Betrayed by Blood: The Shelton Family Legacy : 1

by L. A. McGinnis

  A pounding on the door made him take a step back, which was good, because for a second I almost thought he was going to…

  “Gabe, honey, do you have a radio going in there? I thought I heard voices.”

  “We’ll be right out,” Gabriel told her, never taking his eyes off me. “You are staying, Andy. I won’t force you, nor will I try to manipulate you into it. But you’re staying until we sort all of this out. Including you and me.”

  I wished I’d had my phone out when we emerged from the backroom, just to get a picture of Dawson’s shocked face. For all her heavy-handed attempts to get me to leave, she’d done it to protect Gabriel. Not that I forgave her for it, but I certainly agreed with her motives.

  “I’m setting down ground rules,” Gabriel said, before Dawson had recovered from seeing me follow a mostly naked Gabriel out of the shower. “Andy and I go back further than you and I do. Never forget it. You’ll respect her, and you won’t try to guilt her into leaving again. We’ll all work together to stop the Devilton slaughter, and when we’re done, if we make it past this second surge… then, and only then, we’ll discuss your reservations.”

  His tone softened a bit as he added, “You’ve been like a mother to me, Daws. Don’t make me choose.”

  “Told you it was a bad idea,” Henry said softly behind her, and she turned and glared. “But you had your reasons.” He threw me a pointed look. “And your heart was in the right place.”

  “Now I really am getting dressed,” Gabriel said as he went to the bedroom and shut the door.

  Leaving me in uncomfortable silence with Dawson and Henry. Dawson went over to the window to pout, but Henry walked to me and put out his hand. “No hard feelings? Daws likes you, she really does… it’s just that we know too much, maybe, from Lincoln’s stories. You don’t always use good judgement. We’re just looking out for Gabriel’s best interests.”

  “I once had a client who was looking out for his wife’s best interests,” I offered, taking Henry’s hand and giving it a hard squeeze, my eyes never leaving his. “He killed her with a hatchet in the backyard and then went out to dinner. Lobster, if memory serves.”

  I released Henry’s hand. “Don’t ever delude yourself into thinking that manipulating someone else’s life is for the best, when it’s only to make you feel more comfortable.”

  I took a seat in the space between Henry, who was looking at me with a frown, and Dawson, who looked like she wanted to throw me out the window, while we waited for Gabriel to appear.

  “I discovered a few things that might help us.” He quickly explained as he walked to the main workstation and fired up his system. “First, thanks to Henry, we are in the process of disabling Devilton’s computer mainframe. Via the doctor’s home computer, I was able to plant a virus. Right now, it’s systematically corrupting every single file they have.”

  There was a sense of urgency to Gabriel that hadn’t been there yesterday, which meant the situation had changed. How, I didn’t know, but I hoped it didn’t involve Bennett. That would be a complication we definitely couldn’t afford.

  “Secondly, the harvested magic is being housed in a reinforced storage capacitor, kind of like a huge battery. Magic can’t be readily converted to other forms of energy, the way electricity can. There is still a biological element to it, which makes storage tricky. These…” On the holo, a set of complicated plans appeared. “Show the machine itself, which is a closed loop, so the magic moves in a circle. The capacitor’s design makes it possible to store huge amounts of power in a relatively small area.”

  The drawing meant nothing to me, but I could see how storing power in a continuous loop would work. There was no resistance, since everything flowed round and round.

  “Can we destroy the storage facility?” I wondered, imagining the sheer amount of energy that must be contained in one place. Another drawing replaced the collider plans. This one showed an expanding red circle that slowly grew to encompass all of NYC.

  “Okay, I’ll take that as a no. What if we release it, like a valve on a pressure cooker?” I asked, watching that red circle expand over most of the northeast.

  With a click, Gabriel pulled up another schematic, this one showing the red circle of destruction contained to Devilton itself, and a little bit of the surrounding area, which I remembered being mostly old growth forest.

  “Has anyone ever accumulated that much magic in one place?” Henry asked. “You can crunch the numbers all you want, but when you’re dealing with something so powerful, things might not work out the way you plan.”

