Chapter 8
Quinn
Drown them all. The portly shadowkind man’s words were still ringing in my ears when Rollick returned to our shoreline location not long afterward. He took in our combined gloom and cocked his head with his usual authoritative air. “All right, what’s gone wrong now?”
“We managed to catch one of the leviathan’s minions that knew a little about his plans,” I said. “And Torrent talked to a siren near a rift in the ocean whose story lined up with it. The leviathan is sending a bunch of water-based beings through the oceans all around the country to hurl tidal waves at as many places as they can.”
I rubbed my arms against the growing chill, which wasn’t all internal. The clouds overhead had thickened even more, their spitting turning into a full if light rain.
Rollick frowned at the sky and motioned us toward his car to get out of the weather. “I’m not sure how much he could accomplish by attempting that. He can create a real tsunami, but a siren isn’t going to have much impact. It takes at least a few of them just to upend a boat.”
“A big boat,” Torrent put in, walking stiffly in his physical form with his tentacles for balance so that he could continue the conversation where I could hear. “And we don’t know how many beings the leviathan has under his sway at this point—or helping him willingly. How are things in L.A.?”
“The flooding is getting worse,” Rollick admitted. “But that’s more due to a bunch of small waves rather than one particularly big one. I’d imagine he’s in the process of building one at least for that spot. But he can only tackle one place at a time himself.”
My heart skipped a beat. “They’ll need to evacuate even more people. A tidal wave can cover a lot of ground. If it comes on too quickly…”
Rollick nodded as he opened the passenger-side door for me. “They’re already moving a lot of the residents to temporary shelters farther inland. I’m not sure about this approach our foe is taking. He could have stealthily built up a wave with less obvious preamble. It’s as if he wants us to be aware of the threat.”
“Maybe he likes knowing we can’t do much about it,” Crag rumbled somberly.
Rollick’s forehead furrowed. “I can’t help thinking there’s more to it than that. But I haven’t been able to put my finger on it yet. I took a look at his pet rift that he’s been expanding, and while it’s noticeably bigger and giving off more energy than I usually see, I can’t tell why he and the behemoth were so obsessed with it either.”
“I don’t trust anything that big snake is doing,” Lance muttered. He leaned past the open car door to steal a kiss from me before hopping into the back seat. Paisley fluttered after him, and Torrent and Crag disappeared into the shadows. There wasn’t much more for them to report anyway.
As Rollick started the engine, I hugged my messenger bag to my chest. “If the leviathan is sending shadowkind to the Atlantic side too, and we know he has it in for me… He’ll probably have them targeting Jacksonville before anywhere else, won’t he?”
My parents didn’t live super close to the ocean, but I didn’t know how far any of the waves the leviathan’s minions summoned might reach. Or whether Mom and Dad would be at home if one hit and not taking a stroll on the beach. Or what other problems our enemies might cause out there.
The villainous duo hadn’t figured out who my family was, as far as we knew. But they’d been aware I’d been staying in Jacksonville. It wouldn’t be hard for the leviathan to guess that there’d be people I cared about in the city. If he targeted the entire area, no one was safe.
My stomach knotted. I didn’t want anyone dying because of the monster’s campaign against me. But my parents had already been through so much both because of my childhood illness and now my long, unexplained absence. How could I leave them unprepared when the threat might be coming right to their doorstep and it wouldn’t take more than a quick call to warn them?
The demon could obviously guess at my concerns. As heavier droplets started to drum on the windshield, he shot me a tight smile. “I whisked your parents away to safety once before. I’m sure I can manage to do it again if it seems necessary. We’ll keep a close eye on the reports from all North American coastal areas.”
“Why is he specifically after this country?” Lance asked from behind us, clicking his claws restlessly. “The worst sorcerers are over on the other side of the ocean.”
He had to mean the enclave where experienced sorcerers led novices through the vicious rites that granted them the power to “harness” shadowkind. I couldn’t disagree with his assessment of them, having witnessed those rites and the sorcerers’ attitudes about the shadowkind they enslaved firsthand. Oh, and also after having those sorcerers almost murder me. That gesture hadn’t made me feel all that friendly toward the bunch of them either.
“I don’t know,” I said, glancing at Rollick. “It sounded like the leviathan and the behemoth were going around in Europe and Asia plenty before, although maybe that was before they joined forces. You said there doesn’t seem to be anything special about that rift other than the way they’ve expanded it. They could have done that to any rift anywhere, right?”
“As far as I know.” Rollick rubbed his jaw. “It could simply be that they joined up and decided to go on their sorcerer-murdering rampage, and they found it easier to track down the families here in the ‘new world.’ Many of the sorcerer lines on the other side of the globe are more established and practiced at hiding themselves.”
“And the storms?”
He shrugged. “I’m already unconvinced that he’ll be able to wreak all that much havoc with his lackeys even on one country. If he tried to take on the entire world all at once, he’d be spreading his forces even thinner. He probably wants a certain amount of concentrated impact. The real question is, toward what end?”
I thought back to the minions we’d managed to capture before. There’d been one who’d been helping the duo of its own free will. “That one creature did say something about taking the mortal world for themselves. But a few tidal waves and some storms… I mean, they’d cause a lot of destruction along the coasts, and that’s horrible, but it wouldn’t really turn the tide for an all-out invasion. You didn’t think they had any hope of managing that no matter what they did.”
