Chapter 32
Tess
I didn't have time to answer.
"Who the hell—" A researcher spun toward us from behind a long steel counter that ran along the left wall.
Lab equipment covered every inch of it—crystals in labeled racks, syringes, instruments organized with the precision of someone who'd done this a thousand times.
He had crystals clutched in both hands and his face was white.
His eyes went to Lunessa, then to me, then to the insignia on my tactical vest.
Dragon Rider.
His fear lasted about two seconds. Then he threw the crystals at my head and fired a bolt of raw energy at Lunessa's chest.
The crystals shattered against my Golden Shield. The energy bolt hit Lunessa's seismic barrier and ricocheted into a bank of monitors on the opposite counter, and the screens exploded in a shower of sparks and glass. And then the lab erupted.
The room was big—maybe sixty feet long, rectangular, counters and equipment lining both walls.
Examination room doors on the left and right, six of them, with observation windows set into the walls at chest height.
The stairwell down to the next level was at the far end.
Everything between here and there was lab space.
And it was full of people who wanted us dead.
Three of them came at us at once. Not the panicked, evidence-burning scramble anymore. These were supes who'd done the math—two Riders, no backup visible, and a lifetime in a Harbinger prison if they got caught.
A woman snatched a long-handled instrument off the nearest counter and swung it at Lunessa's face.
Lunessa dodged and the woman's other hand came up—a bolt of greenish liquid magic shot from her palm and ate a smoking, fist-sized hole through the steel counter beside me. Anything it touched, it consumed.
A broad-shouldered demon came from behind a freestanding equipment rack in the center of the room.
He slammed both palms together and the air rippled—a visible wave that hit my shield and rattled through my teeth, my skull, the base of my spine.
The impact was like taking a hit from something that outweighed me by a thousand pounds.
A third I barely saw—just felt the impact when his spell caught me in the ribs and sent me stumbling sideways into an examination table. My hip hit steel. Instruments scattered across the floor. A restraint cuff clattered against my boot.
This is what you trained for.
The thought arrived at the same time as the next blast and it was almost funny—trained for, as if Theron's drills in the practice arena had been anything like this.
As if anchor, rotate, don't drop your off-hand had been a rehearsal for a room where the people coming at me had stolen magic falling out of their hands and a lifetime of nothing left to lose.
I kicked the cuff away and threw Shadow Fire at the demon. He dodged behind the equipment rack. The fire hit a shelf of vials on the back wall and they burst, spraying liquid that hissed where it landed.
The fight split us in seconds. The corrosive woman drove Lunessa left. The demon and the third researcher pushed me right. Ten feet of burning lab between us and growing.
I blocked the demon's next concussive wave and the force slid my boots backward across the tile. He was advancing already, palms coming together for another shot. I threw Shadow Fire at his legs—he jumped—and the fire scorched the base of the rack and something inside it popped.
Then Lunessa's voice, sharp between strikes. Not beside me—thirty feet away and receding, shouted across the wreckage of the lab.
"These instruments—"
I couldn't look. The demon was pressing me.
"—my parents were working on—"
Her voice cracked on the last word. Not a sob. I heard the crack of her fist connecting, the thud of a body hitting tile.
"—they took their research and they built this—"
I heard enough.
Lunessa's parents. The stolen research. The tools on these counters. The restraint cuffs. The crystal probes. The chairs with drains in the floor.
They'd murdered two people and turned their life's work into a machine for breaking others.
My next Shadow Fire blast caught the broad-shouldered demon square in the chest. He flew backward off his feet, over the equipment rack, and crashed into a bank of shattered monitors on the far counter. He didn't get up.
The third researcher caught me from the side before I'd finished the swing.
His spell hit my left shoulder. Heat—sharp, biting, the kind that cooked through fabric—and my jacket sleeve smoked and the skin underneath went white-hot.
I cried out before I could stop myself. My shield snapped sideways and slammed him into the freestanding rack.
He hit it head-first and slid to the floor.
My shoulder was screaming. The fabric was stuck to the burn.
I didn't have time.
Because that was when the door opened.
Not one of the examination room doors on either side of the lab. A door at the far end, near the stairwell that led down. It opened slowly, deliberately, and a man walked out.
