Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(40)

My grandmother had taught me how to make people obey. I seized Lopez by the ear and pulled him, protesting, out into the hall, and then I pushed him toward the cells.

Behind me, I heard Sam’s screams merge from pain into absolute terror, and then the walls began to bulge.





Chapter Fourteen

Lopez fumbled with the coded lock on the steel door that led to the cells. The door and lock were new—Nash had been quietly triumphant when he’d obtained the funding for it. Lopez preferred old-fashioned keys. His fingers slipped on the pad and the lock buzzed red, not letting us in.

Lopez started to try again, but I batted his hands aside, fried the lock with a burst of Beneath magic, and yanked open the door.

Behind us, the walls of the interview room exploded outward, throwing bricks, mortar, nails, insulation, and probably many toxic substances toward us. I shoved Lopez into the corridor with the cells and slammed the door behind us.

Lopez clearly wanted to know how I’d futzed the lock, but he sprinted with me to the cells at the end. The two men inside them were still on their bunks, but they were writhing and kicking, as though being squeezed by some unseen force. The heavily muscled one turned over and puked onto the floor.

I wondered if Sam’s spell had triggered whatever Emmett had dosed them with as I zapped the lock of the first cell with a tiny ball of Beneath magic.

The problem with using such magic was it started to take hold of me. It was best when I grounded myself, balancing myself with my storm magic, but I was fresh out of a storm and too agitated for balance.

Lopez had started trying to fit his key into the lock of the second cell, but my burst of magic melted the lock and his key and nearly burned his fingers. He dropped the keyring but I kicked it aside, yanked open the cell doors, and ran into the first one.

“Get him out!” I yelled to Lopez, waving my hand at the second cell.

I grabbed the man in the first cell, who was still puking, under the arms, and dragged him up. He was about twice my size, but Mick had taught me how to haul around people bigger than myself. I pulled him into the corridor just as Lopez came out with his guy. Both men were limp, helpless, cramped in pain.

The building shook again. A shriek like a banshee tore the night, not the cry of a dragon, but some other kind of terrible magic. Mick would break his way out, I knew, but I also knew he’d try to do it with minimal damage. Mick was dangerous but not chaotic. Anything else happening was courtesy of Emmett.

An explosion rocked the building deep inside it. A shower of debris raced down the hall outside and slammed into the steel door between us and the rest of the jail. I dove flat, pulling Lopez with me, in case that steel door came bursting down.

It held. The door bulged, bricks, rebar, whatever else was in walls smacking it with denting force. The door bent, but stayed in place.

The lights died instantly, without even a warning flicker. Debris rained from the ceiling of the one-story building, striking my skull, back, and the hands that tried to protect my head. Dust clogged my nose and grit cut my skin. In the pitch dark, I felt Lopez huddle next to me, trying to shield both me and himself. The two thugs were lying in misery, one groaning, the other making whimpering noises.

We hunkered down and waited. After a sickeningly long time, the shower of ceiling pieces died away. Silence descended. The building stopped shaking, and Sam’s screams had vanished. I concluded that Mick had flown the hell away—whether he’d taken Sam or not remained to be seen.

Lopez moved beside me, coughing in the dust. The ceiling groaned in a way I didn’t like, and I struggled to my feet.

“We need to get out,” I said.

“Any ideas?” Lopez asked, not in anger, but brisk efficiency. “We can’t use the door.”

Not only was it be blocked, rubble from the broken building might flood in on us if we opened the door.

I touched Lopez in the dark, guiding him gently behind me. “Stay here and don’t let these guys move.”

“Okay.” I heard Lopez’s boot scrape in the darkness, then he spoke sternly to the thugs. “Come on, stop whining. We’ll do as the nice lady says.”

I would like to have used a bit of Beneath magic to light my way, but I feared dividing my attention, in case I couldn’t pull myself together to do what I had to. I felt my way, step by step, using the cell’s bars to guide me, to the end wall.

I put my hands flat on the concrete and took a long breath. I coughed, dust and floating insulation clogging my throat. Resting my forehead against the wall, I tried to calm myself, but calm wasn’t coming.

I worried about Mick, who’d turned dragon to keep from becoming one with Sam or whatever other weird magic Emmett had in store for us. I hoped also that the desk clerk had found the sense to dash out the front door as soon as he heard the walls come down in the back.