Chapter 22

Keeping my eyes on my nemesis, I refocused my power, once again excluding Lienna from the invisi-warp. The tension in her shoulders released as her self-perception returned. She gave me a questioning look, but I grabbed her arm before she could ask why the hell she'd been unceremoniously dumped into a pseudo sensory deprivation chamber.

"It's Kade," I hissed. "We can't let him get away!"

He was disguised as an MPD agent, and he was hiding in plain sight, just like Tim had said he would be.

Whatever had happened to my teammates, I couldn't search for them now—not with Kade right in front of me. I dashed toward the coat check, Lienna beside me.

Kade tapped the brim of his cap in a mock salute, then ducked into the shadows.

But I had that bastard's number. Or, more specifically, I had a lock on his slippery mind. His anti-Kit bracelet shielded him from incoming Psychica, but it didn't do shit to stop his brainwaves from broadcasting loud and clear.

Invisible, Lienna and I sprinted behind the coat check. Tucked in the back corner next to the rows of outerwear was an unmarked door.

I slammed through it, hiding the noise with my warp. We found ourselves in a plain concrete corridor just wide enough to accommodate a loaded pallet jack. It followed the curve of the concourse, with dozens of doors at regular intervals along the inside wall—access points for event staff.

Kade had already vanished, somewhere ahead of us down the curving hallway. I could sense which way he'd gone, and I took the lead, full-out sprinting with Lienna right behind me. Since there was no one else in sight, I dropped all my warps to save my brain power.

A metal fire door blocked our path. On the other side was an industrial kitchen where all those tasty hors d'oeuvres were being prepared. I skidded to a stop, narrowly missing a young man carrying an armload of dirty dishes. Lienna grabbed my shoulder for balance as she halted beside me.

The busy hubbub of the kitchen staff paused to stare at our intrusion into their workspace.

I concentrated on my target. Darting around the busboy, Lienna and I bolted in Kade's direction. As I rounded the stainless steel prep station in the middle of the kitchen, almost bumping shoulders with a sous chef, I spotted another metal door on the far side of the grill.

We burst into a vestibule lined with staff lockers, finding a continuation of the curving access hall at the other end. Directly on my right was a door marked with a staircase sign.

Lienna looked from the staircase to the hall. "Which way?"

I hesitated, honing my sense of Kade's location. Close. Not moving. He was… waiting.

Waiting to see if I chose the right route.

Turning, I swung the door open, revealing a concrete stairwell with ugly metal railings. As I stepped onto the landing, a door clanged below us, and Kade's mind moved away from us.

"He's this way," I told Lienna, lunging for the stairs.

"Kit," she began breathlessly as we hurtled down half a flight before it doubled back on itself.

"I know." I careened around the U-bend and onto more stairs. "He's luring us somewhere."

Straight into another Kit-napping setup, no doubt.

As we reached the next landing, I slowed to meet Lienna's eyes. "We'll spring his trap, and this time, he won't get the better of us."

She nodded, eyes blazing with determination.

We reached the next landing, and I could practically feel Kade's creep-essence leading me onward, like a trail stomped through the underbrush by a hairless predator. I pushed through the heavy fire door onto the sixty-first floor.

Another hallway greeted us, this one carpeted in a dull brown pattern. A sign on the wall directed visitors toward various meeting and conference rooms.

There was no sign of Kade, but I was fully locked onto his mind, the echo of his brainwaves leaving a clear path for me to follow. As I streaked down the hall, it occurred to me that my burgeoning clairsentient ability was becoming sharper and more singular.

I led the way around a corner, past meeting rooms 6107, 6108, and 6109, and came to a rough stop in front of meeting room 6110. The door was closed, but this was where the trail led. Kade was inside.

"This is it," I told Lienna. "I'll keep him busy since he doesn't want to maim or murder me, and you hit him with everything you've got."

"Exactly what I was planning to do." Her Rubik's cube was in her hands, and she gave it three quick spins. "When I give the signal, dive to the floor."

That sounded ominous, and I was all for it. "Will do."

"Let's go."

I twisted the handle, whipped the door open, and leaped into the room, ready for Kade's attack.

The scene that met my shocked eyes wasn't what I'd expected.

The meeting room was set up for a casual discussion, with leather club chairs arranged in an oval around the room's center point. A sideboard lined one wall, and a projector screen filled the back.

Dead center in the room were two men—neither of whom was Kade. I'd gotten so focused on Kade's psychic trail that I hadn't noticed any other nearby presences—though I only would have detected one of them: Peter Druthers.

