Sin & Lightning (Demigods of San Francisco Book 5) Read online

  She screamed. My spirit friends continued to pile onto her. Zorn reached her and picked her up before tossing her across the room. Her back hit the wall before her head and she slid down to the floor. Her hands flung outward and a huge blast of magical fear doused the room. Zorn froze, his knees wobbling but not buckling. He moved a leg forward, his exertion obvious.

  “Guard Alexis,” Kieran yelled, waving Zorn out. “Forget about me. Find Alexis’s body and guard her. Set Thane loose.”

  The first cat jumped onto the coffee table, knocking away the food and drinks. It hunched, watching me through eerie, glowing bronze eyes—the female cat. She roared again, and another shock wave of spirit pounded into me. Lydia’s invisible web hung on to me for a moment, reluctant to let go, but the cat’s calls finally sent me hurtling from the room.

  I punched through a wall and sailed out into dead silence. The bright desert sun beat down on me, and a bird lazily sailed through a blue sky. In the distance, a storm brewed, building quickly. Lightning would come with it, I had no doubt.

  Panicked, hanging out in nothingness, I floated through the sky. I had to get back to my body. I felt it calling, and Harding had taught me how to pull myself back. There was only one problem: the shortest path to my body would take me past Lydia. I doubted I’d be allowed to escape twice.

  “Lexi.” Jack popped into existence next to me. He looked down before his eyes widened and his hands started to windmill. “Oh shit!”

  “It’s fine. Calm down.” The words reverberated through the nothingness around us. “Spirit is holding your soul. Besides, you’re already dead. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “I fall, lose my shit, and end up back at your house feeling helpless, that’s what.” His chest rose and fell, not needing air but going through the motions of taking deep breaths anyway. “You need to get back to your body. Only Henry, Thane, and Zorn are mobile. Everyone else is fading like Kieran is. They were given a drug or something. So only three are running around trying to find you, but this place is huge and it’ll take them forever. Meanwhile, one of Lydia’s people can just call you in from behind the Line. They can snatch you real easy. You need to get back to your body and fight your way to the guys. You need to stand with them until Kieran is back online.”

  He stared at me expectantly.

  “I don’t know how to get back to my fucking body,” I growled. “Lydia’s in the way.” Except there had to be a way around her, didn’t there? Maybe if I just created another path…

  “One step at a time,” Jack said as I drifted through spirit, pulling myself along. This method of movement seemed to deplete my energy more quickly than using something else to pull me.

  “I don’t have any feet,” I said, continuing to move.

  “I know,it’s a trip, right? It was really hard to get used to that. I don’t mind this flying bit, though. That’s not so bad. Did you see what those cats did? Something is up with those things. The thump Zorn gave Lydia didn’t seem to bother her for long, but when I left, she still had blood dribbling down her face from those scratches.”

  Chad popped up beside us, looking harried, eyes bugging out. “Why are you out here?” he demanded. “Get back to your fucking body or you’ll be permanently in this space with us. Lydia sent her team to recover you, and Kieran is down for the count.”

  Mia popped up next to me, her eyes wild, the air about her panicked. Her spirit looked sunken and weak, almost inflating like being slowly pumped up.

  “Mia!” I cried, barely stopping myself from lurching for her and trying to wrap her in a hug. “Mia! It’s you! Where have you been?”

  Her eyes focused on me, and then seemed to notice Jack and Chad. Her eyebrows lowered. “I don’t know. That bitch Demigod grabbed me out of the blue. Me and a couple others that were on duty. It happened so fast—we saw her, and before I could say anything, we were…tethered… It felt like she tethered me or something. I heard you call, though. I heard you…call…and the ropes disappeared…” Her eyes clouded. She shook her head. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

  I kept pulling myself toward my body, hopefully far enough to the side that I wouldn’t sail past Lydia. My energy sank fast.

  “She needs to get back to her body,” Chad said.

  “Her body is in some strange hall with Bria and a really handsome man. I popped up there first. I can get back there.” Mia grabbed my shoulder as though I actually had one.

