Witches' Waves (21 page)

Kyle braced himself for being struck by lightning or turned into a toad and slapped Deck's face as hard as he could.

“Kyle?” Deck's voice was soft, hesitant.

For a second, he seemed to have no idea what he'd done or almost done, what had provoked him to such extremes. No idea why he was bleeding on the floor with Kyle pinning him down and smoke and ozone in the air, various relatives staring with haunted eyes and a Gaelic keen filling the room.

Kyle watched as the wave of knowledge broke over him, as horror and grief and shock recaptured him. Only this time, he didn't lose control of his magic.

A strange buzzing startled everyone. Apparently Kyle wasn't the only person who simply couldn't hear it as the mundane sound of a cell phone.

Jan grumbled, pulled the phone out of her pocket, shook her head, then handed the phone wordlessly to Deck, who crawled up to a sitting position to take it.

Deck looked at the screen and laughed bitterly. “My father knew there was a problem before we did. He and Mom and Uncle Dermott got a flight out of Lagos yesterday. Hell, I didn't even know they were in Lagos. They'll be in Portland in a few hours. He says that he has no idea what's compelling him to come home, but he hopes it's a wedding, not a family emergency. Sorry, Dad, it would have been a wedding except our bride-to-be has been kidnapped. I hope you packed your Superman cape.” Somehow Deck managed to smile, a smile that broke Kyle's heart. “He probably knows about Grandma already. Crying on the plane and doesn't know why. At least he and Uncle Dermott, between them, may be able to narrow down where to look for Meaghan.”

“We'll get Meaghan back. If your father's connections can't help us, I'll go to the Agency office in Portland and crack them like abalones until they give us some information.”

“You…” Deck shook his head. His still-damp hair was tangled with twigs and leaves and splattered with blood, and dirt streaked one cheek, and Kyle thought he'd never looked more perfect. “Leave that for Jocelyn's daddies. They're built for that kind of rough stuff. Where you are made for a much more fun kind of roughness…” Somehow he dredged up a flirtatious, sex-drenched smile, one carrying memories of their times together and the promise of a lifetime to come.

Then his face crumpled into tears. Kyle drew the larger man into his lap and rocked him as he wept. Around them, the Donovans sang to their dead.

Chapter Twenty

Meaghan prayed. She couldn't think of anything else to do. She and her captor were…nowhere as best as she could figure out. It was icy cold and windless. No scents. No ground under her feet, no way to grasp the space she occupied. Nothing to touch. Her captor had dropped her, but there was no place to fall and no way to flee because she couldn't move. A silence more complete than anything she'd ever experienced. She could hardly breathe, as if the air were short on oxygen but at the same time thick.

Frantic, she reached down the cords that bound her to Deck and Kyle. Something blocked her. The cords weren't severed—at least she didn't think they were—but she couldn't get anywhere, couldn't reach the men, couldn't even be sure that she wasn't deluding herself and they were actually dead. Or maybe she was. This cold, silent, numb place might be death, for all she knew.

But before she could panic about that possibility, they were suddenly
somewhere
again. Someplace far from the ocean and from Deck and Kyle. Someplace dank and enclosed, with a sour yet sterile smell. Despair and sorcery and magic that felt like the old woman Roslyn's, only with a blade in it. A buzzing in her head, a buzzing that could eat her soul if she let it.

The hospital. The Agency hospital.

Meaghan reset her shields as fast as she could, praying that her rush didn't make her do a sloppy job. She was so new at this.

Someone who felt as big as Jude grabbed her shoulders with bruising force. She kicked back with all her strength, but didn't even make contact.

Anger filled her and Meaghan channeled Shaw. “Let go of me, you fucking moron. I hope you're proud of yourself, ganging up on pacifists so you could try to kidnap a baby. You've got me again. Leave the kid alone and don't fucking go back after her again or I'll do worse than I did. The Donovans don't kill. I do. And I will again.” To her astonishment, she heard the shuffle of footsteps as someone she hadn't known was there backed off a bit, though the agent holding her maintained his painful grip.

Damn, her channeling of Shaw must be pretty good. Or maybe it was the touch of Donovan she'd put in there, not the inelegant wording, but the assumption that she was a person of power and importance, and of course others would pay attention when she spoke.

“I'm sorry, miss. My orders…” The other agent was a woman, soft-spoken. She didn't sound hard-edged enough for her job, and Meaghan pushed that. Not that she expected it would work, but she had to try.

“I don't give a fuck about your orders. Your orders are wrong. If someone tells you to snatch a baby, they're obviously sick in the head.”