I recognized his mug instantly from Tim's incessant drilling, but without it, I still would've seen the unmistakable family resemblance. Druther's broad shoulders filled his suit, and he had the same shiny cranium as his son, though the senior psychopath had added a gray goatee to offset his shaven scalp.

Lying at his feet in a pool of blood was Director Ashbluff.

He'd also been part of Tim's photo lineup. A man even larger than Druthers, with short-cropped brown hair and a silvering beard. Black-framed glasses sat askew on his face, his dead eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

Director Ashbluff was dead. The man we'd come all this way to save was already dead.

"Kit!"

Lienna's shout snapped me out of my horrified reverie, and I did the only thing that made sense to my frazzled brain—I hit the deck.

It was the right move. A band of blue magic whooshed over me, speeding not at Druthers but straight to my left. It caught Kade in the midriff a split second before he could fire the potion gun he had aimed at me.

The spell threw him back into the wall. He shoved off it, but before he could take aim again, I grabbed the potion gun with my telekinetic fingers and wrenched it out of his hold. The gun soared through the air and into my waiting hand.

Hot damn, I was really starting to get the hang of this.

"Ori dormias!" Lienna cried as she flung a stun marble at Kade. Like me, she seemed to have decided that Druthers was a problem for future us. His progeny was the immediate threat.

Kade twisted, the marble whipping past his shoulder and pinging into the wall. I grabbed it too—yep, definitely getting the hang of this—and redirected it into Kade's back. It bounced harmlessly off his armored MPD vest, which was clearly too insulated for the spell to knock him out.

Lips curled in a sneer, Kade came at me with aggressive speed. I raised his potion gun and fired.

He didn't even slow when the purple potion burst over his shoulder. He must've dosed himself with a universal antidote like we had.

I lunged forward to meet him, hoping Lienna was prepping another stun marble. Between the two of us, we could bounce it off that bald-ass head of his and put him down for good.

He tackled me like an NFL veteran, and I focused on breaking my fall instead of struggling. As I thudded hard into the floor with his weight on top of me, I used some extra telekinetic leverage in my grappling throw, flipping our positions so I was on top. Grabbing him by the throat, I cocked my arm back to punch his teeth in, simultaneously glancing up to see if Lienna had another stun marble ready.

I saw Druthers step up behind her.

"Lienna!" I yelled.

She started to turn. Druthers's hand landed on her shoulder as though he were about to offer a patronizing condolence for our failed attack. In his other hand, he lifted a short, shiny dagger, its blade streaked with blood—Ashbluff's blood.

For a horrified instant, I expected him to plunge it into Lienna's body.

Instead, he held it out to her.

She took it in both hands, gripping it tightly, and aimed the point at the soft skin under her chin. She poised it there, otherwise unmoving, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

"Now, Mr. Morris," Druthers said, his voice a touch more gravelly than his son's and just as loathsome, "you will do exactly as I say, or Miss Shen will suffer the consequences."

Lienna didn't move or even blink. Druthers's hand was still holding her shoulder, his fingers digging in.

He was a goddamn mentalist. The senior bastard was a mentalist, and he had control of Lienna.

"Nuh-uh, Kit," Kade rasped through my grip on his throat. "I can sense the moment you gather your focus to attempt something. Do you think you can pull the dagger out of her hands faster than she can put it through her throat?"

My head reeled with a dozen wild ideas on how to get out of this mess, and I couldn't attempt any of them. I couldn't risk it. Lienna was holding that deadly point against her vulnerable skin, and I didn't know if I could act fast enough to save her.

"Now," Kade said with a nasty smile, "stand up and put your hands behind your head."

I clenched my jaw. What choice did I have? With stiff movements, I clambered up and placed my hands as instructed.

Kade got to his feet, nonchalantly straightened the shoulder of his protective vest, then reached out and plucked the earpiece from my ear. He pitched it into a nearby garbage can before turning to Lienna and removing hers as well.

She didn't react, her stare utterly blank.

"In case you were wondering, Kit," Kade said as he faced me again. "My father's mental control doesn't break the moment he releases his victim. She'll still follow his last order after you separate them."

My stomach twisted. Fear pounded through every fiber of my being, and I couldn't come up with a snarky retort.

Kade studied my face with a smug smile, enjoying my reaction.

"This is what we've been waiting for?" Druthers asked in a musing tone, his hand still gripping Lienna's shoulder while his gaze slid up and down my body in a way that made me want to instantly invisify myself.

"Yes," Kade replied, also scanning me. What was I, a mythic show dog on display for the judges? "I wasn't sure at first if he would fit the bill, but he's rapidly unlocking his abilities."

"How many so far?"

"A portion of the Psychica spectrum." Kade gave me another once-over. "But he doesn't have full control yet, so it's not all clear to me."

