Chapter 14
Quinn
Iwoke in a daze, blinking and finding myself staring up at the white ceiling in the guest bedroom. In that first second, my body felt weirdly numb, giving me the impression that I was floating over the bed rather than lying on it. Then my awareness sharpened, and I felt the silky texture of the sheets wrapped around me. A waft of cool air brushed my cheek.
“She’s awake!” Lance bounced right onto the bed but slowed down his movements as he reached for me. He gazed down at me with obvious concern and stroked his knuckles over my temple, brushing the hair away from my face. “How are you feeling, Quinn?”
I cleared my throat before speaking. “All right. A little disoriented. Did everything go okay? I remember getting kind of stir-crazy—trying to run off—it’s a good thing you held on to me. But the rest is blurry.” I had distinct impressions of drinking in Lance’s essence but not whether the other men had managed to contribute theirs as well.
Torrent’s voice spoke up from near the foot of the bed. “After a little while, you seemed to realize you weren’t going anywhere and resigned yourself to the process, just testing us a little here and there. We offered as much essence as we safely could—even Rollick again. Do you notice any change in your powers?”
I focused my attention on the ripples of energy that often passed through my chest. I had a sense of my sorcery whirling around my heart, but it was vague. “I didn’t really feel the difference the first time I took in Rollick’s until I actually tried to use my magic. I’m sure it’s done something.”
“You should try it on us,” Lance declared. “Come up with a command that’ll protect us from the leviathan’s magic. We’re about to go off and do battle with him anyway, right? As soon as you’re up to it.”
He spoke easily and without any outward sign of concern about me using my sorcery on him, but a twinge of anxiety quivered into me that I could tell was his. It had a Lance-like flavor somehow, which was a relief, because it would have been a huge muddle if I’d been getting hit by emotions constantly with no idea how to tell who might need my help.
I pushed myself upright and knit my brow at him. “I don’t need to start giving commands. Not yet, anyway. We’ve got to get back to California first.”
Rollick appeared in the bedroom doorway. “We do, but we don’t know how far the leviathan is extending his reach now or how often he’s putting out a call with his power. I think it’d be better if we’re protected as much as we can be before we venture anywhere near his chosen domain. You can top up our protections when we’re closer, of course.”
He didn’t sound at all bothered by the thought of me using my sorcery on him, despite the distress he’d talked about experiencing leftover from the behemoth’s attempt at enslaving him, and I didn’t catch any flicker of emotion that undermined his tone. I guessed he didn’t associate my magic with the power that monster had used on him. Small comforts.
Crag loomed next to the demon. “You wanted to go right away to confront him, didn’t you, Softness? Are you well enough to?”
I sat up and stretched my arms. “I’m totally fine. Just must have needed some rest after the whole essence-consuming thing. But we need everything else to be ready too.”
I gave Rollick a questioning look, and he offered a slightly crooked smile. “The trap is ready whenever we are. If you want to flex those extra-enhanced powers of yours and see if we can hook a sea serpent, I say we go give it our best shot.”
“I guess we’d need to find him first,” I said.
Torrent nodded. “I don’t think that’ll be much trouble. He’s mostly sticking to the ocean now and sending his minions to do his inland work. I might be able to draw him farther up the coast toward the trap so you don’t have to go quite as far into his territory. We’ll have a better idea once we get there.”
“Okay.” I dragged in a breath, ignoring the knotting of my stomach. I had wanted to get this confrontation over with. And I should make sure my powers were noticeably revved up before we took that step. Maybe I’d maxed out my potential with Rollick earlier and my other men’s essence wouldn’t have done anything other than forge those tenuous emotional connections. “What command should I give you that won’t get in the way of anything you might need to do?”
“You had good phrasing last time,” Crag rumbled. “It didn’t cause any problems. You could stick to just the part about refusing orders from the leviathan for now, since we don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing out there yet.”
“Yeah.” Relief trickled through me at that thought. Protecting them really could be that simple.
I just had to hope my sorcery would be strong enough to fend off the leviathan’s magic as well.
I turned to Lance, reaching to grasp his hand. “Do you want to go first again?”
No more tremors of anxiety reached me. He simply beamed. “Absolutely.”
I fixated on the power I knew I held inside me, willing it to activate at my call. When I opened my mouth, it burst up my throat more like a bolt of lightning than a sizzle of electricity. The words flew out in its wake. “You will refuse any orders the leviathan gives you.”
The command rushed out of me, leaving my skin tingling. Lance blinked and grinned. “That went in faster than before, and deeper I think. I can feel the magic wriggling around in my mind. But it’s a good order. That’s okay.” He cocked his head at me. “Did it feel more powerful to you?”
A giggle bubbled my throat. Now that I’d stirred up the sorcerous energy inside me, it was jittering all through my veins. “Oh, yeah. You know, we might just be able to do this.”
Torrent’s lips curved in one of his rare smiles. “I like the sound of that. Then the rest of us had better receive our orders.”
