Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy #1)(57)

Some instinctual switch flipped inside me. Magic burst into pain in my shoulder, rolled down into my fingertips, and exploded into frothy lightning on the woman’s hand.

The woman’s eyes rolled back in her head.

It hurt. It hurt so much. My chest shuddered. It felt like every nerve in my arm snapped loose, frayed with agony.

The woman shook in my grip. The magic linked us, the pain binding us together into one.

I unlocked my fingers, severing the connection.

She crashed to the floor. Her feet drummed the ground. Foam slid from her mouth. She shuddered one last time and lay still.

“You’re full of surprises,” Mad Rogan growled next to me.

The pain receded, a dull echo of the burning agony. My right arm was red with blood.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

The woman on the floor didn’t move. It didn’t look like she was breathing. Jesus. I dropped by her and felt for a pulse. Nothing. I didn’t mean to . . . No, I guess I did.

Mad Rogan reached over and gently raised my arm to look at the two-inch-long cut. “Shallow. You’ll live.”

My lips had gone numb. I made my mouth move. “Thank you, Doctor.”

He held up a large piece of jewelry studded with small pale stones, each about the size of a pomegranate seed. It looked like two elongated oval loops, one on top of each other, as if a child had tried to draw a hamburger and had forgotten to draw the top half of the bun. A straight piece, studded with the same stones, ran vertically through the center of the two loops. In the center, the straight piece widened into a ring about as big as my index finger and thumb touching. If it was a brooch of some sort, it was the strangest design I had ever seen.

“Is this what they were after?”

Mad Rogan nodded.

“What is it?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

I looked past him to where the last firefighter slumped against the wall, clutching at his side. Okay. I could do that. It didn’t require me to kill anyone.

I walked over and crouched by the fireman. His breath was coming out in ragged gasps.

“What did you do to him?”

“I kicked him in the liver and then broke two of his ribs. He’ll live if paramedics get here in the next ten-fifteen minutes.”

I held up the piece of jewelry. “Is this what you came here for?”

He stared at me. I focused, trying to re-create the lasso of magic that had clamped Mad Rogan and squeezed the answers out of him. Nothing happened.

“Compel him to answer,” Mad Rogan said.

“I’m trying.”

Mad Rogan picked up the knife the woman had dropped. “We can always go to Plan B.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Nevada, you’re wasting time.” His voice turned cold and precise. “Be useful for a change.”

Useful? You asshole.

“I’m tired of dragging around your dead weight.”

Nothing stirred inside me.

“Do something, don’t just sit there.”

“Has anybody told you that you’re a colossal asshole?”

Mad Rogan grimaced. “Apparently anger isn’t your trigger, and we don’t have time to figure out what it is. Oh well.”

He jabbed the knife into the man’s leg. The fireman screamed. I winced.

“Is this what you came here for?” Mad Rogan barked.

“Yes.”

True.

“Is it magic?” I asked.

“No.”

“Lie,” I said.

Mad Rogan yanked the knife out and jabbed it into the man’s leg again. The man howled.

“I’ll keep cutting you until your leg turns into hamburger,” Mad Rogan told him, his voice light. “Then I’ll put a tourniquet on it and start on your other leg. Answer her questions, or you’ll never walk again.”

“Are you working with Adam Pierce?” I asked.

“No.”

“Lie.”

Mad Rogan stabbed the man’s leg again.

“What does it do?” I asked.

The man stared at me.

Mad Rogan jabbed his leg again, methodically, calmly, the knife going in and out, in and out . . .

The man cried out, “It opens the gate to enlightenment!”

“True.”

Mad Rogan glanced at me.

I spread my arms.

“What time is it?” the man groaned.

I looked at the electronic clock above the elevator. “Five thirty-nine. No, wait, five forty.”

The man smiled. “Three . . .”

Mad Rogan spun around.

“Two . . .”

Mad Rogan lunged at me, knocking me off my feet.

“One . . .”

An enormous fireball erupted from the side entrance. Orange flame boiled, raging toward us. Heat bathed my face.

That’s it, flashed in my head. I’m dead.

The floor surged up and swallowed us whole.





Chapter 10


I was lying on my side. Darkness surrounded me.

A hard arm was wrapped around me. Someone’s body pressed against my back, curled around mine.

“Am I dead?”

“No,” Mad Rogan said.