Shattered Spirits (15 page)

Capri’s pulse raced. She blasted her earth magic at Anaea, full force. There wasn’t time for gentle. Anaea wanted to stop, but somehow couldn’t. That should make it easier. Mother of All, the power within that one woman was terrifying.

Capri’s magic slammed into Anaea’s head, but didn’t latch onto her thoughts.

A chair leg shot toward Capri. Fast, so damned fast. She twisted, but it sliced across her hip. Pain shot over her side.

She struggled to stay focused. Anaea wanted to stop. So just stop. Take a deep breath, Anaea. That will help.

Grey yanked Capri to the side again. Another piece of chair shot past. She hadn’t even seen it coming. She’d never be able to control her magic and dodge chair pieces. She needed cover, but there wasn’t any.

“Come on, Anaea. You can control this.” Capri’s magic slid across Anaea’s mind, like fingernails on plate mail and completely useless.

“Help me out here, Anaea.” Capri’s magic skidded again. There was no way into Anaea’s mind.

“I’m trying.”

“This is your fault, you crazy bitch?” the man pressed against the window yelled.

The vortex swept stronger.

“Not helping,” Capri growled. “Come on, Anaea. A deep breath. You’re stronger than this.” She locked her gaze on Anaea’s. She could do this. They would do it together. Just take a breath. Let it go. Capri had her back. She didn’t need to be afraid.

Anaea blinked, something snapped, and Capri’s magic swept into her head. Thank the Mother.

Her calming chill swept in.

Take a deep breath. Control it. Anaea could control it.

Anaea drew in air and that something snapped again. Fire roared over Capri’s mental thread. Terror and rage swept down it, erupting into an inferno in Capri’s head.

Her knees buckled. She shot her hand out to grab the wall to keep standing, but it wasn’t there, and she was falling.

Grey’s arms wrapped around her, jerked her up, and held her close.

“Anaea, stop,” he yelled over the roar of the vortex.

“I can’t.” Anaea’s body shook. Her wind ripped the tears from her eyes and tore at her hair and clothing.

Capri’s head burned. She could barely focus past the agony. “You have to.”

Another chair shattered against the wall. The pieces flew toward the window. The man screamed. Capri struggled to focus her thoughts. Stop. Just stop.

The pieces hit the window, and it shattered. The man’s eyes flashed wide. For a heartbeat, he hung suspended in the air, with shards of glass catching light around him and the Newgate skyline behind him.

Then time lurched up to speed, and he fell out the window.

Grey’s arms around Capri tensed. Heat blasted through her head. Anaea screamed. The vortex whooshed out the window, seized the man, and tossed him back inside. He tumbled across the conference table and landed in a heap on the floor.

The telekinetic wind vanished. The chair bits and glasses clattered to the floor, and the flaming papers fluttered around them.

Anaea sagged to her knees, and Capri’s earth magic snapped off.

“You all right?” Grey asked.

“All right enough. Go check on Anaea.” Capri’s head pounded. She didn’t think she’d be able to move to check on the human herself.

Grey released Capri, and she staggered to the wall, but even with its help, she couldn’t stay standing. She slid to the floor, praying her head would stop hurting. Sirens wailed in the distance. Someone had called 9-1-1. But then a window had blown out on a skyscraper and the sprinklers had gone off. Lots of people had probably called 9-1-1.

Anaea sobbed onto Grey’s shoulder, and one of the men under the conference table peered out. This was one hell of a mess. Tobias was going to have a fit. The only good thing in all this was that Capri was already here to adjust everyone’s memories.

She leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and said her power word. Her earth magic flared, and pain sliced through her temples.

Mother of All, she’d never experienced so much pain using her earth magic like this before.

Her magic stuttered and fizzled.

And she’d never had that happen, either.

But then, she’d never tried to control a sorcerer before.

Note to self, never do that again.

She said her power word again. Her magic flickered, and she seized it, focusing past the agony and putting all her concentration into it. There was nothing else in that moment except her earth magic.

It wavered, then gained strength. Not nearly as strong as it usually was, but it would have to do.