* * *
It was hard to maintain my optimism for the entire, long drive out to the L.A. area. Even with Rollick handling the car tirelessly and using some demonic power to ensure we didn’t get caught speeding, night had fallen by the time he slowed at the edge of the terrain he considered reasonably safe.
He pulled off onto a smaller road and parked just beyond a desolate-looking gas station. Rain drummed against the roof, and wind warbled overhead. He glanced toward the back seat. “I think we’d better split up here. If any of you have concerns about your part in this scheme, you’d better mention them now.”
Lance shifted impatiently. “I just want to see that big snake fall down.”
“Well, you might not get to see it, but if all goes well, you can come watch the aftermath. One big bonfire of essence.” Rollick chuckled darkly.
Torrent slipped a tentacle around my wrist to give it a quick squeeze. “You’re stronger than him in the ways that matter most.”
Then he and Lance vanished into the shadows.
The rest of us waited in the thickening darkness for half an hour, letting the two of them get a head start on us. The plan we’d come up with during the drive was that the dragon shifter and the tentacled man would create multiple disturbances across the city—making it look as if my supposed army was launching an attack. If it worked as intended, the leviathan would send a bunch of his minions to go deal with the threat but not bother going himself, which was his usual MO. That would leave much fewer lackeys hanging around guarding him.
We’d never come right to him or his partner before, not like this. I didn’t think he’d be expecting it. The only question was whether I could pull off my part of the plan once we were close enough for me to cast my sorcery at him.
When Crag nudged me, I obliged his concerns by eating the rest of the drive-through meal we’d picked up for dinner. My stomach was still tight, but he wasn’t wrong that I could use all the energy I could get. Whether it worked or not, the attempt was going to take a lot out of me.
I popped my pills at the right time, trying not to think about whether they were really making a difference at this point. At the ping of Rollick’s phone, he started the engine. That was our signal that the other men’s gambit was underway.
We didn’t know exactly where the leviathan was. All Rollick’s shadowkind contacts in southwest California had been swept up in the fiend’s waves of magical influence. So we were going to go down as close as we could get to the most central beach and work from there. Knowing the leviathan’s preferred habitat, Rollick had possessed the presence of mind to arrange for the second trap to be constructed not far from the coastline, in an old warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
The roads were eerily vacant even once we reached the suburbs. The streetlamps glowed off the rain-slick asphalt, and the only sound was the pounding of the rain and the distant thunder. The west-most end of the city had been totally vacated, flooded by the earlier smaller waves that we knew were just a precursor to the immense one the leviathan was building.
I wasn’t totally sure how Rollick determined when we’d better leave the car ourselves. He parked outside a bar that was closed far earlier than I’d imagine it would have been under normal circumstances. “Out into the deluge we go.”
I pulled on the ankle-length rain slicker he’d gotten for me, tugging the broad hood as far forward as I could so that it would shield my face. This wasn’t going to be a fun excursion. But Crag’s head had already lifted, his gaze focusing on something in the distance beyond his actual sight.
“He’s close,” he said. “Just a little farther north, out in the ocean shallows. I can fly out there in just a minute.”
In just a minute, I’d be facing our ultimate foe. I swallowed thickly. “All right. Let’s do this.”
Rollick grasped my shoulder. “I’ll be right there with the two of you. In this darkness, I can travel almost anywhere.” He glanced at Crag. “If Quinn’s sorcery isn’t working and that serpentine monster comes at you, get her out of there as quickly as you possibly can. You know where we’ll regroup.”
Crag dipped his head in a brisk nod. He wrapped his arms around me, and I adjusted my position against his chest in the way I’d learned was more comfortable for both of us. The vinyl layer of the rain slicker gave him another barrier of protection from the silver and iron threads woven into my undershirt, but they were thin enough that they didn’t bother him as much as my old vest had even without that. He showed no sign of irritation as we lifted off together into the downpour.
The cool rain spilled over the brim of my hood and streaked across my rain slicker as well as Crag’s granite-like gargoyle skin. My hands were immediately drenched. I kept my feet tucked under the hem of the slicker so my sneakers didn’t end up sopping too. The drops battered us in waves with each sweep of Crag’s wings, lifting us higher.
At least the weather hid us from view—and stopped many people from coming out where they might have been able to see us in the first place. And as Crag soared closer to the churning sea, the buildings beneath us looked totally abandoned, no lights gleaming in the windows. The only glow was from the streetlamps that hadn’t been toppled by the earlier waves.
I fixed my gaze on the frothing water beyond the coast. Somewhere amid those currents, our greatest enemy was lurking. He must have been deep beneath the surface or hidden in the gloom for now, because I couldn’t make out the monstrous serpentine form I’d watched devour his partner just days ago. He was too massive to hide his physical form very easily.
Crag’s sensitivity to shadowkind presences guided him. He flew farther north along the coast, gripping me firmly. It would have been difficult for him to speak in the storm, but for the most part, my sense of him was steady and calm. Only a few brief, faint quivers of apprehension filtered through the connection we’d formed.