  “Not that I know of,” Gabriel said, his brow furrowed in concentration. “But even if we release it without incident, there’s still the matter of the Elementals imprisoned there. Every scenario I’ve run so far shows a certain scope of destruction.”

  “Could we get everyone out, beforehand?” I pondered aloud. “A fire drill? Or maybe… a radiation drill? What if we could fake a leak in the machine—the capacitor? Would that give them enough reason for them to fully evacuate the facility?” When he didn’t answer, I prodded, “All right, then what should we do?”

  I searched his face as he concentrated on the maps. Gabriel was focused, and there was an air of anticipation about him, so I knew he had a handle on this. “Because I know you have a solution.”

  “We use the government against itself,” he answered with a rather aggressive flourish as he hit the final key on the panel. “Right now, the prison can only be closed by order of the government. There is a strict evacuation plan, in which all the prisoners are moved to another facility. The window of opportunity is long enough we can go in and drain the capacitor.”

  “You say this as if we’re really going to break in and open up a pressure valve. It’s probably a little more complicated than that. They’ll leave some guards there, even if you do stage an evacuation. They have a lot of money tied up in that stolen magic.”

  “We’re about to find out,” Gabriel said, as his phone began buzzing. He chuckled at my quizzical look. “Alarm, telling me the virus is working, and my worm is destroying their records.” I glimpsed the timer on his phone. Five hours left and counting.

  “You’ve been busy this morning,” I commented. “And the order to close?”

  Gabriel pulled up a different feed this time, and on it, I saw the fabulous entrance to Devilton thrown wide open, the parking lot chaotic and crowded with buses.

  “An order came down an hour ago from the Department of Elemental Surveillance and Control,” Gabriel informed us. “Followed by guidelines on how to move all prisoners to a new, undisclosed location.” He switched over to another feed showing a huge, nondescript building. “The one I fed into their system as an authorized emergency evacuation site. It’s a warehouse I own, thirty miles from the prison, and the distance should serve to protect the Elementals from any residual effects of the explosion.”

  He turned to Henry. “They know you. I need you to go there and mix with the prisoners, reassure them this is all part of a bigger plan. Once the danger of an explosion is over, they’ll all be free to go.”

  “They’ll want assurances.”

  “They won’t get any. Once they’re free, they’re on their own. I can’t protect them all.”

  Henry nodded, then before our eyes, changed into a fat, jovial man. “Just for the drive to the warehouse,” he promised Dawson softly as she wrinkled her nose in distaste when he kissed her. “So nobody will recognize me.”

  “You know I hate that disguise,” she called after him as he disappeared through the door. “Why can’t you be that nice young man with the curly brown hair?”

  “This shape-shifting… can any Elemental master it, or do you have to be predisposed?” I asked, then clarified. “In other words, can only a Cronus shape-shift, or can someone with fire magic learn this skill?”

  “I learned from my grandmother, who had a bit of the talent. Some take to it quicker than others, but it’s really just a matter of trainin
g your magic to take on another shape, then wrapping it around yourself.” Daws chuckled. “I’m sure there’s a more scientific explanation out there, but that’s my down-to-earth one.”

  “Could you teach me?”

  “Maybe, if I had months at my disposal, which I don’t.” Daws flicked a bright red nail at me.

  “Henry is who you want to talk to. He’s got the patience, not me.”

  “Yeah, well, he told me to talk to you.” So neither of them wanted anything to do with me.

  “Daws, you’re on the command center,” Gabriel informed her, gathering his keys off the desk and jamming them into his pockets. “Andy and I are heading to the complex to shut down the capacitor.” He made a pit stop at a storage cabinet, pulling out a few small items and slipping those into his pocket as well. He tossed me an earpiece, which I fit it into my ear, the faint buzz of static making it itch, then fit one into his ear as well.

  “Keep us informed of the evacuation process, but stay off the channel unless there’s something we need to know about. I’ve cloaked the signal, but given what’s happening, there will be extra monitoring of the cell signals.”

