The Lost Rainbow Mage: Complete Trilogy Edition, page 19
“Coop?”
He turned to face me, but his dark glasses made it impossible for me to read what he was thinking.
“Can you do me a favor?”
He remained quiet, so I plowed forward anyway.
“I need to go. Can you get me out of here? I’m dangerous here, this place is dangerous for me. He’ll wake up, and… and…” I couldn’t finish. When Dr. Anderson woke up, what would he do? What wouldn’t he do? I was already in solitary, he was already making me hurt people… weaponizing me somehow. And the person I’d spoken to through the vent system had mentioned an army, right? Dr. Anderson would never give up chasing me.
I didn’t want to be some sort of supernatural soldier.
Coop still didn’t speak.
“I’ll run; I’ll hide. I’ll stay quiet, lie low, just live my life.”
But he was already shaking his head. “They’ll find you. They have their ways. How do you think they found you before?”
I considered his question. “I have no idea.”
“Meira, they have dream walkers, astral projectors… They don’t need normal methods of investigation to find you, especially not now your signature is known to so many of the guests here.”
I choked out a laugh. “You’re still going with guests?”
His mouth twisted, then he opened it to reply, but an alarm blared loudly out in the corridor. It was loud and deep and honking and unlike anything I’d heard here before.
The other men in suits began to move immediately, and Coop sprang to his feet and started barking orders about checking on guests and securing the perimeter.
“What’s going on?” I looked to Coop for an answer as the other men ran out of the door to scatter in the facility.
“Security breach.” He took my upper arm gently and began to draw me from what I thought of as the control room. “We need to get you somewhere secure.”
I didn’t try to shake him off. I liked his touch. It reassured me, and I knew he’d keep me safe. He’d promised it and tried to keep his word.
We ran down hallways and corridors that Coop seemed to take at random until he pushed open a door at the end of a long hallway. He shoved me inside the small closet.
“What? No!” I tried to push my way back out, but he tried to block me. I pressed my palms against his jacket and tried to make him move.
He hadn’t expected my shove, and he stumbled back. His glasses slipped, revealing his eyes to me for the first time in I didn’t know how long. Since the cot?
I’d lost track of how many days I’d been in “the facility,” but now I didn’t care as I met his bright blue gaze. His irises were edged in a lilac color as he watched me, and the shade seemed to slowly bleed inward.
“I have to come with you. You can’t just leave me in a closet.”
He didn’t reply.
“Please.”
Instead of responding, his gaze didn’t waver from mine as he slowly lowered his head until our lips touched. It was soft and fleeting, barely a kiss, but my whole world hung on that half-a-second. Then Coop laced his fingers through mine, and we were running again, my hand grasped firmly in his. Down more hallways until he pulled me into a room with screens all over the walls and computers on every desk. And each desk had an agent.
“Coop! What are you doing?” somebody barked.
I glanced up to see Locke glaring at Coop from behind one of the monitors. The rest of the agents observed as though trying to decide whether to react or remain stationary.
Locke frowned. “Why have you brought Meira here? She needs securing.”
But Coop merely shrugged. “She stays with me,” he said. “I will keep her secure.”
Locke shook his head and returned his attention to his computer screen as he scrolled through various security feeds. “We haven’t located the source of the breach yet. We’re guessing blind.”
The agents peered at their computers. Each one seemed to be rolling through video footage from throughout the facility.
Coop huffed out a sigh and approached one of the big screens on the wall. They showed images of the cells, and I was able to see the people inside them. “Full lockdown?” Coop called the question over his shoulder. He crossed his arms and peered at the images.
“Full lockdown.” Locke’s repetition of his words was confirmatory.
But a patch of light in the corner of the room caught my attention, and I frowned. There was something wrong with it. Like it was bendy. The angles were wrong. Cautiously, I stepped closer to it and reached out my hand as if I could explore inside it, but it moved at the last moment and the sudden blur revealed a figure clad all in black.
