Witches' Waves (25 page)

Paul coughed quietly. “I don't blame you for wanting the group-hug moment. But we need to leave. Now.”

“Not a bad idea,” Kyle agreed. “Get safe first, then spend like the next ten years or so holding you.”

“I'm not the only prisoner here. We need to open more doors. We'd need to be careful, though, because some of the prisoners may be as dangerous as the Agency thinks they are.”

Deck wanted to say no, wanted to grab Meaghan and run like hell. But Meaghan's voice was uncannily clear, and Deck suspected it was touched by prophecy.

And he was a Donovan, which meant that even if he wasn't the most responsible guy out there, he couldn't leave prisoners of the Agency to rot…and a Thorssen, so he just
liked
blowing stuff up. “Of course. But we won't be able to get everyone into the SUV. Paul, could you cloak yourself and Tag, get the hell out of here and then call my father? We may need some backup.”

Paul's face fell. “I didn't bring…”

“Your cell?” Tag patted his pocket. “I know, witch boy. That's why I grabbed it on the way out the door. Desmond will think he got butt dialed if I call him, but he'll pick up for you.”

Deck stepped out into the hall and began blasting locks open.

Chapter Twenty-Five

On the third level, they'd freed two children, another seer who looked about twelve, and a girl with curiously greenish skin, who couldn't have been more than six, a badger dual teenager with a hint of earth magic in his aura, and a woman who looked human, appeared almost human to witch-sight and according to Kyle smelled human but had wings like a bat. They'd sent the prisoners off toward the surface with Paul and Tag guarding them. To everyone's amazement, the green-skinned child, whatever she was, had cloaked that group before Paul had even gotten his spell started.

Unfortunately, she hadn't included Deck, Kyle and Meaghan in the cloak, and they hadn't wanted to drain Paul, who was already looking shaky.

And even more unfortunately, this door set the alarms blaring. So Deck, Kyle and Meaghan were running down the stairs pell-mell toward the fourth level, hoping to outrun whatever was coming for them. The lights went off in the stairwell except for dim emergency strips on the stairs, but the darkness made no difference to Meaghan. She moved like she knew exactly where she was going, because she probably did. A little cautious and tentative, but she always was.

Deck said he could see her, that she glowed to his witch-sight.

And all Kyle could do was to use the emergency lighting and hope for the best.

The good news was they didn't have far to go to reach the next stairwell.

The bad news was the door opened before they got to it.

Time slowed. “Get down!” Kyle barked, hitting the floor and trying to pull Meaghan with him.

She shook off his hand, but he shoved as she did it so she staggered toward the wall. Deck reeled her in and pushed her the rest of the way.

Two armed agents, which was bad. One who wasn't obviously armed, which was worse.

“He's about to cast,” Meaghan said calmly.

Kyle smelled the ocean, felt currents hundreds of miles away. Water poured from the ceiling—dirty water with a distinct sewage stench—dousing the would-be caster's head and most of one shooter. The caster sputtered, his concentration shattered.

At the same time, a puddle appeared under the other gunman's feet and he briefly wondered what that was supposed to do. “Deck, now!” Meaghan exclaimed.

A tiny lightning bolt zapped from the damaged door to the puddle. Kyle heard sizzling. The agent yelped and jumped.

Unfortunately, nothing else happened.

“Damn rubber-soled boots,” Deck quipped. Time, which had slowed to a crawl, sped up again like a Quentin Tarantino movie, all violent non sequiturs at hyperactive speed.

The other armed agent fired, but the shot went wild as her gun started spouting a fountain of water from its barrel. At the same time, her lips cracked and her eyes rolled back in her head. She hit the ground, the gun falling from her hand. The agent was still breathing, but Kyle's EMT training picked out all the signs of acute dehydration.

Kyle smelled sulfur and ice and braced for pain, but the caster, not any of them, convulsed and fell to the floor, trembling all over. His eyes rolled back in his head. Then he flopped, still. Kyle could see his chest rise and fall with shallow breaths, but he didn't look like he'd be doing anything useful anytime soon.

Deck grinned. “Water's reflective. So are water shields,” he said calmly.

The other gunman was aiming at Meaghan. “Stand down!” he barked. “Stand down or I'll shoot.”

The corridor shook as Deck tapped into earth powers, but it wasn't enough to be really alarming.

“Stop. Stand down. I don't want to hurt you.” The agent's smile suggested something different, that he'd be glad to hurt them, given a chance.

