Page 42 of Gates of Tartarus

I shrug painfully but remain quiet.

“Yup,” he says under his breath. “That’s what I thought.”

The bar is silent for a long moment as neither of us speaks, but when the door crashes open, Marco has a weapon out and pointed at the sound before I can blink.

“Put your fucking hands up!” he commands in a deep voice, surprising me again with how quickly he transforms from a baby-faced kid to a man who has clearly seen death’s face.

“Putyourfucking weapondown!” a dark, dangerous voice returns, barely restrained violence shimmering in the air. Marco’s only response is to release the safety, and there’s an answering click of a gun being cocked from the doorway.

“Marco,” I say quickly. “That’s my partner.”

He doesn’t even look at me, stepping in front of me, shoulders relaxed, grip firm on his gun. “You take one step forward, I’ll blow your fucking head off,” he says casually, almost nonchalantly, and I’ll give him his due, he doesn’t flinch as the bottle near his head explodes, raining small shards of glass around like snow.

Pushing me firmly behind him, he widens his stance, dropping slightly. Things have gone from zero to sixty in the space it took me to take a breath, and I don’t want to move in case I make things worse. Marco bares his teeth, a low growl from his throat, and a barely restrained Hideo steps from the dark doorway into the only slightly lighter room.

“I’m not asking again,” he says tightly. “Holster your goddamned weapon.” Eyes darting around the room, they finally focus on me, and an agonizing relief breaks through his icy demeanor, so raw it’s almost painful to watch.

“Kai,” he says, halfway between a statement and a question, iron control strangling the emotion in his voice.

“Deo, stop!” I plead, holding out a hand. “Marco’s on our side! He’s helping me.”

Hideo doesn’t put his gun down but angles it slightly so it’s no longer pointing directly at Marco’s forehead. Marco, however, doesn’t move, eyes and barrel still tracking Deo like a laser.

“Stand down! Jesus Christ, Tanaka! Lower your weapon. Please God in heaven tell me you didnotdischarge that thing in public!” Maddox’s booming voice echoes through the empty bar from somewhere behind Deo, who meets my eyes and shrugs slightly. “This is a fucking nightmare,” Maddox continues from somewhere behind Hideo. The door to the bar is small enough that, unless he physically pushes Hideo to the side, he’s unable to enter, and his frustration at being kept out is clear in his voice.

“Step aside, Tanaka.” Walker’s tattooed arm is suddenly visible, disembodied in the half-light of the door, and it pushes a now unresisting Deo to the side. Walker stalks in like an angry lion, face wild with anger, but pauses when he sees the scene in front of him. “Aw, Christ. This kid again? Don’t you have to get to your kindergarten class or something? Sharing is caring or some shit?”

Marco barks out a surprised laugh before shaking his head. “You fucks are lucky thatthis kidwas doing your job for you. I told you she needed someone other than your sorry asses to track her.”

Deo and Walker both light up with rage, and the anger in the room ramps up to almost suffocating levels, wrapping around me so tightly I can feel my heart pounding painfully in my chest. Marco still has me behind him, gun fixed firmly on my team members, but when Jonah walks in it’s like an hourglass shatters, the tension draining out of the room.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” he asks, voice smooth and happy, deceptively casual. “Whoa! Kai, you cool? You’re bleeding? Let’s take a look. Hey man, I’m Jonah.” He walks up to Marco with his hand outstretched, and Marco, because at heart he’s a good kid, lowers his gun and shakes it, looking confused. “Aw, shit, Kai. What the hell?” he addresses me, concerned, then turns to Marco. “You pick her up? Thanks, man. It was crazy – we were across the street watching…” He’s babbling slightly, and I think only I can feel the focused effort he’s putting into his tone and words, trying to diffuse the situation in his Jonah way. His signature is tense and worried, wound so tight his chest feels like there are rocks crushing it, but his voice and face are calm, almost happy, that lazy, laid-back tone soothing the room. “... Marco, you have any warm water? Maybe some clean towels?... Anyway, Kai, so we’re across the street and the press are like vultures, you know? We couldn’t see for shit, and we were trying to move, but we couldn’t give away the game, right? And then you two came out, and Tennireef was surrounded… We almost didn’t see you from where we were when you left. But then we got your text to meet at the station, so we thought we’d head there... Thanks, man…” This was directed at Marco, who had brought over some supplies, and Jonah starts immediately washing off what he can see of the blood on me, wiping my face and hands. “Anyway, so we thought we’d head to the station, but it took forever to get out around the reporters without being seen. And then Tanaka did a quick track on your phone because he had a bad feeling, and it popped up heading here. Which didn’t make sense, obviously… Kai, we need to get this jacket off…”

Walker, Deo, and Maddox are all still frozen by the door, while Marco hovers uncertainly over me. Jonah is the only one carrying on like nothing’s wrong, chatting away in the silence. He tries to help me off with my ruined jacket, and I moan quietly with pain. The sound is like an electric shock to the guys, and they all jump into action, moving forward as a unit.

Maddox shoves forward, pushing Jonah to the side, who bristles slightly but bites his tongue as Madds runs through questions in a clinical voice which hides waves of almost suffocating worry, and oddly, guilt.

“Does this hurt? Can you move this? Where else? Your hip? How did you land? How’s that foot? Can you flex it?”

The questions are machine-gun fast, not even giving me a chance to answer, and I look to Hideo, wanting to roll my eyes at him, but stop when I see his paper-white face. Deo’s jaw is flexed hard enough that I can hear his teeth clench together, and his eyes are wild, and his energy signature is pulsing in and out in waves, like he’s trying to get control of his emotions, but can’t. His nostrils are flared, and he’s running his hand through his hair.

“You look like a porcupine,” I say inanely, which is evidently the go-ahead for him to completely and totally. Lose. His. Shit.

“KAILANI REED!” he almost yells, his voice shaking. “I TOLD YOU THAT FUCKING BIKE WAS A DEATH TRAP! I FUCKING TOLD YOU!”

Everyone, and I mean everyone, even Marco, freezes, because Hideorarelyswears andneverloses his cool.

Shrugging painfully, I defend my poor, much maligned bike. “It wasn’t my bike’s fault! Someone cut the brakes or something. And I laid it down purposefully so I wouldn’t hit traffic. It did its job! If it were a car I would have had to drive straight into traffic and been pancaked!”

There’s a collective intake of breath from the guys around me, and Walker turns to storm out of the bar.

“We put it in the back,” Marco says quietly, correctly interpreting Walker’s intention. “Didn’t want to leave it where anyone could see it or get to it. But yeah, there’s brake fluid everywhere.”

“When could it have happened?” Maddox barks as Marco leaves the room with Walker. “Where has it been? Your house?”

I shake my head decisively, brain sloshing against my skull. “Wouldn’t have happened where I live. Lach has the entire place covered. The whole property is fenced in, though you can’t really tell when you approach it, and he has cameras everywhere. He’s kind of a security nut. Plus, I haven’t ridden it since... I don’t know, whatever day the rain started. Deo doesn’t like me riding in the rain.”

Deo huffs slightly at that, looking somewhat mollified, and scans me carefully, his hair still standing on end. He then walks forward and gently touches my arm where the road-rash is the worst. “You wore your gear?”

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