To my relief, Rollick responded with the exact same confidence as before. “An attempted takeover would be bloody and catastrophic on both sides, but there’s a reason it’s never been attempted before. There are far too many mortals, and you have an abundance of the substances that can easily weaken or even kill us. I truly hope he’s not so delusional that he’s going to attempt that kind of invasion anyway.”
“It’d be a strange way of launching it,” I said, knitting my brow as I gazed out the window into the falling rain. “Where are we going now?”
“I thought we’d take a little detour over to?—”
Rollick’s remark was cut off by a strangely fleshy thump from behind me. A thump that sounded like it’d come from inside the car.
I spun around just as Lance lunged at Paisley. The pixie was flinging herself at the window next to her headfirst, her skull smacking against it for a second time. She pounded at it with a few swings of her fists as well before the dragon shifter caught her in his grasp and clamped her arms to her sides, holding her well away from him to dodge her now-flailing legs.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, looking bewildered.
“Have to go,” Paisley muttered through clenched teeth. “Have to get to him. He needs us.”
My eyes widened. “I broke the behemoth’s hold on her. The leviathan shouldn’t have any control—unless the sorcery can hide and activate later?—”
Before I could finish that thought, Lance twitched. He snarled and whipped his head around as if trying to shake something out of it. Next to me, Rollick shuddered. The wheel jerked in his hands with a screech of the tires.
I jolted against my seatbelt, my breath knocked from my lungs. Swearing, the demon swerved all the way onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes. His hand fumbled as he reached to shut the engine off. A cold smack of terror passed from him into me, like nothing I’d ever felt from Rollick before.
“Quinn,” he grated out, sounding as strained as Paisley had. “You need to drive. East. As fast as you can. There’s a”—he cut himself off with another shudder, smacking one hand to his temple—“a turn off onto another highway up ahead. Take that and keep going.”
I shoved open my door and stumbled out into the rain, my heart thudding. “What’s happening?”
Lance was twisting and squirming in the back seat, groaning with frustration. “He’s trying to take us. The slippery magic is tickling around in my head. I can’t get it out.”
The pixie had darted from his grasp. I yelped as she shot past me, her wings fluttering so fast they were a blur. In an instant, she’d vanished into the shadows along the darkened road.
Rollick heaved himself out of the car and around the hood to the passenger side, unsteady on his feet. The sight of him so off-balance sent a flare of panic through me. I dashed around to take the steering wheel like he’d said.
“Our serpentine ‘friend’ is sending out a general call,” the demon managed to growl as he threw himself into the seat I’d just vacated. “I wouldn’t have thought—for him to reach this far with this much power—but he did absorb so much from his partner.” He let out a hiss through his teeth.
I started the engine, but my mind was spinning. “If it’s his sorcery, I could try to cast my own to block it.”
“No. We don’t have time for that. We don’t know if you’re strong enough, and if you don’t manage all of us—I can feel Torrent and Crag grappling with it too—it isn’t hitting us as forcefully as it would have up close. Even Lance is holding off the leviathan’s influence for now. You just need to get us farther away before the bastard ramps it up even more.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I hit the gas and tore down the road as fast as I felt I could control the car on the increasingly slick road. My pulse pounded louder than the raindrops drumming on the roof. Lance was still thrashing in the back seat, the leather tearing as he dug in his claws. Rollick had bowed his head over with his hands clutched around it, breathing in halting gasps I could tell he was fighting to even out. More fear wafted from him into me.
How far were we from the leviathan right now? L.A. was at least fifty miles away. And the leviathan had managed to extend its influence all the way out here.
How many other shadowkind, not quite as powerful as my own or closer by, had already fallen completely under his sway like Paisley had?
I couldn’t answer any of those questions. All I could do was take the exit Rollick had mentioned and speed farther away from the coast and the city that was the leviathan’s current haunt. Thankfully with the stormy weather, there was even less traffic than when we’d driven out here. The gas tank was still three quarters full.
We’ll be okay, I told myself over and over. We’ll be okay.
As we roared along the highway to the east, the rain dwindled. The drumming became a patter and then faded away completely. Afternoon sunlight streaked out across the landscape up ahead where the clouds thinned.
Rollick gradually straightened up. His stance was tense, but even so, he couldn’t hold in the tremor that ran through his body. He glowered through the windshield for a few minutes before he let himself speak again.
“Just when I thought that fiend couldn’t become any more of a menace.”
He glanced toward the back and sighed, I assumed at whatever wreck Lance had made of his seats. The dragon shifter had quieted down, but I still heard the occasional grunt and rustle as he fought off the lingering effects. It was several more minutes before his bright voice, unusually mournful, carried to us. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Rollick said in a resigned tone. “Blame the beast that caused it. You did a good job fending off his commands.”
“I think… I think there was still a little of Quinn’s sorcery in me from taking on the behemoth. I reminded myself of her orders, even though they didn’t totally make sense anymore. That helped.”
At least my magic had done a little good. I swallowed thickly. “Can I assume Torrent and Crag are all right?”
Rollick nodded. “Still with us in the shadows, taking a much-needed rest after dealing with that crap.” He shifted his gaze back to the horizon ahead. “It seems we won’t be doing much more investigating around L.A. for the foreseeable future. But I don’t think that’s where we’d want to be heading right now anyway.”
I glanced at him. “What do you mean?”
His mouth twisted. “If the leviathan is powerful enough to send out his sorcery that far, he’ll have enslaved hundreds more beings than he had under his sway before. Maybe enough of an army that he will be able to send tidal waves all along both coasts. We’d better get your parents out before he has time to see that plan through to its brutal conclusion.”