Shattered (Alchemy Series Book #3) (14 page)

"Oh. I'd heard thing
s that made me think you could," she replied, disappointed.

"Sorry."
It was the first time I'd ever had to apologize for not being freakish enough.

"What about Cormac?
Does he know?"

"No, he can't
tell."

"I went to the seer. S
he didn't know either."

"The seer?"

"Yeah, you ever been? She's good. She knew I'd be going with you."

Or made her decide to come,
I thought to myself. Now we had people running around pretending to be psychic. But then again, maybe they were. I had to keep reminding myself this wasn't the world it used to be. Actually, the old world wasn't what I'd thought it had been, either.

Things were changing so rapidly it was becoming hard to keep track of all the comings and goings
at the casino. I wanted to ask Cormac if he'd heard about the seer but we were hardly on idle chit chat terms. Plus, he was keeping his distance from the group, right now. I, on the other hand, couldn't. Until the rippers showed up and I knew for sure they wouldn't bother them, I wasn't comfortable leaving too much space between them and me.

I was just about to answer no when out of nowhere
I tripped. I thought I snagged my foot on a vine somehow until I heard the softest little giggle by my ear and a flashing that looked like a few lightning bugs zig-zag away.

"
You okay?" Katie asked. The rest of the group was looking around at what happened.

"Yeah, just caught a shrub I didn't see."

Of course, they all had to flash their lights at the ground having some sort of compulsion to locate the nefarious shrub.

"Must hav
e been a rock," I said when the evil shrub didn't come into view. "We're losing Chip," I continued.

"What was that?" Cormac asked
, catching up.

"That was me tripping
." I brushed off my pants and started walking forward.

Cormac
, appeased and looking a bit calmer, headed to the front of the group. It allowed me to hang back a bit, hoping to go unnoticed so I could figure out what just happened. As soon as there was some distance between the group and me, the bugs started flitting around in view again. In the dark night, they looked exactly like lightning bugs, but lightning bugs didn't giggle.

"Hello?" I said softly, thinking I was crazy
for even trying to greet lightning bugs.

"Hi
, Jo!" excited little helium sounding voices chimed out.

"Did you trip me?"

Little giggles filled the air near my ear. "Not on purpose. We like your boots. We didn't mean to trip you."

"
It wasn't nice to giggle at me falling," I told them in a hushed whisper. A year ago I would've been in freak out mode over hearing lightning bugs speak; these days weird was old hat.

A sad little chorus of
"awww" escaped them in unison.

"What are you?
" I asked, walking now but keeping a certain distance from everyone else.

"We're lightning bugs, Jo," one of the
m said.

I looked at the group of them flying around my head. They did look like lightning bugs. "Lightning bugs don't talk."

A collective "Hmmm," went through the little group, as if I'd stumped them. A rough count showed eight bugs in total, flying around 

One of them did a kamikaze dive an inch away f
rom my face. "Look at me, Jo! I can turn pink! Hehehe."

"How do you know my name?"

"Cuz you're Jo!" they said. "Yeah, you're Jo!"

That explained nothing as
I kept pace with the group, close enough for no one to be concerned but far enough that I hoped no one was noticing what was going on. I couldn't believe I'd never considered that magic might have an effect on other things besides humans.

I watched the tail of the talking bug turn pink instead of yellow. "Oh no,
the scary one's coming back," another one of them said.

"He's okay," I told th
em as I watched Cormac approach.

"Oh no! G
ot to go. Have to hide!" They started flying in frenzied circles.

"Why?"

"We know things! We can read. We know the rules. We saw that big sign. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We don't want to break the law."

"That's not what it means,"
I tried to explain but they were whizzing around frantically.

"Oh no, Jo. We've got to go. Rules. Got to go!" I watched the lightnin
g bugs fly off as Cormac approached.

"What are
you doing?" he asked as he stood a few feet from me in black cargo pants and a t-shirt.

The lightning bugs were gone.
"Would you believe it if I said I was talking to bugs?"

"Stop scr
ewing around. This isn't a joke. You shouldn't be hanging this far back by yourself." He turned on his heels and started walking off.

I quickl
y caught up to him. "And you should keep your distance from the humans, because you're scary." I kept walking past and threw back, "The bug whisperer has it under control. We don't need you," over my shoulder.

I hea
rd his laughter as I moved closer to the group and it almost felt like we were back to our old bickering, but nothing was the same.

It was eerily silent and d
ark. No rippers, no people. Chip marched ahead at his own personal beat and I wondered, more than once, what he was seeing in his mind's eye.

We slogged along through the night. The only one that seemed fresh as we
continued was Cormac. He was lingering about ten feet behind us, perhaps taking my scary comments to heart and trying not to alarm Katie and Chip.

The rippers didn't stay at bay completely.
They would occasionally dodge in and out, but they didn't bother anyone. They would just check us out as they passed by. Except for me. They were more interested in me, for some reason, and I had to tell them to leave more than once. It didn't work the first time I said it, I had to wait until I got mad or got stressed or just got …more. That's when the mist would come out. Without the mist, my words were ordinary. But even with the mist, they wouldn't go away completely.

