“Dinnae speak to her that way,” I snarled, vibrating with rage. It took all my willpower not to break the restraints on my hands and shrug off the guard perp-walking me down the hall. That would give away my hand too soon. “I dinnae ken yer history, but she doesna deserve yer scorn.”
A fist struck my jaw, and my head snapped back. “Mind your own business, Scotty,” the other man sneered.
“Did a fly just land on my cheek?” I asked blithely, as if pain weren’t radiating across my face. “Perhaps ye lovely gents wouldn’t mind brushing it off my face, since I’m bound up?”
“Why you—”
“Knock it off, Mack,” the guard holding me snapped. “No point in getting into a pissing match with a prisoner.”
I waited for Mack to snap back, but he said nothing, so the other guard must have gotten through to him. Pity. I strained my ears as we marched through the halls, trying to glean any detail I could. We seemed to be walking on stone at times, carpet on others. Some of the halls were deserted, and others were full of buzzing chatter that quieted the moment we entered. I could feel eyes upon me as we passed, full of curiosity and suspicion, and more than a few gasped whispers of the lass’s name. Her own footfalls scraped heavily against the stone, as if she were resisting with every step. I hoped she wouldn’t try to fight too much, and end up hurting herself. There was no need—I would get us out of this soon enough.
Even so, I couldn’t stop the swell of anxiety in my chest as Arabella’s footsteps began to fade away. Blast it, were they separating us? Where were they taking her? Surely there was only one dungeon in this place. Maybe they weren’t locking her up. If my sorry ass was the only one going into a cell, all the better.
It seemed an eternity before the guard holding me finally ripped the blindfold off my head. I glanced around at the bare cement walls, the hard cot, and the single chamber pot in the corner—a cell. The door slammed behind me, and I turned around to see it was thick, reinforced steel with rivets bordering it on all sides. The lock clicked with an awful finality, and if I hadn’t had a backup plan, I might have been nervous.
Taking a deep breath, I sat down on the cot, then waited a few minutes. All was silent but for the guard’s breathing outside, and I knew he was waiting to see if I’d use magic to blast my way out of here. Of course, I couldn’t do that—there were runes etched along the door and the walls, preventing me from using my power on them. So I sat silent, counting the seconds, waiting for him to move away.
When he did, footfalls fading away, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I pulled up my right pant leg and slid a hand into my sock. The Sentinels had taken away my pouch belt, and they’d patted me down, but not thoroughly enough.
They’d forgotten the spare piece of chalk I kept in my sock as backup.
“Thank Gaia,” I muttered, kneeling on the ground. I began to draw a current circle on the cement floor, chanting prayers under my breath. The circle was the easy part—it was the runes within that were more difficult. Each one had to be drawn with care—a misplaced line or curve could botch the whole thing and send someone to a place they didn’t want to be. There was one story of a Druid who accidentally landed in the Faerie Realm, and was bewitched by a selkie. It had taken him a month to free himself, and by the time he came back to the Earth Realm, a hundred years had passed. I couldn’t let something like that happen to me. Not if I wanted to fulfill my oath to Gaia, and protect the woman who I cared about far more than was wise.
Finished, I stood tall in the circle, then closed my eyes and reached out with my senses. The thick metal reinforcing the walls and door made it difficult. For a moment, I was worried the runes would prevent me. But these runes were keyed to demonic power. At most, all they could do was prevent me from breaking the walls down. Slowly but surely, my senses penetrated the barrier and stole out into the Watchtower, seeking out my friends. The current circle allowed me to latch onto a specific person or place in order to travel to them.
I found Jax first. She was three floors above me, hopefully in the infirmary. The spell around her held, but not for long—I could already feel it fraying. Casting my consciousness further, I sought out Arabella. She was one floor up, and her agitation spilled through me the moment I touched her soul. She was going out of her mind with worry for Jax, scared and sick at the thought of her dying while she was trapped in that room.
I ached to go to Arabella, to take her into my arms and spirit her out of that place. But I knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted her friend to be safe. And Jax was running out of time.
Gritting my teeth, I let go of Arabella, and then reached for Jax again. The world shifted around me, time and space warping, and exhilaration rushed through me, the way it always did when I rode the currents. It was like surfing on an endless wave at lightning speed, sounds and colors screaming past in a dizzying array that both overwhelmed and fascinated the senses. And no matter how many times I did this, it never got old.
When the world finally snapped back into place, I found myself standing next to a hospital bed. Jax was lying there, her skin still marbled, her heartbeat still absent. She was hooked up to machines, and a doctor was standing in front of them, cursing under his breath.
“Need a hand?” I asked pleasantly.
“Jesus!” He jumped about a foot in the air, then spun around, his white lab coat flying out behind him to reveal jeans and a V-neck sweater. He was a trim Asian man with black-framed glasses and a lean face that looked like it saw its share of sleepless nights. “Who the hell are you?”
“What the fuck?” another man yelled, and I knew Mack, the guard from before, was standing behind me. Did he have some sort of attachment to Jax, or was he just watching over her? “How did you get out?” he demanded when I looked over my shoulder at him.
“That’s not important,” I snapped. Ignoring both the doctor and the Sentinel, I approached the bed, then lifted Jax’s lifeless hand. “What’s important is that I wake her, so that you can save her life. Do you have the antidote, Doctor?”
“Doctor Yang,” the man said, confusion in his dark eyes as they darted between Mack and me.
“You get the fuck away from her,” Mack growled, yanking my arm away from Jax. “I’m taking you back to your—”
I grabbed the insufferable bastard before he could finish, and slammed him into the wall. The drywall cracked beneath the force of the blow, and I swore on Gaia’s green earth I could hear his teeth rattling around in his skull.
“If ye ever touch me with those filthy hands again, I will rip them off and shove them down yer throat,” I snarled. “Now stay the fuck out of my way and let me save yer girlfriend. Or do ye want her to die?”
The man’s jade-colored eyes met mine, blazing with outrage. But then they shifted to the lass on the hospital bed behind me, and all the fight seemed to go out of him. “Save her then,” he said roughly, shoving me away. “Your life depends on it.”
“I’m quaking in my boots,” I sneered, turning away before I punched him in his smarmy face. I took calming breaths as I approached the bed again, renewing my focus so I could undo the spell.
“You say you can awaken her?” the doctor asked carefully as I picked up Jax’s wrist again. “Normally, I’d refuse to believe it, but my machines are showing magical activity surrounding her brain despite the lack of a heartbeat.”
“Aye. That’s Gaia’s power, keepin’ her brain in stasis until I could get her to ye. ’Twas a good thing I broke myself out, because ye wouldna have been able to waken her without me.” She would have woken on her own in about an hour, but if the doctor wasn’t around, she would have died.
“Get the antidote ready,” I warned, pressing two fingers against Jax’s non-existent pulse. “Once I wake her, ye’ll only have a minute or so before the poison finishes her off.”
