Warp (Conduit #3)

Chapter 1

One

ZAYA

A boom followed by a blast of energy reverberates through the parking lot, yanking my attention away from the half-dead dire awry on the ground at my feet.

I straighten, pivoting in the direction of the blast. Beside me, Reck bows his body over Presh.

And Bellamy. Inadvertently, I assume, due to the younger awry hovering over her newly discovered half-sister.

The residual of that energy churns through dust and loose gravel across the cracked pavement of the small parking area next to the outpost in the middle of the barrens, ruffling Presh’s pastel-rainbow-colored hair and the lapel of Reck’s black suit jacket.

It doesn’t touch me or Muta — presently sunbathing in his bushmaster form on the blood-spattered pavement — at all.

Essence, then.

Not just random energy.

And likely malignant. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed it.

While we’ve been distracted with saving the dire awry, Bellamy, storm clouds have gathered on the western horizon.

Well, not so much saving Bellamy as Presh healing her, maybe even realigning her half-sister’s life force.

The storm is at least twenty minutes away by car, at best estimate.

I can actually see rain streaking down from the now-darkened sky.

The unnaturally dark sky. Given the bright sunshine we’re standing within.

Clad only in sweatpants, his dark-gray hair falling over his eyes, DeVille stumbles a few feet away from Reck’s black SUV, his gaze also fixed to the stormy horizon.

All the doors of that hulking vehicle hang open behind him.

The seventeen-year-old has barely recovered from transforming into his beast — a sabertooth tiger — for the first time.

The Authority-issued nature of the SUV — with all the protection that implies, both mechanical and essence-based — is about to be seriously tested.

I know that fact without any prompting from the universe. I knew it in some form the moment I defied the universe and climbed into that vehicle with Reck not even two hours ago. But now I’m not at all certain that those protections will be of any benefit to me. The opposite, in fact.

On the far side of the parking area, the bodies of the two other Authority agents — the shifter Shaw and the mage Wilson — lie inert on the cracked pavement.

The blood-spattered pavement. Mostly due to the aforementioned sabertooth tiger’s mauling of Shaw, but also from the dire awry who stupidly insists on flinging her blood around to fuel her spells.

Well, more like her curses, though Bellamy does have an annoyingly robust essence-wielding skillset.

Too bad it comes with a side of homicidal mania and a seriously fucked-up moral compass.

I doubt her long-lost possible twin, Reck, will ever forgive her for pretending to be me while trying to goad him into fucking her.

Nothing else moves on the horizon.

No one leaps through another invisible barrier to attack us.

But I already know, don’t I?

I know there’s something coming that the universe doesn’t want me anywhere near.

A whisper flits across my mind. A telepathic call … a plea? I try to open myself to it, to loosen all the natural defenses built around my mind, because I think it might be —

Miles away, a bolt of pure energy streaks skyward from the ground into those dense, rain-filled clouds. A projectile weapon of some sort, but clearly essence enhanced. Targeted on … what? Or who?

My stomach bottoms out. I strain to hear that telepathic whisper, that voice, again. Because I know … even though the connection between us is thread thin … I know that voice. It’s anchored within me.

“Fuck!” Reck shouts, grabbing Presh’s shoulders and hauling her to her feet.

“What?!” the young awry cries. “What is going on?”

That bolt of energy hits something rapidly heading our way while hidden within the storm, exploding and lighting up those dark clouds from within.

It takes a moment for the boom to reach us a second time, right before more residual energy floods through the barren landscape. It resonates across the parking lot and around my legs. Around us.

At the same time that residual hits, I also watch a massive wingless creature with a long serpentine body fall through those same storm clouds.

A celestial dragon. Limp bodied and plummeting unimpeded to the earth.

“Zaya!” Reck shouts, half-dragging Presh to the SUV. “Move your fucking ass!”

“What is that?!” Precious struggles to free herself from Reck. Or to at least look past him. She’s so much smaller than her eldest brother that her view of the skyline is blocked by his body. “Is that …? No! Is that Rath?!”

As I watch, oddly stuck in the moment, a large flying creature — a bronze gryphon with golden-tipped wings — streaks through the sky in a sharp dive, trying to reach the falling dragon before he hits —

The dragon — Rath — impacts the ground so hard that a plume of dirt and dust rises, visible even from miles away. It takes another moment for the echoed crash of that landing to audibly reach us.

