In the darkest part of the night, even the starlight had faded. The city of New York, barely a toddler in this age before skyscrapers, slept on in dreams and shadows. I was exhausted and scared out of my mind. And though I couldn’t be completely, one hundred percent certain, Blasi didn’t look like a guy who was planning to kill his girlfriend and roast her body in a house fire.
Something else was bothering me. But Bran had already hoisted himself halfway back onto the roof and was gesturing for me to hurry.
“The stairway’s clear,” he said. “Come on, I’ll guide you.”
He disappeared back into the dark rectangle. I descended and let him lead me through the dusty, cluttered rooms to the stairwell.
Just before we eased out onto the top landing where Collum and Phoebe were waiting for us, Bran spun. His arms slid around my waist. His lips found mine, warm and soft and too quick.
“Sorry,” he whispered into my hair. “Couldn’t be helped.”
“I forgive you,” I said, but I held on to him, needing this . . . needing us . . . for just one more second.
“Blasi’s here,” Phoebe whispered as we scurried over to join them. “He and Gabriella and the other two guards just went inside.”
The door to Tesla’s lab must’ve been left open because I could just make out Bran’s features as they clenched. “If he hurt her—”
“I don’t think so,” I told them. “In fact—”
“Nikola Tesla!” Blasi’s voice boomed up the stairway. “It is such an honor to finally meet you. I’ve admired your work all my life.”
“Illogical,” we heard Tesla reply. “You could not be many years behind me in age, and therefore what you term as ‘my work’ is not something for which someone like you could have a lifelong admiration. Leaving that aside, I ask you what kind of esteem is it that lends itself to abduction? Speak plainly. What it is that you want?”
The sound of a door snapping shut, and the stairway went black.
“Hope,” Collum whispered. “You stay here while we go take care of the guards in the stairwell.” He turned to Phoebe and Bran before I could open my mouth to protest. “We do this fast and quiet. No shots.”
Bran snapped a two-fingered salute. “Pardon,” he said. “Bit of clarification. Are we snapping necks or bashing brains today? Your call.”
Collum, whose sarcasm meter had never been very finely tuned, didn’t blink as he handed out the crowbars Bran had scavenged from the construction site next door. “Disable and disarm only. We have tactical advantage here, so a solid blow to the back of the neck should do it. We are not murderers.”
God, I so did not want to stay up here all alone. But I had no illusions as to my combat abilities. I knelt at the top of the staircase as the other three crept down.
Thuds. A couple of grunts. Silence.
Taking too long. Way, way too long. Where are they? Oh God, what if—?
Phoebe rounded the landing, grinning as she loped up the steps, the boys just behind her. They were barely out of breath.
“Didn’t even see us coming,” she told me. “Left them trussed up and snoring on the second landing.”
“So,” Collum rasped. “There are still three guards inside, plus Blasi. We go in hard. Cameron, you cover the right. I take the left. Phee, you come in behind. We’ll cover while you locate Mac and Doug, aye? By then, Cameron and I should have cleared, but I’ll still feel better when Mac’s free. Hit knees, hips, torso. No kill shots unless absolutely necessary.”
“Speak for yourself,” Phoebe muttered.
“What about me?”
They shared a look I didn’t like. At all. Collum’s eyes skated over me, assessing. He frowned when he saw me clutching my one measly dagger. Between the three of them, they carried a veritable arsenal.
Phoebe reached into her bag and retrieved a small silver revolver about the size of my palm. “What about this?”
“She hasn’t trained with guns,” Collum argued. “Much less a derringer.”
“Aye, but we can hardly let her go unarmed, now can we?”
“What about the Colt?” Bran said.
Collum shook his head, which made me want to slap that serious I’m-in-charge look off his face as he said, “Hope isn’t going in at all. Not until I give the word.”
“Just stop it!” I snapped. “Okay? Stop talking about me like I’m not even here. I know I’m no warrior, but those are my people too. Just give me a freaking gun, Collum.”
Collum peered at me for a long moment. I knew he was probably thinking: Can we really trust her not to shoot off her own foot?
I glared right back, letting my rage and determination show. I knew Collum and Phoebe—?Bran, too, for that matter—?thought they were protecting me. But I was not helpless, and I was sick and tired of other people deciding my fate.
I’m a Viator too, dammit. And I can decide what I’m capable of, thank you very much.
Before anyone could stop me, I snatched the Lilliputian gun from Phoebe’s hand and moved to the steps. “Ready when you are.”
Chapter 44
IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST. LATER, I WOULD TRY TO re-create it in my head, but even with my abilities, there were simply too many elements to follow.
Kneeling outside the door, through which came the sounds of crashes and shattering glass, the slam of heavy objects being overturned.
A sharp crack. A muffled cry.
Then Collum and Bran were blasting through the door. Shouts and ear-numbing shots. Bangs and more glass shattering. The caustic mixture of gunpowder and burning oil and frying electricity. Smoke everywhere. A shot at the ceiling that made the bulbs flicker and go out.
After that, everything seemed to happen in a series of flashes. Lit only by the crackle of electricity overhead, my brain was unable to decipher the utter and complete destruction of what once had been Nikola Tesla’s lab. Blasi’s men had ripped the place apart.
“Holy. Friggin’. Hell.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Bran said as he shoved me down behind an overturned table.
Golden and crimson sparks danced and popped from dangling wires. Chunks of machinery and other, unidentifiable objects lay strewn across the floor in a jumble of glass and twisted metal. A six-foot tower, one of two that were identical to those that lay beneath Christopher Manor, was on its side. Half of what might have been an intricate web of black yarn was still tacked to the wall. The rest hung in a limp tangle.
“Doug! Mac!” Phoebe shouted in triumph as she wrenched open a small utility closet and the two men tumbled out.
Collum scrabbled over a pile of detritus to the spot where Jonathan and Tesla sat on the floor, hands and wrists bound. Tesla’s eye was swelling. As Collum struggled to free them, I saw one of the guards take aim. I didn’t think. I just raised my gun and fired. I missed, of course. The bullet ricocheted toward me, spraying me with shards of brick before splintering one of the tall windows. The building itself seemed to inhale. A draft of dark smoke streamed in to thicken the already dense air. The shot was off, sure, but when the guy ducked, Bran dove on top of him. They went down in a flurry of fists.
I couldn’t see Blasi or Gabriella anywhere.
Coughing. Coughing. Everyone coughing now.