The Shadow Stealer (Silver Moon Saga Book 3) (11 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Rafe stared at me, his eyebrows lifting in disbelief. “What?”

“I was just talking to Kain,” Philip said, already moving toward the hallway. “He’s at HQ, and we couldn’t understand what he was saying, and then there was this noise—”

I grabbed Rafe’s hand and squeezed it. “It sounded like a loud boom, Rafe, and then it was cut off because Kain’s phone must have died.”

“I need to get over there.” Philip grabbed his coat from where he’d laid it over the couch in the front room and shoved it on. “If anything’s happened to him, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Did anyone feel that?” Evan made a sudden appearance behind us, looking pale and worried. Behind him, Alexandra hovered, her lips pressed together tightly.

“Feel what?” Rafe asked him as I went to my brother’s side and put a hand on his arm.

“Phil—”

“I know what you’re going to say, Gabi, and the answer is no,” he said without looking at me.

Irritated, I scowled at him. “If he’s hurt, you’re going to need
me—
”

“You
can’t
heal him, not when we don’t know what could happen to you.” Philip tried to worm his way out of my grip, but I refused to let go. “Are you listening to me? You could die!”

“And without me, Kain could die,” I said plainly.

His brown eyes were filled with pain. “Please don’t make me choose between the two of you.”

“You won’t have to because this is
my
choice. I’m coming with you.”

“Uh, hello,” Evan called, waving his arms. “Are you two listening to me?”

“We’re a little busy, Evan,” I snapped, the tension in the room making me angry. “We don’t have time for your crap—”

“This isn’t crap!” he shot back. “There was just a crazy surge of magic right now, okay? Maybe you simpletons couldn’t feel it, but I did.” Evan’s face went uncharacteristically serious. “Whoever cast that spell didn’t care about veils
or
cloaking their power. They
wanted
us to know what they were doing.”

“Blowing up HQ,” Rafe said, looking at me for confirmation. I nodded, and Evan whistled.

“So what the hell are we doing standing around and chatting?” Alexandra demanded, also grabbing her coat. “If HQ is under attack, then we need to be there!”

“To defend it or help the fires spread?” Evan asked.

To my utter surprise, she answered him. “I don’t know. We’ll see how I feel when we get there.”

But I didn’t have time to marvel over the fact that they’d somehow made up (maybe?) overnight, not when I had to convince both Philip and Rafe to let me come along. They both voiced their protests loudly until Alexandra shoved herself between us. “Just drop it already! You know she’s just going to follow us, anyway! What are you going to do, tie her up?”

I shot her a grateful look.

Shaking his head, Rafe went over to a small wooden chest pushed up against the wall. Crouching, he opened it and said, “Grab a weapon, guys.” As the others went over and selected knives, he turned to me. “Do you have the knife I gave you?”

I picked up my purse from the couch. “Always do.”

“Good.” Rafe slipped a sheathed knife into his belt and pulled on his coat to conceal the weapon.

After the others followed suit, Alexandra exclaimed, “Come on, we’re going to miss the excitement if we don’t get moving!” To me, she said, “Don’t worry, Gabi, nothing’s going to happen to you. They’ll be so preoccupied with their precious building in flames they won’t even notice you’re around.”

“Please stop saying the building is on fire,” Philip muttered as we left the apartment and headed down the hallway to the elevator. “Kain is in there, somewhere. So is—” He cut himself off, but I knew who he meant.

Charles.

As we waited for the elevator to arrive, I squeezed my eyes shut and sent a silent prayer.
Please, please, please let them be all right. Especially Kain. Philip can’t lose him, not when he just found him. Not when we just found out about Mom. How much more crap do we have to deal with?

In the elevator, Philip continued calling Kain, swearing each time the call didn’t go through. I exchanged tense glances with the others, my sense of dread growing with each passing minute. As soon as the elevator doors opened to the bottom floor, Philip took off, leaving the rest of us to chase after him.

When we’d arrived the day before, I hadn’t paid any attention to where we were, but I gasped as I was greeted with a familiar view of brownstones and low-level buildings. When Rafe shot me a questioning look, I explained, “We’re close to HQ, aren’t we?”

He nodded. “Just a few avenues over. Dad didn’t want to live in HQ, but he didn’t want to be too far away, either.”

Normally, this was the part where Philip would have praised me for actually knowing where I was, instead of becoming instantly lost the moment my feet touched the pavement. But he was already half a block away, winding his way around pedestrians as he raced toward HQ. The air was filled with the sound of sirens, and as we turned the corner, onto Eighteenth Street, police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances sped past us. Dark smoke was billowing in the air in sharp contrast to the blue, cloudless sky.