“Miss, I…”

The man behind her roared with laughter. “Miss? She's nothing to be scared of, Jenkins. She's just Shaw's pet seer from Ward 6. Got herself a taste of freedom, got off her meds, and she's feeling all cocky.”

“She killed Wade.” The female agent sounded frightened, but not especially upset. “But I think it was an accident.”

“Someone was going to kill that asshole eventually. Might have been me if someone else hadn't done it first. If she killed him, though, the boss'll get her straightened out.” The man's voice dripped malice. He was one of the bad ones, the ones who ended up with the Agency because they liked hurting people who weren't like them, not because they had the illusion they were serving a greater purpose. And his hands were bruising her.

He moved those big hands around her throat. He wasn't squeezing but Meaghan was sure he could choke the life out of her without making an effort. She was small for an adult woman, even the Donovans had commented on it, and this guy was immense.

And his erection was jutting into her back. He
liked
the idea of hurting her, maybe killing her.

How the hell was she going to get out of this one? Killing him, tempting as the idea was, would probably be fatal to her as well.

And she had no intention of dying here. Her neurological problem might kill her in the end, but she was going to get back to Deck and Kyle and live some more first.

It was cold and damp in here. Not freezing, but cold enough her teeth were chattering. Cold enough to get the ball rolling.

She sent the chilled moisture from the air to the blood of the man holding her. Pictured the water that made up his blood chilling, slowing down blood flow, dropping his body temperature to the point of hypothermia.

It might have worked. It should have worked. Hell and damnation and fuck it all, it
was
working. She could sense the flow of the magic working on the water. The female agent's teeth began to chatter and she pulled away, even though the spell hadn't been aimed at her; Meaghan heard a soft sound as if the agent had chafed her arms with her hands for warmth. The man's grip loosened, and his erection thankfully faltered.

And then, from some place not nearly far enough away, she heard a familiar voice. “Well done, honey, but we can't let you harm anyone else. Not yet, anyway.”

Meaghan froze in astonishment, her heart refusing to accept what her brain was telling her. She knew that gentle voice, knew it even though there was unfamiliar steel under its familiar warmth. “Garrett?” It couldn't be Garrett. Garrett was a nurse, not an agent. More importantly, Garrett was her friend.

She waited for mocking laughter from some other agent who had a similar accent.

Instead, the familiar voice replied, “I'm afraid so. I'd hoped it would never come to this.” She heard footsteps, tried to struggle away, tried to use her magic.

Her thinking slowed. A viselike headache gripped her brain. The big agent's grasp tightened. She tried to cast a spell, but it hurt. It hurt and she couldn't find that part of her brain, couldn't even remember how to cast a spell.

Garrett put his arms around her. He still smelled like medicine and fried chicken and his touch was gentle, drawing her into an embrace rather than manhandling her. “I'll take her from here.” His voice was soft as he added, addressing the big man, “Don't touch this woman again, Delondres. If I find out you've been anywhere near her, in the same part of the complex as she is, breathing the same
air
she is, I'll stop your heart.” He said it perfectly calmly. Meaghan knew beyond a doubt that he meant it.

He'd always said he had no magic to speak of, but that was another lie. She could sense the currents flowing off him, working on her in ways that her shields could not prevent. It felt a little like healing, like Roz's and Jan's magic, but also like Shaw's, like he was using something that combined sorcery and witch magic. He was trying to form another kind of shield, one made to keep things from going out rather than coming in. Another kind of magic lock.

Water. Water is almost impossible to hold back. My magic is fluid, like water. He can't contain it.
She thought of waves and currents and natural laws she instinctively sensed that Garrett did not understand, rode fluidity like an otter would ride a current or a surfer would ride a wave. Surfed the spell he thought he was setting and rode the flow of the magic. It was affecting her to some extent, making her thoughts hazy. Her head was screaming as if she was about to have a seizure.

But her magic could flow out around the lock, she thought, as long as Garrett wasn't right there, touching her.

“Welcome home, honey,” Garrett said, and his voice sounded as warm and loveable as it always had, which freaked her out. If he was one of the bad guys, shouldn't he sound like it, feel like it? And if he wasn't, what the hell was he doing here? “For what it's worth, I'm both glad to see you again and sad that you were found. And I think it's tragic the child of five bloods has been located. But no one listens to me.”

He kissed the top of her head, the way he used to do when she was alone and afraid and trying to face her own death.

And as he did, he stuck her with a hypodermic. “Sleep,” he whispered. “It'll hurt less if you sleep. And I can't keep the others away from you forever. They'll want to know about the baby, and about the Donovans.”

“Fuck off.” A definite Shawism, but she thought Deck and Kyle would approve under the circumstances.

Garrett made a choked, bitter sound that wanted to be laughter.

