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Kopano took the opening to seize him by the scruff of his neck using the arm that wasn’t pinned to the fridge. He slammed the guy’s head down against the countertop, then hefted him using his telekinesis, rammed his back against the ceiling and finally let him fall to the floor.
While that was happening, Nigel clambered in through the window. He glanced out the back door—Ran was still huddled behind some rocks. As he watched, she used her telekinesis to fling a glowing stone at the second level of the cabin, aiming blindly for the sniper.
A small explosion soon followed. The air was still for a moment. Ran started to peek her head out—ffft!—and yelped when another bullet nearly took her head off. The shot grazed her cheek, opening a deep cut there.
“Sniper upstairs!” Nigel yelled to Kopano as he ran for the stairs.
“I’m stuck!”
“One bloody thing at a time, mate!”
Nigel bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time. His telekinesis tingled on his fingertips—ready to disarm the sniper as soon as he came into view. He raced down the hall, counting doorways to match the windows outside.
He burst into the room where the sniper should be. The window was empty.
“Where—”
Behind him. The sniper spun Nigel around and clocked him in the bridge of the nose with the butt of his rifle.
Nigel fell on his back with a cry, blood streaming down his face. The sniper spun his gun back around, smiled and took aim—
Nigel screamed. The sound was piercing and high-pitched enough that the glass on the rifle’s scope shattered. The mercenary flinched and grabbed at his ears.
That was all the space Nigel needed. He yanked the rifle away from the mercenary with his telekinesis, grabbed it out of the air and pulled the trigger.
He shot the sniper right in the chest. The bullet cracked into his body armor and sent him flying backwards into the hall, where he slumped against the wall. Nigel got up, still holding the rifle, and stood over the man as he gasped for breath.
“Shouldn’t go shooting at everyone who teleports into your backyard, mate,” Nigel said as he chambered another round. “Maybe we were just coming by for a cup of sugar, eh? Guess you’ll never know.”
Nigel might have killed the mercenary—the guy had shot Ran and certainly would’ve done the same to Nigel if given the chance. But movement in the corner of his eye distracted him.
A little girl stood at the end of the hallway. Frightened and pale, she watched Nigel with wide eyes. Around her neck was a strange choker that she kept nervously tugging at.
Instead of shooting the mercenary, Nigel sighed and brought the rifle around and down like he was swinging a golf club. A swift blow to the temple knocked the sniper unconscious. Nigel then used his telekinesis to bend the muzzle of his gun into an unusable pretzel, a trick he’d picked up from Nine.
Finally, he turned to the girl. “Are you some kind of tiny assassin?”
“No . . . ,” the girl replied with a shake of her head.
“Didn’t think so.”
“Are you here to rescue me?”
Nigel looked around. “Sure, love.”
The girl approached him cautiously, still tugging at that weird collar. Nigel noted more cameras mounted along the hallway and in the rooms. What kind of weird shit went on in this Nordic cabin?
“How many of these guys were here?” he asked, nudging the unconscious mercenary with his foot.
“Four,” the girl said.
Nigel made a quick count. “Right, then. Got them all.” He crouched down to better look the girl in her face. “What’s your name?”
“Freyja.”
“Freyja, is there another girl hiding hereabouts? My age, American, pretty if that’s your thing.”
“Taylor,” Freyja said, then shook her head. “She was here, but he took—”
A scream from downstairs distracted Nigel from the rest of Freyja’s sentence. That didn’t sound like Ran or Kopano.
It sounded like Taylor.
Regardless, screaming was a bad sign. “Stay here,” he snapped at Freyja, then bolted back downstairs.
The first thing Nigel saw when he came down the steps was Kopano, still pinned by the wrist to the side of the fridge by that magnetized manacle. An uneasy feeling came over Nigel. There was fear in Kopano’s eyes—not an emotion he’d seen on the big man before.
“Nigel Barnaby,” said a smooth, accented voice.
The guy from the highway—Einar, Rabiya had called him—stood in the back door. He wore gray slacks and a white dress shirt, the latter spattered with fresh blood. He smiled at Nigel in a way that made his skin crawl.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
TAYLOR COOK
ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES • HOFN, ICELAND
“TAYLOR,” EINAR SAID, HIS VOICE SOFT BUT commanding. “Get up.”