Not even a patch of skin showed. The figure looked like a shadow. It held a gun, and as Coop stepped toward it, already reaching for his own weapon, the being in front of me fired. The crack of the bullet echoed around the room, and I whirled.
I cried out as Coop fell, agony twisting his face.
He watched me from the floor, his brows drawn down, the corners of his eyes creased. He gripped his knee, and blood spurted between his fingers.
Everything happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to process it. Every agent in the room had their guns drawn, but darkness fell as a hood was pulled over my head, and I thrashed against the sudden arms in a vise-like grip around my chest.
I was pulled back against a hard body, and my breath left me in a whoosh. A rumble worked through the building. Was it an explosion? Or was it the sound of hundreds of boots marching en masse? What was happening?
Boom! The floor vibrated. Could it be an earthquake? Who could make an earthquake during an invasion? I blinked, trying to figure out what was going on. A wave of exhaustion slammed into me, and my eyelids fluttered. Sleep.
“I have the target,” the shadow’s deep voice boomed. “Repeat, the target has been captured.”
It was the last thing I heard…
her magic fight
Where there is light, there is also shadow.
Where there is love, there is also hate.
And where there is me, there is also danger.
A prisoner no more, I’m now an honored guest at a new facility run by a man who claims to be my long-lost father. Like me, he can bend light and shadows, harnessing their magic to do impossible things.
But while he is kind to me, he keeps other stolen supernaturals locked in cages. He and his guards torture them until they break.
The man I love is trapped here, too, except now he looks at me with hatred burning in his eyes. I want to tell him the truth, to share my plans to stage a coup and rescue everyone, but a binding spell prevents me from speaking out against my father or his facility.
Left with no allies, I need to challenge this new enemy by myself… But will my mere weeks of training be enough to overcome his lifetime of mastery?
one
Light. Wonderful, glorious light. It was the first thing I was aware of every morning, streaming over my face, turning my closed eyes into a kaleidoscope of red hues, bathing me in heat. I stretched and writhed in it, soaking it up, luxuriating in the power it sent zinging through all parts of my body. Warmth became energy, and it all came from the sunbeams.
Nothing beat the strength and duration of Sweetwater light. Why had I stayed in cold Minnesota so long before? I’d packed up and trekked across the country on a whim, but I hadn’t regretted it for a sunny minute. Florida fed my soul.
I sighed, content at first to just accept the light for what it was, unquestioning. An old friend, joining me first thing. I’d always enjoyed good light in my apartment, after all.
But then the disorientation of sleep receded and the confusion caused by remembering set in. I kept my eyes closed as I sorted the memories, running through everything that had happened. Glow made power.
It had been a long time since I’d experienced the light in my apartment. Well, okay. Not a long time. Not truly. Though, it certainly felt a lifetime ago, like the changes in who I was had been monumental. How long had it been?
And the light there hadn’t been this… This… I searched for just the correct word. Then I almost tasted it. The light hadn’t been this pure. And it had certainly been many different things at… the Facility. Shit. I didn’t want to think of that ugly place.
But I suppressed a shiver as flashes of the Facility filled my mind, the walls, the locked doors… the dark. They’d starved me by keeping me tucked into a shadowed cell, and I’d withered on the inside. Though, Locke had brought me art supplies, hadn’t he? It had helped stave off the dark-caused sorrow.
But I was okay now, wasn’t I? There was light here. Glorious illumination. So I stretched again.
Except something niggled at my thoughts. How had I arrived here in this bed? At home? What had happened? I rolled to my side, tugging my blankets over with me as I tried to make sense of my scattered thoughts, cobbling them back together to make them coherent again.
There had been an attack of some sort. An explosion? Or maybe an earthquake? Somebody had put me to sleep, but I didn’t think it was the vampire-blue-light-guy in the cages beneath the Facility. No telling what happened after I’d been mentally chloroformed.
Who had been there?
Coop!
His name flared through my head like a firework, and my eyes snapped open. My hand slammed against my face to block out the…
White. So much damn white. It almost hurt. So bright. The word pure returned to my thoughts, and I lowered my hand and squinted until my eyes adjusted to the light in the room.