Dammit,
I swore.
This is so bad.

What were we going to find when we reached HQ?

We caught up with Philip at the next block. The crowds were so thick he was having a hard time pushing through. I could hear him snarling in anger, and when I reached out and grabbed his arm, he whirled on me, his fist raised. He blinked when he saw it was me, and some clarity returned to his eyes. “Gabi.”

“We’re going to get there,” I told him. “But only if you act like a human being. Punching people out of the way is only going to get you arrested, and that won’t help Kain.”

“But why are they all moving toward HQ?” He was right; the crowd was steadily pushing us in the direction we needed to go. “Are they going to stand around and gawk? Take videos on their phones and post them online?”

That was probably exactly what they were going to do, but I didn’t answer. Instead, I kept hold of his arm, and Rafe did the same with my other arm. Turning my head slightly to look over my shoulder, I saw we’d formed a sort of human chain, with Alexandra clutching Rafe’s other arm, and Evan, a little bit behind her, holding onto her free arm.
Yeah, they definitely made up if she’s letting him touch her.
As if she heard me, Alexandra scowled and shoved Evan’s hand off of her.
Okay, maybe not.

It was slow progress, but eventually we made it to HQ, only to find the area was already blocked off by the police. They were yelling at people to stay back, but Philip ignored them and surged forward.

“Stop!” a police officer yelled. Behind him, firefighters were spraying parts of the building with their hoses, but from where I stood, I couldn’t see any flames. Philip’s bedroom was on the sixth floor, I remembered, so I counted the windows until I reached that floor, scanning it for damage. The windows were blown out, and thousands of tiny shards of glass littered the street like transparent snow. Thick, black smoke unfurled from the windows on the first three floors, coating the sky with darkness and the air with an acrid, burnt scent.

Philip was arguing with the officer, who kept repeating, “You need to stay back. The building is unstable—”

“I don’t give a shit, someone I know is
in
there—” Philip made to move toward HQ again, and the cop’s eyes narrowed.

“Rafe!” I yelped when it looked like Philip was going to deck the officer in the face. My boyfriend surged forward and grabbed one of Philip’s biceps. Evan followed suit, taking hold of the other, and they pulled him back, toward me. Cursing, he struggled against them. “Phil!” I hooked my fingers in the front of his jacket and shook. It didn’t have much effect, since Philip was built like a tank, but he did stop, mid-curse, to look at me. “You’re not going to help Kain this way! Let them do their thing, and when they find him, we’ll do our thing, okay?” By “our thing” I meant my healing thing, but I didn’t want the cop to hear me say that. He was already looking at us closely, like he expected he was going to have to arrest us at any moment. “Please, Phil?”

A commotion behind us saved Philip from answering me. We turned as one to see people spill from the front doors, shouting orders to the EMTs who waited at the curb. A young man with dark hair was being carried out by a group of firefighters, and my heart skipped a beat as, next to me, Philip stilled.

“Is that—?” Alexandra asked in a hushed whisper. I stood on tiptoes, trying to see his face, to see if it was Kain, all the while praying that it
wasn’t
him.

Philip was half a second away from bolting past the cop when Evan said, “That’s Jonathan.”

He was right, I realized. Kain had coal-black hair, while Jonathan’s was brown. It was hard to tell, because of the soot coating both his hair and face, but his build was different from Kain’s. Kain was taller and more slender, while Jonathan was bulkier. In fact, it took four firefighters to carry him out of HQ to one of the waiting ambulances. Jonathan’s head lolled to one side, his eyes shut, as if he were sleeping. The EMTs immediately began pressing on his chest, and my friends and I watched in horrified silence as they worked desperately to save Jonathan’s life.

Eventually, it became too much for me, and I hid my face in Rafe’s chest. His arms encircled me, holding me close. I’d never liked Jonathan, had hated him for hurting Philip the night we’d tried to escape, but I didn’t want to see this.

I didn’t want to watch him die.

My fingers were unresponsive, though, and all I could do was huddle next to Rafe and hope that Kain had met a better fate.

There was more noise from the entrance as another person spilled out of HQ. He waved away an EMT and looked at us, as if he had known and expected us to be there. Next to me, Philip sucked in a shaky breath. It wasn’t the person he wanted to see come out of the building, relatively untouched, but I knew, however angry he might have been yesterday, this was still someone Philip was thankful to see.

Locking gazes with his son, Charles headed toward us.

