Chapter 19 Kaian
Kaian
Heavy footsteps pound on the stairs, and Kaian has ten seconds to throw up a heavy shield of air before the door begins to shake, as if someone is throwing their shoulder into it from the other side.
Kaian doesn’t even need to push Soren back from where he’s kneeling between his legs, because the bigger man is already on his feet.
He’s turned toward the door, his razor-tipped claws extended and two-inch fangs bared in a feral growl.
He’s fierce, and if Kaian had thought he’d been menacing before, he was grossly misinformed.
Quinn’s firm chest presses into his shoulder. “Who the fuck is that?” he murmurs in his ear. “They’re here for you?”
“Yes.” Kaian doesn’t have time to explain.
He just needs to get away before the Aeternum Academy’s scouts break the door down.
He can’t think about what gave him away this time.
Maybe it was the Sam’s Club card stunt at All’s End.
“Can we get to the next rooftop from here? They’ll have blocked off the fire escape. ”
He’s so grateful that Quinn doesn’t ask questions or insist they stick around to find out for themselves how persuasive the Academy can be with witnesses. He’s already got his boots on and his bag slung over his shoulder.
“The fire escape is fucked. The only way out is through the front door or by crossing over to the building next door. It—”
The door bursts in, the old lock giving way under the shoulder of a huge guy with a buzz cut and a cheap vinyl jacket. He’s standing behind two smaller guys, one wiry with greased-back hair and a shorter one in an ugly brown suit.
Kaian’s shield wavers when he realizes they’re not magic users, just someone’s henchman. Strange for the Academy to show their hand but not send the proverbial big guns as usual. How insulting.
The wiry dude takes a step back, so the big guy is now between him and Soren. “Hey! No one said Vexley would be here. I still can’t use that hand. Vinnie, you said this was just a stripper and his latest fuck—”
Soren doesn’t wait for the smaller guy in front to answer, just shoots his fist out faster than Kaian’s eye can track, snapping the short guy’s head back and dropping him to the floor like a bag of rocks.
Wiry takes another step back so quickly that he hits his head on the doorjamb and squawks like a chicken.
The biggest one rolls his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Jimmy.” He pulls out his gun and points it over Kaian’s shoulder. “I’m here for the kid, Vexley. You’ll have to find another piece of ass. Two, if you make me put a hole in the stripper.”
For all the things Quinn had explained to him about mates—about being drawn to people in a way you couldn’t explain—he must not have gotten to the part where a threat against your mate makes you want to rip someone’s face off.
Although, to be fair, he had been a bit jealous of that creepy frat boy in the Uber.
Rage swirls in Kaian’s belly. The disparaging tone would be enough to piss him off, because dancing is still work, and there is no doubt in Kaian’s mind that Quinn would be beautiful doing it. But it’s the gun that tips him over the edge.
Gun-guy’s nostrils flare, and his eyes pop wide. He’s surprised not only by Soren being here, but that look says no one told him he was going up against a magic user who could bring the building down around their ears with little effort.
He’s smarter than he looks because he doesn’t hesitate. The gun discharges at the same time Soren’s hand snaps out, snatching the gun, but it’s already too late.
The bullet is airborne, bent on taking Quinn from them. Despite his surprise, the gunman is an excellent shot. The bullet’s trajectory would have made a direct hit between Quinn’s beautiful whiskey-colored eyes.
Fueled by fear and an anger so hot he can feel it burning in his veins, Kaian pulls on The Plain.
Without conscious thought, he’s moving through the solutions, one after the other, as he slows this timeline to a crawl.
Nanoseconds become minutes. The muzzle flash is still blooming.
The bullet is already free of the barrel, already spinning through the air toward him.
He can see it.
He can count the grooves spiraling along its surface from the rifling.
He can see the air peeling back in waves around the nose.
He floods heat into the spinning slug midair, past the jacket, straight into the core.
Metal softens, and the bullet loses shape, warps, and flowers apart in a slow-motion spray of molten edges instead of one lethal point.
He drags the air around that molten scatter and snaps it shut, a sudden pocket of pressure that smothers the last of the burn and steals the bullet’s speed. What should have been deadly becomes a stuttering, collapsing drift of slowed fragments.
He reaches for The Plain and pulls. The fragments of Earth’s elements are swallowed; one instant, they’re suspended in front of them, the next, they’re gone, absorbed into the ether like pebbles thrown into deep water.
