Chapter 23

I pulled over on the side of the road and looked around. There were hotels on either side of us. The fancy kind that I could never have afforded to stay in. On one side, we had the super fancy and large hotel that wouldn’t have many people. On the other side we had the kind that was full of suites, but didn’t look like more than a normal hotel.

“Which one?” I asked.

Billy glanced out her window and then mine, taking inventory of both buildings. Then she squinted and pointed out her window. “That one. According to my senses there’s only a dozen people in that whole building and only two of them are legions.”

Considering how they’re tracking managed to block us out, that made sense. These weren’t the kind of hotels that were hurting for clientele. More than ten people worked in there, so some of the employees must have fallen under the masking that was keeping us from finding Millie.

I pulled into the parking lot and waved off the valet that rushed over. He frowned in annoyance, but didn’t get in my way when I pulled into a parking space. I didn’t like strangers driving my truck. Hell, I barely tolerated people I knew well driving my truck. They didn’t treat it as well as I did.

There was no doorman at the front of the building, which I found odd. I supposed not all fancy hotels had them, but this one felt like it would. The man behind the reception counter glanced up at us. One of his eyebrows rose, but he masked the expression quickly when I drew nearer. “How may I be of assistance?” he asked. He was dressed in a suit and his hair was immaculately combed. I couldn’t see a single stray strand.

“How many guests do you have right now?” I asked.

He immediately went on defense. “I do not see how that is of any concern to you or your companions.”

I leaned against the counter and eyed him up and down. “Sir,” I said politely. “You look like a nice gentleman—” And he did. His cologne was too strong, almost masking the scent of his fear, but he was a human and they were ill equipped to defend themselves. “However, you may not have as many nice people staying here as you think. You don’t have to give me names or anything. Just an approximation of how many guests you may or may not have.”

His fear became more potent and I eased back from the counter. It was disproportionate to the words I had spoken. “I do believe it was time you left, ma’am,” he said, but I could see the whites all around his brown eyes and his hands were shaking ever so slightly.

The lobby door opened. I stayed facing the man, but Billy turned to see who was coming in. I took a deep breath and didn’t need Billy’s curse to know who had just walked in. I glanced over my shoulder and glared at Alain and Ella. Neither of them seemed to care.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “And how did you get past Henrik?”

“Or Loki?” Sunbeam chimed in, sounding worried.

“Is she here?” Ella asked, her eyes shifting around the entire building. Frantically hunting for the baby that she had lost.

“Ma’am, you really should take your companions and leave,” the clerk said, stepping away from the counter.

We all ignored him.

“I wasn’t going to be stuck at home for another day,” Alain said. “I did what I had to do. Now tell me, is my daughter here or not?” He took an aggressive step forward, but stopped before making a second. “Please… I just want to get her back.” This last was said so quietly the clerk would never have heard it.

“I don’t know,” I told him.

“Ma’am, if you don’t leave now, I’ll call security,” the clerk warned.

“Then let’s find her!” Alain yelled. “You came in here for a reason right? Let’s just bust down all the doors and see if she’s here.”

“What do you mean you did what was necessary?” Sunbeam squeaked. “Did you hurt them? Did you hurt Shade?”

“I’ll call the cops!” the clerk yelled.

The statement made me turn to look at him, putting my back to chaos that was emerging between the Heron Family and Millie’s parents. The clerk was pressed up against the wall and his eyes were wide. His entire body shaking. The scent of his fear was leaking out into the entire room. Rising over the scent of the floor cleaner, the polished metal and tile, old perfumes and the people who had walked through this lobby in the last three or four days.

The fear was odd, but it was the thing about the cops that clued me in that something was going on here. Calling the cops in Seattle was about as useful as pointing an unloaded gun at a psychopath. The others hadn’t noticed any of this, two of them too worried about their Family and the other two worried about their daughter.

So when the elevator doors dinged, I was the only one who glanced over. Until a high pitched voice screamed in delight, “Daddy!”

Millie broke away from her keepers, two legions I’d never seen before, and ran straight at Alain. He whipped around and snatched his daughter out of the air and held her close to his chest.

One of the two legions cursed and whipped out their phone. While she did that, the man she was with stepped out of the elevator.

“Alain!” I yelled, “Get her out of here!”