Finally, he stopped and swung around in mid-air. He ducked his head so his mouth came close to my ear.
“He’s down there,” he rumbled through my hood. “I took us a little past him. You see where that red car is halfway in the water? He’s almost directly across from there, maybe a hundred feet out.”
“Okay.” Now I just needed to call the leviathan toward us—and keep calling him all the way to Rollick’s trap farther north. No big deal. Ha.
I closed my eyes and trained all my attention on the whirling energy inside me, tuning out the damp and the chill and the battering of the rain. Just with that internal gesture, the magic spurted and sizzled, crackling through every nerve. I felt like a live wire, ready to zap anything I touched. My pulse thumped faster as I opened my eyes and my mouth.
As always when I aimed my sorcery at any beings other than the men I knew so well, the words that seared from my mouth came in a language I couldn’t understand myself. But I knew the intent I was putting into the shout, the command I was hurling at the invisible being below.
Show yourself and follow me. Now.
My skin quivered and my tongue tingled as the energy rushed out of me. It rang through my body so intensely that my vision briefly whited out. I reached toward the monster in the crashing sea with every ounce of strength I had in me, as if the foreign syllables were talons I could dig into its flesh and yank it forward with.
Something twanged deep in my chest. Exhilaration flared through my veins in the wake of the sorcery. I’d snagged the beast; my magic had caught hold.
Crag grunted with a mix of uneasiness and approval as a sinewy blueish green form materialized below us, a few shades darker than the wild waters that swept over and around it. The creature raised its head, its smoldering orange eyes large and fierce enough that I could make them out even across the distance between us. But it pushed forward through the water, heading our way.
“Good,” Crag murmured, propelling us backward with flaps of his wings. “Very good. You’re doing amazing, Quinn.”
I hugged his arm and braced myself before flinging the command at the leviathan again for good measure. My heart stuttered with the blast of energy that surged through me as the words left my mouth, but the massive serpent slid forward a little faster than before.
It was working. I’d really made it happen. I was controlling this immense fiend.
I couldn’t tell whether it was exhaustion from the energy expended or giddiness at my victory that’d left my head spinning. Maybe some of both. My mouth had gone dry. I clung to Crag even tighter, doing my best to ignore the increasingly erratic thump of my heart and the prickles of pain that were starting to dig into my rib cage.
I had to concentrate on the leviathan. I had to reel him in all the way to the trap, or this whole effort would be for nothing.
He was still coming, weaving through the waves, more of his seemingly endless snake-like body revealed as I drew him into shallower waters. I wasn’t sure exactly how much farther it was to the trap; I wasn’t sure how far we’d already come. My sense of time had fallen away along with everything else other than the hitches of my pulse and the magic shivering between me and my prey.
The ache in my chest spread down my back and out through my arms. Crag nuzzled my head through the hood. “Halfway there, Softness. We’ve got him.”
The reassuring words had only just left his mouth when the leviathan reared up. Seawater streamed off its dark scales. It shook its upper body from side to side like a dog drying its fur and then smacked itself down on the road right at the edge of the coast.
I flinched automatically at the impact, the thud of it carrying all the way to my ears. And then the jitter of energy inside me fizzled. I knew in an instant, with a gaping horror that stretched wide through my chest, that I’d lost my hold.
A cry burst from my lips. I grappled with the magic twined through my heart, willing as much of it as I could still summon up to my tongue, and hollered out another command so forcefully it turned my throat raw.
My pulse lurched. The constricting sensation squeezed harder, pushing the air from my lungs. I gasped and choked on a sob as the answering jolt of a successful command didn’t come.
My efforts hadn’t been enough, and I didn’t know what else to do. My limbs felt like jelly; my heart was on fire. My head was spinning so fast that the leviathan seemed to double and triple before my eyes as he surged farther out of the surf.
He threw himself upright and shrank at the same time, his body shifting into a mostly man-like form that stood at least seven feet tall. His wet, tangled hair hung halfway down his back, and his eyes glared up at us. A sheen of smaller scales dappled his bare torso and arms.
“You tried and lost, sorcerer and traitors,” he bellowed at us. “Now you’ll just have to sit back and watch. I’ll bring the depths of the shadow realm down on this place and make it ours even if I have to summon them myself.”
Then he whipped around and dove into the water. His body never resurfaced that I saw; he’d probably melded into the shadows there as he made his way back to his former haven.
I couldn’t pay much attention anyway. My lungs were heaving and my breaths rasping as I gasped to fill my chest. I couldn’t tell if I was suffocating or having a heart attack—maybe both.
“Quinn,” Crag muttered in a mournful voice with a flash of fear that rushed from him into me. He whipped around. “Relax now. You can’t do any more. Just—just breathe, and I’ll take you someplace safe.”
As he soared onward and I grappled for control over my body, one clear thought penetrated the growing haze in my head.
There was nowhere safe. Not in the entire world. And from what the leviathan had said, even if I didn’t know exactly what he’d meant, soon our home would be even more dangerous for all of us.