Chaos (Book 4) (The Omega Group) (11 page)

Orano peered around the trunk of a large tree as Tori placed
what must have been the crystal on the stump of a recently felled oak. She and
her cohorts joined hands surrounding it and began to chant something that he
couldn’t make out.

“Are you waiting for an invitation, big guy?” Phoenix
taunted.

His jaw clenched, Orano fought off the urge to throttle his
partner and instead focused on his target. The largest of the three women had
positioned herself directly between him and the tree stump, unknowingly making
herself a human shield. He would need to move away from his hiding spot in
order to get a clear line of sight to the crystal.

“Could you maybe do this
before
they blackout another
nuclear facility?” his partner continued.

Ignoring him as best he could, Orano moved. In a low crouch,
he made his way to a smaller tree that stood less than ten feet away. Now, with
the crystal easily visible between two women, he formed an energy ball and
hurled it. To his shock, it stopped midway to his target, as though hitting an
invisible wall, and fizzled to nothing.

Three pairs of angry eyes turned toward him. The women
continued their chant as Orano pelted them with energy balls. None of them
broke through their protective field.

He could see the crystal glowing on its perch. No longer a
softball-sized, brown ball, it instead held every color of the rainbow swirling
inside its mass. He could only imagine the amount of power being channeled
through it.

The hair on Orano’s arms stood on end as electricity filled
the air. At first, he thought Tori’s magic had diffused his expelled energy
into the atmosphere, but he soon realized the spark emanated from the crystal.
Whatever they were doing, it was working.

“Go get Gracey,” he yelled to Phoenix. “I need her help
breaking through the protection spell.”

Orano’s mind raced. He needed to finish this, and quickly.
As it stood, the women were locked into performing their ritual. Even after
he’d bombarded them with firepower, they hadn’t missed a word of their chant.
They obviously needed all of their powers focused on the crystal.

On the bright side, it gave Orano some uninterrupted time on
the offensive. The downside meant that, as soon as they were finished, he’d
have an army of angry witches focused solely on him.

Gracey almost bowled him over as she ran to his side.
Although she’d seen him throw an energy ball earlier, her jaw dropped as she
watched him unleash one after another up close and personal.

“It’s not working. Can you weaken their protection?” he
asked.

Phoenix handed over her bag, and she dumped its contents on
the ground. Pushing aside everything but the items she’d picked up at the herb
shop, Gracey grabbed a clay bowl, threw in what looked like herbs from several
different jars, and crushed them like the old-time pharmacists used to do. When
she finished, instead of performing some kind of spell, she just stood there.

“Now would be good,” Orano pleaded.

“Give me a second. I’m trying to rewrite my earlier spell to
make it work.” She closed her eyes for an annoyingly long time, before breaking
into a smile and stepping forward.

“Whatever protection spell is here, I cast it down. I have no
fear. With the dark of night and the speed of wind, this protection spell will
be rescind … ed.” Gracey scrunched her forehead as she said that last
not-quite-rhyming word, then threw the freshly ground powder at Tori and her
henchmen.

Orano rolled his eyes before manifesting another energy
ball. He relished the horrified expression on Tori’s face as he pulled his arm
back but, before he could throw it, Phoenix jumped in front of him.

“Move!” Orano shoved him to the side, only to have him
scramble back up and stand in his way again. This time, he waved his arms and
jumped left and right.

“Get out of my way, Phoenix,” Orano yelled, his temper
rising.

His partner dove at him, wrapping his arms around Orano’s
and nearly knocking them both to the ground. The spastic behavior seemed to
come out of nowhere.

Orano pushed him off again. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Whatever I want him to.” The third member of Tori’s inner
circle—Nicole, he thought—sauntered toward them holding a creepy looking wax
doll. She turned to her leader. “Gracey cast a spell to ward off the other
covens’ power, but I’ve taken care of it.”

The three women behind Phoenix were still chanting around
the glowing crystal. Phoenix bounced from one foot to the other, apparently
ready to dive in front of anything Orano might throw. Gracey stood in silence.

The smug grin on Tori’s face all but dared Orano to risk
killing his partner to destroy her crystal. He even formed another energy ball,
holding it up for her to see, to let her know how close she’d come to losing. Her
smile, however, never wavered. She knew he wouldn’t do it.

Nicole reached down to where Gracey had emptied her bag and
grabbed the discarded book lying in a pile of leaves. Its cover, emblazoned
with the title
Controlling Your Mental Health
, disintegrated at her
touch. What remained no longer resembled a book at all, only a few sheets of
photography paper.

“Thank you for making this easy, Gracey.” Nicole held the
pictures in front of her, smiling as small orange flames appeared, engulfing
each page.

