He took her through the space to a back-corner office and stopped just outside the open door. Zane stood near the battered desk in the center of the office, an unearthly green glow simmering in his eyes as he slowly pivoted, his gaze distant as if searching for something, a frown lining his face.
“Where are you, you bastard?” Zane muttered.
Cass wanted to tell him to hurry up, but she kept her mouth shut and an eye back on the way they came. It wasn’t long before Zane’s “Gotcha” pulled her attention back around.
“Grayson,” Zane called as he moved around the desk toward a large set of metal shelves overflowing with wires, notebooks, folders, and random pieces of metal. “There’s a lock around here somewhere.”
When Grayson joined him, Cass dared to leave the doorway and moved farther into the office. A few tense heartbeats swept by as the men continued their search.
Finally Grayson said, “Found it.”
He touched a series of items on the bookcase. Each time his fingers made contact, a spark of amber erupted. When he grabbed the edge of the metal unit and pulled, the bookcase opened smoothly on nearly silent hinges.
Zane’s grin was fierce, and little storms of green lightning rolled over his shoulders and down his arms until he was outlined in a faint luminescence. Without a word, he slipped through the opening.
“Come on, Cass,” Grayson said.
She closed the office door, muting the mechanical drone from outside, then hurried over. She slid through the opening and into another stairwell. This one coiled around a thick pipe at the center of the tight space. The lighting—a couple of floor lights stuck under the risers—was dim, but peering down the pipe, she could see a brighter glow at the bottom. The stairs were contained within a concrete column with only one opening that led deeper inside. From where she stood, she couldn’t make out much more than that. The top of Zane’s dark head was just disappearing as she started down. There was a shift in the air above her. She looked up to see that Grayson had closed the hidden door and was coming down.
Why in the hell does the resort have a hidden room? It was a question for later, one she hoped she’d remember to ask.
They wound their way down. With each step, the noise above faded. She was halfway down when voices rose up. She couldn’t make out the words, not with her ears still ringing. The only sign that Zane had picked up on the same thing was the way his movements went from a predatory stalk to a dangerous glide. A few feet from the bottom, he paused to look back and held up his hand for her to stop.
She froze.
He shot Grayson a glance, and whatever Grayson saw had him gently nudging her aside so he could move to the front. From behind Grayson, she caught a glimpse of Zane clearing the last of the steps. Without looking back, he disappeared into the space beyond. Grayson cleared the last stair and was moving toward the opening when a surprised yell was abruptly cut off.
“Stay here,” Grayson ordered before he went to join Zane.
Heart in her throat, she ignored him, rushing to the entry to discover a narrow entryway created between the long cement wall and a shorter interior wall. The opening only extended a few feet before widening into a larger space. The sounds of fighting drew her forward, then a burst of magic smashed into the cement wall. Cass jerked back with an undignified, terrified squeak and dropped into a defensive crouch, her back to the dubious protection of the shorter interior wall. Something heavy crashed into it, sending a vibration through both it and her back. More angry yells, accompanied by curses and pained grunts, came from the room she couldn’t see. Staying low, she crab walked to the end of the opening, sucked in a deep breath, and dared to peek around the wall’s edge.
Unlike the space above, the room was a cement box, maybe fifteen feet across in either direction. There was a worktable along the side, filled with things she couldn’t make out. A rolling stool lay on its side, a bent leg impaling the wall next to the table. A few feet in front of her, a body was sprawled on the concrete, not moving. Beyond it, Zane was grappling with a muscle-bound behemoth. The green coils of Zane’s magic snapped and stretched around him like a lethal tentacled nightmare as machinery tools whizzed through the air as if thrown by invisible hands. One of the coils snapped a sledgehammer aside, sending it careening through the air until it embedded itself in the concrete wall. Another sent a heavy pipe rolling across the cement, where it came to a stop a few feet away.
She darted out from her hiding spot, grabbed the pipe, and straightened just as a flash of movement in the far corner caught her attention. She looked over and locked gazes with a snarling scarecrow of a man standing behind another man strapped to a chair. She’d barely registered the fact that it was Russ in the chair when the other man abruptly winked out of sight.
The Slider.
A pained grunt came from her right. She spun in time to see Grayson suspended about ten feet in midair. A man, his back to her, stood below him. He spread his arms wider as if tearing something apart. Grayson’s body jerked, his face paling, his eyes burning as he strained against the invisible restraints pulling his arms and legs out.
Without stopping to think, Cass rushed across the floor, clutching the pipe like a baseball bat. She was already swinging as the mage started to turn. The pipe sank into his ribs with an ugly sound. He stumbled back, one arm going to protect his torso, the other swiping out. Magic followed, picking her up and throwing her across the room. She lost the pipe and curled into a protective ball as she hit the ground with bruising force. The impact made her forget how to breathe for a few precious seconds. Panic started to inch in before her lungs came back online. She sucked in air, spots dancing in her vision, as the fighting filled her ears with the dull wash of noise.
She painfully rolled to her hands and knees and lifted her head to see Grayson had the air mage backed into a corner. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but whatever it was, the air mage’s face was slowly going from red to purple to white, his hands scrabbling at his throat, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on land. She shoved unsteadily to her feet, using the wall for balance, and realized she was now behind the man in the chair.
“Russ.” She pushed off the wall and stumbled closer. When she saw the circle etched in the floor, she barely managed to pull up short. “Shit, shit, shit.”
A couple of runes looked vaguely familiar, but the rest meant nothing to her. Magic ran through the symbols in a trickle of sickly-looking orange that warned her that crossing into it might not end well for her or for Russ. Stymied and desperate, she called out Russ’s name, hoping he was among the living.
Nothing.
Her heart sank even as she skirted the circle, trying to get a better view of him. His head hung down, chin resting on his chest, his arms and legs chained to the chair, which happened to be bolted ominously to the cement floor. There were no telltale signs of violence—no blood or other nasty things—but she didn’t like the look of the tendrils of orange slowly crawling up Russ’s legs.
The sound of approaching footsteps was followed by Zane’s voice. “Is he alive?”
“I don’t know.” She forced her gaze away from the magic and to Russ’s chest. Nerves and dread tightened into a choking knot as she waited for it to move. It finally did with a shallow inhalation. “Yeah, I think he is, but I don’t think this”—she motioned to the circle—“is helping.”
“It’s not.” The grim confirmation came from Grayson, who was limping his way over. He got to Cass, and his gaze narrowed as he skimmed his fingertips along the pulsating ache in her face. “You okay?”
“Been better, but I’ll live.” She took in the red marks scoring his jaw, where someone had gotten in a couple of hits, and the lines of pain radiating from his mouth. “How about you?”
