Heavy Metal (A Goddesses Rising Novel) (Entangled Select) (18 page)

“Whoa,” Riley breathed. “No wonder you look like—” She caught herself just in time, but Quinn laughed. Even in the odd lighting, Riley saw color returning to her face.

“Like shit? Yeah.”

Nothing Riley had felt in the last three years even came close to what Quinn was describing. But she could tell by the look on Quinn’s face that there was more. There was energy that couldn’t be returned. What would happen to Quinn when that was all that was left?

“What about the other energy? That doesn’t have a place to go?”

Quinn straightened her spine. “Beth’s power barely registers now. It’s not a problem.”

That brought it down to one that Riley knew of. “And Marley’s?”

Quinn gazed across the now-empty lawn. “I’d hoped I could return it to her, but the rift there is different from the others.” Her voice was low, regretful. “Not just a crack, but a hole. The part of Marley that made her a goddess is less dynamic every time I see her.” A tear tracked down her cheek. “If I hadn’t taken so long to find a solution, maybe things would be different.”

“Hey.” Riley laid a hand on Quinn’s arm. “It’s not your fault.”

Quinn sniffed and nodded. “I know. But I hate that I can’t help her. She’s my sister.”

There was a world of complication in the way she said that sentence. Riley closed her eyes against an answering swell of grief, of longing for her own sister. Of what could have been if she’d lived long enough to be a goddess, too.

But this wasn’t about her. She opened her eyes. “What’s wrong with Marley’s energy exactly?”

“It’s different from the others.” Quinn wiped her face with a napkin. “Beth’s energy is dissipating because its vessel is no longer alive. Marley’s energy has a vessel, but no way to connect to it because of the permanent damage. So it’s changed. It’s a dark, heavy mass. Almost…toxic.”

This was worse than Riley had thought. “Like poison?” she asked, aghast. “Is it poisoning you?” She didn’t need Quinn to answer verbally—it was clear in her eyes. Riley stood and clenched the trash in her fist. “This is stupid. You can’t handle another fourteen or more hours of driving.”

“I have no choice.”

“Yes, you do. You can fly.”

Quinn laughed. “Nick will never leave the Charger behind.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “You don’t think he cares about a
car
more than he cares about you, do you?” She threw the trash in a nearby garbage can and returned to the table to sell her plan to Quinn. “We’re near Knoxville. You can get a flight to Providence. That’s near Chloe’s, right? You can rest and then do the transfer.”

Quinn raised her eyebrows. “So you want all of us to fly?”

No. But it was the only option. “You need Sam. So, you three fly up. I’ll drive the car. I’ll probably get there right about the time you finish the transfer.”

“You think Nick will let you drive his car?” She smirked. “Or that Sam will leave you alone?”

Riley found herself fiddling with a long screw from her pocket. She’d been doing that all day, unconsciously reaching out to whatever metal was close at hand. But she never pulled any energy. The skin on her forearms stung whenever she even considered it.

“I think they’ll both do anything
for you
.” She glanced up to find Quinn staring at her with narrowed eyes.

“It’s not like that with Sam,” the older woman told Riley. “He’ll do just about anything for anyone in need.”

Ouch.
Riley couldn’t stop herself from wincing at the implication that she wasn’t important.

Quinn rushed on, “No, I mean that his feelings for me are just friendship now. I promise you.”

The attempt to reassure her was backfiring. She hadn’t doubted that until Quinn found it necessary to say so. “That’s not the problem.”

Quinn took the bait. “I’d do anything for Sam, too. So if you think I’m blind to something he needs, you can tell me.”

Bingo. “Let’s just say Sam needs to speed this up as much as you do.”

Quinn looked stricken. “I didn’t realize it was affecting him that much…physically,” she admitted softly.

“So, you’re on board?” Riley asked.

“Yes. Let’s—”

Riley shot up off the bench. “Good. Stay here.” She ran back through the building to the parking lot. Nick and Sam were leaning against the hood and fender of the Charger.

Sam pushed away from the car, arms spread wide in obvious frustration. “What’s taking so long? I was about to come in there after you.”

Nick watched behind her. “Where’s Quinn?”

“She’s out back in the picnic area.”

“Alone?” Nick moved to walk by her, but Riley stopped him.

“She’s not doing well.”

Nick’s jaw clenched. “We don’t need you to tell us that.”