Orano eyed the totem in Nicole’s hand. Phoenix might be
blocking him from taking out the crystal, but he could still hit that wax doll
and release his partner from the witch’s control.

“No, Orano,” Gracey yelled as he pulled his arm back. “The
totem’s linked to Phoenix. That’s how she’s able to control him. Anything you
do to it, you do to Phoenix.”

“That doesn’t stop me from taking her down.”

Gracey laid her hand gently on his shoulder. “Yes, it does.
All she has to do is squeeze and every bone in Phoenix’s body will be
pulverized.”

“She’s right, you know,” Nicole said with a smirk. “There’s
nothing you can do.”

The internal battle raged as Orano saw his chances of
stopping Tori slipping away. He could end the threat, right then and there,
with only one casualty. A few days ago, he probably would have done just that,
but not now. Somehow, Phoenix had gotten under his skin or, perhaps more
accurately, Gracey had. He let out a long breath.

Gracey’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “It’s over, Orano. We
failed.” She grabbed her bag and shoved the items that were scattered on the
grass into it. “We need to go before they finish the spell, or there’ll be
nothing stopping them from turning their magic on us,” she said. “Grab
Phoenix.”

Orano’s jaw ticked. “We can’t take him with us. Not while he’s
under their control.”

“But—” Gracey sputtered as Orano grabbed her arm and pulled
her into the woods. He didn’t let go until they were safely in the car and driving
back toward town. Tears streamed down Gracey’s face, though she remained
silent.

 Orano pulled out his phone and dialed. “We have a problem,”
he said when his boss picked up.

“Yes, we do. What happened?” Myrine asked.

Orano started to answer, then realized that they were
talking about two different things. Myrine couldn’t have known about Phoenix. “It
happened again, didn’t it?”

“Rome, Italy is completely blacked out, along with an almost
twenty-mile swath around it in every direction. It’s too soon to know for sure,
but it looks like every piece of electronic equipment is fried. It’s like the
area was hit by an EMP.”

“Shit,” Orano mumbled. He could see the lights of Virginia
Beach in the distance, so he’d just assumed that the witches had failed.
Obviously, he’d been wrong. “It’s definitely got something to do with these
witches. They just finished some sort of spell using a crystal to channel their
power. I don’t see how screwing with Rome helps them, though.”

“We have a theory about that. We think California may have
been a demonstration of their power. It’s possible that this is another one,
although, according to Julian, it would have taken a whole lot more power to do
this kind of damage. Does your source have any ideas?”

Orano put the phone on speaker and relayed his boss’s
question to Gracey.

“All we knew was that we were trying to harness and store as
much power as possible, so when the mundanes—sorry, the people without
magic—needed us, we’d be able to take care of them. Tonight, though, Tori, our
high priestess, said that a lot of other covens were also sending their power
to us.”

“Tori’s working her way up to the main event.” Orano pieced
together what he knew. “She used California as a recruiting tool. Show other
covens what can be done and get them on board to help.”

“It sounds like she’s using terrorist tactics. Recruiting is
never easier than immediately after a successful attack,” Myrine said. “The
California incident made national news headlines, but only garnered small
bi-lines internationally. This one will be plastered across every media outlet
in the world.”

“We have another problem,’ Orano said. “They’ve got
Phoenix.”

Gracey kept her face turned away from Orano, watching the
scenery pass by outside her car window. She understood the logic of leaving
Phoenix behind—they couldn’t very well have someone who worked for Tori at
their side regardless of whether or not he was a willing participant.
Intellectually, she agreed with the decision but, emotionally, she hated Orano
for making it. She hated herself.

She’d held it together long enough to answer his boss’s
questions, but now that the phone call had ended and her mind had no more
distractions, she felt her resolve weakening. Gracey’s eyes welled up,
threatening to shed a torrent of tears she wouldn’t be able to stop. She brought
her hand to her mouth, ready to chew away whatever remained of her mangled
fingernails.

Orano wrapped his enormous paw around her fist and pulled it
back down to her lap. “He’ll be okay,” he said, leaving his hand resting on
hers.

“You can’t know that,” Gracey choked out as the tenuous grip
on her emotions disintegrated and tears streaked down her face. “Tori has his
totem. She can do almost anything to him.”

“But she won’t. Phoenix is her insurance policy. She needs
him alive and kicking, or she’ll lose her leverage over us.”

Again, Gracey agreed with the logic behind that statement
but found it difficult to tamp down her emotional response. “And when she no
longer needs leverage?”