  Lights and colors speckled my vision. A whoosh washed over me. The world stopped spinning, and Mia let me go, the two of us now hovering in spirit back where I’d started.

  Dylan held my lifeless body in his arms, standing in the middle of the corridor with Red on one side and Bria on the other, both of them brandishing weapons. Daisy stood behind them, a dagger at the ready, her eyes hard and fearless, and Mordecai waited not far from his pile of clothes, in wolf form. Several grim-faced men and women were slowly advancing on them, the same way a gardener with a shovel would creep up on a poisonous snake. They’d found me fast.

  There was no sign of the shadow man from earlier, but I had no time to spare. I dove back into my body and gasped for air, the transition seamless, before pulling on the Line and filling myself with power. I rolled out of Dylan’s arms, startling him, before grabbing up our attackers’ fluttering souls and yanking. The souls slammed against their casings, and the dozen advancing enemies staggered but didn’t go down.

  “Take them out!” I yelled, my body shaking and sucking as much as I could from the Line. It pulsed quickly, matching my beating heart again, sending waves of power through me.

  “What do you need?” Jack asked, falling in at my side. John and Chad were there a moment later, followed, unbelievably, by Frank.

  “What’s the status here?” Frank asked as Red ran at the enemy. She flung her hands forward, one after the other, alternating. Knives appeared between her fingers before blooming in enemy bodies, so fast that I couldn’t keep track, and neither could they.

  “Ah yes. Battle. Your mother was a great fighter. Attack them!” Frank motioned me on.

  “I can’t yet,” I yelled, sucking in more power, feeling it bolster my body. Just a bit more, and I’d be back in business, I could feel it. I might not have done an oath, but I still had the benefits of the blood bond, and healed at faster rates.

  “Yes, you sure can, young lady. Your mother said you had a sprinkling of her in you, and I’ve seen it. Go on, now—don’t be the lame duck of this battle party.”

  Red ripped a falling body to the side, punched forward, miraculously found and produced a knife in her fist at the last moment, and sliced open a neck. She punched with her other hand as she whirled, sticking out a foot and slamming her sole into a nose. The crack made me wince. The man fell with blood already running down his lips.

  Bria followed Red through the group, her own knives ripping and stabbing, finishing off whoever Red hadn’t.

  Magical fear tingled across my body and bit into my skin, but it was absolutely nothing compared to what Lydia or Aaron could do. A slim slice of spirit slashed my skin, and Dylan sucked in a startled breath.

  “Gotta be about time,” I said, running forward.

  “That’s my girl! Give ’em hell!” Frank shouted.

  I ripped across the soul casings of a few of Lydia’s minions I could feel running toward our skirmish, saving my strength in case the others flagged. Red pulled a gun out of God knew where, stood still for two beats, and shot three times. The last three bodies fell. Bria glanced up before plucking her knife from someone’s eye.

  “Bria, do you have your Necromancer stuff with you?” I asked, jogging after Red and making sure the kids were keeping up.

  Red descended on the group I’d slowed like a falling star, clearly in her element with her fighting magic in close quarters. She cracked someone’s neck, dodged a punch, grabbed an arm and bent it the wrong way, moving all the time.

  “The one time I’m without it,” Bria sai
d. “You don’t have the energy?”

  “I don’t have as much as I’d like,” I answered.

  “We’re bound to encounter another Necromancer in this place,” she said, falling back with me. “Or a few. Find me one and I’ll take their shit. I don’t think it’s wise for us to go back to the suite.”

  “We need to work toward the meeting room Kieran is in. He’s been drugged. He’s out. Three of the guys are heading toward me. Us. And the cats.” I felt five more people coming, running our way. “Low-level fours coming,” I hollered. I punched their spirit boxes as we turned a corner, heading for the stairs.

  They stood in the way, recovering from the attack far faster than most people would. We were dealing with Hades magical people now, and they were no strangers to having spirit used against them.

  Lightning rained down from the ceiling, striking each of them in the head. Three screamed. The other two didn’t get a chance before all five started convulsing, electrocution not a fast or pretty death. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about the things I could do.