Riley folded her arms, ready to do battle. A few hours confined with people told you a lot about them. Not only was Nick very proprietary about his car—something that had to be as much a symbol as a possession—as a protector, he probably hated the confined space and nonexistent escape routes on an airplane. Quinn was trying hard not to ask anything of him, nor to worry him any more than she was. And Sam had already made it clear he wouldn’t leave Riley behind.

“You need to get to Chloe’s faster.”

Nick scoffed. Sam threw him a look and said, “We’re already pushing the limit.”

“Yeah, so you need faster transportation.” She outlined the plan she’d already laid out for Quinn. Both guys were shaking their heads before she was halfway through.

“No way,” Sam said. “I’m not leaving you. We talked about that.”

“You have to,” Riley argued. “Quinn can’t handle the drive. She won’t be able to do the transfer if you force her to travel that way.”

A flicker went through Sam’s eyes. “Nick said she can’t fly, either. That’s why they drove to Mississippi in the first place.”

“This is worse,” Nick admitted. “But there’s stuff in that car we can’t just leave, and we can’t take on an airplane.”

Riley stayed silent and let Nick and Sam hash out alternatives, but she knew they’d come to the same conclusions she had. She liked Quinn and hated how much she was suffering, and would want to help her because it was the right thing. But she had deeper motivations. Sam had his own suffering that he would never reveal to Quinn and Nick unless he had to, and Riley knew the only way to end that was to get through it.

She turned to Nick, who stood silently nearby. “You can trust me with your car.” Riley steadily met his piercing stare and held out her hand. Half a minute went by.

“Hell.” Nick bounced the keys on his palm. “I can’t trust anyone with my car. But—”

“I know.” She shifted her hand forward a little. Nick dropped the keys into it, then snatched them back.

“At the airport.”

“No!” Sam held out his hands as if to separate the two of them. “I’m not agreeing to this. We know she’s a target. She can’t drive up there alone.”

“How is anyone going to know where I am?” Riley argued. “There’s no way for Anson to have any clue.”

Nick pulled out his phone. “We’ll get someone else to go with her. We need you for the transfer, man,” he reminded Sam as he dialed.

“Hey, John. Nick. We need a guy.” He briefly explained.

Riley listened tensely. The Protectorate had been stretched thin since she first connected with the Society, so she was surprised when John apparently offered someone to Nick.

“I don’t know him,” Nick said. “You’re sure he’s cool?” He listened skeptically, then nodded. “All right. We’ll meet him at the airport.”

Nick hung up as they spotted Quinn moving slowly toward them, supporting herself with one hand on the brick wall of the building. He dashed over to her, and Riley braced herself.

“This is wrong,” Sam said through a tight jaw.

Riley was less certain of her plan now that she was going to be left alone with a stranger, but she couldn’t let Sam see that. “I’ll be okay.”

He caught her shoulders and made her look at him. She tried to hide her conflicting emotions. If Sam thought she had a single moment’s trepidation about this, he’d never go with them. And he was hurting almost as much as Quinn was. The sooner he got through it all, the better.

“I can stay with you,” he said. “They can fly up, and she can rest. We can do the transfer when we get there.”

Riley shook her head. “You need to be there and ready to do it as soon as she’s able. You don’t want to miss a window, and what if we hit traffic or something?” She patted the roof of the car. “This baby is pure steel. I’ll be invincible. And you know John wouldn’t give us someone we couldn’t trust.”

He smiled, the one-sided quirk of his mouth that flashed a dimple and charmed the hell out of her. Her heart thumped hard once, fluttered twice, and settled back into rhythm.

“Promise me,” he said, “that you’ll be careful. Keep in contact. Take some back roads—be unpredictable. There’s no reason anyone should be able to track or follow you. But just in case—”

“I get it. Don’t worry. I’ll be there before you know it.”

He hugged her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll miss you,” he murmured.

Half an hour later, she sat behind the wheel with a steely military type named Tom sitting next to her, watching them all disappear into the airport and fighting the melodramatic feeling that she’d never see any of them again.

…

After landing in Providence, Sam, Nick, and Quinn got a hotel room so Quinn could spend a few hours recovering. Sam called Riley just about every hour until Quinn insisted she was well enough to make the transfer. Her color was better, and she was moving more easily, though she still got out of breath quickly. But they couldn’t argue when she said it was the best she was going to get, and there was no point in waiting.

