Chapter 4
Quinn
Iskimmed my fingers over the smooth plaster walls as we descended the concrete steps into what I could only describe as an underground bunker. Cool air closed in around us despite the summer heat above. Ahead of me, Rollick flicked a light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and a room that looked like an immaculately Ikea-furnished studio apartment flashed into sight.
“Wow,” I said, taking it in. “You put a lot of work into this setup. You were expecting the apocalypse to come sometime soon?”
The demon shot me an amused glower. “It’s brand new. I commissioned it and a few others around the country after it became clear what level of threat we were facing. But it’s not for my protection. With the amount of silver and iron embedded in the earth around this room, I’d rather be outside it in the safety of the shadows if worse came to worst. This is all for you.”
I blinked, studying the elegantly functional space again with a lump rising in my throat. I’d thought a lot of harsh things about Rollick over the past month, and early on he’d deserved some of them. But he’d been more devoted to my well-being than I’d had any idea about for longer than I’d imagined.
“Oh,” I said, groping for the right words. “You managed to get this built that quickly.”
He shrugged. “I pulled together your massive sorcerer-inspired trap in just a few days, didn’t I? It’s amazing how speedily things can come together when you simply ignore red tape and pay your workers enough.”
I could believe that. I ventured a little farther into the space, my sneakers whispering over the thin but soft rug. There was a kitchenette at one end, a small birch dining table and a linen sofa, a TV mounted on the wall, and a big boxy shape that I guessed was a Murphy bed, ready to drop down when it was time to sleep but kept upright for the time being to maximize the floor space.
The only thing the room was missing was windows. I could feel that I was underground in the lack of natural light, and a faint sense of claustrophobia itched at me as if I could feel the earth all around us pressing in.
“The leviathan and his minions won’t stand a chance of finding Quinn here!” Lance declared happily, but I noticed he gave a tiny shiver as he bounded around the room, peering at all its contents. The metals toxic to shadowkind would affect him and my other men even more than they irritated Rollick, who was the oldest and strongest of the four.
I glanced at the demon. “Just how much silver and iron are there around this spot? You had plenty at your house in Texas, and it didn’t seem to bother the rest of you there.”
“I pulled out all the stops,” Rollick said. “And those layers are concentrated much closer to the living space here. But we should all be able to tolerate it for as long as necessary, and we can take turns ducking out for a break before it wears on any of us too much. You can remove your threaded shirt while you’re down here without any worry at all that your presence will be detected. I figured a safe house should be as comfortable for its primary occupant as possible.”
A safe house. As he said the words, it sank in that this wasn’t just a temporary resting place. “You’re expecting me to stay here for a while.”
“The leviathan does seem very eager to get you out of the way,” Torrent put in from where he’d appeared at my other side. “If you stay down here, we can be sure you’re safe.”
Rollick nodded. “If your heart is acting up, we don’t know how that might affect the energy it’s giving off. The threads in that shirt might end up not being enough to ward off notice if you’re walking around in the open.”
A surge of defiance cut through my exhaustion. “No. I can’t just hide away for who knows how long while that monster does whatever it’s planning to do to the rest of the world. I might be the only person who has any hope of stopping it before things get so much worse.”
Crag frowned. “Quinn—no one could ask you to take all that on by yourself.”
“I’m not by myself,” I insisted. “I have all of you, and whatever other beings we can rally. We defeated the behemoth, and we’ll figure out what to do about the leviathan.” I rubbed my temple, the momentary spurt of energy fading under my exhaustion. It had to be well past midnight by now, and it’d been a very long day.
Lance veered back around to catch me in his arms. He nuzzled my jaw. “You need to rest now, baby girl. You’ll make yourself sicker if you push yourself too hard, right?”
Torrent nodded. “You’ve been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours. Once you’ve gotten caught up on sleep, you’ll be in a better position to make decisions.”
I made a face at him. “I don’t think any amount of sleep is going to make me think it’s a good idea for me to bury my head in the sand while the world goes to hell.”
He gazed back at me, his sea-green eyes as steady as ever. “Then you’ll be in a better position to make plans about how we’ll stop it from going to hell. You’re wiped right now.”
“As owner of this humble abode, I whole-heartedly agree with what my mutinous former employees have said.” Rollick strode over to the bed and hit the control to bring it swinging down from the wall. “I’ll only entertain further arguments about your next exploits after you’ve recovered.”
