Placing his hand on the nape of her neck, Kaz pushed them back through the crowd. His head moved restlessly, trying to take in everyone at once, looking for any suspicious faces, movements,anything,but there were too many people moving too erratically for him to catch more than a glimpse of a face in the churning crowd. That was good for Fracture, who could use the chaos as cover, but the worst kind of circumstance forhim.
It took a small eternity for them to reach the doors.Get her in the car. Get her back to the caravan. You can do this. You can keep her safe. Almost there.
They burst through the crowd lingering by the doors and out into the cool spring air. The street was clogged with scientists, too, but it was much more tolerable than the hotel lobby. Breathing a tiny bit easier, Kaz dropped his hand to the middle of Atria’s back and ushered her toward the dark, unremarkable, Fracture-commandeered car idling by the curb.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
Kaz stiffened, his steps slowing, as his head whipped to one side. There and gone again in a second— He could have sworn there was a flash of blue skin and long, black curls.
He didn’t get a chance to turn around, though. As soon as his eyes registered the familiar color of elvish skin, a scientist wearing aI Like To Have Fun-git-shirt knocked into his left side.
It normally wouldn’t have done much except annoy him, but the scientist was orcish. That meant he hit Kaz’s shoulder with enough weight to force him back a step, momentarily separating him from his mate.
“Watch it!”he snarled, shoving the orc back into the crowd.
“Sorry!” The orc righted the dark glasses on his nose and backed away, a sheepish look on his dark gray face. “My bad, man! I was looking at the signs.”
Kaz spared the clumsy idiot only a threatening hiss before he whirled back around to find his mate. Pushing people out of his way, he’s eyes jumped from head to head, looking for bronze skin and long brown hair.
She wasn’t there.
His heart jammed into his throat. Dread seeped into his veins as he thrust a hand into his pocket. His claws tangled in the thick braided cords of her lanyards as he frantically dug around for the receiver synced to her tracker. In his mind, Teddy’s voice rang over and over again.
“She was meeting with a friend for dinner, stepped out onto the sidewalk to head back to her hotel, and then nothing. She completely disappears from the footage.”
He was overreacting. He wouldn’t need the receiver. He was right next to her. There was no way a luminist could have snatched her when he was a foot away. There justwasn’t.
“Fuck!”He turned once, heart hammering unevenly. When he still couldn’t find her, he pushed past a group of people attempting to hail a ride and spun in a circle again. Fear crawled up the walls of his throat like bile.
No.
She couldn’t have gone far. Atria knew to stop the second they became separated. She knew to wait for him. He could still sense the tether, so she had to be close. She wouldn’t—
In his pocket, just under the pads of his questing fingers, the receiver began to buzz.
And then the tether snapped.
ChapterForty-Nine
One momentshe was standing next to Kaz and the next — darkness.
Atria didn’t think she’d been drugged, but shewasincapacitated. She was fully aware as firm hands grabbed her and hoisted her over what had to be a shoulder. She could feel the shift of muscle under her abdomen, the change in temperature as they passed into shadow. She could hear the sounds of the crowd getting dimmer, then dying away altogether as she was dropped into what could only be the trunk of a car. The smell of gasoline and chemicals filled her nose as the hatch was shut.
But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t do anything other than rage in her mind as she willed herself to dosomething.
Whoever had taken her had somehow managed to throw shadow over her eyes, to blot out even the suggestion of light without physical means. She existed in complete, helpless darkness as the vehicle rumbled to life. Her limbs and telekinesis were useless.
It wasn’t so much that her hands were bound, but rather that they had been somehow deprogrammed — the nerves simply switched off.
Luminist.
The word slammed through her mind, somehow making it through the frantic, clawing panic that stole her breath. Her skin crawled.
She’d never met a luminist before. Or at least, she’d never met one powerful enough to manipulate not just light but theabsence of it.It took a breathtaking amount of power to do something like that. Most luminists she’d heard of could craft illusions and manipulate light to make heat. Some could create illusions so precise they tricked the mind into believing they were not only real but solid. Only the most powerful could do something like eliminate light altogether.
A luminist stole Ruby off of the street. Fuck!
Atria tried to arch her spine, to wiggle her toes,anything,but it was useless. The illusion of darkness was so complete, the animal part of her brain had been tricked into believing it was holding her down. Sheknewthe darkness had no weight. Only demons could create physical shadow. This was different. There was nothing there, nothing but a trick of the light — which made her captivity all the more infuriating.
