Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Kit
The “S” of the mysterious S level didn’t stand for secret, subterranean, or snack shack. It was the subway level. Yep, the SI Department had a top-secret escape tunnel underneath their building that connected to the London Underground.
It wasn’t until we’d tossed our ski masks and were hauling ass down a service tunnel that I fully realized the flagging condition of my friends.
Lienna had one arm clutched to her chest and was doing a poor, albeit admirable, job of hiding her pain.
All five-foot-nothing of Robin was at Darius’s side, one hand hovering near his elbow as though she could catch him if he stumbled.
And the silver fox was holding a spot just above his belt, his breathing labored and his progression down the tunnel slowing by the minute.
They looked like soldiers returning from battle. I mean, that’s exactly what they were. I was just the guy who’d walked through a big ol’ door.
The tunnel led to an underground station which disgorged us into the middle of a broad, well-lit intersection surrounded by historic buildings and a statue of a regal-looking dude rocking a cape while on horseback.
The many Londoners hustling about didn’t see a ragtag group covered in concrete dust and smears of blood; my halluci-bomb had transformed us into anonymous banker types walking in a harried, businessy way instead of an injured, pursued-by-murderous-enemies way.
Our getaway van was parked in a gated lot half a block away—which I knew because Lienna and I had, at Darius’s bidding, stashed our belongings in it before joining him a scant hour ago for our mission.
I hadn’t expected to be driving said van, but I didn’t protest when Darius threw me the keys. We piled in, Lienna and I taking the front seats and the other two sliding in behind us, Zylas still safely stowed in Robin’s infernus.
“There’s a plane waiting at London Biggin Hill Airport,” he said as I merged into traffic between two giant red busses. “A nonstop charter straight to Vancouver. One of the crewmembers is a healer.”
“Will you last that long?” I asked, glancing at his pasty complexion in the rearview mirror. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Two bullet wounds. I’ll be fine.”
Bullet wounds and “fine” were mutually exclusive terms in my experience.
“Just get us to the plane, Kit,” Darius added, “and keep an eye out for any unwelcome company.”
Beside me, Lienna had her phone in hand, a navigation app on the screen. My gaze darted from the line of taillights filling the road ahead to the way she had her other arm locked against her stomach. “Are you also ‘fine’?”
“Totally.” She smiled faintly. “Broken arm, I think. Nothing life-threatening.”
“I’ll get you to that healer ASAP,” I told her, taking another peek at Darius in the mirror. “You’ll probably be second on the triage list though.”
As I drove through rush-hour traffic, I kept a warp running, subtly changing the van’s appearance every few blocks. Following Darius’s instructions, Robin pulled a first-aid kit from his bag and passed him a selection of potions.
Lienna nodded at the document bag tucked between our seats and gave me a look that fluttered between exhaustion, anxiety, and triumph. “Did you have any trouble finding the documents? What was the archive like?”
“Hmm.” I pretended to consider it. “The archive actually reminded me a lot of the containment floor at the precinct.”
She frowned. “But you’ve never seen the containment floor.”
I arched my eyebrows pointedly.
She stared at me for a moment, then gave an exaggerated huff. “Fine, be like that.”
Following her directions, I navigated us southeast of London, the skyscrapers and tower blocks giving way to terrace houses.
The glow of streetlamps welcomed us into a quaint village with cute little shops.
I slowed the van to a respectable speed as we cruised through—and it was only because we’d slowed down that I caught a glimpse of headlights veering off the road and into the front garden of one of the village’s first houses.
Shit.
“Buckle up back there!” I called as I hit the gas. “That unwelcome company you mentioned has arrived.”
The van blasted out of the village at twice the speed limit. Playing the role of copilot, Lienna called out the upcoming turns, and I took the winding bends on two wheels.
“Get the plane on the runway,” Darius ordered, his phone pressed to his ear. “Do whatever you have to. We’re almost there, and we need to take off immediately.”
Headlights glared behind us—more than one set, way too close for comfort but far enough behind us that I couldn’t target them with a psychic attack, especially while driving at breakneck speed.
Houses with big yards and mature trees lined the road. Then suddenly they were gone and a chain-link fence appeared on our left. The entrance to a private airport waited just ahead, gates open. I lifted my foot off the gas.
“Keep going,” Lienna ordered. “If you slow down, they’ll be on us.”
I accelerated past the airport turnoff. “Just one problem with that. We can’t board the plane from a speeding van.”
“This road loops behind the end of the runway. We’ll drive right up to the plane, and then …” She glanced at me, her face pale in the flickering glow of passing streetlamps. “You’ll need to create a diversion.”
Nodding, I lifted the document bag from between our seats and set it on her lap. “You have the astrolabe and the grimoire?”
She gripped the strap of her satchel with her good hand. “Yes.”
Traffic in the opposing lane whipped past so fast my heart jumped each time.
