“It’s right through here,” I tell Vanessa as I approach the closed doors to Darius’s office. He hasn’t used it once in the past few weeks, so I’m a little surprised to find it locked. Luckily, I’m coded to all the penthouse biometrics now.
I press my palm to the panel beside the door. It clicks and swings slightly inward. I push it the rest of the way open and come to a dead. fucking. stop.
Vanessa slips into the room behind me and screams.
On the phone, I can hear the Wyvern shout, “The fuck is going on!”
“Oh my God. Taranis has like ... There’s a woman tied up to the ceiling ... hanging from the ceiling. She’s dead!”
“I don’t think she is,” I say, clapping my hands over my mouth as the woman starts to cough.
“Auooow,” she groans, and I rush forward, grab a chair shoved against one wall, and start to drag it. It makes a screeching sound over the hard,sadly rug-less concrete floor in here that has the woman wincing as she tries to open her eyes, right her head on her neck, and focus.
“Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you,” I feel the need to say as I push the chair up against her back and then carefully race around her body and try to pull her up onto the seat. She’s taller than I am, though, and starts to struggle, so Vanessa sets down her sword and comes to help me.
Together, we manage to get her seated. We back away from her and I glance at Vanessa, who’s got her pink-painted nails pressed to her mouth. Her cheeks are puffed out. She looks like she’s gonna burst.
“How . . .” I start.
“I told Roland where we are. He’s coming.”
“Good.” I should call Taranis and ask himWhy, but I want to get the woman down first.
The woman croaks, her head resting on the back of the chair. She swings it around and blinks her brown eyes open. Seeing us, she starts, “Who—who—who the hell are you people?” And then she squeals, “Are you with the guy? With the lightning?”
“I ...” I try again, but I’m about to shit myself in shock and confusion.
“We’re ...” Vanessa starts. “I’m ... dating the Wyvern. I’m his fiancée.”
Vanessa has one of the most recognizable faces in America at the moment, but the woman gives her a dead-eyed blink. “Who is the Wyvern?”
Vanessa and I share a glance before I sputter, “Are you in shock? Or like ... injured?” Maybe that explains why she doesn’t seem to recognize the most famous person in the world.
“Yes,” she moans. “Some monster ... came into my coffee shop ... and thenelectrocutedme. I thought it was Mr. Taranis—he’s come into my coffee shop before—but why would he do this to me? He’s never tried to hurt me before ...”
“Oh my God!” Vanessa says in the same breath that I shout, “Mein Gott.”
Flustered, panicked, guilty, and confused, I flap my hands like a bird. “Let’s ...” And then the adrenaline starts to kick in and my pulse settles. I speak and my voice is sharper than it was. “Let’s worry about the whyafterwe get you out of here. Vanessa, can your sword cut through that metal?”
“I’ll try.” Vanessa lifts her weapon, and the moment she touches the hilt, the blade comes to life.
The woman screams. I offer her paltry reassurance as Vanessa whacks and hacks away at the steel beam connecting the woman to the celling. It doesn’t work.
Vanessa’s sweating as she says to me, “Where’s your weapon?”
I glance at the bookshelves. Taranis shoved his desk in front of them, but I can still reach the strange objects I identified from Mr. Singkham’s book.
I withdraw the short wrist swords and slip them onto each arm. There’s an inner handle inside each object, and the moment I grip them, twin blades shoot out of the sides of central blades, making me and Vanessa and the captive woman all jump. And then we scream as a collective when my wrist swords suddenly erupt in electricity that doesn’t burn me at all.
I wave my arms around in a panic and get lucky, because my right arm is pointed at the ceiling when I inadvertently squeeze the blade-release mechanism inside the hilt a second time and a blaze of lightning releases from the tip of the central sword and hits the ceiling above the woman’s head.
“Move!” I shout, and the woman just manages to dive forward out of the chair as the entire ceiling crumbles, the huge metal hook her chain is looped through falling with it. She lands on her face on the ground, and when I race over to her, she immediately recoils. “I’m so sorry!” I shout. “I’ve never used these before!”
I fling the lightning hand swords off my wrists and don’t bother gathering them as they clatter against the wall, shooting off a couple last errant sparks before becoming dull, lifeless alien antiques oncemore. I drop down onto my knees next to the poor girl and roll her onto her back.
“I’m gonna go grab a glass of water and some towels,” Vanessa shouts, dashing out of the room and thundering down the hall, her sword in hand.
Meanwhile, I help the woman sit up. She’s whimpering, cradling her hands, which look swollen and uncomfortable. They’ve turned a darker brown, almost purplish color.
