Page 15 of Gemini Kings
The elevator gives a cheerfulding!The doors slide open. I’m already on the move, because I’m not gonna die trapped like a rat in a cage.
I dive through the opening doors with a hum gathering in my throat and electricity crackling around my fingers.
No one tries to stop me, and for a sec I’m alone up here in the night on my dad’s empty helipad, floating one hundred stories above the Vegas Strip, with a dry hot wind whistling in my ears and lifting the hair from my shoulders.
Then thethokka-thokka-thokkaof churning rotors drowns out the wind’s whistle.
And the chopper rises into view.
With its side door open, goons in carnival masks hanging out, and the swoopy double pillar Gemini sign painted on the side.
I’ve got a sec while I’m pelting across the roof away from the chopper to make the connections in my head. That it’s my dad gunning for me (again) and he obviously knew I was coming. That Xiao’s the bait he used to lure me out. That the emergency stairwell’s the only escape route I’ve still got. And that I better dive into it before that chopper cuts me off.
But I’m only halfway there, even at my speed, when the stairwell door opens and more goons pour out to cut me off.
Sweet Jesus, can’t a girl ever catch a break?
I could summon the lightning and be free in a flash (literally). I can’t hear the rumble of thunder over the chopper’s roar, but heat lightning dances in the crisp winter sky, already drawn by the hum in my throat. That lightning’s so close all I’d need to do is raise my arm and yell to hurl it.
But damn it, I’m not taking the roof off another casino.
I’m not psycho like my mom.
I’m not a killer. I’mnot.
Except when I have to be.
I push away the unsettling memory of Bjorn the polar bear shifter, his furry bulk all smoking and scorched and lifeless in the courtyard of ourdomusback home. A death that’s still under active investigation by the AIB. That shifter would’ve killed Lucius if I hadn’t done my thing.
I’m in control now when I kill.
I am.
I veer away from the fire escape and head for the edge of the roof, not even knowing why, because there’s nothing close enough for me to jump to (though I’ve been known to try stunts like that before).
The chopper veers to cut me off, hovering twelve feet above the helipad. Then tendrils of rope spool out and guys in carnival masks start dropping like spiders through the door.
Now it’s time for these fuckers to show me some respect.
I growl low in my throat—the brassy rumble of the lightning voice—and stomp my foot. Lucius and I have been working on this. I’m channeling the little lightning.
An ultraviolet sheet of electricity spreads from my boot, rolling and crackling across the helipad. It’s strong enough to give a nasty jolt to everyone standing on it.
Except me, because Iamthe fucking lightning.
I’m the Gemini queen.
My jolt knocks every joe on the helipad on their asses like they’ve just been tasered.
Savage joy surges through me and lifts the hair off my shoulders. I pivot toward the elevator, figure maybe I’ll try this trick with the boys downstairs…
Just in time to see the elevator doors slide open. And wouldn’t you know it?
There’s my fucking father.
Yep. Mick Gemini’s pretty impossible to mistake. Even though he’s looking kinda disheveled from whatever Vasili did downstairs to delay him, with his tie all crooked and his jacket torn. But Mickie boy still has that broad-shouldered frame in his trendy suit that draws the girls and the commanding lift to his Irish mob boss head that intimidates the boys.
Or maybe, you know, that’s just his money talking.