Orano took his eyes off the road long enough to capture her
gaze and show her his determination. “We’ll get him back long before that
happens. My team will be here soon. Two of them are in Washington, DC right now
and are probably already in a helicopter on their way. The rest are only a
couple hours behind. We don’t mess around when one of our own is in trouble.”

“And they’ll be able to take down powerful witches?”

The corners of Orano’s mouth twitched up. “If you’re asking
if they’re like me, the answer is no. I don’t know anyone who’s like me.”

The disappointment on her face must have been evident,
because he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and continued.

“They’re different from me, but no less powerful. In fact,
one of the people coming from DC, well, she’s more powerful than any human I’ve
ever met.”

His choice of phrasing struck Gracey as odd. It seemed to
suggest that he’d met people who were classified as something other than human.
Her first reaction to that thought was one of disbelief. No aliens lived secretly
among the people of Earth. Then she realized what a hypocrite that made her.
Most people felt that way about witches, not to mention men who could manifest
balls of energy. If she herself fell into the category of unbelievable things,
then how could she assume others in that category weren’t just as real as she
was?

“You know people who aren’t hum—?”

A loud
crack!
sounded, and the car jerked hard to the
right. Orano let go of her hand so he could use both of his on the wheel, while
Gracey braced herself with one hand on the dash and one gripping the plastic handle
above her door. When the car turned to face the woods beside the road, Gracey
felt herself become weightless as the tires on her side left the pavement.

Everything moved in slow motion. The view out the windshield
became an abstract picture as tree trunks went from vertical to horizontal. The
world tipped on its side, and Orano’s door crushed inward. They tumbled
further, until the ceiling crumpled below her and every window exploded,
covering them in shards of glass. Orano’s side of the car rose up as if to
continue the roll, but hung suspended for only a moment before crashing back
down.

The screech of metal dragging across asphalt filled her ears
until the inverted car slid fully off the road to the shoulder. Stones, twigs,
and other debris hurtled through the hole in the windshield, pelting them with
enough force to embed themselves in Gracey’s skin. When a small rock struck her
temple, she felt herself losing consciousness.

“Gracey! Are you all right?”

She dragged her eyes open, knowing she needed to stay awake,
but unable to control her thoughts enough to form words. Gracey turned her face
toward the screaming voice and saw an upside down Orano, face bloodied and
filthy, kneeling outside her window. Her trauma-addled brain slowly realized
that she must have passed out, giving him time to extract himself from the
wreck. Then she understood that he wasn’t the upside down one.

“I’m going to undo your seatbelt, Gracey. Okay? Don’t worry.
I’ve got you.”

The words barely registered when she felt his arm wrap
around her upper body just before her hips and legs dropped to the ground. Orano
grabbed her under her arms and slowly pulled her out the window. Her head
rolled to the side in time to see another car come around the corner. It slowed
as it approached them. Orano stood, waving his hands while he took a few steps
forward.

As soon as the car stopped, a young man slid out from behind
the wheel. His facial expression felt wrong to Gracey—no shock or fear—but she
knew not to trust her reactions at that moment. She’d barely begun thinking
straight. When the Good Samaritan raised his arm, weapon in hand, her heart
sank.

The man pulled the trigger and Orano stumbled backward,
almost losing his footing but remaining upright. Relief washed over Gracey.
Although she could only see him from behind, she felt sure that he would have
fallen immediately if he’d taken a bullet. Somehow, the attacker missed his
target.

She watched as Orano raised his hand to the side, a bright
orange ball forming in his palm. Before he could let it loose, he stumbled once
more and fell to his knees. The energy ball disappeared, and Orano sat back on
his heels before collapsing to the ground.

Gracey heard herself scream. She scrambled the rest of the
way out of their car, ignoring the added pain of the rocks and newly shattered
glass shards slicing into her skin, and pushed herself up. The man held Orano’s
arms, dragging him away from her. If she could just focus her mind, she’d be able
to summon enough magic to—

Something hit her in the chest. Not particularly painful, it
felt more like the sting from a really large bee.
Forget about the bee. You
need to help Orano.
No sooner had the thought entered her mind, than it
melted away. The silver and blue dart protruding from her chest told her why.

Another man had exited the attacker’s car, holding the same
kind of weapon used on Orano. He opened their back door and helped his friend
lift Orano onto the seat. He then ran to Gracey and pulled the dart out of her
chest. She expected him to grab her, too, but he didn’t. He simply left her
lying, almost unconscious, on the side of the road.

As the kidnappers’ car pulled forward, Gracey used every
last bit of lucidity she could muster to focus her eyes and read.

X … K … F … 9 … 4 …

Her last thought before the darkness took hold left her
bereft. She’d failed.