Guy number two stepped closer to the bed and leaned toward his friend. But before he even opened his mouth, Quinn exploded into motion, swinging the metal pipe in a quick backhand to the crazy guy’s head, and even quicker forehand to the other one. Boom. Boom. They were down.
The blaze of red pain along Riley’s side subsided, her lungs expanded, and blessed air filled them. “Quinn,” she croaked.
Quinn shoved herself off the bed, but as soon as her feet hit the floor she overbalanced and landed next to Riley. “Crap. That didn’t work.”
“Come on.” Riley struggled to her knees and reached for Quinn, who waved her off.
“I’m okay. Just overestimated. I can do it.” And she pulled herself up with a lot less grunting and moaning than Riley.
“I was afraid they’d hurt you before.” She braced her hands on her knees, panting.
“They were too panicked about losing you.” Quinn held out the pipe.
Riley took it gratefully, closing her eyes with relief and joy at the immediate infusion. “How did you do that?” She mimicked Quinn’s one-two swings with the pipe.
“The strength you gave me. I was able to hold on to it, save it for the right moment.”
“Yeah, but…”
Quinn smiled. “I wasn’t always an old lady, Riley.”
She felt herself blush and hoped the flashlight, now on the bed, was dim enough to hide it. “That’s not what I meant. I thought you were dead.”
“Sorry. Had to lull them. I wasn’t going to be flying around the room or anything. Shot my wad on that one move, too.” She lurched toward the door. “There are others out there, right? I heard the commotion.”
“Yeah, four of them. They’re probably recovered by now.” Riley let Quinn go out the door before her, but squeezed past her in the hall to take the lead. She had more versatility with the pipe, and she was not letting those assholes take anything. Not magically, not physically.
The hallway was clear, and no bodies—prone or standing—were visible. Riley dashed down into the main room.
And came face to face with Anson and his three Numina bosses.
Chapter Nineteen
In all our centuries of existence, we have dealt internally with factions who did not fall in line with Numina’s greater purpose and intent. The time has come, we fear, when internal sanction will no longer suffice. As such, we must reach out to our counterparts to seek mutually beneficial outcomes.
As soon as Sam stepped off the elevator, he felt them.
All of them.
“Get Nick and John up here,” he ordered. “Now.”
Marley dialed and put the phone to her ear. “What is it?”
Sam looked from one end of the corridor to the other. The elevator was in the middle of one long hall. Unlike downstairs, which had both interior and exterior apartments built in the building’s square layout, this floor only had the one hallway. Two apartment entries were on either side, with a fire door directly across from the elevator. A set of stairs led down to the next level, where the main fire stairs were in the four corners of the building.
“Sam?” Marley had finished telling Nick to come up to the top floor and moved to stand in front of him, looking worried. “What is it?” she repeated.
“That way.” He strode down the hall to the right. Stupid, he knew, but he couldn’t wait for the others. Something was happening. “A whole mess of them. I don’t know. Five? More? Some of the signatures are hard to read. Almost like they’re merging and splitting. But Quinn and Riley are definitely in there. They’re bright. Hot.” He stopped before anything else came out of his mouth. Like how he could tell Quinn’s because of the poison slicked through her blue and green light, and Riley’s had the smell of honeysuckle, which was so stupid because he couldn’t smell anything. But they were very different from the Numina morons.
Sam thought he saw them differently from how Riley did. She felt their location, the prickle a physical expression of something mental. For Sam, it was more of a shimmer, like the mirage hovering above hot pavement in the summer. So light he could barely detect it, and that was why he wasn’t sure how many.
He faced the apartment door and prepared to kick it in.
“No!” Marley jumped forward and blocked his leg. “You have to wait for Nick and John!”
“There’s no time!” Sam pointed back to the elevator. “Go wait for them. Show them which apartment. I have to go in there now. Don’t argue, Marley, please. I have no choice.”
Sam couldn’t explain how he knew this. When he’d made love with Riley, that brilliant flash of light, that sense of sinking into her, joining with her…it hadn’t been metaphorical. Now that he was near her again, he understood. His illness hadn’t been because he wasn’t close enough to the ocean. It was because he wasn’t close enough to her. His body knew her, knew she was near, and thirsted for what she could give him.
Which terrified him almost as much as her abduction, and on a whole different level.
The nausea, headache, and raking pain faded as he moved closer to the bodies he sensed, though the movement of the power inside him sped up. It was eager and tired of being pent up.
Well, he was about to give it something to do.
As soon as Marley was far enough away, Sam lifted his foot again and slammed it against the door, following it into the bland apartment. He held his fists loose and ready, and balanced on the balls of his feet as he swiftly took in what he was up against.
A bunch of guys in their young twenties gaped at him from their sullen group in the kitchen area. One bled from cuts on his cheek. He and some others had nasty facial bruises, too. A couple looked dazed, one kept an arm wrapped around his waist, and one stood as if he had unbearable back pain.
Flanking them were three older, obvious father figures, if not actual fathers of some of the guys. Sam recognized Danner, the financial wizard who’d swindled half his clients yet still managed to avoid jail despite being partly responsible for the economy’s collapse. Another was a man named Lilling, a former senator who’d stepped down after pictures of him with prostitutes were spread around the Internet, time-stamped and confirmed to have been taken while his wife was in the hospital recovering from the stillbirth of their third child. Sam didn’t recognize the third guy but had no doubt he was as much of a scumbag as the first two.
“What are you doing?” Danner demanded. They’d shifted to face Sam, puffing themselves up with indignant self-importance but presenting no immediate physical threat.
What chilled Sam’s blood, the reason he’d known it was so urgent to get in here, was the rest of the scene.
Riley lay on the floor, blood trickling from her temple. She was limp, apparently unconscious—please, just unconscious. Anson ignored Sam as he shoved a scuffed, painted square metal tube under Quinn’s chin and pinned her to the wall with it. Quinn got her hands up behind it but clearly didn’t have the strength, or any goddess-based ability, to budge it from her neck. Still, her expression was unfazed, almost bored.
Anson was only a couple of inches taller than Quinn. He leaned in close to her face and hissed, “It’s mine. All of that awful, dark, angry power churning inside you? It was mine first, and it’s mine now, and you’ll give it to me. Or I’ll kill her.” He gave a head jerk toward Riley. “And Sammy gets to watch. If we’re lucky, your precious protector will join him. Now that would be a dream come true. Draining you, painfully and slowly, while he’s impotent.”