Ilona Andrews: White Hot

The soldiers unlocked the massive front doors, then one of them wandered over to the side of the limo and opened the door. Catalina stepped out. The soldier waited behind her, his face relaxed, attentive like a bellhop at a luxury hotel. Melosa got out of the car. Her eyes were wide like two saucers.

Catalina turned and waved at us. I sped up, trying to close the distance. An older man in a grey uniform with a bearing of a soldier smiled at us.

“Are you her friends?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s so nice. Come on, I’ll show you inside. It’s lunchtime.”

Catalina squared her shoulders and stepped into the fortress. Two sentries rose from their seats. The older soldier waved at them. “Come with me.”

We walked through the narrow hallway, turned right, turned left. My mouth tasted like a copper penny. I should’ve never let her do this. Ahead an open door revealed a large cafeteria.

The strike team around me put in their earplugs and halted. We’d gone over this maneuver during the planning stage. If they walked into that mess hall, we’d have no strike team left. Rogan, Cornelius, Arabella, Augustine, and I followed Catalina in. I’d told them it was a bad idea. They’d decided they would do it anyway.

At least sixty people sat at the tables, eating. Everyone stopped and looked at us.

My sister smiled. “Hi!”

“Hi?” a woman said from the nearest table. “Who are you?”

“I’m just a kid.”

Every pair of eyes watched her.

“I go to Cedar High. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me in algebra class yesterday.”

Rogan looked at me.

“Watch,” I mouthed.

“I was sitting at my desk and Dace Collins just broke up with his girlfriend.”

Sixty people in the room and not a single one was eating. They held completely still.

“He did it right in front of the whole class. She cried. It was so uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to do.”

The room fell silent.

“Dace Collins is an asshole,” a man on the left said.

“Yeah, what the hell?” a young guy on the right said. “What kind of a little punk does a thing like that?”

“You don’t worry, sweetie,” the first woman said. “Don’t stress out about it. He isn’t worth it.”

“How dare he put you in that position? You shouldn’t have to feel embarrassed for him and his girlfriend,” another woman said. “Do you want us to go and get him for you? Because we’ll go right now.”

The older soldier nodded at the crowd. “Jake and Marsha, go get a vehicle out of the motor pool, find this Dace, and bring him here. We’ll have us a little talk and teach him how to treat a lady.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Catalina said. Getting Dace Collins would’ve been a tall order, since he was a character on Liars , the latest teen soap opera. “Would you like to hear the rest of the story instead?”

“Yes,” several voices said at one. “Yes, please.”

They moved toward her, forming a tight semicircle.

“That’s close enough,” she said.

They didn’t want to stop, but they obeyed.

“I really want to tell you the rest of the story, but can we get the rest of the people here? They might want to hear what happened.”

The older soldier spoke into his radio. “All personnel report to mess hall immediately. I repeat, all personnel, report to mess hall immediately.” He looked at Catalina, his face and smile soft. “They will be here right away.”

“Oh good. Please sit down.”

They sat on the floor as one, devotion shining on their faces. Next to me Cornelius tried to bend his knees. I grabbed his arm and hauled him upright.

“My friend is going to make a hole in that wall right there.” Catalina pointed to the far wall. “So we have more light.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“Yes, more light never hurts.”

I nudged Rogan. He raised his hand. A gap sliced through the far wall, cleaving a twenty-five-foot hole in the reinforced concrete.

“Bigger,” I murmured. Arabella would need a fast exit.

The gap grew to forty feet.

“Bigger.”

The wall exploded.

“Thank you!” Catalina said.

“You’re so nice,” one of the soldiers told Rogan. “I’m glad she has nice friends like you.”

“Is that your brother?” a woman wanted to know.

“No, it’s my sister’s boyfriend.”

“You have a sister! That is awesome. I have a sister too.”

More people poured into the mess hall. An athletic man with a long scar across his face led the charge. He saw us and narrowed his eyes. “What the hell is going on here?”

“She’s telling a story,” the older soldier said. “You’ve got to hear this, Gabe. It’s a hell of a story.”

“Have you all lost your damned minds?”

“Welcome, Gabriel,” my sister said. “Welcome, all of you.”

Gabriel’s eyes softened. He raised his hand. A shy smile tugged at his hard face. “Hi.”

“I was telling you about Dace,” Catalina said. “Yes. Dace is one of those neither-here-nor-there guys. He isn’t smart and he isn’t athletic. He just kind of bums around the school and tries to look edgy . . .”

They stared at her with rapt attention.

“We have to go,” I murmured.

Rogan startled, as if coming awake.

“Wait,” Augustine said. “I want to hear the end of this.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, really, this is fascinating,” Cornelius whispered.

Rogan locked his right arm on Augustine’s shoulder, his left on Cornelius, and dragged them out the door.

“You’ve got this?” I asked Arabella.

She nodded. “They won’t get her.”

I walked out and shut the door behind me. The strike team had closed ranks and kept walking, herding Augustine and Cornelius down the hallway. We were twenty yards away before either of them stopped looking over his shoulder.

“What was that?” Augustine asked, stunned.

“Love,” I told him. “They love her.”

“Is that why Matilda likes her so much?” Cornelius asked.

“No. Catalina never uses her magic on those close to her. Matilda likes her because my sister is nice and takes care of her. We have about thirty minutes. The longer they stay near her, the more they love her. Eventually they’ll want to touch her. They’ll want a piece of her clothes or better yet a chunk of her hair or a finger. She can’t stop it. In twenty minutes Arabella will have to get her out of there, or they will rip her apart.”

“But what about Arabella?” Cornelius asked.

“She and I are immune. She is our sister. We already love her as much as we can.”

We ran through the narrow passageways, going through the place room by room. As soon as we cleared the mess hall hallway, Cornelius began to hum to himself. It was an incessant, almost hypnotic tune. It didn’t sound like any song I’d heard before. Maybe all this pressure had finally made him lose his mind.

Three people jumped us. The strike team took down two, while Rogan collided with the third and broke him like a rag doll. The man slumped on the floor, breathing fast, his right leg bent at an odd angle. I crouched by him.

“Where is Olivia Charles?”

The man’s hands curled into fists. He strained, but my magic was too strong. “Down the hallway to the bottom floor. She is in the room at the end of the hall.”

We left him in the hallway, sobbing.

Eight minutes later we reached the room, a vast empty space, its walls and floor completely black. I had seen a room just like it before, at MII. It was painted with chalkboard paint. A half-finished circle marked the floor, the piece of chalk lying discarded next to it. Olivia Charles was nowhere in sight. We spread through the room. No doors besides the one we had come through.