Page 11 of Cast in Shadow
“He thinks one of the Brethren was forced back to the Alius,” I said, cutting through my own worries to focus on the thing that had pulled me to my feet. “Mimi, show me everything you have on Theloneus Cahill of the Brethren.”
The open windows on the board shrank and a new column of files started populating. Internal reports, news articles, and police reports popped into view, along with scans of ancient texts that were undoubtedly taken without the permission of the countries and museums housing them.
Shay sidled up beside me, humming with stimulant-induced energy. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
Oh, it was, but breaking through the veil required more power than most covens could muster on their best night. “It sounds like someone found a way,” I said, ignoring the sharp twinge in my chest when my brain processed what that really meant.
No.I refused to believe my heart was this stupid. Or was it masochistic?
I left Emerson because he betrayed me. Because he said I was nothing to him. And because he didn’t so much as blink when he told his best friend he would take me out. It shouldn’t matter one iota if he disappeared from my world.
The hollow reassurance did nothing to ease that pinprick of pain. But why? Emerson and I had been over for generations. I had no reason to hurt at the prospect of losing someone who hadn’t been part of my life for so long.
An internal report from the Brethren flashed on the screen. “Mimi, stop. Expand the last file.”
I read the report in silence, barely hearing the hushed conversation between Dennis and Nguyen behind me. Each paragraph tightened the vice. My pulse picked up and the rushof blood in my ears grew louder. Whoever had done this hadn’t just framed Lexa, they’d set me up. My name wasn’t on the report, but it might as well have been.
I was still reading, glaring at the screen, when a cacophony of crashing equipment and yelling sliced through my focus, and I wheeled around to see one of my agents running down the hall, covered in blood.
5
“Med team! I need a med team!” Charlotte bellowed as she ran. She glanced through the glass wall separating the conference room from the hallway, locked eyes with me, and skidded to a halt. “Senna!” She pounded her bloody fists on the glass once. “Thank fuck.”
The woman was drenched in crimson. It painted her auburn hair and her pale neck, and gave the front of her black tactical gear a gruesome shine.
I moved quickly out the door and followed her back the way she’d come. “What happened?” A new drip of adrenaline seeped into my blood, heightening my focus until I picked up the weak pulse of dying magic coming from down the hall.
“Smith needs help, fast,” she breathed.
“Give me a summary.”
We rounded the corner, and I had to push through the urge to pause and take in the scene. There was so much blood.
“We were extracting the shifter girl when we were attacked. I swear to gods, Senna, half the damn pack came after us.”
Brody glanced up at me from the floor, looking every bit likea warrior, with streaks of deep red smeared across his tanned face. Then he looked down at the young man in his arms. “He lost consciousness about five minutes ago.”
Which meant he couldn’t shift to start the healing process himself.
I sank to my knees and pressed my hands to either side of Smith’s head, wincing at the knots forming beneath his black curls.
My magic went to work quickly, pouring out of me and into him, finding and assessing the damage. I didn’t care about the scrapes or bruises, or even the obvious concussion. All of that would heal on its own once he could safely shift. My magic in this instance was purely triage. I needed to find the most serious damage and do what I could to repair it.
Closing my eyes, I sent another pulse through his nervous system.
It would have been so much easier if my magic worked the way it did in movies. If I could just lay my hands over the cut or broken bone and let it go to work.
In reality, my magic was energy-based, and this part worked best through the nervous system. That meant starting at the head was the quickest way to get things moving, even when I could see the blood leaking from Smith’s middle.
The moment I found the worst of the damage, I opened the gates and let my power flood through his system to that spot. His body ate it up, absorbing it so quickly that I had to fight to keep it from creating a vacuum and sucking the power from me to heal itself.
This was the point in healing where things got tricky. If I lost control of the connection or let him take too much, he could drain me dry. It wouldn’t kill me. At least, I’d never come that close with it. But it could take me out of a fight and leave me bedridden for days.
I eased back on the flow, narrowing it to a steady stream without letting Smith’s system pull everything it wanted. Even with that, the drain was coming on fast. The wound to his abdomen was life-threatening, but it wasn’t just the blood loss that would kill him. It was the damage to his liver. If I couldn’t get it healed before the bile spilling from it poisoned everything around it, he was as good as dead.
I directed my magic to that singular point, opening the flow incrementally, until I felt the last bit of liver tissue repair itself. Then I got to work on the blood loss. By the time the med team loaded him onto a gurney and wheeled him off, I was already fading.
I fell back against the wall, breathing hard, doing my damnedest to stay conscious. “Shay?”
