Shit. Nero glanced at the monitor. Men rushed to the outside of both doors, moving with the efficiency of an experienced combat team. These men had breached buildings before, and more than half of them carried sidearms and not Tasers.

Nero stood and faced the front door. “I can’t gate us out of here until that tracker is disabled.”

He hissed his power word and summoned his wind. Raven stood, woke her magic, and turned to the back door.

“Sure.” Gig said. “Just—”

Agony sliced through Nero’s head and someone— no, Becca gasped behind him, awake.

Raven’s wind stuttered and vanished — she still needed to concentrate to hold it at the ready. “How the hell did she burn through even a half dose of midazolam?”

“Gig, that tracker,” Nero growled.

A crack erupted from the back door. It crashed off its hinges, and four men stormed into the tiny room. Another crack from farther away, the other team breaching the front of the warehouse, and on the monitor, they stormed into the empty main room of the building and headed toward the smaller safe house room.

“Let me go.” Becca wrenched against the handcuff, making the cot jerk forward, the feet squealing against the floor.

Raven barked her power word, reviving her wind, but the men in the doorway had already raised their sidearms to fire.

Nero shot his wind into the first two, but a slash of pain from Becca made the gust sputter, and it only shoved them back into the doorway. “The tracker?”

“Working on—”

Becca kicked Gig in the chest. He fell back and cracked his head on the floor.

“He’s trying to help.” Raven slammed another blast at the men at the door, pushing the first two farther than Nero had managed and into the two behind them.

Becca yanked harder against the handcuff, her expression wild. “I said I’d never go back. And I’m not.”

One of the men in the doorway fired at Raven. Nero swept his wind up, but the bullet skimmed her shoulder. With a roar, she lassoed the guy with her wind and tossed him against the far wall.

The front door crashed open and more men rushed inside. Nero strained against the agony and roar of voices in his head and sent another gust into the guys at the back door.

Gig groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Get up and deal with that tracker,” Nero yelled.

“Dealing with it, and I’m staying the hell away from her.”

Two of the guys at the front heaved themselves out of the doorway to make way for the other two, and the biggest guy managed to wrench his Glock up and fire. Two bangs erupted, and blood sprayed from the back of Raven’s shoulder. She screamed and her wind vanished, but she remained standing — thank the Mother her healing was fast enough that it would take more than a bullet to the shoulder to incapacitate her.

Nero tore his wind in half and sent blasts at both doors. Becca’s agony flared and the muscles in his chest seized. His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor. Mother of All. He had to gate them out of there, but he couldn’t risk moving them until the tracker was disabled.

“Tell me it’s dead.”

“Almost,” Gig said.

Get out! Becca screamed. Just get out. Please, get out. Please, God, please.

The roaring inside him increased. Every nerve had ignited into an inferno. Now. He had to gate them away now, or it was never going to happen. Raven and Gig couldn’t free gate. Nero was the only one who could get them out of there.

More gunfire exploded. Pain ripped through Nero’s chest.

“Got it,” Gig said.

Nero yelled his power word, forcing his magic to form a gate past the agony and whirlwind in his head. Becca screamed, yanking on the handcuff, as if hoping she could break free. Raven dropped to one knee, another spray of blood exploding from her side. She grabbed Gig, his eyes wide, and shoved him to the side of the cot, while the young man still restrained in the cot started to howl. His aura blazed as Nero’s gate formed beneath all of them, the cot included, and the gate enveloped them.

Power surged through Nero, burning with agony and threatening to consume him. He grasped onto the one safe place he could send them that was close, and the gate shoved them up through another concrete floor into a dark room. With what little strength he had left, he snapped a tendril of wind to the light switch and turned on the overhead light.

Raven gasped. “You brought us home?”

He pressed his forehead to the concrete floor of the biggest room in his house’s transition suites, a series of underground rooms built two hundred feet from the main house, used to help those humans Raven believed were safe to join the puzur but who were having trouble controlling a dangerous earth magic. Both the door to the hall and the en suite bathroom stood open, and the cot sat beside a bed, crammed against a lounge chair and the bedside table.

“We can argue about this later,” Nero said.

The whoosh of air from a gate gusted behind him.

“What the hell?” Diablo growled.

“Hey, Diablo,” Gig said.

“Diablo?” Becca’s fear and agony jerked taut within Nero. With a roar, she heaved at the handcuff, wrenched the guardrail from the cot, grabbed the knife forgotten beside the young man on the bed, and leapt at Diablo.