She eased it through the room, sliding it into the minds of the men under the table and the man who’d almost plummeted to his death. The window had a flaw in it. A freak burst of wind shattered it, and the sprinklers had malfunctioned. That’s all that happened. You’re lucky and grateful to be alive. Who’d have thought a burst of wind could do that to a window and the sprinklers.

It wasn’t a great fix to their memories, but it would have to do.

Their memories eased, taking on the new thought, mostly because that made more sense than what they’d actually experienced—Thank the Mother of All for that. She didn’t think she’d be able to fight with anyone at the moment.

She pressed her magic out of the conference room. The fire in her head threatened her concentration. Just a little more. She needed to catch anyone who might have gotten out of the room before she’d arrived. But there wasn’t anyone else in the office.

She sent out a blanket thought about the flawed window and sprinkler system through the rest of the building. That sent another burst of agony pounding through her. Her hold on her magic faltered, and the thread snapped away. That was the best she was going to be able to do.

Firemen, cops, and paramedics rushed into the room. She wasn’t sure if they arrived all at the same time or not. The world stuttered around her, caught in flashes of bright agony and blissful nothingness.

Someone helped her stand, wrapped her in a blanket—even though she still wore her winter coat—and escorted her out of the office to a chair—one half of a seating area—beside a bank of elevators. Cops started taking statements from the men who’d been under the table, and Grey and Anaea sagged into the couch across from Capri.

She couldn’t believe that someone only five inches taller than her and completely human could be so powerful. But then, Anaea wasn’t completely human anymore. She was a sorcerer, a full one, able to cast spells, not just in control of one or two earth magic abilities. She was the thing dragons had feared since the Great Scourge. The real thing. Regis might claim that there wasn’t a difference between a mage and a sorcerer, but Anaea’s power made the differences perfectly clear.

And she was Hunter’s inamorata. Mother of All, Capri had to focus on that. Hunter trusted her. His soul had chosen Anaea in a bond between spirits that could never be broken.

Dragons didn’t soul-bond often. Not even when they’d had their dragon bodies. It happened even less now that they were stuck in their parasitic spirit states, trapped in human corpses. The bond was unbreakable and lasted for life. If Anaea had refused Hunter as her mate, he would never love another. Sure, he could have other relationships, but he’d spend the rest of his eternity knowing he was incomplete.

It was a good thing that when Anaea’s earth and soul magic had been awakened, so, too, had been the magic that made her immortal and made a soul bond possible. She was inamorated with Hunter as well and they could have an eternity together.

A curl of jealousy slid through Capri, but it was small, just a twinge. She was happy for Hunter. If anyone deserved an inamorata, he did. He was a good drake, who, regardless of his previous occupation as Prince’s Assassin, did the right thing. It was just that Capri had found love. She hadn’t been inamorated, but what she’d had with Eric had been the next best thing. She wanted that again, and yet didn’t want to face the inevitable heartache it brought.

Grey murmured something to Anaea. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. Although right now things weren’t great for Hunter and his inamorata, and this disaster wouldn’t help. Prince Regis was furious that Hunter had left his employ to clearly break dragon law by letting a human sorcerer live and have a relationship with her.

It also didn’t help that he held one of the last two medallions used to save dragon souls for the rebirth process. But better him than anyone else. He wasn’t crazy like King Constantine or Prince Regis, and no one could get to the other medallion, since it was embedded in the heart of the arena. It would be best if Hunter stepped up and claimed leadership of his new coterie, but that wasn’t really Hunter’s style, no matter that dragons were flocking to his unofficial banner. Hunter had never wanted to play court politics, and she doubted he’d ever want to be a doyen. Which left Grey holding it all together.

Anaea sniffed again.

And apparently helping to hold Anaea together, as well.

“Where’s Hunter?” Capri asked.

Anaea drew in a ragged breath and squared her shoulders, visibly pulling herself together. She was as tough as a drake. Capri had known that the moment she’d watched Anaea take out Zenobia and then Xanthic during the coup, but to see it again, to watch her battle all that emotion, proved why Hunter’s soul had picked her.

“He’s trying to find the Handmaiden,” Grey said, keeping his tone low so the emergency responders wouldn’t notice.