Chloe fed them a late lunch while Sam and Nick set up the beach chairs and Quinn’s notes. She fussed over Quinn like a grandmother, but excitement vibrated in her voice.

“You know,” she told Sam when he went inside for another of her melt-in-your-mouth orange muffins. “I thought I was glad to be free of it.”

“I remember.” He broke the still-warm muffin in two and popped half into his mouth. When she’d been leeched, Chloe had seen only the silver lining, an opportunity to open her own bakery, which had been a raging success. “God, that’s good.”

She beamed. “That’s exactly what I wanted. I needed to be free for a while, to concentrate on my dream. But I’ve missed it.” She looked out the window to her source, the Atlantic Ocean. It was a perfect day outside, high sixties with the slightest of breezes, the water rolling in long, smooth swells onto the soft sand. “It belongs in me,” she almost whispered, her unnaturally pale gray eyes gleaming in the reflected sunlight.

“Then let’s make you whole again.” Sam ate the rest of his muffin and led Chloe out onto the weathered cedar deck at the back of her little cottage, all raised eight feet off the sand with stilts. The private beach was deserted, and they were shielded from sight by scrubby bushes on either side of her property.

“Sit here,” Quinn said, indicating the chair closest to the water. She nodded at Sam, and he settled into the other chair. Quinn stood next to Chloe and settled her hands on her. “Ready?”

First she healed Chloe as she had Jennifer. Sam and Nick both watched carefully, but the effort didn’t seem to tax her at all. Chloe clung to the sides of her chair, and her jaw flexed as if she grit her teeth, but after a couple of minutes she loosened her grip and relaxed. When she opened her eyes, they held the same wonder Jennifer had displayed.

“How do you feel?” Quinn asked her.

Chloe rolled her shoulders and smiled. “Good.
Really
good. Full of energy. You know, like healthy.” She settled back in her chair. “I’m ready for the next bit.”

Quinn eyed Sam. “You ready?”

He nodded but tried to hide his trepidation. Quinn closed her eyes, but he kept his open, watching her, ready to stop her if things went bad. Her hand in his grew cold, then warmed, and something wriggled inside him. The residual power, responding to what was coming?

Quinn’s hand tightened, and the conduit opened. Sam had a sense of space, of connection. He braced himself for the onslaught of pleasure.

But the power slid forward into him, cold and sluggish, jagged. It pierced, as if resisting by digging thorns or claws into him. Sam gritted his teeth against the pain. His mind tried to cringe away, to close the conduit, but he forced himself to stay open, not to resist. Quinn tensed. Her brow wrinkled, and Sam sensed her driving it through, into him.

“Quinn.” Nick’s voice came from far away, but his urgency was obvious. “Quinn, stop.”

“I can’t,” she ground out, and Sam tried to open more. He wanted the slight bit of power he already had to reach out and draw in the new power, but it only churned restlessly. This was a far cry from the smooth flow of the other day.

Fear spiked. They’d screwed something up. They had to stop. He tried to pull his hand out of Quinn’s, but she clutched him tighter, her hand sliding up to his wrist and her other closing over his fingers. He lay helpless while she pushed, and the power slowly filled him like a big, icy blob. The pain increased steadily, raking along his insides and coalescing in his consciousness more than any physical spot. The pain seemed disconnected from his body while wholly contained within it.

Quinn gasped and broke the connection as the last trailing tendril slid into Sam. “Chloe, grab Sam’s hand,” she croaked.

“No,” Sam groaned. “Wrong.” He couldn’t communicate, couldn’t explain. He felt like someone had beaten him up.

“You have to, Sam. It’s okay. She’ll be okay.”

He closed his right hand into a fist and tried to pull it close to him. He couldn’t give this to Chloe. She’d go insane. But she reached and curled her fingers around his fist, her nails scratching his palm as they pried up his fingertips.

The power went wild. In seconds the ice seemed to melt, and it whirled and spun like an excited puppy. Sam recognized Chloe’s capacity, felt the affinity. He relaxed and let go, and the energy flowed out of him into her. It sliced as much going out as it had coming in, but the pain stayed behind. Chloe inhaled deep, the sound welcoming, pleased. Slowly, as the energy left Sam, the pain faded, leaving only a raw fatigue.