Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

Paris was cold.

Not as cold as he had been locked in that awful freezer, but down here in the violet dark, it wasn't much better.

Violet .

He froze and reevaluated his surroundings. Not pitch-black, a purple hue coloring the edges. A dream—or memory—he had fallen into. Whose was it? And where was it?

He inhaled and smelled earth and brine, shifted his feet and felt water lap at his ankles, and when he stretched his arms out wide, his fingertips brushed walls of dirt and mud, tree roots and rock.

The tunnels beneath the Huimen Enclave. While he'd never been there before, he was sure that was where he was now, in the network of underground tunnels Mary had shown him.

Splashing echoed from somewhere in the tunnels, growing louder, coming closer. Paris flattened himself against one side of the tunnel and inched along the wall, careful not to splash, until he found the next junction and rounded the corner, plastering himself to a different cold dirt wall.

And waiting.

The splashing grew louder, accompanied by that horrible voice Paris would never forget. "You can't save her, warlock!" bellowed the giant who'd tortured and tried to sacrifice him. Who couldn't see him now, Paris reminded himself as the splashing footsteps stopped right outside the tunnel where he hid. He was here for a reason; he had to keep his eyes and ears open for clues.

He peered around the corner and spied two people in the main tunnel, the warlock's green magic faint but bright enough to light his and the woman's face. He recognized Quinn Paxton from the photo Mary had shown him—tan skin, dark hair, green eyes, compact body—but he was all skin and bones, his hair limp, his eyes dull, and his clothes too big for his emaciated frame.

Paris didn't recognize the woman with him. She wasn't much older than him, with tan skin and big brown eyes, and like the victim from the Portola parking lot, her face was bloodied and bruised. But unlike that woman, this stranger was pregnant, one arm in a makeshift sling, the other wrapped protectively over her round belly.

"Go," Quinn said, with a nod toward the tunnel where Paris hid. "I'll hold him off."

"How?" she said. "You're weak already. Vincent made sure of that."

"I'm strong enough to give you a head start."

"You're mine," the giant shouted, ever closer. "Both of you."

"Please, Pati, go," Quinn urged the woman.

Pati, Pati, Pati , Paris repeated to himself, committing her name to memory.

She clasped Quinn's hand in hers. "I'll name him Pax, after you."

He laid his other hand on her belly, a mist of green shimmering around them. "It would be my honor. Now go!" With a final sideways hug, he directed her into the tunnel, and she splashed past Paris, into the dark.

Just in time as the giant sent a barrage of fireballs down the tunnel. They exploded against a shield of green, one after another until the giant was right in front of Quinn. The worst night of Paris's life, his nightmares since, come to life again.

"Paris."

He whipped his gaze to the warlock who was staring straight at him, his mouth moving, forming urgent words. "Help her," he pleaded, a second before a fireball sizzled through the shield of magic and swallowed him whole.

Paris would have lurched to sitting in bed if not for the man draped over him, Mac's thigh thrown over his and an arm slung across his middle. Mac's breaths blew steadily over his chest, his familiar snores the first thing that penetrated the blood whooshing in Paris's ears as he returned to this reality, only a few hours since he and Mac had fallen back asleep after making love. His mind—and body—wanted to go back there, to that perfect place of warmth and connection, but he didn't have time. He needed to get the details down before they flitted away.

He scooted out from under Mac, a testament to the raven's exhaustion that he didn't wake, then slipped the rest of the way out of bed, pulling on his sweats and sneaking out of the room, closing the door behind him. He hustled through Mac's office to the sitting room where he kept his painting supplies and gathered what he needed, setting up an easel in the corner and getting to work, painting the faces and places of his nightmare.

Once every detail had made it to canvas, Paris laid down his brush and returned to the bedroom. He'd been planning while painting, a means to rescue Pati coming together in his head. But he stalled over the threshold, watching Mac's beautiful body rise and fall, his tan skin warm and rosy in the late morning sun. The aura around him flowing blue and violet, red bleeding through from the rim, and at the very center, a new green orb. The man who'd helped everyone else first the past two weeks, who'd done everything Nature had asked of him, was finally taking a much-needed rest.

How could Paris wake him? How could he burden him with more? How could he ever convince Mac to let him do what he had to? Paris could take it from here, thanks in no small part to the confidence Mac had instilled in him. I've got this , he'd told Mac. Now he had to prove it—to Mac, to himself, to everyone who'd ever thought him a fool.