’s sardonic tones flooded his mind, and he could see his brother on the other side of the flames, having crossed the boundary to stand over the weeping Gadi. I can’t hold this bodyguard forever. If you’re going to do it, now’s the time, bro.
Rafe bowed his head. No choice at all. Clenching his trembling hands into fists, he closed his eyes and opened up completely to the Hunter.
* * *
Criten came after Cara. He threw some kind of energy balls, one after the other, spheres of red, angry power. She tried to dodge them. One struck her shoulder, burning through clothing and flesh like hot acid. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath, nearly blinded by the agony. She reached for the wound, touched it, and nearly blacked out.
“Cara!” Rafe’s mother appeared at her side. “Stay down,” she ordered, then faced Criten. She barked a word, something foreign and musical, and the Agrippa Boundary flared, sucking in Criten’s energy balls as fast as he could throw them, disintegrating them.
“So,” Criten snarled, lowering his still glowing hands. “The head bitch finally makes an appearance.”
“You can leave now under your own power,” Maria said, staring him down, “or you can leave with the coroner. Your choice.”
“Someone will definitely die here,” Criten said. “But it will be you, Seer. You and your spawn.”
“Perhaps you should speak to my son about that,” she said.
And Rafe leaped through the flames with a roar, flinging Criten across the room with one swing of his arm.
* * *
Rafe had become the Hunter. Cara blinked teary eyes and breathed slowly, trying to ignore the searing pain of her shoulder and arm. She recognized that impassive expression, the blackened irises she could see even from this distance. More than that, while he still pulled energy from her, his own had changed. The black and silver of the Hunter swept through her instead of the silver and blue of Rafe. She welcomed it. The impassive, unemotional warrior that was the Hunter helped her keep it together in the middle of what had become a battlefield.
“Oh, my,” Maria murmured as the Hunter went after Criten. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“He won’t hurt us,” Cara said as Maria helped her to her feet.
Rafe’s mother shook her head as she watched the entity that looked like her son pull Criten up by his shirt and pummel him with machinelike efficiency, before dropping Criten’s groaning form to the ground. “You’ve never seen him like this, my dear. Last time—”
“Last time he was still a kid and still new to what he could do.” Cara peeled back one side of what was left of her shirt and winced at the burned flesh of her shoulder. “And, yes, I have seen him like this. When his car exploded, he changed.” She looked up and held Maria’s gaze. “And he saved my life.”
Maria gave a nod, but Cara could tell she wasn’t quite convinced.
Cara looked over at Rafe. He stood over Criten’s fallen, bleeding body, breathing hard. Their bond flickered for a moment. “He’s weakening.” She started for Rafe.
“Cara, no.” Maria caught her uninjured arm. “Don’t get too close. Wait until he changes back.”
Cara shook her head. “He won’t hurt me.” She pulled her arm loose and headed across the room toward Rafe.
He seemed to sense her coming. This time that flat, black alien gaze didn’t throw her. This was a part of Rafe. He’d saved her life. Again.
“Hey,” she said as she reached him, then frowned as she noticed how he held his arms a little away from his body. “What happened to your hands?” She took them in hers, hissing in sympathy as she saw the burns on his palms.
He pulled his hands free, then frowned and pointed at her shoulder.
“Yeah, he got me, too.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “Come see your mother. She’s worried about you.”
He looked past her, then back.
She urged him with a jerk of her head. “Come on. Come see your mom.”
He didn’t respond, just turned and headed toward Maria. Cara shook her head and followed. “We really have to work on communication,” she mumbled.
They were halfway across the room when Maria screamed. Cara whirled to see Criten on unsteady legs, glaring at them with enough hate to set them on fire where they stood. Criten glanced over at Maria’s flowers and jerked his hand. The birds of paradise popped off their stems and flew across the room toward them, glowing with red light as their spiky petals became razor sharp blades.
“Farewell, Seers,” Criten gasped, sinking down to his knees.
Cara dodged to one side, then the other, but the swarm of blades changed directions with her. Her strength flagged. Her breaths came quick and fast. She stumbled.
Rafe stepped in front of her. His body jerked once, then again and again as the deadly blades found their target in his flesh. Someone screamed. He staggered.
The bond between them flickered again.
“Where … are you getting … this power?” Criten panted. He narrowed his eyes, focused on Cara. “Ah.” He raised his hands.
Energy built up in the room like a static storm, making Cara’s hair stand on end, pressing against her lungs and making it hard to breathe. A panel of glass shattered in the atrium roof, raining shards down on
all of them. She hunched down and covered her head as splinters sliced at her exposed arms. People cried out. The power intensified with an audible, growing hum. She looked up, shaking off the glass bits. Criten had fixated on her, his entire form glowing demonic red. The energy writhed around him like snakes. His features twisted into a sneer, his eyes narrowed on her, gleaming with glee and pure, murderous menace.
She raised her chin and stared him down.
The bond with Rafe flickered, then kicked in at full force. Energy drained from her to him in one quick flood, leaving her empty and trembling. She whimpered and slumped to the floor as the pain in her shoulder roared to life again. In front of her, she saw Rafe straighten to his full height, flex his shoulders and charge at Criten. She wanted to shout a warning to him, but her vocal cords wouldn’t work. She simply did not have the strength. She could only lie there, limp and fading, as Rafe used their combined life forces to slam his hand into Criten’s chest, sending him flying across the room. Criten hit the wall with an audible crack. His smirk faded to stunned surprise as he slid like a broken doll to the ground.
Rafe turned toward her. Took one step. Another. Stumbled. Fell to his hands and knees. Tried to rise again … and keeled over like a felled tree.
She fought to stay conscious, to make sure he was all right, but this time her body won. Exhaustion hit her like an ocean wave. Reality faded to distant sounds and cloudy images.
Then, finally, to nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Today, deadbeat dads. Is this one man the father of the children of these six women? Stay tuned after the commercial break.”
Rafe winced at the overly loud commercial jingle that followed the words. Swallowing spitless in a desert-dry mouth, he forced his eyelids open, then groaned at the brightness of the room and shut them again.
“So, Sleeping Beauty awakes.” Darius’s voice had Rafe turning his head and squinting at his brother.
“What happened?” he managed.
“Well, first of all, let me express my delight that this time it was you who ended up in the hospital and not me.” Darius grinned. “Payback and all that.”
Prodigal Son Page 31
