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“Show him,” Seth said.
Well, if the boss told me to, I guess I was going to put on a little display.
“Stand back,” I whispered to Cade. This might get messy, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get caught in the crossfire. He didn’t look thrilled about it but stepped away from me all the same.
My skin tingled. With Seth so close, I didn’t need to pull the power from the storm, I could take it straight from the source. It was like the difference between plugging a lamp into a portable charger or plugging it directly into a grid. If I wasn’t careful, it could actually overwhelm me, and that could have disastrous consequences.
Small hairs along my arms and the back of my neck stood up, and all the warmth I’d felt from my proximity to Cade was replaced with the cool, quicksilver feeling of Seth’s enormous power flowing into me and filling me up. I closed my eyes, letting the electricity flicker, touching every nerve and synapse in my body. I was a storm of lightning bugs. A meteor shower compressed into human form. I was too bright to be contained.
I screamed, the magnitude of the energy overpowering me. It was too much, too fast, and it needed an outlet now, or it would burn me up from the inside out.
I whipped my head around, and my attention fixed on the man’s car parked a few feet away. It was slicked wet with rain and glimmering faintly under the parking-lot lights. Electricity sparked on my skin, and I lifted my hands, which were glowing bright blue-white, and willed the energy out of me.
The lightning struck me then, a forked bolt straight from the sky that sliced through me easier than a hot knife in butter. The bolt followed the path of Seth’s energy and poured out through my hands, directly into the car.
Much like the sedans driven by Manea’s henchmen, the car in front of me exploded, sending a ball of flame and metal ten feet in the air before the shell of the former automobile fell back to earth halfway across the parking lot.
I turned back to the hotel, still radiating waves of pure, storm-borne power.
“Get out now,” I snarled.
This time the man didn’t argue. He opened the door and ran, never looking back. He passed the husk of his car and kept going until I could only see flashes of his white shirt in the night.
“Good. Now we finish.” Seth touched the mark at the back of my neck, and I felt as if I’d been punched by a fist made of thunder. My bones ground together, and I thought my brain might be exploding one particle at a time. He pushed his power through me, and though my mouth was open in a scream, I couldn’t hear any sound.
The sensation of it was somewhere between the worst pain I’d ever felt and what I imagined pure bliss to be. It confused my senses so thoroughly I didn’t know how to react. He’d never used me as a conduit before, not like this.
Lightning struck me a second time and poured out of my hands once more, flowing into the resort. A chorus of bolts followed suit from the sky, crashing into different parts of the hotel.
Glass shattered and wood groaned as it splintered. The whole building sounded like it was howling in pain.
Or maybe that was me.
Seth released me, and I staggered. The hotel was in ruins, a smoldering heap of wood and debris. I’d brought it down in a minute flat.
“We’re done here.”
I waited, rooted to the spot until he had disappeared into the rain.
Then I fell, and the world went black before I even hit the ground.
Chapter Eight
Someone was licking me.
I woke up slowly, my body protesting with each minor shift or adjustment, every part of me demanding I just lie still and everything would be okay.
But I was being licked, and that required further investigation.
Opening first one eye, then the other, I found a pair of wide brown orbs staring back at me, a fawn-colored snout and huge ears completing the face.
“Go away, Fen,” I grumbled.
The fennec gave a short, barking sound, then began to lick me again, until I lifted my arm to push him away. He nipped at my fingers, enjoying this new game. My joints and muscles,
on the other hand, hated me for every second of it.
At that point I paused, drinking the whole tableau in.