The gryphon’s golden-threaded wings snap out, talons raked downward to land by the dragon’s crash site. Not that my eyes are keen enough to see anything at ground level.

Another of those energy bolts discharges, angled lower across the ground now. The shooter has clearly repositioned. A mage, maybe? But I’ve never seen that sort of firepower in action before.

The gryphon — Rought — veers away from the projectile aimed his way, but he still gets clipped hard enough to be driven into a spiral fall. Then he too crashes to the ground.

That voice whispers across my mind again, then snuffs out.

“Zaya?!” Presh cries.

I can’t tear my gaze away from the horizon. From where the storm is now rapidly clearing, sunlight and light-blue sky filtering through the clouds as they lighten. Because the celestial dragon has been —

I press my hand to my chest, forcing myself to focus on the now, on what I know. I can feel the thread knotted into my rib cage over my heart, the soul bond that connects me to Rought. It’s steady, though quiet.

Rought was the source of the telepathic whisper that brushed my mind.

But either I was too far away, or touching me telepathically is still complicated despite our soul bond.

Not only because my essence is naturally resistant, protective, but also my bond with Rought, and with the gryphon, is newly anchored.

But I’m not bonded to Rath. So I have no idea if —

“Please, please,” Presh sobs, confused more than terrified, as she tries to look around Reck’s shoulders. He’s struggling to load her into the SUV without actually hurting her.

DeVille is still standing a few feet away, staring in disbelief at the horizon with his hand forgotten on his head, as if he’s brushed back his hair to clear his sightline and just left it there.

“They’re not dead,” Reck shouts at Presh, trying and failing to moderate his tone. “But we have to fucking move because whoever took them out of play did so to stop them from reaching us.”

At my feet, Bellamy rolls over on her side with a groan. “He’s right,” she rasps. Her naturally dark-olive skin is pale, her lips thin and blue-hued, features hollow.

Being reborn, even if Bellamy wasn’t all the way dead — or perhaps I held her on the edge of that death — seriously fucks with your entire system.

I know.

I do it often enough.

“The Authority asshole is right,” the dire awry mutters, meaning Reck. “You have to run. You should have run ten minutes ago.”

“I never get to run,” I say, repeating my words of just a few moments before. As a reminder to myself, again.

Also, I can’t run. Not even if the universe starts tugging me away.

Because I’m not the only target just standing out in the wide, wild open, watching two extremely powerful shifters get taken down. Possibly even two demigods, at least as far as I’ve figured out.

Presh has no offensive capabilities. I’m not certain she could manage a shield or barrier spell even if I had taught her one.

Not with her slowly awakening healing-focused abilities.

DeVille is still shaky on his feet from his first transformation.

He’ll heal faster now. But whatever enhancements his beast will lend his human form, he’s months, even years, away from learning how to purposefully harness any of them.

And there’s no guarantee that Bellamy will fight for us, even if she weren’t currently half-dead and not using her power properly to begin with.

Reck is unarguably powerful. But he’s only one person against whoever just took both his half-brothers out of play, if only for the few moments it will take for that assailant to focus on us.

Plus, the cu-sith Reck holds at bay only skin deep is …

unpredictable, at best. I don’t even need to meet his beast a second time to know that.

I’m not certain the cu-sith’s energy can be directed.

I’m not certain his bark — a literal death sentence — can be targeted away from Presh and DeVille.

And whatever Reck can harness of that voice while in human form seems inadvertently done.

Though his earlier command to ‘stop’ during the skirmish with his Authority agents didn’t touch me, it affected everyone else.

A twist of energy close by draws my attention away from scanning the horizon.

Despite Presh’s cries and Reck’s demands, my eyes have been riveted to the skyline.

With my heart thumping in my chest and all these thoughts tumbling around in my head, I need a glimpse of wings.

Just a glimpse. So I can move on from this moment.

Hovering over Agent Wilson’s prone body to my far left, that pulse of power tightens, resolving into a swirling shadow of blackened molten energy about the size of a fist. As if someone has punched through the fabric of existence.

No, not a shadow. A sucking, writhing void.