33.

SLOANE'S KNEES GAVE WAY, and her eyes rolled up into her head. Riley tried to peel Balin's hand away from his throat. He still seemed dazed from the wyvern's stare-or maybe the head blow.

"Stop it, Balin!" Jax yelled, climbing over the wyvern's body. "I didn't expect him to be here, but he's covered in the oath!"

"No, he's not," growled Balin.

"Let him go!" Evangeline, too, was trying to clamber over the wyvern blockage.

"Count yourself lucky, Emrys," Balin said between clenched teeth. "I swore not to harm anyone in Aubrey's clan-otherwise you'd be next."

Evangeline started muttering and clenching her fists, and Jax knew she was working on her fireball spell again, despite how exhausted she looked. "Wait!" he said, holding up a hand to signal her to stop. He didn't want her threatening Balin.

In spite of his menacing tone, Balin hadn't done anything to Riley except knock him around, and if he'd really meant to harm him, he could have. Jax remembered Mrs. Crandall saying that an oath demanded obedience in ways one didn't always expect. "You're bluffing, Balin," Jax guessed. "He's my guardian by law and magic; that makes him part of my clan, and you know it."

With a sneer, Balin shoved Riley away from him. "She's not, though." He held Sloane pinned to the wall. "Maybe I'll snap her neck, just to make up for missing out on Pendragon."

Sloane's eyelids fluttered. She licked her lips, leaving a smear of blood. "Safe passage," she murmured.

"What's that?" Balin pulled her closer, cocking an ear.

"I can grant you safe passage out of here," Sloane said in a hoarse voice. "Otherwise my clansmen will kill you before you can get out of this building."

When it looked as if Balin was going to let her go, Jax called out, "Wait a minute, Balin. Hang on to her." He took a step closer and asked Sloane, "What about my friends? Do they get safe passage?"

Sloane glared at Jax through narrowed eyes, Balin's hand still around her throat. "If your friends leave today without any hostile action against my clan, they have safe passage." She placed her right hand over her heart, tightening her hand on the fabric of her suede jacket where they could see the shape of her dagger. "I swear it on my bloodline, as leader of the Dulacs."

"Okay," said Jax, and Balin released her. She steadied herself with a hand against the wall. Her eyes swept the room, and her face crumpled when she saw her grandmother's body shoved out of the way like a piece of garbage.

Riley rubbed the back of his head, eyeing Balin resentfully, but he spoke to Sloane. "Where was your useless clan when we had a wyvern to fight?"

She wiped her eyes. "I don't know. Grandmother couldn't raise anyone on her radio."

A voice spoke behind them all. "Is it dead?"

They turned. Dorian stood in the corridor, looking small and pale.

"Yes," said Evangeline. "It's okay. You can come out."

Dorian blinked at them. "Can-somebody help my dad-please?"

He led them into a large room with a trash compacter and a huge stinking bin of garbage. Finn Ambrose lay on the floor, shaking uncontrollably.

Billy sat beside him, looking every bit as pale as Dorian and shaking almost as much as Uncle Finn. "I thought a tourniquet might help, and then I opened the wound with Dorian's knife, to let the poison out as much as I could. But I only read about this in books. I don't know if it was the right thing to do." He stared up at them with worried eyes.

Jax saw that Billy had removed Uncle Finn's belt and buckled it tightly around the injured arm. And yes, from all the blood on the floor, it was obvious Billy had opened the wound.

Evangeline was the first to react. "You did the right thing. Maybe saved his life." She swooped in and pulled him to his feet and away from the gore. "You're Billy, right? I'm Evangeline."

Billy looked at her, and his eyes got big. He leaned into her arm with a goofy smile.

"My mom's a healer," Dorian said. "We have to get him to Mom. Will you help?" He turned to Riley as if he were half scared to hear the answer. "Please?"

"For you, Dorian, yeah." Riley bent over and slung Uncle Finn's uninjured arm around his shoulder. "C'mon, Ambrose."