Chapter Eighteen

“She shouldn’t be here,” Charles said by way of greeting. Rafe’s hold on me tightened, his features growing dangerous as he morphed into his scary, protective mode, but Charles didn’t even notice because he was too busy staring at his son. There was a deep-looking cut over his right eye, and blood flowed freely down his cheek, staining his dress shirt. He looked like he was wearing a creepy, crimson mask on just half of his face, and I tried to concentrate on the left side of it.
That
side was unmarked, although it was dirty with soot. It was much better than the bloody side, which made him look like a freaking murderer.

“Where’s Kain?” Philip demanded, obviously not affected by his father’s deranged appearance.

“Kain?” Charles squinted at Philip, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he was confused, or blood had just splashed in his eye. He smeared some of the blood away with the back of his hand (that definitely did not make things better) and asked, “He’s in HQ? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!” Philip shouted. He was at his breaking point, and I doubted I would be able to calm him down again.
He needs Kain,
I thought.
Kain would be the one helping him get a grip right now.
Despite that realization, I didn’t feel jealous. I knew, if I was in the same position, I would need Rafe by my side to keep me sane.

Our eyes met, as if Rafe knew I was thinking about him, and some of the fierceness left his eyes as he leaned down to plant a kiss on my forehead. “I’m scared,” I admitted in a soft whisper, not wanting Philip to overhear.

“Me too,” Rafe said. “And I know I said you shouldn’t be here, but…” He trailed off, watching the paramedics continue to work on Jonathan. “It’s a good thing you’re here.”

My mouth parted slightly. “You’ll let me help Kain, if he needs me?”

“That’s not my decision to make,” he told me. Just like that. As if we were on a date at a restaurant and he knew he’d never have a chance to pick what dessert we were going to share. (And by share I mean he’d let me eat most of it.) I waited for Rafe to amend his sentence, but he didn’t. He meant it. This was my choice, and he respected that.

Seriously. I must have been a saint in a previous life to land a boyfriend this supportive. Because we all knew I wasn’t exactly the nicest of people in
this
life.

But, no— There would be time to gush over him later (I hoped). What mattered right now was Kain.

Charles was shaking his head as Philip shouted at him, demanding to know if he saw Kain. “No, I didn’t. I was alone in my office when the explosion occurred. Why would Kain even be here, and not with you?”

“He was packing some of my stuff up. I’m not staying in HQ anymore. I can’t.”

Pain flitted across Charles’s face, and he fell silent.

“Who set off the spell—err, bomb? Do you know?” Evan asked after a quick glance in the cop’s direction. When Rafe elbowed him hard in the side, Evan shot him an annoyed look. “What?”

“Don’t say the b-word,” Rafe muttered. “Or else they’ll think you did it.”

“No, they won’t!”

“Yes, they really will!”

“I don’t know who it was,” Charles said in answer to Evan’s question. “There was no warning, and then—well, you must have felt it, Evan.”

The blond nodded. “Yeah, all the way from Rafe’s apartment. Let me tell you, whoever set it off is someone I will never, ever want to meet in a dark alleyway.” He shuddered, which was odd for Evan. He was always so confident in his abilities; in fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing him scared before.

“Could it have been Collins?” I asked.

Everyone turned to stare at me, as if they’d forgotten I was there. Charles’s mouth dropped open. “How do you know about Collins?”

“I know all about him, unfortunately. And I know he had issues with Liam and Rafe,” I explained. “We think… Charles, we think he killed Rafe’s parents.”

I watched Charles work through my bombshell. When his face paled, making the soot and blood stand out even more severely, I knew he’d come to the same conclusion as we had.

Collins was our guy.

Rafe realized this the same time I did and his grip on my arm tightened. “Is Collins in New York?” he asked Charles.

Charles nodded slightly. “He flew in on Thursday.”

“Get her out of here,” Philip growled. “
Now.
”

“But—” My eyes darted to HQ again. The smoke was continuing to billow out the shattered windows, but no one else had emerged from the building since Charles. If Kain was still in there, then he must be unconscious and injured.

And he needed me.

“Go.” My brother wasn’t looking at me when he spoke. “We can’t risk Collins finding you. Go, Gabi.”

I shut my eyes briefly. Philip was right, and I knew there was no arguing with him. But I also knew I wasn’t going far, not if Kain needed me. “We’ll be right around the corner,” I told him. “If you need me,
call
me, Phil.”

He nodded unhappily before turning his attention back to HQ. Rafe put a hand on the small of my back and began guiding me through the crowd, which had grown since we’d arrived. I scowled.
Don’t they have anything better to do than gawk at this tragedy?