But… Coop?
Flashes of images burst through my brain. Target captured… Strangers. Hands. Surrounded. More bits and pieces pulsed through. None of the information answered the most important question.
What had happened to Coop? I churned through my memories. I’d been abducted. That much was clear, anyway. But how—and where—was he?
I pressed my lips together and nodded to reassure myself. Sure, he’d be fine. Probably damn fine because that was the kind of guy he seemed to be. Always fine. Always surviving. Those government types did, right? He could take care of himself. He had managed long before I had shown up in his life.
But the attack. What had that been? Coop had been shot, right? Right? Hadn’t that happened? Locke had been there in the room, studying the monitors, when the ground reverberated with a boom. I shook my head, trying to dislodge additional knowledge and bring my thoughts more into focus. Many parts of my recent memory were hazy.
So. Based on snippets I recalled, I had been abducted… again. Trapped once more. At least I hadn’t been tucked into a dark cage. Honestly, I’d made it into my twenties with minimal freaking drama and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of me. I was… What… What had Dr. Anderson called me? Rare?
A light mage? It all came flooding back. Adrian. The agents. Dr. Anderson. He’d called me a light mage because that’s what I was. I had power over light. Splitting white light into colors gave me weird emotional reactions to whichever color I “grabbed onto.”
Until the breach, I had decided to linger in the Facility to learn as much as I could from repugnant Dr. Anderson before freeing everyone and walking out of there. Now I was at a new place, but by the looks of things, at least not kept in the physical dark. Maybe I could still learn from somebody about how to use my powers.
I groaned and threw back my blanket to feel the light on my skin again. But I wasn’t in my clothes. I glanced down at the weird white sack I was wearing. How very… virginal. At some point, someone had changed me into the most ridiculous puritan nightwear I’d ever seen. I frowned as the thought of somebody seeing me naked without my knowing hit me. Although the option I wore was definitely preferable to the alternative of waking up naked or decked out in something sexy. Both the latter would have a long list of questions along with it.
The simple gown was at odds with the luxurious surroundings of the room I’d been placed in. While my dress was simple, the room was not.
Abduction, incredible light, and nightwear pilgrims would have been proud of. Well, the new mysteries just kept stacking up. To be honest, I could do without the unknowns. After all the men in suits and sunglasses descended on Sweetwater and kidnapped me the first time, I would have been happy to live without any more intrigue.
I slung my feet over the edge of my thick mattress. I didn’t want to keep lying in this strange bed, in this strange room. My position here was no better than it had been at the Facility if I’d remained. My time at the Facility had at least shown me I had no need to be passive. It was in my power to be so much more, and I didn’t have to merely accept whatever others handed to me as my fate. I had hoped to learn more about myself and controlling my powers from Dr. Anderson, but that no longer was likely.
Exploration of my surroundings seemed a good way to start an escape plan. There was no need to panic. Well, no point to it anyway, but knowing was always so much better than not knowing. I found control in situations where I at least knew something about them.
I pushed the sheets and blankets completely off my lap and stood up, taking in the entire room in that first glance. Everything bore a layer of stark white paint.
“I ain’t in Kansas anymore,” I muttered, my tongue thick as I spoke. Cotton mouth could indicate some sort of drugs, or so I suspected. But hell if I actually knew. Maybe it was a side effect of whatever power I didn’t know I had.
My head ached more than a little, too. I rubbed the back of my head, skimming my palm over a hard knot. I winced and sighed. Turned out my captors hadn’t been so gentle. Then I massaged my temples and pinched the bridge of my nose. Had it happened when they wrestled me into the nightgown?
Letting the bump on my head keep me from freeing myself wasn’t an option, but a part of me wanted to roll over and stop trying. I shouldn’t let a little bump on my head prevent me from getting up, but a big part of me wanted it to. Being trapped again… I’d gone from prison to prison.