  The lightning slid along the ceiling and crawled down the wall like a live thing. It seeped into the carpet, leaving scorch marks in its wake. The hall smelled like burned skin and hair, and I needed a second to stare in shock and keep from retching.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? A red carpet?” Frank said, jerking me out of my daze. “Get moving.”

  “That was gross,” I said, pausing at the landing.

  “That was gross.” Bria nodded. “Poor Jerry isn’t going to like that one bit.”

  “Lightning isn’t always pretty,” Dylan said.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  Bria took the map from Red, who was quickly cleaning weapons and tucking them away. “He’s on the third floor at the other end of the building. If we go this way”—she pointed down the hall—“we’ll pass that weird stuffed-animal asylum and maybe I can get some of them active, eh? Just need to find a Necromancer. Too bad they usually hide from the action.”

  We started jogging, passing lower-level staff hiding behind plants, in doorways, and one crouched behind a potted plant half her size.

  A roar shook the foundation of the building. It echoed down the corridor we’d chosen and tumbled across the floor above us.

  “Thane has gone Berserk,” Bria said. “Watch for him, Lexi. Do not cross his path.”

  “You’re talking to me like I don’t know what he’s capable of. Two ahead, high level three.”

  Mordecai loped ahead of us, and I didn’t try to stop him. I couldn’t hold him back forever—I’d save that for when the enemy was more powerful than a level three.

  He snarled as he leapt on the first of the crew, the sound competing with another of Thane’s roars. Daisy darted ahead of us with a burst of speed. She threw a knife mid-stride. It flew, end over end, and dug into the chest of the second interloper, a woman dressed in spandex. She stopped and clutched at the knife hilt, looking down in confusion. Mordecai slammed her to the ground.

  Zorn’s soul popped onto my radar, on the same level but at the other side of the building. Henry ran with him.

  “That way,” I said, pointing before jumping over the newly downed enemy and racing through the hall beyond her. Suits of armor lined one side, each in its own glass case. Along the other were elaborate dresses of the same time period, and I sure wished we’d strolled through this room yesterday instead of the nightmare stuffed-animal room.

  We burst out the other side, directly into a throng of people running down the corridor toward Zorn and Henry. A roar ripped through the air, and something heavy fell on the floor above us. The sound of it banging and then rolling filled the air.

  Red stabbed a guy and ripped him to the ground before he knew he was being attacked. A woman cracked Red over the shoulder with a steel pipe, and Red turned, gun suddenly in hand, and shot steel-pipe woman in the face. Crimson sprayed those behind her.

  I grabbed the spirit boxes of anyone I didn’t recognize while yelling, “Zorn! Over here, Zorn!”

  “Sure, yeah, alert the whole world.” Bria bent and scooped up the dropped pipe. She turned and thwacked a woman in the face with it before clunking a man in the forehead.

  A woman appeared at my side and reached for me. I startled, immediately reaching for her soul.

  An arm wrapped around my middle and yanked me back against a strong chest. Dylan. He brought his other arm around in front of me, stretching it forward. Lightning ran from his elbow, down to his hand, and then out through his fingertips. It blasted into the woman’s middle, flinging her back. She hit the wall and started to sink.

  Dylan released me, and I grabbed the soul as it left her body then shoved it right back in. Power pumped through my blood. The wobbles in my knees were mostly gone. Time to use the full gamut of my magic.

  And not a moment too soon.

  “She’s coming,” Zorn said as he reached us. He hacked down on a man’s shoulder with a machete, of all things. Zorn definitely did not fuck around. “She’s weakened, but she’s still too strong for you, Alexis. We need to hide you.”

  The cats ran around him in their eagerness to get to me. They rubbed up against my legs, sleeker and less pushy than dogs of their size. Done with their greeting, they took their places at my sides, battle cats. My life kept getting weirder, somehow.

  “How are you going to hide me?” I shoved another soul in a body and sent the two commandeered minions running in the direction Zorn had come. They wouldn’t last long, but they’d be a small distraction. “She can find me in spirit and send people to my location. Or just ask the staff. We can’t run, either. No one is just going to hand us cars. We have to fight, Zorn.”