Slate gray skin. Glowing red eyes. Small sharp horns. Dark suit that didn't belong in a lab. He stood between me and the stairwell to the lower level—between me and the victims I could still hear through the floor.
My throat closed. Phantom pressure—a metal collar against my windpipe. My wrists ached where the restraints had been.
I knew him.
Garanth Kreel surveyed the chaos of his lab with mild irritation. Researchers down. Evidence burning. Two Dragon Riders tearing through his operation.
Then his red eyes found mine.
His mouth curved.
"The human." He said it like he was identifying a specimen. "I remember you. Last time I saw you, you were wearing a collar and crying in the dirt." He tilted his head, taking in my tactical vest, the shield flickering at my fingertips, the insignia. "They gave you a uniform. How sweet."
My hands were shaking. Not just rage—fear too, the honest kind. The part of me that remembered the collar wanted to run. The part of me that had trained for this, that had chosen to be here, planted my feet.
Both parts raised my shield.
"I remember you too," I said.
He laughed. Short, dismissive, genuinely amused. "Good."
Then his hands filled with greenish-yellow fire and the world became hell.
His fire came in waves. Not bursts—sustained, rolling sheets of flame that hit my Golden Shield like a battering ram. The heat was immediate and enormous. I braced and the impact drove me back a step, two steps, my boots scraping tile.
He was already moving. Closing the forty feet between us, cutting off the angle to my left where the central lab opened up toward Lunessa. I tried to angle back toward the center of the room. He drove me back with another wave that hit my shield so hard my teeth clacked together.
He was fast. Faster than anything Theron had put in front of me. Every blast positioned to close a line of retreat I hadn't realized I needed yet.
"I built this facility, you know." Between blows, conversational. His fire swept in a low arc that forced me to jump and I landed two feet closer to the examination room doors. "Designed the layout myself. Every room serves a purpose."
I threw Shadow Fire at his chest. My dark flames hit his fire and dissolved. Just—gone. Eaten. His was hotter, denser, and it consumed mine.
My stomach dropped. That was my best shot. My Shadow Fire—dark consuming dark—and his just ate it.
He didn't even flinch. "Cute."
I tried again. Angled lower, more force behind it. Same result. The fire didn't even slow down.
He pressed forward and I blocked. Blocked again. Each blow shook through my arms and into my chest. I was running out of room and I knew it—the examination room doors were behind me now, and every step backward was a step he wanted me to take.
He threw a blast at my feet and I jumped back. My shoulder blades hit a doorframe.
I was next to one of the examination rooms. Through the observation window, I caught a glimpse of it—small, maybe fifteen feet across. Restraint chair bolted to the floor. A drain in the center of the floor.
His next wave came and I blocked it, but the force pushed me through the doorway. The smaller space closed around me. Cooler air on the back of my neck for one second before the heat followed me in.
Garanth stepped into the doorframe. The observation window was the only glass left between me and the lab.
One room. One door. And no way out.
"That's better," he said. "I like the smaller rooms. More personal."
My earpiece crackled.
"—next floor, coming down—"
Draven's voice. Cutting through static and the sound of fighting.
I risked a glance through the observation window. The central lab was chaos—Lunessa fighting near the far counters, researchers scrambling, equipment burning. And there, at the stairwell entrance sixty feet away, a figure cutting through the smoke.
Draven.
Our eyes met through the glass. Just a flash—his face through the haze, and I saw the moment he registered where I was. The examination room. Garanth between me and the warded door. Me inside.
His expression didn't change. It emptied. Every emotion stripped away, and what was underneath was nothing I had a name for—nothing I'd ever seen on him before.
Then Garanth's fire slammed into my shield and I lost the angle.
"I'm coming." Draven's voice through the earpiece. Tight. Controlled in the way that meant the opposite. "Hold on."
I couldn't answer. Garanth was advancing into the room, his fire pushing the temperature past bearable. Sweat ran down my spine. My burned shoulder screamed every time I moved my left arm. My shield blazed gold between us and I poured everything I had into holding it.
That was when I felt it.
The impacts were wrong.
Every time his fire hit my shield, the force didn't bounce back the way it should have. It went somewhere. My shield was absorbing the kinetic force of each collision and feeding it through to the other side.
Feeding it to him.