He didn’t get the chance. A second after the last word was out of my mouth, the male legion unleashed a wave of pure power that crackled the air and brought the scent of magic, obliterating all the other aromas in the lobby. The force hit us all at the same time like a battering ram. It socked into my stomach and chest, stealing all the air I had in my lungs and I became airborne.

When I landed again, I skidded across the slick tiles of the lobby and into the reception desk. I hit hard enough that I heard the wood crack against my body. Dust and splinters rained down on me. I was on the ground for seconds before I began to scramble to my feet, shedding bits of wood the whole way.

Instinctively, I threw my senses up. The only legions I could sense were Billy and Millie’s parents. There were no other signatures. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the human clerk on the ground. Blood was leaking out the back of his head and there was a hole in the wall, about his height. His eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

The two legions stepped out of the elevator together. The only person who seemed unaffected by the blast was Sunbeam. She stood where she had been the whole time. Her body tense. The woman in the elevator had been thrown against the wall and the man was panting, like it had exhausted him.

It wasn’t enough to keep them from attacking though.

Billy and Ella were still scrambling to their feet. Alain had landed on his shoulder and Millie was sobbing loudly.

Sunbeam dropped her bag to the ground and started rummaging through it frantically, while I dashed forward.

The stairwell door banged open and half a dozen legions poured out. Eight verses four. Time to enact our plan. Alain was still on the ground, but I felt confident we could protect him, if we got the baby away. “Get Millie and run,” I said as I passed Ella. To emphasize my point, I grabbed her arm and thrust her toward her mate.

There was a sickening crack from behind me and I glanced over to see Sunbeam swinging something. The first hit had produced the crack and a man was down on the floor, blood leaking from his temple. To ensure he stayed down, Sunbeam swung the object over her head and thrust it down, right into the same spot she hit before. There was another crack and judging by the spray of blood, that legion wasn’t getting up anytime soon. When she was stationary again, I saw that the thing she swung was a tire iron.

How the fuck did she hide a tire iron in that messenger bag?

That was all the time I had for contemplation. I came up against a woman who immediately began swinging at me. I dodged her first hit, but she moved with more speed than finesse and managed to kick me in the thigh. I ignored the rocket of pain that shot through my leg and grabbed her by the arm she was raising over her head. With a quick twist, her wrist broke and then her elbow. Another twist and her shoulder popped out of socket.

The woman screamed in pain and I silenced her by bashing her forehead into the clean tile. She wasn’t dead, yet, but I couldn’t waste the seconds it would take to finish her off.

Billy was fighting the man who had blasted us across the room. She was all speed. Her movements were lightning fast and he could keep up. I could feel the air around me rippling as he tried using his magic against her. Not all legions got magic, but those who did were extra dangerous. I trusted my cousin to be able to handle this one.

There was another crack followed by a body hitting the ground. Sunbeam was handling her own just fine.

No, it wasn’t them I was trying to get to. It was Ella and Alain. They were having some trouble getting Millie out of the building. Alain, recovered, was clutching his daughter and dodging around two men who were blocking the exit. One was brandishing a knife and swiping it dangerously close to the toddler’s body. Millie was looking over her father’s shoulder and directly at me. Her blue eyes streaming tears and her face contorted into misery and fear.

The other man blocking the exit wasn’t doing anything so stupid. He kept his eyes on Ella. She was trying to slide between her husband and the man trying to keep him in the building.

If I wanted to get to them, I had to deal with the woman from the elevator and another man who was approaching me. They were both blond and blue eyed. Their facial features similar enough to tell me they were related. Probably brother and sister. The woman came at me first, launching herself forward. Her balance was off, though. Disoriented from getting thrown against the elevator cart.

I easily slipped around her only to have her brother’s arms come around my middle and haul me into the air. My feet left the ground and my arms were pinned to my side. Wiggling around wouldn’t do anything and there wasn’t an object near me to use as leverage. So I went slack. I was an inch over six feet tall and made mostly of muscle. Legions were strong, but it still took him by surprise. His arms locked around me tightly, but I was close enough to the ground to work with it.

Instead of doing anything fancy, I used classic self-defense moves. I stomped on his foot and threw my elbow into his gut. He made a choking sound and his hold loosened just enough to give me some leverage. I snatched his wrist up and twisted my body around until his weight went into the air and he landed flat on his back in front of me.

That’s when I played dirty.