Uncle Finn couldn't stand, and it didn't look like Balin was going to offer any assistance, so Jax stepped in on the other side, even though that was the messy side.

"Bring him to the elevator," said Sloane. "You have to go up with me, or you're liable to be shot on sight."

Riley half dragged Uncle Finn out of the garbage room. "Did you thank the kid for saving your life, Ambrose?" he asked in the quiet tone he used when he was really angry. "You know. The kid you were going to shoot."

What? Jax looked up at his uncle.

Uncle Finn could barely hold his eyes open, but he managed a resentful glare at Riley. "You have no idea how hard I was resisting being manipulated into shooting him."

Once they'd carried Finn over the dead wyvern's tail, Evangeline looked at Jax expectantly. "Jax?"

Of course! "Dorian, can you get your dad? I have to help Evangeline."

Dorian nodded and took Jax's place. "Are you-back to yourself?" he whispered.

Jax grinned. "Yes, I am." He grabbed Evangeline's hand and helped her climb over the bulk of the monster's corpse and into the laboratory.

Jax didn't realize Billy was tagging along until he said, "Is it damsel-in-distress time?"

"Yup."

"Can I go in first? Maybe she'll say, Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper? That would be so cool."

"I doubt she's seen the movie, Billy."

Addie was being held in a room adjacent to the laboratory. That symbol painted on the wall, the one cracked by the wyvern, had been a ward on the outside of her room, not on the inside of the lab, Jax realized.

Jax led Evangeline through the hole in the wall to the furnace room. As Sloane had said, there was no longer a way to get into the brownie tunnel from here. Jax guessed the tunnel itself still existed, but this particular entrance had been destroyed along with the laboratory wall.

They exited from the furnace room into the opposite corridor, just across from Balin's open cell door. Jax rifled through the ring of keys, and by the time they turned the final corner, he was sure he had the right one. He stuck it into the lock as soon as they reached the door with the warding symbol above it. "Uh . . ." He looked at Evangeline. "Can she do the fireball thing too?"

Evangeline pounded on the door. "Addie? It's Evangeline! Addie?"

Jax turned the key and opened the door.

Through a haze of dust, Jax had an impression of pink and black. The hair on his arms rose with the tickle of lingering static electricity. He looked around the room-and then straight up.

Addie's cell was empty, and there was a hole blasted right through the ceiling.

34.

JAX CIRCLED THE ROOM in disbelief. Evangeline stopped in the center and stared at the walls. This wasn't a bare cell like Balin's. Someone had tried to make it comfortable for a girl, and Jax's bet was on Aunt Marian. There was a pink comforter on the bed, a fluffy rug on the concrete floor, puzzle books, and a hairbrush.

"Wow." Billy held up a corner of the comforter. "Did she hate Hello Kitty or what?"

A black Sharpie had been used to X out the eyes on all the bow-topped kitties. Jax could hardly blame Addie. Only Aunt Marian would think a Hello Kitty comforter would make up for being locked in a dungeon and tapped for blood samples.

There was graffiti on the walls, too, scrawled with the same black Sharpie: symbols and letters Jax didn't recognize. Evangeline moved from wall to wall, reading them. "What does it say?" he asked.

"Curses mostly, directed at the Dulacs in general and your uncle in particular."

Jax grunted. Addie probably had good reason to hate Uncle Finn, since he was the one so eager to experiment with her blood.

But Evangeline looked puzzled and disturbed. "This is more than Addie being obnoxious. The writing corresponds to the location of the wards on the other side of the walls. They're not just swear words. They're magical curses-spells-meant to weaken the wards on this room. It's a combination of what I do with my spells and what A.J. does with his artwork. I wonder where Addie learned how to do this."

"Maybe at the Carroways'? It was a way station for refugees, right?"

"What kind of Kin did they have passing through there?" Evangeline's brow was furrowed. "Curses skirt the dark edge of magic, like Morder subverting his loyalty oath to the Dulacs. Jax, your uncle did get gravely injured and this cell was broken into. The curses worked."

