Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [104]
I hadn’t considered that—that there would be RG gear, materials, documents I’d need to keep secreted away even within my own room. I’d have to give that some thought.
Jonah rubbed his hands together. “How about a drink now?”
“Yes, please,” I agreed, but before I could place an order, I got a very bad vibe. The building vibrated a little. Only for a moment, but I’d have sworn I felt something.
“Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
I froze, and after a moment, wondered if I’d imagined it. And as I stood there waiting, I happened to glance at a cup of water on a bar table beside us. The rumbling started deep and low, sending ripples across the water.
“Jonah—”
“I saw that,” he said, then paused. “Maybe it’s just really big dinosaurs.”
“Or really big magic,” I finished. “I think we need to get outside.”
I could see in his face that he didn’t want to believe anything was out there, but he had a duty to perform, so he was willing to take a look. “Let’s go.”
We scooted through the bodies and tables—the humans and vampires apparently oblivious to the rumblings—and stepped into the cool November air . . .
And saw nothing.
Partygoers walked up and down the street. Traffic was light, but there were a few cars out and about.
“I know I felt something,” I said, scanning the street back and forth.
I took another step forward and closed my eyes, letting down some of the defenses I used to keep the mass of information that flooded into a vampire’s brain at bay. For a moment, there was nothing . . . Just the typical smells and sounds of a fall night in Chicago. The air smelled of people and food and grease. Dirt from the ballpark. Smoke from the traffic.
My eyes closed, my head tipped back, I felt the rumble again, the ground vibrating dizzyingly beneath me.
“Merit!” Jonah yelled. I opened my eyes just in time to be snatched backward as he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him.
The asphalt split, a twenty-feet wide mountain of earth erupting into the middle of the street in front of us.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE
“What the hell is that?” he asked, as we watched this new mountain burst through the middle of Wrigleyville. The asphalt around it cracked and moved, stopping traffic and turning over cars on the sides of the road. Car alarms and honking horns began to ripple down the sidewalk as chaos erupted, people streaming from the bars to scream at the bubble of earth in front of them.
Both too stunned to move, we stood on the sidewalk, Jonah’s arm still around me, staring at it. I risked a glance at the sky, and saw exactly what I’d expected to see.
It was flaming red again, the sky flashing as lightning lit the clouds from within. And I’d bet good money the lakes and rivers were back to black and were sucking in magic.
“This is earth,” I said, foreboding collecting heavily in my abdomen. “I talked to Tate. The problems occur when someone mixes good and evil magic and the balance of the elements is thrown off in the process.”
“We’ll leave aside the fact that you went to see Tate alone again,” Jonah darkly said. “For now. Bigger point—whoever or whatever is responsible for these problems is at it again.”
Before I could answer him, the rumbling began again.
“Jonah,” I warned, and he released me, scanning the street for the next eruption.
“I feel it,” he agreed, and we watched, horrified, as another mountain punched through the sidewalk in the front of a real estate office down the block a bit. Before we could react, a third followed, a couple of blocks down the road.
“They’re still coming.”
“And they’re headed toward Grey House,” he frantically said, pulling out his phone. He dialed some number, but then cursed. “I can’t get through.”
“Go,” I told him. “Go back to your House. Take your vampires with you if you think you need help.”
When he looked down at me, for the first time, I saw fear in his eyes.
“They’ll bury us with this, Merit. They will bury us.”
The heavy weight in my stomach didn’t disagree, but that’s not what he needed to