Taylor opened her eyes slowly. Her muscles felt tired, her fingertips and palms still tingling from the protracted use of her healing Legacy. Her mouth was dry, as were her nasal passages. She coughed scratchily, sitting up on the divan where she had passed out.
Einar handed her a glass of water. “You’ve been sleeping for almost six hours,” he said. “I think that’s long enough.”
Taylor worked some moisture into her mouth. “You didn’t do any healing. How would you know?”
Einar didn’t reply. He simply grabbed her by the arm and helped her stand. They were in one of the palace’s hundred guest bedrooms. This one was decorated with pictures of the sheikh—grim as he looked when Taylor first saw him—standing next to a variety of expensive cars. Taylor rubbed her eyes.
“What happens now?”
“We go home,” Einar said.
Taylor gave him a look.
“Back to my home,” Einar clarified.
“And then what? Wait around until this Foundation of yours picks another rich prick to have me heal?”
Einar raised an eyebrow. “Did you not enjoy it? Using your Legacy to save a life? To do the impossible?”
Taylor hesitated. She and the other healers—they had cured the prince’s leukemia. Cleaned it right out of his body.
The cancer was deep in the prince’s cells. She could feel it there. Alone, Taylor wouldn’t have been able to produce enough healing energy to cure the sickness—but with the group, it was possible. Vincent had been of similar strength to Taylor; Jiao’s healing energy was the most focused and precise; the crippled boy a font of raw power. After getting over her initial reservations, Taylor had thrown herself into the work, her energy commingling with the others, beating back the corruption that infested the prince’s body.
The process had taken four hours. After, all of them were spent and ready to pass out. Oddly and despite the fact that they were strangers to her, now that she’d broken away from the other healers, she missed the warm feeling of their energy.
Taylor didn’t tell any of this to Einar. “You know, the Academy had me healing people too,” she said instead. “They didn’t pick special cases. They let me heal whoever was in need.”
“The prince is a valuable all
y. His family helps keep this region of the world stable.”
“Who told you that? The Foundation?”
Einar said nothing, which Taylor took as a yes. He walked out of the guest room, forcing Taylor to follow him.
“These people you’re working for, they get to decide who gets healed? They get to control the healing? Is that it?” Taylor pressed him.
“I’m sure we could arrange for you to do some kind of charity, if that makes you feel better,” Einar said.
“It would make me feel better to not have some shadowy organization controlling my life.”
Einar stopped, looking around. The hallways of the palace were clearer now than when they’d arrived; there didn’t seem to be a squadron of guards assigned to them. There also weren’t cameras mounted over every doorway.
“I liked what you said to the prince. ‘Are you a good person?’” Einar chuckled quietly. “It does these people well to be reminded, once in a while, who really holds the power.”
Taylor started to say something, but realized that Einar was being genuine. Opening up, even. She closed her mouth and let him keep talking.
“The Foundation, Earth Garde, the Academy. They are all just ways to control us,” Einar said. “We are young now and not strong enough to make our own way. One day, though, we will be. In the meantime, we’re forced to choose who we allow to exploit us. The Foundation . . .” Einar met her gaze. “They provide a good life. To fight against them, at this point, would be futile.”
Einar resumed his walk down the hallway. Taylor followed after him, mulling over his words. So, he wasn’t blindly loyal to the Foundation. But they’d corrupted him to the point where he’d do their bidding. She didn’t agree with what Einar said about the Academy—that felt like home to her, which surprised her. Taylor hadn’t wanted to go there in the first place, but now badly wanted to go back. She needed to find a way out. A way to free herself, and Freyja, from the grasp of these Foundation creeps.
As they entered the courtyard with the Loralite stone, Taylor had begun to remove her headscarves; they’d become annoyingly tangled while she was passed out. She and Einar stopped short. A dozen of the white thobe–wearing guards stood in the courtyard, blocking their path to the Loralite stone. All of them were armed and, while their weapons weren’t raised, they all seemed ready for action.