Lance eased off his embrace, but only so he could tug me toward the bed, which was already made up with ivory sheets and a thin blanket. “I’ll keep you company. And not in the distracting way. So you know for sure there’s no way anything could hurt you here.”
I swallowed thickly and let him guide me over to the bed. They weren’t wrong. I wasn’t going to do anyone any good if I collapsed before I got around to figuring out my next brilliant plan.
“Fine,” I muttered, and crawled onto the bed. Lance tucked the covers over me and snuggled in next to me, perfectly chaste as he’d promised. Rollick flicked the light off again. As I leaned my head against the dragon shifter’s warm shoulder, breathing in his smoky scent, his warmth did ease my jangling nerves.
I closed my eyes, and despite the chaos of the day, it wasn’t long at all before I drifted off.
* * *
When I woke up, finding my head muggy but my body somewhat refreshed, I was alone. As I squinted in the darkness around me, the lights flickered on and Lance appeared at the other end of the room by the stairs that led to the main door. I had the impression he’d just returned from a jaunt outside.
“You’re awake,” he said eagerly. “How do you feel?”
“Not too bad.” I sat up. “Where did you go? Where’s everyone else?”
He tipped his head toward the door at the top of the stairs. “That little pixie woman who came to the apartment managed to follow us here. We were all having a chat with her.”
I pushed off the covers and shoved myself off the bed. “I want to talk to her too. Has she brought along any of the other shadowkind she said wanted to pitch in?”
Lance shook his head. “She’s very sorry about causing any trouble in the city, so she was careful. But she says she can find them again.” He paused. “I don’t think Rollick will like you coming out of here until we agree on a plan, but I can tell the others that you’re up and they can come down.”
I glanced down at myself, abruptly aware of the clothes clinging to me with a day’s accumulated sweat and other grime. I’d been so wiped last night that I hadn’t even taken off my threaded undershirt despite Rollick’s assurance that I could. “Give me five minutes to wash up a bit.”
The bunker had a tiny bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower stall all crammed next to each other. My phone alarm went off in the middle of the world’s hastiest shower, and I hopped out to take my morning pills. My schedule had changed so much with the different time zones I’d traveled between that I had no idea how I’d have managed without the automated reminder.
Within five minutes, I managed to pull on a reasonably fresh change of clothes from my backpack. I’d just grabbed a granola bar from the box I found in one of the kitchenette’s cupboards when four shadowkind figures appeared in the living room area.
Crag wasn’t with them—I assumed he’d stayed aboveground to patrol the way he liked to. The other three of my men surrounded the little pixie, who looked even tinier with their tall, well-muscled bodies looming over her.
“She’s very persistent,” Rollick remarked.
“I think that’s a good thing.” I swiped my damp hair back from my face and sat down on the floor so I was almost eye to eye with the little winged woman. “I have a feeling we’re going to need all the help we can get. I’m glad you made it through the fight all right.”
She ducked her head. “I went to warn the others and made it back in time to see the gargoyle and you flying off. I was able to follow—but I made sure no one noticed me. It was my mistake, letting the others gather so close by before. I’m sorry.”
“Anyone could have made that mistake. You don’t know what we’ve already been through with the leviathan’s people.”
I sighed and leaned back on my hands, glancing up at my men as well. Torrent and Lance had sunk onto the sofa while Rollick propped himself on its arm. The demon took one look at my expression and chuckled softly. “You’re still determined to throw yourself right back into the fray, aren’t you, stubborn sorcerer?”
I let out a huff. “I don’t think that should be a big surprise. The question is how.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly, gathering my thoughts, and the men waited to see what I would say. My thoughts gradually came together. “We still need to find out what the leviathan is up to. And the more of his supporters we can peel away from his ranks, the better. I think targeting his minions, especially the ones he’s forced into serving him, is our best bet. If we can figure out where to find them without getting swarmed again, anyway. Do we know for sure that he’s still active at the rift?”
Rollick inclined his head. “I took a little trip to check while you were sleeping. He’s sacrificing away, tossing up lesser beings like they’re nothing more than shark chum. If that doesn’t make the ones watching eager to find a new master, I don’t know what would.” He shot me a narrow grin, but I caught one of those odd twitches of his jaw and a flicker of emotion that sent a jolt through me that was too swift for me to focus on it.