And he was huge and maintaining a steady aim at Meaghan.

Even over the stench of sewage, Kyle could tell the agent smelled wrong. Not dual, not human, not anything healthy.

Time did that slowing-down thing again. The air smelled of sulfur and sewage and blood that hadn't been shed yet, and Kyle once more felt like he was trapped in a Tarantino film.

What would Tarantino have one of his characters do in this situation?

Something totally stupid and kamikaze so everyone else could live.

Using all the strength and grace garnered from years of surfing, Kyle flung himself up and out, at the guy with the gun—and shifted faster than he knew he could.
Help,
he thought, hoping someone would catch it, and he found himself surfing on a surge of water that appeared out of nowhere.

Okay, not out of nowhere, since it had a distinct smell of shit, but he'd take what he got.

He and the dirty wave hit the agent in the face.

The agent staggered. A shot rang out, deafening—and a ceiling tile caved in, bringing more water with it, this time clean. Thank you, jerry-rigged plumbing. The gun clattered to the floor.

Kyle began to bite any flesh he could find. His wordside grimaced at the taste of flesh and blood—this wasn't a sexy moment where you drew blood for fun, humans were definitely not food, and this one didn't taste like he was properly human or properly anything else either—but his otterside was too mad to care. His raft had been threatened, and in particular his female. One otter couldn't do much, especially since the human who wasn't exactly human had gotten over his shock and was trying to pull him off, and humans were stronger than otters…but the guy's nose was in Kyle's mouth.

Kyle bit down as hard as his jaws allowed, clawing as he did so.

And still biting down, he shifted back to wordside. Well, at least he didn't have to worry about being tangled up in clothes, which usually happened when he shifted on the fly.

Being human made the blood taste even worse, but also gave him a much bigger jaw.

He bit for all he was worth, kneeing the guy's groin at the same time.

Gristle and cartilage gave. Kyle's mouth flooded with blood. The man underneath him roared, rolled over so Kyle was under him. Blood poured onto Kyle's face. Sanity returned with a painful thump that bore a suspicious resemblance to the injured man pounding Kyle's head against the floor.

Had Meaghan and Deck taken the opportunity to escape during the distraction? Were they safe?

Kyle didn't want to die with his head smashed in on a tile floor hundreds of miles from the ocean, but if his partners were safe, he'd go to the Otherside content enough.

Only they weren't safe. They were flinging spells at the big agent.

Who unfortunately either had some resistance to magic or was just too stupid to know when to give up. He was soaking wet, shivering and sporting the cracked lips of dehydration, but none of it was slowing him down much.

The agent was freakishly strong or made that way by pain and terror. And freakishly fast too. Kyle shifted, but before he could squirm away, hands closed around his neck.

He squirmed, twisted, but the world was already going dark. If the agent actually knew how to break a neck, he'd be dead already, but the guy must have missed the training on how to dispatch lithe, weasel-like mammals while bleeding profusely.

Which meant Kyle was strangling slowly instead of dying quickly. Not necessarily an improvement, but at least it might give him time to…

Escape?

Electricity jolted through him like sticking a fork in a light socket. The agent's grip loosened and Kyle narrowly avoided being crushed as that big body went slack. Dizzy, Kyle started to burrow his way out. His shoulder hurt even in otter form. His head spun.

But he was alive.

And the agent was curled up in a bloody ball, whimpering. His hair, damp though it was, was singed.

Otterside Kyle was content. His raft, for the moment, was safe, and predators that tried to attack his raft were dead or incapacitated.

Humanside Kyle wanted to vomit, see if that sour taste would wipe away the copper reek of blood. But instead he joined the others in running.

They'd come this far. Might as well see if they could rescue anyone else.

Someone was following them, which was hardly a surprise. Deck was about to say something when Meaghan, who had been following along a wall, grasped at the nearest doorknob. It opened easily; Deck figured he must have fried all the locks with his magic. “In here,” she hissed as she entered.

They closed the door just before the pursuers rounded the corner.

Deck blinked, his brain working slowly through a haze of magical exhaustion, and said, “Someone's in here.”

It looked like a hospital room, but more like one in a rehab center or nursing home, where the patient had been staying for a long time and would be staying for some time to come. Plants. Books. A framed photograph of Yellowstone over the bed. It could pass for a bedroom in a small, rather bleak apartment, except for the institutional smell, the institutional lighting, institutional furniture augmented with a few homier pieces. A dim night-light cast a yellowish glare that helped Deck's witch-sight and regular sight alike to pick up details.