It was a lot to take in. My mouth dried, and I thought of home. Not back in the cold of Minnesota, but in the warmth of Sweetwater. Yet, thanks to being kidnapped and experimented on—shit, how surreal was it to admit I had been a lab experiment—I knew more about myself now. Helping and healing were a part of me.
What had they called it before? Oh, a talent.
I’d brought a small creature back to life, and the power had come out of me the same way making art did. It warmed me, filled me full, and spilled out of me as an extension of my being. That had given me a kind of confidence. How had I never known this truth about myself? I had so much more to learn. Maybe I could learn here. Or maybe there were people to help.
Changing me without my permission and the uber-modest gown I wore didn’t bode well for the mindsets of the people here, but they hadn’t dunked me in a dark tank right away. Maybe they weren’t so bad. I had only one way to find out.
Shaking my head, I took a deep breath. I’d climb to my feet, and I’d find my way out of here. I already knew I was stronger than I’d ever given myself credit for.
Coop came to mind again, and I pushed myself up from the bed. He’d believed in me back in the Facility, and I didn’t intend to let him down now.
First, I slipped across the shiny floor and tried the door. I jiggled the handle but nothing happened. The handle didn’t depress at all, even under force, so I turned back toward the room and pressed my back to the door. This space was far more luxurious than anything I’d experienced at the Facility. But if I couldn’t walk around outside the room, I was still trapped in a prison.
Chewing my bottom lip, I put my hands on my hips. Staying and cooperating weren’t options. But I could help others trapped here. I hadn’t known enough about myself to do anything at the Facility, but maybe I could change things here.
I’d been in this position before—a locked room. It was hardly my first rodeo. And—bonus!—I wasn’t confined to darkness this time. That would bode well for me and probably not well for whoever had me trapped. I lingered in front of the window, appreciating the white light, before I moved on to opening drawers and cabinet doors.
Two drawers were empty. A third cabinet held clothes in my sizes, stacked neatly. At least they didn’t expect me to keep wearing the puritan-virgin-nightgown-dress-thing. I’d gone from the Facility where the head scientist-doctor studied me to… here. I glanced around. Wherever here was.
Whoever had locked me in here seemed to know a hell of a lot about me. Though, if they knew so much about me, I didn’t understand why they allowed me the light to recharge my abilities. What had they called me? A light mage? Rainbow mage? Light and the colors in the light were integrally a part of me.
I yanked on another drawer and froze. “Damn,” I whispered as I drew out a set of paints in the brand I favored. It was an extensive collection, so expensive. I’d saved for months to buy my own, and these were brand new.
I studied the colors and the urge to paint made my fingers itch. There were brushes here too, but I couldn’t afford distractions right now. So I returned the paints to the drawer. Before I slapped the drawer closed, I thought better of how I’d put them away and rearranged them gently before I dropped to all fours and stuck my head beneath the bed. No spiders or scorpions or cobwebs greeted me. The floor was as clean as the rest of the room. Then I crawled beneath the bed.
After all, at the Facility, an air vent had linked me to another, helped maintain my sanity, and taught me a lot, so why not here? When I got all the way under, I was met by a blank, stark wall. I skimmed it with my fingers, but it was perfectly smooth, and frustration forced a sigh from me. So much for a vent-phone to the next captive.
This room was giving me absolutely nothing.
I thumped my fist against the wall, but it was solid. And there was nothing else under here—not even dust bunnies. The gorgeous room had been cleaned, maintained, and definitely not ignored. Though, it was beginning to feel as though I’d been tossed in and left behind.
Aside from the locked door, the room was nearly hotel standard, almost like I was a guest. The walls were white, the soft neutral furnishings sumptuous. Everything was off of a very pale color palette. Only the paints in the drawer could add color here, and they were more than tempting. The furniture alone could use a bright blue splash over the upholstery, and I could splatter bright colors all over the walls in an act of defiant rebellion. I winced. Not a great plan; frankly, not a plan at all. Instead, I cautioned myself to play along and find my opening to act. I had to get the best bang for my escapee buck.