“He left—” The words slid out before Capri could stop them. In the early days of being inamorated, separation was actually painful. No wonder Anaea was struggling with her emotions, and if what had happened in that room was any indication, her magic was directly affected by her emotional state.

“Your people need her more than I need him right now,” Anaea said.

“But—” Capri couldn’t work her throbbing head around the idea that Hunter would just leave Anaea.

“This is a dangerous time for all of us,” Grey said. Sweat glistened at his temples. It might have been water from the sprinklers but his pallor was grey again. His wet blond locks were plastered to his head, making him look even more bedraggled and sick.

“Are you all right?” Capri asked. He hadn’t been looking well for at least a week now. No, not since the whole fiasco with Hunter and Anaea had started three weeks ago.

The muscles in Grey’s jaw twitched. “I’ve been better.”

Capri waited for more, but he didn’t elaborate and she didn’t have it in her to pry. Her head pounded. The fluorescent light in the ceiling panel was too bright. Even her teeth and soggy hair hurt.

A cop approached, notebook in hand, and she bit back a sigh. All she really wanted was to go home. And the best way to do that was to convince him it was a blown-out window and they didn’t need to make any kind of substantial statement. She subvocalized her power word and slid it into his mind. He already knew what had happened. The other men who’d been in the room had given him more than enough information.

“Have the paramedics seen you?” the officer asked. He had a gentle smile that went with his boy-next-door looks.

“We’re good,” Capri said, pushing past the pounding in her head. They were fine. Just let them go.

The officer glanced at Grey and Anaea.

“Just a little shaken up,” Grey said.

Anaea nodded her agreement. If Capri looked past the soaked clothes, red-rimmed eyes, and too-pale complexion, she wouldn’t have known Anaea had just had the scare of her life.

“All right.” The officer motioned to another cop by the elevators. “Take them downstairs.”

The other cop pressed the elevator call button. Capri pulled herself out of the chair, the hall twisting for a gut-wrenching moment then steadying. The elevator dinged and the door opened.

Capri eased in beside Grey, with Anaea and the officer on his other side, and they rode down to the lobby in silence, leaving a puddle of water on the elevator floor. There was a lot that needed to be said, but couldn’t because of the human beside them, and Capri wasn’t sure she wanted to have any kind of conversation at the moment. Her head pounded, and the pain just wasn’t easing up, not like the pain in her hip. That cut had already healed.

Her phone rang, and all eyes glanced at her.

“Jones,” she said.

“Where the hell are you?” Swipe growled.

Oh, crap. She might not have been late when she’d left the youth center, but she was more than late now. “I got tied up.”

The cop’s eyebrows raised.

Yeah, tied up was one way to describe the situation, and the cop didn’t even know what had really happened.

“I’m on my way now.”

“And by ‘now’ you mean?”

“Ten minutes.” Except she had no idea where she was. “Twenty if traffic is bad.”

“I can give you a lift,” Grey said.

“Who’s that?” Swipe asked, his voice darkening.

“I’ll be there in ten.” She hung up before he could argue. She was losing control of her team. She was losing control of her life, too, but pulling that together would just have to wait.

“You know I didn’t mean for—” Grey shrugged, unable to say anything with the human beside him, but she knew what he meant. And really, she couldn’t hold any of this against him, or even Anaea. There was no way they could have predicted what had happened. The only person who knew anything about being a sorcerer was the Handmaiden, and she wasn’t around to give Anaea help at the moment—another possible reason Hunter might have gone looking for her.

“Swipe will get over himself.” And if he didn’t, Capri could just shoot him. That might even make her feel better. “But I will take you up on that lift.”

“I’m parked out front.”

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Voices roared over them, and a crowd of reporters surged toward the open door. Cameras and lights and microphones surrounded them, and people started yelling questions. The lights were too bright, the noise too loud.

Capri fought to breathe past the agony in her head. The cop pushed forward, trying to create a path for them through the crowd. Grey draped a protective arm across Anaea’s shoulders, and kept them close behind Capri.

They inched forward a few feet. The crowd jostled against them, and the noise billowed. Mother of All, her head hurt, and she had no idea how to make it stop hurting.