At the same time, he pushes another great gust of air out and around him.
When time synchronizes again, Jimmy and the now-Gunless-Guy fly backward out the door and down the stairs. They land with a satisfying thud at the bottom. Kaian nudges the unconscious guy down after him, bump-bump-bumping on each step.
The silence is deafening, and when he pulls The Plain back in, shoring up his inner shields, he realizes he has been growling under his breath the whole time.
“Holy shit. So fucking hot, Angel-Baby,” Soren grins.
“Fuckin’ crazy,” Quinn grins back, and there’s a hard smack to his ass that makes Kaian clench his thighs. “I thought for sure I was a dead man.”
Kaian does not like the sound of that, holding back The Plain as it surges behind its levee. He wants to throw himself at Quinn, climb him like a tree, and curl himself around all his vulnerable parts like a magical shield. He doesn’t, but it’s a near thing.
“We should go.” Soren finds his jeans on the floor, slipping them on and tucking the gun into the waistband. Quinn tosses him a T-shirt and his jacket. “They were here for you.”
It’s a statement, not a question—Gun-Guy had been clear about that.
“Yeah, but they’re not the usual scouts. I don’t get why it was those bozos and not the Academy.” It’s not like the Aeternum Academy didn’t have retrieval scouts in every major city in the world.
Soren chuckles, straightening the collar on Kaian’s jacket. There’s molten heat in his electric green eyes, and Kaian’s gaze drops to his mouth, catching sight of his pink tongue.
“Don’t think I know anyone else who’d be insulted that Vincenzo sent his best.” Soren slips his phone into his back pocket, tossing Quinn his as well, and turns the lamps off so they’re standing in the dark.
“If that’s their best, then…” Kaian mutters.
“I’m going to need a lot more information about why you’re running, bébé, but now doesn’t seem like the best time.
” Quinn locks the front door after checking to be sure Vincenzo’s guys are still unconscious at the bottom.
He ushers them out onto a very nice patio with mismatched chairs and a flower pot holding too many used cigarette butts.
Is there ever a good time to tell your new friends (mates) that you’re being hunted by a magical society bent on world domination?
Probably not. So he doesn’t answer, instead thinking about escape, but this time he’s not alone.
A frisson of something warms his belly, and he finds it’s not a bad feeling.
“If those guys were sent by someone, then we have to go. It won’t be long before they figure out I used The Plain.”
The three of them lean over the edge of the roof. The next building is about eight feet over and ten feet down. Kaian isn’t sure he can make the jump without The Plain, and says so.
“We can get all the way down the block this way if you don’t mind being tossed like Gimli at Helm’s Deep.” Soren cracks his knuckles and shrugs. It’s a surprisingly nerdy thing to say, and even Quinn chokes back a laugh.
“What? I spend a lot of time hanging around, waiting, and shit,” he sputters with a smile. He’s adorable with his red ears and purplish bruise across his temple.
Kaian wants to laugh with them. Wants to revel in their company, when any other time he’d be alone and scrambling. Running like prey for his freedom and his life. But he can’t drag them into his life. The Vincenzos might have been easy, but next time, the Academy will send magic users.
“Is there anything I can say to convince you to let me go alone?”
“Fuck no, bébé. I haven’t finished telling you everything yet, and I want to know more about that bullet.”
Soren shrugs and holds out his hands, miming tossing Kaian over the side, the smallest smirk on his lips.
Quinn takes a running leap over the side, landing as lightly as a cat.
“It’s going to be okay,” Soren murmurs as Kaian steps up to the edge. “Ready, kid?”
Kaian is flying through the air, but there’s no doubt Soren heard his muttered, “I’m not a fucking kid.”
Quinn catches him in his arms, staggering on the tar paper surface, but sets him on his feet with a squeeze.
It looks farther from down on the second roof than it had from higher up, and when Soren throws himself over, Kaian has to swallow back a tickle of fear.
How can he be so invested in these two men already?
He’s hardly allowed himself to care about anyone but himself his whole life, and now he’s worried about skinned knees and falling thirty feet to the alley below—especially since Soren hadn’t been conscious for more than five minutes at a time an hour ago.
“Hey, Soren. How’s your head? You seem better…but if you need to sit or lie down…we could—”
The question seems to surprise him. Maybe it’s that no one has bothered to ask or that Soren is surprised he feels better, Kaian can’t tell.
He shakes off the expression, cracks his neck, and shrugs. “I’m actually…good.”