“You wouldn’t want to go at him there,” Torrent said before I could worry too much about the demon. “There are too many minions milling around, and he’ll be reinforcing his sway over them regularly. We need to pick off stragglers.”
I turned to the pixie. “He and the behemoth were working pretty closely together before. You might have some idea where the leviathan would have sent beings like you in smaller groups where it’d be easier for us to deal with them.”
Her eyes brightened. “Yes! I can think of a couple of places near Los Angeles that might work. The rift could be a good start, actually. There would be a lot gathered right around it, but they always sent out a few here and there to make sure no mortals came near, even during the day, between the nighttime sacrifices.”
I smiled. “Perfect. Then we can start there.”
Lance let out a faint hissing sound. “We’re going right back to the place where they attacked you so many times? I don’t like it.”
“I’m not exactly excited about it either,” I told him. “But holding off on tackling the problem isn’t going to make anything better. The leviathan is out there already, probably terrorizing the city and who knows how much else of the world even more than before.”
Rollick pushed to his feet. “You’re going to need to put your protective gear back on, then. And we’re giving the areas he’s claimed a very wide berth this time.” He checked his phone. “And I have a medical professional I’m going to insist you speak to before we go anywhere else.”
I glared at him, but he simply gazed back at me without any sign of budging. I could tell from the expressions on Torrent’s and Lance’s faces that they’d side with the demon on this particular subject no matter what I said.
Grumbling wordlessly, I stood up. “All right. If that’ll make you feel better.”
* * *
The visit with the doctor Rollick had picked out went both more smoothly and more awkwardly than I’d anticipated. She checked me over quickly and efficiently, listening to my heart and my breathing and running a handful of tests. But there were hesitations between her questions and moments where she knit her brow that reminded me that she had no idea of my patient history beyond what we could fill her in on. This wasn’t an ideal scenario for giving a diagnosis or treatment.
In the end, she wrote out a prescription that Rollick grabbed and then told me to take it easy for a little while. I managed not to laugh out loud at those instructions. We also hadn’t been able to explain to her how the supernatural powers I’d been wielding might have been speeding along my borrowed heart’s demise. She did look concerned, though, which left me with a knot in my stomach.
The transplanted organ was definitely starting to falter. And I had no idea how the trials ahead of us might rush me toward my end even faster.
Our next stop was the beach quite a stretch up the coast from L.A. My men had wanted to scope out the area near the leviathan’s chosen rift from a distance first. As I stepped onto the rocky shoreline where we’d come down to the ocean, my gaze was immediately drawn to the swath of dark clouds that smothered the sky from just a little south of us to as far as the eye could see across the water. Even where we stood under hazy afternoon sunlight, the waves were frothing wildly as they smacked the shore.
“It looks like a storm’s settling in,” I said.
Torrent dipped a tentacle into the water, and his expression turned grim. “The water’s being churned up. I did hear that the leviathan has summoned tidal waves in other parts of the world in the past several years. He might be attempting the same thing here.”
My heart sank. When I looked at Rollick, he was eyeing his phone again, scrolling through something on the screen. The tensing of his mouth unnerved me even more.
“There’s been quite a barrage of weather hitting L.A. and the nearby coastal regions since early this morning,” he said. “I was hoping from the early reports that it was a natural stormfront, but from what I’m seeing now, the way they’re intensifying… I’m sure that menace is behind it. There’s already been flooding along the beaches.”
A shiver ran through me. “We might not even be able to get close enough to look for his minions. And what about all those people—the mortal ones?”
“The city is starting to evacuate everyone in the neighborhoods closest to the sea,” Rollick told me.
Crag scowled at the roaring waves as if he could frighten them into chilling out. “We should get Quinn away from here.”
I set my hands on my hips. “Forget about that. We only just got here.”
Torrent turned to face the rest of us. “I’ll take a closer look, see exactly what’s going on. The ocean is my domain. I’ll have the best chance of determining how he’s working his powers on it and whether there’s a way to interrupt the effect. It shouldn’t take very long.”
I hadn’t thought I could get any more worried than I already was, but it turned out I was wrong. My lungs constricted. But I couldn’t tell Torrent not to go when I was insisting on taking my own risks, could I?
“Be careful,” I said instead.
He held my gaze for a moment with a small smile. “I told you I’ll always come back to you, and I plan on keeping that promise.”
Then he leapt into the waves.