  “She’s a Demigod, and Henry and I are strangely weakened. Neither of us ate or drank anything provided, but we’re still sluggish. We can’t take her.”

  Lydia must’ve unleashed the spirits on them to harvest their energy. That was probably why they’d been kept in a different room, out of sight of Kieran. He would’ve been able to see the spirits hanging around, if nothing else.

  “We cannot win,” Zorn said above the din, the crashes and screams from upstairs now farther away. Thane was moving around.

  “We have to try,” I said, my heart breaking at the thought of what would happen if we failed. “We have to try to get to Kieran. If we can hold them off until he wakes—”

  “We have no idea when that’ll be,” Henry said, shoving in. Sweat and blood coated the side of his face. Desperation clouded his eyes. “We have to hide you.”

  But there would be no hiding me, and we all knew it.

  I pushed them away and held my head high. I would fight, and if I lost, then my only hope was that Kieran would see me again someday, recognize the mark, connect that with the feeling in his soul, and we’d find a way to be together again. I had to hope.

  31

  Alexis

  “Well, well, well.” Lydia stopped fifty feet down the corridor, each side of her face sporting bloody claw marks, and the space opening at her back into a hall. She could dive out of harm’s way if she needed. That wasn’t ideal.

  My team fanned out around me, Zorn and Henry flanking the cats and everyone else behind, surrounding the kids.

  “My little plan worked, in the end.” Lydia’s smile pulled at her wounds.

  “There’s more to winning than the acquisition of assets,” I said, having heard that from Kieran at one point. “You’ll never pull this off.”

  “What do you know, girl?” Lydia sneered, walking toward me. “Have respect for myself, isn’t that what you said?” Even from this distance, I could tell she was looking me up and down. “Look at you. Your ridiculous clothes, your plain face—getting attention from the servants made you uncomfortable yesterday, didn’t it? I knew then that you could never sit at my table in your present state. You’ll welcome my attentions, trust me. I’ll teach you how to be a lady, how to treat those lesser than you, and how to be so much more than th
is blunt tool Kieran brought me. And in return, I’ll let you play with the baby Kieran puts inside me.”

  Pain ate through me. I blinked away tears.

  “It is not wise to taunt a Price woman,” I heard from somewhere in the back. Frank was still on the scene. “Just you wait. Taunt a Price woman, and you are toying with your life.”

  “Let me through.” Dylan pushed his way in front of Henry. “There are level-five leaders that can take a Demigod.”

  “Yes, with their full arsenal. We only have a few,” Zorn murmured.

  “You could’ve killed Flora.” Dylan side-eyed me. “Couldn’t you have?”

  “Yes,” I said, licking my lips. Souls in bodies came up behind us, her people blocking us in.

  “A few is all we need,” Dylan said. He fisted his fingers and electricity zipped around his knuckles. “The others can keep her people off us. I’ll distract her. You can pry out her soul.”

  Lydia’s smug grin made it seem like she’d heard us. Or maybe just read our plan for a last-ditch effort. She motioned, and her people surged around her, running at us.

  Dylan stepped forward and flexed his hand. A peal of thunder rolled from him, thankfully muted. It hit the enemy almost like a tangible thing, and it was clearly not muted for them. They cried out, grabbed their ears, and blew back, their backs slamming into the ground.

  Lydia visibly recoiled, staggering backward with her hands halfway to her head, her face slacking in shock.

  Dylan stepped forward and electricity rolled up his arms, around his torso, and then danced on his whole body. It moved and fizzed over him, some parts sparking, others spitting.

  “Is that…” Lydia’s eyebrows pinched together. “Is that a Lightning Rod?” She either wasn’t well informed, or Kieran had done a good job of hiding some facts.

  Dylan showed her the answer.

  Lightning rained down on her and her people in sheets, and he shot out his hands, spraying targeted bolts of lightning from his fingertips. Electricity sprang up on the walls to either side of Lydia before zipping down behind her, arcing across and around in the shape of rounded bars.