  We jogged through the lobby, where HSG was eating something that I dearly hoped was a pickle, and Gabriel hit the button to close the elevator doors. “Are you sure about this, D?” I asked, feeling terribly underprepared with my shitty night of sleep and general feeling of inadequacy. “We should do more research. Maybe add some new members to our team? I always take a day to prepare for a job. It keeps bad things from happening.”

  “We don’t have time for that now. There were new developments overnight.”

  “Such as?”

  “They’ve already brought in a new head physician.” His face tightened as he pulled up a picture on his phone, then held it out so I could see. “This guy… Dr. Adam Wright. I read the whole file. According to a directive that came down last night, he’s to double production within a week.”

  “You mean double the killing?” I couldn’t believe I’d taken Dr. Death out of commission, and they found an even worse replacement so quickly. Did they have some kind of bank of evil doctors to pull from?

  “Yeah, killing. Don’t you just love all of their little euphemisms, like they aren’t really doing anything wrong, it’s just the usual research and development.”

  When we hit street level, I kept up with Gabriel, which was saying something, given his legs were twice as long as mine. Seriously, when did he find the time to work out amongst taking over Techlandia and saving the world?

  “So, to answer your question, I would love to be more thorough during the planning stage, but we can’t spare the time,” he told me as we crossed the street, ending up in front of an overhead door. With the press of a button, the door rose, and behind it sat the sweetest little ride I’d ever seen.

  The car’s paint was so glossy I had to run my hand over the fender before I got in, then ogled the interior. Was that real wood? Knight would cream himself over this car.

  “Buckle in,” Gabriel told me, tapping the all-glass dashboard. “We’ll be taking the Newtown Tunnel.” My heart sank as my chest tightened up.

  The precursor to a panic attack. I tried to think happy thoughts.

  Back when New York became more of a gridlocked nightmare than it was in previous centuries, the city engineers proposed a bold plan. Build a tunnel, similar to others that interconnected the city, but in true American fashion, make it bigger, better, and longer.

  The result, after years of misappropriated funds and countless setbacks, was the world’s most expensive road project, costing an estimated seventy billion dollars. Called the Newtown Tunnel, it ran twenty-four miles underground, from Midtown to Newark.

  After sinking more money into this one project than all the road improvement projects before posed a dilemma to the city. How to pay for it? The answer was simple. Make it accessible only to the city’s elite. The expedited escape from New York cost each authorized driver three hundred thousand dollars annually, paid up front, in one lump sum. So yeah, no big surprise Gabriel had the golden ticket.

  However, the thought of being underground for twenty-four miles made my stomach hurt.

  Gabriel patted my knee. “It’ll be okay, Andy. Speed limit’s a hundred, we’ll be in and out in no time.”

  “Not making me feel better,” I grumbled as he pulled out onto Fifth and headed for the tunnel’s mouth, which replaced a city block of what used to be green space. Because who needed trees when you could build a magnificent tunnel for one percent of the population?

  “What happens if someone who doesn’t have a permit tries to use this?” I asked curiously as Gabriel deftly merged over into the designated express lane, joining a fast-moving line of high-end cars and SUVs.

  “Mandatory five years in minimum security and loss of your driving rights for life.”

  “Well, that seems a bit… harsh,” I pointed out. “Why not make it so everyone can get in and out of the city easily?” I asked, observing the expansive highway. I assumed there was another one, just as wide, leading back into the city. The road was sparsely populated. I counted maybe ten cars in total as we sped along at too high a speed for such an enclosed area.

  “I know you hate this, Andy,” Gabriel murmured, hitting auto on the car. When it engaged, he took his hands off the wheel and met my eyes, then reached out and took my hands. “I remember you don’t like tight places.”

  “Not hurtling through space at a hundred miles an hour, I don’t.” But my heart beat a little bit faster as I realized this was the first time we’d been alone, really alone, since I arrived.

  For a second, he wavered, then leaned in, our lips almost touching. His breath was minty, his mouth so close to mine just an inch would bring us together. Electricity crackled between us, along with the pungent scent of ozone. Magic sparked between us, and not the emotional kind.