Before we could make it to the corner, Rafe grabbed me, pulling me behind him. I stepped on someone’s toes and was rewarded with an elbow in the side. Grimacing, I went to snarl at the person, but Alexandra and Evan materialized next to me and pulled me even farther into the crowd, away from Rafe.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Evan spoke quickly, his face white. “It’s Collins. He’s here.” He dropped his hand from my arm and pushed through the crowd until he joined Rafe. Alexandra stayed with me, her hand clutching my forearm tight enough that I wondered if she was going to cut off my circulation.

I craned my neck to see who Evan meant, my heart racing.

A middle-aged man stood in front of Rafe and Evan. Surprise flitted over his face, which he quickly hid as he assessed the two hunters. I did the same with him, noting his dark, nearly black eyes, which were a harsh contrast to his silver-streaked brown hair. Looking older than my dad, Collins was tall and slim, and his dark, form-fitting coat did nothing to hide his broad shoulders. There was something about the sharp look in his dark eyes that reminded me of a predator.

How convenient
, I thought.
HQ is bombed, and here’s Collins.

Rage washed over me, and I found myself cutting through the crowd, ignoring Alexandra’s orders to stay back. There was no way I would let Rafe face this man without me.

“Evan Underwood and Rafe Fitzgerald,” Collins said by way of greeting. “I thought I sensed something amiss.”

They stared at him, their faces grim.

When it became obvious they weren’t going to answer, Collins sighed. “What a mess. Why am I not surprised something like this happened under Charles’s watch?”

“Something like
what
, exactly?” Evan shot Collins a suspicious look. He probably hoped Collins would admit to being responsible for the blast.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Collin’s voice dripped with disdain. “Sorcerers broke into HQ and set off the explosion. It was an act of war, and we need to strike back immediately.”

War? With the sorcerers? Holy crap, we really needed to get out of Manhattan
now.
As soon as Kain emerged from the building, we were taking him and running far, far away. It was bad enough dealing with Collins and demons. We didn’t need to add sorcerers to the mix! From the look of horror on Rafe’s face, I knew he was thinking the same thing.

“But Charles… He can’t be trusted to do the right thing in this case.” Collins shook his head, disappointed. “He’s not much of a leader, and he was never known for his intelligence.” Collins glanced at Rafe. “He was better known for riding Liam’s coattails to glory. The only reason Charles is the director is because you let your father die, Rafe.”

I gasped, Collins’s barbs like razor sharp needles piercing my heart.
How dare he!
Rafe went still as his face paled. He looked like he had the night we’d fought Davenport and the deranged hunter had told him about the test. The shock had been so great Rafe had been unable to move, and I was afraid the same thing was happening now.

Well, I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m going to stand to the side and listen to this jerk torment Rafe!
I surged forward, my hands clenched into fists as I contemplated the best place to hit Collins.
His face,
I decided.
Maybe if I swing hard enough, I can break his stupid nose.

Collins’s eyes landed on me as I emerged from the crowd and stood between Rafe and Evan. My boyfriend didn’t move, but Evan latched onto my elbow, refusing to let go. “And who is this?” Collins asked.

“Someone who isn’t going to let you talk shit about Rafe,” I said. “So how about you shut up, okay?”

Collins smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile, and it did nothing to erase the coldness in his eyes. “Did you find yourself a normal girlfriend, Rafe? How precious. Considering how close to a regular human being you are, with your Sightlessness and all, this is a sensible choice. If only your parents had lived that day; how proud they would be.”

Evan let go of my arm. “Dude, seriously shut the hell up right now or else—”

“Or else what?” Collins’s dark eyes glittered madly. “Do you honestly think you can threaten
me
, Evan? Perhaps if you’d joined me that day, as my apprentice, you might stand a chance. But Davenport showed you
nothing.
You wouldn’t last a moment against me. Your magic is insignificant. Let me show you what great power looks like.” He lifted a hand, but before he could do anything, Alexandra launched herself into the fray, standing in front of Evan with a knife drawn.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to be wielding a knife in the middle of a crowd, but everyone was too busy watching HQ burning to pay attention.

“Back off, asshole,” Alexandra snapped.

“Alexandra Chen.” Now Collins looked genuinely surprised. “So the rumors
are
true. You’re among the living again. How did that happen?”

She spoke through gritted teeth. “It was a medical miracle.”

“Really…” Collins glanced at me, for only a second, but it was enough for me to realize I’d screwed up.

Coming to his senses, Rafe clamped his hand around my wrist as he began pushing through the crowd once more, away from Collins and HQ.

“So good to see you again, Rafe,” Collins called after us. “And it was nice to meet you, Rafe’s girlfriend. Do take care, won’t you?”