We rounded a wide bend, and on the other side of the fence, I saw an open field, the bright lights of the runway, and what I assumed was our plane—a sleek white jet similar to the one Darius had arranged to fly us from Vancouver to New York the night I became the most wanted rogue in the mythic world.
“Turn here!” Lienna yelled.
I hit the brakes, and as everyone lurched forward, I searched for that white-noise thrum in the earth all around me. Now that I knew what it felt like, it was almost too easy to imagine it sweeping into me.
Power blazed through my body from head to toe. Wrenching on the wheel, I turned the van toward the fence as I grabbed the chain link and posts with an oversized telekinetic fist and ripped them from the earth.
They flew upward like they’d been attached to rocket boosters. The van careened through the gap, bumping wildly, on the verge of spinning out.
The moment the tires met the taxiway and regained traction, I checked the mirrors.
Three black SUVs were tearing up the road toward the hole in the fence.
I targeted the minds in the first vehicle—unable to snag all three vehicles without catching other traffic in the crossfire—and hit them with a warp of the ground in front of their vehicle exploding like a landmine had blown its top.
The SUV swerved, lost control, and flipped as it collided with the dense shrubbery bordering the other side of the road.
As soon as our van reached the runway, I brought it to a rubber-melting stop and threw my door open, letting in an eardrum-abusing wall of sound from our getaway plane’s engines.
Leaping onto the tarmac, I targeted the minds in the second SUV, but before I could hit them with a warp, one of the minds hit back.
I cried out, falling to my knees and clutching my head. My brain was on fire, red-hot pain burning through my synapses. Hands grabbed my shoulders and Lienna shouted my name, but I couldn’t respond.
Then it stopped.
My eyes flew open as the third SUV rear-ended the second one, which had slammed on its brakes. They both came to a stop fifty feet from the gap in the fence.
On the other side of the van, Darius was half walking, half staggering toward the plane, but his focus was on our pursuers. I guess a couple of bullet holes hadn’t stopped the luminamage from blinding the driver of the second SUV.
“Get to the plane!” I yelled, lurching to my feet. “Go now!”
Robin heaved several backpacks out of the SUV and ran after Darius. Under harsh runway lights and amidst the mass of luggage overtaking her petite form, the document bag I’d given Lienna to guard was distinctly visible.
Because Lienna was still beside me. I didn’t tell her to go. I knew she wouldn’t.
The doors of the two SUVs had been thrown open and men jumped out. My gaze locked on a familiar silhouette—linebacker shoulders, a hairless skull, and psychopathic rage that I couldn’t see but could sense rolling across the taxiway toward me.
Die, Morris.
Benjamin Kade’s voice burned through my mind. Either he’d turned telepathy into a full-on psychic weapon or his murderous rage was so venomous that it was like acid in my brain.
Jaw clenched, I focused on the earthly power all around me, visualizing it sweeping into me. I could power up now too, and this time, I would finish Kade.
But as the energy lit up my nerves, I felt a suction-like force spiraling toward Kade—and the fuel charging up my magic slowed from a surge to a trickle.
Panic-edged confusion hit me as light ignited around Kade—a wall of fire. I focused on the thrum of energy in the earth and tried to draw it back to me, but instead of flowing easily into my body, it felt like I was fighting gravity to move it.
Kade’s inferno expanded on either side of him, growing larger and higher until it could engulf our jet in a single sweep of all-consuming flame. The energy was still pouring into him while scant sparks of it were fizzing in my veins.
Lienna squeezed my arm. “Kit!”
Kade sent his burning tidal wave rushing toward us.
Desperately, I stretched my senses even farther, to the very edge of the airfield, and pulled on all the power I could reach. The trickle increased to a sporadic rush, and I imagined a wall of earth rising from the ground between me and the incoming inferno.
Tremors rippled outward as the taxiway cracked. Layers of asphalt and gravel shot up, followed by hard-packed earth and rock that kept rising until it formed a wall fifteen feet high and thirty feet wide.
Kade’s fire hit my barrier of soil with a roar of flame and heat that made the air shudder. Lienna pulled me backward a step as fire burst in every direction—but my wall held.
I turned, and we sprinted for the plane. The moment we were up the steps and past an ashen-faced crew member—that healer, I hoped—we joined Darius and Robin at the windows.
The flames were dying down.
With a clunk, the plane’s door closed, sealing the interior. The engines roared.
My wall of earth quaked, then collapsed. Chunks of dirt, clay, and rock tumbled away, and a man strode through the haze of dust and debris.
The plane launched forward, gaining speed.
I’ll see you soon, Morris.
I flinched.
The plane lifted off, and Kade shrank to a speck at the edge of the runway before disappearing into the darkness—but I knew as surely as I knew every syllable of Liam Neeson’s threatening phone call speech in Taken that I hadn’t seen the last of Benjamin Kade.