The man who'd sprung upright in the bed when they barged in looked ordinary enough, a middle-aged black man on the stocky side with a gentle, round face. Deck's witch-sight, though, prompted him to yell, “Shields up!” and yank Kyle close enough to extend his shields over the dual as best he could.

He looked like a teddy bear of a guy, Deck thought, the favorite uncle who helped nieces and nephews get into wholesome mischief, the good-natured coworker who picked up coffee for everyone on the team. Except for his aura, a snarled mess of sorcerous fuschia and healer's rose, tinged with steel gray and a virulent yellow that Deck had never seen before. Deck braced for the worst, not knowing what “the worst” might be.

The man held out his hands toward Meaghan, palms facing up. Without hesitation, Deck jumped in front of her, hoping his stronger mirror shields would deflect whatever was about to happen. He wasn't surprised when Kyle ended up in front of both of them.

“If we live through this, you are so getting spanked,” he whispered as he shoved the otter behind him.

To Deck's astonishment, the man in the bed smiled. As he did, his messy, scary aura warmed, shading more toward rose and the pleasant light purple of a well-balanced sorcerer, less gray and yellow, less of the vivid fuchsia that marked a sorcerer about to fuck you up.

“I'm glad to see Meaghan has friends,” the older man said. His voice, tinged with a slight Tidewater accent, was deep and pleasant. Soothing, Deck thought, but it was a natural thing, not a sorcerous effect to roll their minds.

“Garrett?” Meaghan leaned forward, her lovely face etched with pain. Deck and Kyle worked together to push her back.

“You're with them willingly, sweetie? I won't hurt you boys if you're here to spring Meaghan,” the man called Garrett whispered. “I'm glad you're here.”

Kyle's head perked up. He sniffed the air, his face curious, the otterside obvious inside the humanlike body pressed against Deck's. Everything went very still. “He's telling the truth,” the otter confirmed after a time that might have been seconds or hours. “Thinks he is, anyway.”

“I can help you.” The man Meaghan called Garrett was whispering, barely audible.

Meaghan stiffened. Her aura darkened with a mixture of confusion and fury. “Why should we trust you? You work for the Agency.”

Garrett pointed toward a machine by his bedside. It looked enough like an ordinary medical monitor that it hadn't really registered with Deck, but when Kyle looked at it, he cocked his head to the side and stared as if he'd never seen anything like it before.

And since the medical student/EMT thought it looked funny, Deck peered at it through his witch-sight.

“He's hooked up to some kind of monitor,” he whispered for Meaghan's benefit. “More magically enhanced electronics that need to be destroyed. Santa got my letter.”

Deck, as delicately as he could, reached for the lightning inside him, for the memory of a storm on the beach and Kyle underneath him, convulsing around him, and electricity and red magic snapping in the air.

Something rumbled in the distance, but Deck doubted anyone but he could hear it because it was a storm that existed in the wild places of his mind.

He took three cautious steps closer to the device.

Not to touch it. If it was monitoring magic, that would send through one last jolt of power that, to anyone watching the results, would clearly not be Garrett's.

He sent the energy not into the machine itself, but into its cord and to the outlet into which it was plugged. Sure, there was a surge protector, but those could only handle so much.

The device's screen went black and the flashing lights went out.

All but two.

Damn, backup power.

Another surge and the thing died altogether.

With any luck, it would take awhile for anyone to notice since it was the middle of the night. Then again, they were already looking for intruders, so it might not buy much time.

He repositioned himself in front of Meaghan again. “Talk, and talk fast,” Deck barked. Something in him wanted to like Garrett, but Meaghan knew him. Meaghan said he was an agent. He couldn't be trusted.

Which didn't explain why he was in a room that was obviously meant to lock from the outside.

Or why Kyle said Garrett smelled honest when he said he wanted to help them.

“Meaghan's right,” Garrett said. “I do work here, though not by choice. There are Differents who are too useful to destroy, but too dangerous to reintegrate into society. We end up working for the Agency whether we want to or not. I'm one of them.”

“Are you an experimental subject, a prisoner?” The question came from Kyle. It could have sounded compassionate, but Kyle's voice was cold.

“I was. They found other uses for me over the years.”

“Like winning my trust. I thought you were my friend!”

Garrett blinked, and Deck could have sworn he was crying. “I am, as best as I can be. The best I know how. I'm a monster, Meaghan. But I'm a monster who knows I'm a monster. Not like some of them.”