We hadn't seen anything in a while and w
hen I first saw the sparkling ahead in the dark, I thought nothing of it. I knew it was the bugs and I thought they were just playing. But something about the way they were circling over the one spot started to alarm me.

I ran to the front and stopped everyo
ne in their tracks, jolting Chip out of his trance in the process. Cormac was by my side before I even had a chance to look for him. He silently motioned to a knoll about twenty feet from where we stood.

"What is it
?" Cormac asked once we had some cover.

"T
here's something wrong up ahead. Chip, any idea?" I asked, wondering how much he could see.

"I can't tell
, but it isn't Sabrina. She's about five miles north of here."

"I'll go ahead
and check it out," I said. "You guys wait here."

"Like hell
, you will. I'll go, you wait," Cormac said.

"I should go," Katie's high voice said
, breaking our standoff. "I'm the quietest one here and the most nimble. I'll go over there and see what's up and then come right back."

Cormac and I met each other
's stare for a moment. "Fine," we both said in unison.

Katie just smiled and nodded. We watched as she danced along
, staying close to the ground and moving from shadow to shadow until she was practically on top of the area where the lightning bugs hovered.

"She's getting very
close," I whispered to Cormac. "What's she doing?" I started to jump up but Cormac grabbed my arm, dragging me back down beside him. I was about to argue when I saw Chip's face look to Cormac and then me. I think he was as scared of being left alone with Cormac as he was of whatever was out there, so I held my breath and waited.

I stayed crouched where I was as I saw
her get closer and closer. When her scream hit the air, my patience ran out. I jumped out from behind the knoll and sprinted toward her, but Cormac was there before I even took three steps. How the hell did he get there that fast?

He put
a hand over her mouth as he ran back toward us, carrying her in his other arm. I should've been thinking only of what she'd just found, but I couldn't get past how he'd gotten there so quickly. And really, what was the point of the charade of running back?

"Hold her," he said, practically shoving a still shaking Katie into my arms.

"Here," I said as I then shoved Katie at Chip, who didn't look much better. Great special ops team we made.

Whatever was out there, I needed to know. Cormac
jogged back toward the spot as I followed on his heels.

He didn't say a word as I stopped beside him
and looked down at what had upset Katie so much. If I'd been a religious type, I would've said the devil lay there before us. Only issue with that notion was, the devil was the one who usually did the torturing.

The dead man's
legs and arms looked mangled. That alone might not have meant torture but I nudged Cormac and pointed to the guy's fingers. Every single one had been broken.

"He's one of ours," I said as I squatted down close enough to make
out his face. His name was James and he'd been on the senator's list. "And now we know why he never took off that cowboy hat."

Three-inch
long nubs that looked like they would've eventually grown into horns were visible as they poked through his hair. His hat lay a few feet from his body.

"I hear something," Cormac said a second before
a tiny pinprick of light appeared in the west, heading right for where Katie, Chip and Dark were.

I took off in their direction and
I heard Cormac following behind me. And then in a flash, we were standing there with them and I had no idea how we'd gotten there.

I looked at Cormac but he wasn't paying any attention to me. All his attention was for the double set of
headlights that were barreling down on us, as two large Hummers pulled to a stop in front, kicking up dust. There was no point in running now.

"Throw
down your weapons," a deep voice called out.

"Why the hell should…
" I started to yell back until the sounds of arms being thrown to the ground disrupted my thoughts. I understood why Dark would do it. He didn't need them. As soon as he switched form, he'd be able to rip them apart with his bare hands, but why would the other two do it?

All I could hear from Cormac w
as an outward sigh of annoyance.

I turned
around for a second, knowing it wasn't going to make the slightest difference to the outcome, threw my hands up and rolled my eyes. "Really, people? You couldn't even wait for him to ask twice?"

I'd like to think they looked ashamed
, but in all honesty, they looked more terrified than anything else.

Cormac was beside me, slightly angled in fr
ont but with the way the trucks were parked, it was impossible to completely block me. Looking ahead, I couldn't see much with the lights in my face, but I heard boots hit the ground. Two vehicles meant at least two drivers but we all knew there wouldn't be just a pair.

The silhouette of a
large male form stepped forward in front of the trucks. I couldn't see anything but an outline of his body with a fire arm strapped to his side. The fact that it was still in its holster wasn't reassuring. It simply meant that there were enough others trained on us that he didn't feel the need.

"
Drop your arms," a deep voice said to Cormac and me; everyone else already had.

"Why don't you tell me who you a
re?" Cormac replied, taking a step forward.

"We…" the dark silhouette started speaking and then several things happened simultaneously.

The sounds of bullets whizzed through the air, and a sharp piercing pain hit my shoulder just as I was shoved to the ground and covered by Cormac.

"Stop!"

I hea
rd the shout as I was eating a mouth full of dirt. I was pretty sure it was the silhouetted man that had given the order but I couldn't see. I could just feel the wound and it burned like crazy.

The bullets stopped and it was dead silent
again.

"Are you okay?" Cormac ask
ed.

"I'm fine."

And then he was gone, and Katie was by my side. "Jo?" she asked.

"It's okay."

"Stand down!" The still unnamed man shouted to his men as I watched Cormac pin him to the hood of one of the trucks, his forearm pressing on his throat.