The drug hit hard, like it always did. But so did waves, and she knew how to ride them, how to take the force and use it to her ends. She tried to do that with the drug, and it helped, but these waves were too big to ride. She'd need to be Deck or Kyle, a more experienced surfer. Despite her best efforts, her body began to sag into Garrett's.

Deck. Kyle. The cords were still there, though she couldn't follow them far. She was too fuzzy for that, but they were still there, glowing as they traced back to somewhere she couldn't reach. She held on to that connection as her body went limp and she collapsed into Garrett's waiting arms. Her last clear thought, before drugs and nightmares took her, was:
I love you both. I finally have something to live for. And I'm getting out of here.

Meaghan dreamed blood and fire, just like she always had when they drugged her. Blood and fire and tears and the panicked cries of an infant.

Only this time the dream changed. This time Meaghan knew what to do, and she called water from under the earth with Deck's help, water to put out the fires and wash away the blood, water to cleanse decades of pain and carry them to safety, guided by an otter she knew was Kyle.

This was a dream where she helped stop the evil. A dream where she wasn't alone.

A dream where she and her friends
won
.

She carried that triumphant feeling when the dream faded.

As always, she became conscious long before she regained enough control of her body even to open her eyes. And as always, the hospital staff—she wouldn't think of them as doctors and nurses anymore, though she supposed they had the relevant degrees—talked in front of her.

Only this time they had other people with them.

And there was magic wafting over her. Magic that should be affecting her, but was being deflected…no, absorbed and diluted…by her shields.

“I always like watching you work, Mr. Clark. Such a unique magical signature.” The man's voice reminded Meaghan of Shaw. The man's accent was completely different, more clipped and, she thought, better educated, like John F. Kennedy when she'd heard one of his speeches on TV, but the undertones were the same as Shaw's, steel and sulfur and ruthlessness. A voice used to issuing orders. “You understand I need to monitor this procedure after what happened on the beach. Shame we have to put a lock on her at all, but she can't be trusted.” The “and neither can you, exactly” was strongly implied in that dry, authoritative voice.

“Of course, sir.” Garrett seemed deferential, but there was an edge to it, like any second he might forget he was supposed to be polite and something very bad would happen. “At least my version is a safer spell than Shaw used. And whoever removed the original spell managed to get rid of Shaw's tainted sorcery and heal the worst of the accumulated damage.” He stroked her hair gently as he spoke, as if he really did love her. What was even creepier was Meaghan thought it might be true. He cared about her, but he was going to do his job anyway, even if his job was keeping her a prisoner. “Did the magic-scrambling device work?”

“Long enough to get agents through the shields. The Donovans were confused by it, unable to tap their full potential. But some of them, including your subject, could still use their magics, and the agents were unable to secure the child.”

“I hear we lost a few people.” Garrett didn't sound upset about it, she thought.

“Not to Donovans. We didn't know there were so many other types of Differents on the estate, people the scrambler wouldn't affect. Carnivores and shamans and at least one being we couldn't identify. Jenkins said she thought your girl killed Wade, but that it was an accident.”

Garrett kept stroking Meaghan's hair as he said, “Meaghan should be able to fill us in. I trust she wouldn't do anything out of malice, but she has magic she doesn't know how to use safely.” The touch tickled but she forced herself to stay still.

“Is she still useful?”

“The visions are part of her, sir. Having her other abilities awakened, even temporarily, should make them more powerful and accurate, if anything.”

As Shaw would say, shit and double shit.

“But has she been compromised? She wasn't just outside, she was with
Donovans
.”

“We can expect some resistance as Meaghan readjusts, sir. But she was already starting to resist because of the child.”

“Whom she met. Whom she defended with terminal force, using magic she had no reason to know.”

Garrett laughed in a way Meaghan never heard, a dry, sardonic sound that belonged to an agent, not the warm chuckle she remembered. “I doubt she picked that spell up from Donovans. She's a wild witch, and without training, wild witches play rough. I bet some of the odd storms we've been hearing about on the Weather Channel the past few days were Meaghan as well.” He sounded proud of her.

The older man coughed. “You're too attached to this subject, and I've let you get away with far too much where she's concerned.”

A brief silence followed. Meaghan imagined Garrett nodding before he said, “Meaghan is not a ‘subject'. She's no monster, unlike most of the sentients we study here—or most of the employees, myself included. She's a sweet, intelligent young woman who has the misfortune to have both an unusual Different ability and a rare neurological disorder. Shaw never should have kept her here. She should have been fostered with an Agency family or some of the less extremist witches, so we could tap her gifts without using her up. And she should have had proper medical attention long before now, or proper healing magic.”