Ruby Fever (Hidden Legacy, #6)(9)

I pulled up an image of a two-foot spike with a ring on the blunt end on my phone and showed it to him. It looked identical to the two sticking out of Luciana.

“A marlin spike,” Alessandro said. “Used by sailors for ropework.”

“Most telekinetics throw crossbow bolts or giant nail-shaped skewers. I know of only one family that throws marlin spikes.”

Alessandro raised his eyebrows. “House Rogan?”

I nodded. “The telekinetic who attacked us in the Pit also used marlin spikes.”

“You think it’s Xavier.” A dangerous light flared in Alessandro’s eyes.

“I seriously doubt that Connor climbed the HCC building and hammered two giant spikes into the Speaker of the Texas Assembly. If he wanted to kill her, he would have done it quietly.”

My brother-in-law’s control was off the charts. If he’d wanted to kill Luciana, and I couldn’t imagine that he would, he could have slit her throat with a razor blade from hundreds of yards away, or choked her with her own necklace or clothes, or sent a tiny needle through her eye, scrambling her brain. This was loud and aggressive. It had to be Xavier. I had no proof, but I knew it was him. It felt like him.

Alessandro’s phone rang. He stared at it like it was a snake.

“Please excuse me. I have to take this.” He walked away, speaking in Italian, too low for me to hear.

Something was going on with him, and that something wasn’t good.

I looked back to the spike.

Until Arkan got to him, Xavier’s magic talents were modest. When Arkan had stolen a sample of the Osiris serum years ago, putting himself on Linus Duncan’s permanent hit list, he kept some of it. Once someone took the serum, its effects persisted through generations, and if any of that person’s descendants tried to take it again, it would kill them. Arkan was obsessed with finding a way around that certain death, and he used Xavier as a guinea pig. Most of Arkan’s test subjects died in agony, but Xavier had won the life-or-death lottery, becoming an incredibly powerful insta-Prime.

Xavier had grown up in my brother-in-law’s shadow. To him, Connor, his distant cousin, was the example of everything Xavier wanted to achieve. Connor was freakishly powerful, wealthy, and respected, a war hero who was looked up to by the whole family. To someone like Xavier, with his modest telekinetic talent and craving for the finer things in life, Connor was at the apex of everything he ever hoped to achieve. Now, thanks to Arkan, he thought he had reached that height, and he flaunted his power. The spikes were a special fuck you to Connor.

You didn’t think I was strong enough to use these. Look at me now.

Alessandro came striding up, his phone put away. He and Xavier had a score to settle. Alessandro had tried to kill Arkan for murdering his father. Xavier had hit him with a semitruck and nearly ended his life.

I looked into Alessandro’s eyes and saw calculated, cold rage. Fear punched me right in the stomach. I’d spent the last six months doing everything I could to avoid the confrontation between him and Arkan, but it was coming like a runaway train, unstoppable and inevitable.

“This was sanctioned,” Alessandro said.

I nodded. It had to be. For all of his craziness, Xavier worshipped the ground Arkan walked on. He wouldn’t have murdered the Speaker of the Texas Assembly on his own. Arkan was behind him, holding on to his pet’s leash. He pointed at a target, and Xavier bit it.

“This is so . . .” I waved my hand at the body.

“Loud,” Alessandro finished with a grim look on his face.

It was unlike Arkan. He preferred to operate from the shadows. Was he sending a message? To whom? Why? Was it to someone close to Luciana?

Luciana Cabera had been a halcyon Prime. She specialized in soothing magic. Psionics incited crowds, and halcyons calmed them. Two decades ago, a riot raged inside the Ellis Unit, the most dangerous prison in Texas. The authorities sought a nonviolent solution, so they turned to the best halcyon mage in the state. Luciana walked into the prison unarmed and alone, and when the sheriffs followed her fifteen minutes later, they found the inmates sitting in rows along the hallway walls, quietly smiling. That day started her political career.

In her political life, Luciana had been aboveboard. She approached the Assembly with the attitude of a veteran middle school teacher, which meant she was stern enough to follow the procedure but flexible enough to make compromises where special treatment was required. In her day-to-day life, Luciana had run a clinic that treated people suffering from anxiety. She held a PhD in psychology from Harvard.

None of these things should have put her into Arkan’s crosshairs. I needed more information. Where the hell was Linus?

My phone launched into the Fistful of Dollars theme. Leon. Not texting, calling.

I took the call. Leon’s face appeared on-screen.

“I’m at Linus’. The gate is shut. I entered the code, it didn’t work. I called. No answer on the phone or intercom. Also, there is this.”

He switched to the other camera. The keypad by the gate glowed with yellow. It should have turned green when he put the code in.

Linus had activated the siege protocol. Shit.

“Do you want me to jump the gate?”

“No! Do not go inside. Leon, everything is armed. The moment you step foot in there, the turrets will shred you.”

“Fine. No need to be dramatic.”