"You know, he would love to give you a demonstration," I snapped, "if you'd like to see what he can do."

Druthers ignored me. "Good. The timing is fortunate. Despite your previous failures, we now have the artifact and the psycho warper."

Kade didn't react to his father's dig about failures and turned a slick smile on me. "Kit was so helpful, sparing me another trip to Vancouver to pick him up."

"Let's get moving. Ashbluff's body needs to be discovered as soon as the voting period concludes, or it may create complications for our candidate."

Theircandidate? Nausea roiled through me. We'd gotten it wrong. Kade hadn't come here to set off a weapon of mass magical destruction and kill dozens or hundreds of people. They had planned to kill Ashbluff and install their own puppet director.

Druthers guided Lienna toward the door. Walking without resistance, she lowered the knife to her side. I didn't move, hands behind my head, heart hammering in my throat.

Kade picked up his potion gun, holstered it, then gestured toward Lienna and his father. "Shall we, Kit?"

"Eat shit, asshole."

But I had no choice. I trailed Druthers and Lienna out into the carpeted hall. Kade shut the door and fell into step beside me. We walked together like old pals back the way Lienna and I had come, returning to the stairwell.

Every movement was physically painful. It took all my willpower not to turn and slug Kade in the face or unleash a Blackout warp on him and his father—but even if Druthers hadn't been wearing an anti-Psychica artifact, which I was one hundred percent sure he was, as soon as I tried to warp or use telekinesis, Kade would know it.

So I kept walking, each heavy step like a giant's boot crushing my soul to smithereens under its heel.

"I told you, didn't I?" Kade murmured to me. "That you would cooperate with us one way or another."

"You haven't got what you want yet."

I still didn't know what they wanted with me, but I was fairly confident it wouldn't end at walking Lienna and me through the upper floors of a New York skyscraper.

Kade chuckled low in his throat. "It's almost poetic how well you played into our hands. Considering how long we've waited for someone like you, I'm disappointed that it's over already. I was enjoying our game of cat and mouse."

"You're a sick fuck," I growled.

He gave me a strangely warm smile, as though I'd paid him the world's loveliest compliment.

Ugh.

As Druthers approached the stairwell door, it clattered and swung open. Three black-clad, armor-vested, MPD-cap-wearing agents appeared, their stark expressions shooting straight to our little group.

For one second, one tiny sliver of a moment, I thought Lienna and I might be saved.

"Director Druthers, Agent Kade," the lead one said respectfully. "We're ready for you on the roof."

"Excellent," Druthers responded like a proper department boss and not a mind-controlling murderer.

The lead agent glanced at me and Lienna, not noticing the bloody blade hidden alongside her thigh. "Should we escort your prisoners?"

"Agent Kade can handle them," Druthers replied smoothly. "Report to Commissioner Sparks and send a message to Director Griva. Tell him we've got everything we came for."

"Yes, sir."

The three agents did an about-face and re-entered the stairwell, taking the steps at a jog. I watched them go, my faint hope dying away, leaving nothing but hopeless darkness.

Not only were they taking orders from Druthers, but they also knew who Kade was. He wasn't disguised as an agent; he didn't need a disguise. The only proof he was a corrupt killer had come from our little Canadian precinct, and what was that against the power Druthers could wield?

And not just Druthers. Commissioner Sparks of the IA and Director Griva of Special Investigations too. All three of them had combined their power and influence to allow their minions—like Kade—to act with impunity, to engineer Ashbluff's murder, and to take control of the DD by rigging it so their candidate pal got the job.

When we'd rushed to New York, we hadn't been pitting ourselves against the Consilium. We'd been pitting ourselves against the full might of the MPD.

Kade and I followed Druthers and Lienna up one, two, three flights of stairs. We passed the landing for the building's top level before coming to a final door marked with an exit sign.

Druthers pushed it open.

A dusky sky in shades of magenta and purple greeted us as a cold wind gusted in our faces. The skyscraper's rooftop stretched out ahead of us, and at the far end was a broad helipad illuminated by bright lights around its circumference. On top of it, a black helicopter waited, its rotors stationary.

Four more MPD agents stood near the helicopter, dressed exactly like the ones who'd interrupted our stairwell march. Another six were positioned around three figures on their knees with their hands pressed to the back of their heads, just like me.

Blythe, Vinny, and Tim.

As Druthers strode across the rooftop, Lienna walking beside him with robotic steps, I met Blythe's eyes from twenty feet away and saw the flare of hope in them die out.

This had been our last chance to avert disaster, and we'd failed. Now all that was left was to see which of us would live long enough to watch the world burn.