I stomped on his face with the heel of one foot. His nose snapped loudly and blood poured from him. The second stomp broke his jaw and his screams became these guttural moans. I lifted my foot to finish him off with a third strike, but I heard something squeak on the tile behind me. Without thinking, I threw myself to the side just as his sister made a swinging motion, knife in her hand.

Going with the momentum of falling, I rolled onto my feet and immediately threw my leg out. My foot slid between the woman’s legs, as she stood with her feet apart, and I yanked my leg to the side. Her limb went out from under her and she landed on the floor next to her moaning brother.

A flash of dark clothing appeared and something slender was struck down. The sound of Sunbeam’s tire iron meeting flesh met my ears and suddenly the man’s moans stopped.

The woman was scrambling to her feet. Moving as fast as I could, I reached forward, grabbing her by her arm and threw her over my shoulder, getting her back on the ground and right in front of me. She slashed out with her knife, missing my face by a bare inch. She drew her arm back and came at me again. I managed to get mine up in defense just in time. Our wrists met between our bodies and I was staring at the tip of her dagger.

Billy appeared behind the woman and threw her off me. Free once more, I turned to the important fight. Ella and Alain were stuck in the same game of chicken they had been when I started dealing with the others. Sunbeam and Billy were tag teaming the woman, giving her little hits (and not so little thanks to that tire iron), so I was free to handle the legions keeping us trapped.

I rose to my feet and started moving toward them. The smallest noise sounded off behind me and I shouldn’t have recognized it so fast, but I did. Instincts took over and I dropped to the ground just in time to feel the air ripple above me followed by the boom of a gun going off.

And bodies hit the floor.

Alain’s head took the bullet. Blood sprayed into the air and he fell forward. The scent of death, blood and hot metal filled my nostrils. His arms were still secure around Millie, as he tottered forward. They loosed as he hit the ground and she crashed into the tile next to him, screaming louder as pain filled her tiny body. Ella dropped down right beside her mate. Her eyes rolling into the back of her head and her body twitching from trauma.

The two legions didn’t waste a second. The one with the knife grabbed Millie and took off through the doors of the hotel, the other on his heels. I scrambled to my feet and went after them, barely looking over my shoulder for the sight of the shooter. So it was a surprise when I saw the leather clad man who had been perpetrating the kidnapping from the beginning. He stood in the doorway to the stairwell. When he saw me looking at him, he smiled and retreated into the darkness.

Then I was out the front doors. The two legions were piling into a car. One already working on starting it while the other was clutching the screaming toddler to his chest. By the time I was on the sidewalk, the car was started and they were driving. They peeled out of the space and came right at me. I dodged to the side, tucking my body safely against the building and they careened out of the parking lot and into the flow of traffic. I kept an eye on the car, but even so, by the time I got to my truck, they were out of sight. And we’d lost the baby again.

I rushed back into the hotel, worried that I’d left my cousin in there to deal with any left overs. There were bodies everywhere. Blood covered the tiles and there was more than a few broken skulls that I could see.

Billy held Ella, whose body was twitching. I couldn’t hear the other woman’s heartbeat or her breathing. As I got closer, though, she gasped in one large breath, but stayed slack in my cousin’s arms.

Billy sighed and leaned back on her heels. “She survived,” Billy said, looking heartbroken.

Ella hadn’t been hit by anything. Alain was clearly dead beside her. When he died, their mate bond had ripped out of her. Legions don’t do well without their mates. The force of one’s death destroyed the bond and when that happened… I’d heard it described as being gutted. The pain was so great that the body shut down, the heart stopped beating, the lungs stopped taking in air. Everything just stopped. It killed most legions. A handful were unlucky enough that their body took the trauma and kept going. That didn’t mean they would live, though.

After the initial loss, the body started going into shock. Starting now, since she was still alive, her body would randomly shut down again. If her vitals returned to normal after the first time it happened, she’d live. If they didn’t, she’d be dead within two weeks.

I knelt down by Billy and Ella, who was alive, but unconscious, and hung my head. “Millie’s gone again.”

Billy nodded.

“We need to get her home. Somewhere safe for her to recover,” I continued, looking over the carnage of the hotel. “And I need to call Lixa for cleanup.”

I glanced at Alain. The top half of his face was missing. Blood and brains were splashed across the tile. Legions were fast enough to dodge a bullet, but we had to hear it first. I had moved. And he had taken the hit.