Jax looked up at the hole in the ceiling. A freckled face stared down at him, surrounded by a halo of orange hair. Jax gasped. Tegan told him she'd find a way into the building! "Did you do this?" He wouldn't put it past her to have explosives on hand.

"Me?" exclaimed Tegan. "It was Kin that did it! There were Kin all over the park after you left, and some creepy guy with a ponytail. They walked in here with lightning and wind and . . . urp . . ." She disappeared from view. Jax heard scuffling.

"Tegan?" he yelled.

"Got her!" a man hollered. Then somebody else stood at the edge of the hole, looking down. It took Jax a moment to search his memory for the name. Albert Ganner.

"Jax!" Ganner's hand twitched upward with a weapon in it. "Don't move!"

"Talk to Sloane!" Jax called out. "She knows we're here."

"The radios don't work," Ganner said. "We can't reach Ursula."

And you're not going to. "Sloane went up on the elevator," Jax said. "With my uncle, who's hurt pretty bad. Uh, can you point that gun somewhere else?"

"One of my men was injured chasing you in the zoo today, Jax. A Pendragon vassal bashed him in the head with the butt of a rifle. And now you turn up with her right after we've been attacked." Ganner looked at Evangeline.

"You wanted me to bring her here," Jax reminded him.

Footsteps clattered in the hallway outside, and suddenly the room was filled with heavily armed men who would've been useful ten minutes ago. It figures. Jax put his hands up and let himself be prodded out of the room.

The nearby stairs led to an exit on the first floor-a heavy nondescript door that normally opened into an alley, but that was instead lying on the ground, blown off its hinges. There were scorch marks on the walls and bodies laid out on the floor. A smoking hole in one wall led to the place where the floor had been blasted open above Addie's cell. Tegan was in the custody of a man who had her arm twisted so far behind her back she had to stand on her toes.

"Ease up on her," Jax said angrily. "Are you afraid of a girl?"

"She tried to steal my gun," the guy replied.

"Let the girl go," called Sloane, striding down the hall with Riley on her heels.

The men whirled, guns raised. "Freeze!" Ganner yelled.

Riley put his hands up. Sloane waved at Ganner impatiently. "Put your guns down. We have a truce."

"You're under his compulsion, Sloane," said Ganner.

"I'm not under his compulsion; I'm in his debt," Sloane snapped. "Owing him has made me irritable, but if you shoot him, you'll put me in breach of my oath as head of this clan, and then I'll really be ticked."

"I won't be thrilled either," Riley muttered.

The guns started to come down. Jax watched realization dawn on their faces one by one. "Ursula . . . ?" Ganner said hoarsely.

"Grandmother is dead," Sloane said. Jax noticed the grief on Sloane's face was gone. He supposed she needed to assert her new authority, but it seemed cold even for a Dulac. "Where were you when we needed you?" she demanded of her security chief.

"We were under attack." Ganner's hand shook as he holstered his weapon.

Sloane looked around at the devastation. "You lost, I see."

"What happened to my sister?" Evangeline asked.

When Ganner hesitated, Sloane snapped her fingers. "Answer her."

"It was the Llyrs," he said. "They took us by surprise, coming in through the alley. They seemed to know exactly where they were going. They targeted this room, blasted open the floor, and abducted the girl."

"Not abducted," piped up Tegan. "She went willingly. I was watching from across the street. She knew them-greeted one of them by name."

Evangeline and Jax exchanged glances. What kind of friends had Addie made at the Carroway house?

"You're sure it was Llyrs?" Sloane asked.

"Six men are dead by electrocution," Ganner said grimly. "Our radios are fried. Lights burst as they passed by. The wall and floor here were blown away. Do you know of any other Kin who can throw bolts of lightning and raise small tornadoes?"

Sloane indicated the hole in the floor. "Not even a Llyr should've been able to break in there with magic. That cell was warded."

"One of the wards was cracked by the wyvern," Jax said. He didn't mention that Addie had also weakened it with her curses.

"Did he say wyvern?" whispered one of the security men.

"Ganner?" somebody called up from below.