Destiny Kills (Myth and Magic 1)

“It’s all handprint-coded now. Everyone working there is registered with the computer. No one else gets in without clearance from the big man himself.”

Which meant we’d been doing nothing but wasting time here in Florence. Even if we’d managed to raid the old lady’s house successfully, it wouldn’t have mattered a damn. We couldn’t slide in a new password because Marsten would have final approval, and we couldn’t use someone else’s because of the whole handprint deal.

God, we should have figured something like this would happen, but I guess Egan and I had been working blind. We weren’t security experts—even if Egan had trained in the family “business” of stealing. Security equipment had probably zoomed ahead in leaps and bounds in the ten years he’d been locked up.

“So the security net around the research center is tight? There are no gaps anywhere at all in the system?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

Crap. Of course, he could be lying his pants off, but part of me doubted it. Fear lurked in his eyes, and I really didn’t think his loyalty to the scientists ran that deep. “Tell me how you’ve been finding us so successfully.”

“Tracker.”

“Where?”

He hesitated, then said, somewhat reluctantly, “In your foot.”

“Which we pulled out last night and destroyed. So how did you find us at the hotel?”

“Luck,” he muttered.

But his eyes did a shifty little sideways flicker, telling me he was lying. Or at least, not admitting the entire truth. “I know there’s another tracker, so just tell me where.”

He didn’t say anything. I raised my fingers, entangling the full power of the ocean once again, letting it tug lightly at his feet and twist him around. Fear flashed across his sullen features.

“Okay, okay, there is another one.”

“Where?”

“In your mouth, in one of the fillings. It’s short-range microchip.”

Oh, just great. And here was me with no time and no cash to visit a dentist. Though how on earth would I explain having a tracker in my mouth? “Which tooth?”

He just smiled. “Take me back to the shore and I’ll tell you.”

“Yeah, right.” If I took him back to shore, he’d either immediately create a fuss that’d attract unwanted attention, or one of the idiots who’d been in the car with him would take a second shot at me. And this time, they might not just get a shoulder.

“You need to get help for that shoulder, you know,” he said. “Otherwise you’ll bleed to death.”

“The sea will heal it.”

He snorted. “Yeah. The sea is all powerful, all healing. That’s why I was able to catch you so easily the first time.”

The sea had nothing to do with that because I was near the loch rather than the ocean. Besides, he’d caught me so easily because I was a fool. I’d naively believed him when he said he could get me inside the research center and help me rescue my mom.

Of course, he’d kept half his word. He’d gotten me into the compound all right—and led me straight into the trap the scientists had waiting. I’d called the loch for help, but the loch was freshwater, not sea, and while waters as ancient as the loch did contain a powerful energy, it didn’t have the same sort of magic as the sea. Not for me as a half breed, anyway. She’d answered, but nowhere near quick enough. The scientists had knocked me out very quickly, and I doubted they would have even noticed a brief rise of water up the shoreline.

“Tell me the range of the microchip.”

He hesitated, then muttered, “Five hundred feet.”

“That’s not very far.”

“The other one was GPS technology. The tooth was just meant as a backup, and designed mainly for around the lab. If you got out of your cell, it was easier for them to use the short-range stuff than haul out the GPS.”

He was beginning to shiver now, his bottom lip quivering and his skin turning a paler shade. He was treading water rather than simply floating, and therefore using more body heat than necessary. He was also an air dragon, and they didn’t do well in cold conditions. Not for very long periods, anyway.

Distant vibrations of power began to lap at my skin, and the sea began whispering of an approaching powerboat. I looked over my shoulder, scanning the horizon and seeing a distant dot. Maybe someone had seen this man being dragged out.