  In danger of setting us both aflame, I closed my eyes in frustration, shutting out Gabriel’s blue ones and pulled back.

  The regretful sigh that slipped from his mouth, though… It made my stomach flutter. It was the sound of a man denied, and for a second, I wished this thing had a big back seat.

  “We have fifteen minutes,” he murmured, his expression expectant. Then it hit me. Could he be talking about… us? My heart did a strange little leap.

  But despite my heart’s happy dance, I wasn’t about to go first. Not when this was Gabriel and I was still sorting through my feelings for him, feelings that seemed to change by the moment. Or impending crisis, the way things were going.

  “And…?”

  For a second I thought he’d bite. Tell me his deepest, darkest feelings.

  Instead, we stared into each other’s eyes for so long I lost track of time. His eyes were blue, but not just any blue. They were Gabriel-Vanguard blue, and somehow, it became my very favorite color in the world. Something flashed in them, reluctance maybe, or even regret, but then he leaned in, and I closed my eyes.

  The first touch of his lips on mine… For all the times I’d imagined it, Gabriel’s kiss surpassed any fantasies I’d ever entertained. His kiss was butterfly-wing soft, faintly teasing and absolutely perfect. He licked at my lips, and I opened my mouth, his tongue dancing with mine as I wondered just how much he’d learned in these years apart.

  But fate was a fickle mistress, and we had work to do.

  He pulled away, his gaze dropping to my lips as I evened out my choppy breathing. “We should use this time to plan our assault on the capacitor,” he redirected softly. “I don’t want you getting hurt. With luck, Henry is already helping get everyone to safety.” When I went to disagree, he added, “Now. The capacitor is housed in a building adjacent to the prison. The black one with the two smokestacks.” He tapped the dashboard and glowing hologram schematics came up; rotating them, he pointed to the prison, then to the site where the magic was stored.

  “My device will unarm the alarms. Let’s hope the chaos of the ev
acuation will mean light guard duty around this facility.” He quickly indicated the entrance on the building’s south side. “We go in here, it’s the closest point to the control room. I’ll override the safety program and plant a device to begin the countdown process of releasing the magic.”

  “How sure are you that the explosion will be contained to the prison itself?”

  “The capacitor is under immense pressure, but I can only guess as to how much. Given the number of Elementals they’ve killed? I’d say the pressure is unlike anything else on Earth, except perhaps an atom splitter. Unfortunately, the plans I was able to access only had the mechanics of the machine, not the engineering specs. I devised a program to override their safety protocols, which should give us five minutes to get to a safe distance.”

  “I guess that will have to be good enough.” I indicated our street clothes. “Except we stick out like sore thumbs.”

  Gabriel reached into the backseat and threw a coat in my face. I held it up and took a good look. “Devilton Corrections. Where ever did you get these, Gabriel Vanguard?”

  He grinned, then handed me a bulletproof jacket, set a pair of steel toes boots on the floor beside me, and tossed over a pair of douchey mirrored sunglasses, reminding me of alley-guy.

  “They bid out the prison laundry to an outside company. It wasn’t difficult to get two of them. I already had the bulletproof vests.” When he slipped his jacket on, I noted it fit almost perfectly, while mine hung on me like a sack. “We go in, we get out,” he told me gravely. “Nothing else. I mean it, Andy.”

  “Why are you lecturing me?” I griped, pulling on the heavy boots. “I was already in there once, and I swore I’d never go back. Now look at me,” I grumbled, loudly enough so he heard every word. “I barely made it two days on the outside.”

  He didn’t even laugh at my joke.

  “I mean it, Andy. No heroics, and nothing stupid.”

  “Fine. No heroics,” I repeated, leaving out the stupid part, which went without saying.

  “And nothing stupid,” he reiterated. As if he couldn’t stop himself, he reached out and ran his hand down the side of my face, cupping my chin in his palm. Then sunlight blinded me as we emerged from the other end of the tunnel. Gabriel took the wheel, and trees blurred together as he hit the accelerator.