Succubus Ascendant: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 4) by BR Kingsolver Read Free Book Online Page B

and whined at the ceiling, then started to bark. Everyone’s attention went to the animal, and then to the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling above him.
    One of the Protectors, looking back over his shoulder at the dog, opened the door from the bedroom to the bathroom.
    A massive explosion sent fire roiling through the bedroom and sitting room and out into the hall. Donny and Rhiannon were blown out of the doorway and across the hall, the team leader landing on top of her. Everyone in the hallway was knocked off their feet.
    Someone threw an air shield over the doorway, containing the fire and smoke in the suite. The hall was already full of smoke and everyone was coughing.
    Brenna crawled to where Donny and Rhiannon lay. Both were unconscious. Donny’s clothing was burned away from his body, and the revealed skin was black with open red wounds. She peeled his pants away from his leg and found normal skin on the back of his calf. Placing her hand there, she began pouring healing energy into him even as she cast her mind into his body to diagnose his injuries.
    The healers from her security team and Morrighan’s found their way to them and began adding their efforts to hers. Then Rebecca was beside her, gently lifting Donny’s body off Rhiannon and pulling the woman out from under him.
    Rhiannon’s hair was singed almost to her scalp in the front, her face and left hand burned bright red, but she mostly had been shielded from the blast by Donny’s body.
    “Can you take him and I’ll see to her?” Brenna asked the healers.
    “Keep feeding him energy,” one replied. “He’s going to need everything we can give him.”
    Morrighan crawled up.
    “I can feed you,” she said to the healer.
    The healer nodded, and Brenna turned to Rhiannon. She sent her mind into her cousin’s body. Quickly, she determined that the woman’s injuries weren’t serious, though she did have a concussion. Her burns were superficial. Brenna began to heal the bruising in Rhiannon’s brain.
    Additional Protectors, both O’Neill and O’Donnell, poured into the hallway, adding to the chaos of the scene.
    “Get a fire hose through the window into that room!” someone shouted in an Irish accent. “Clear out the wounded, and clear the hall. Get this damn scene under control!”
    ~~~
    Hours later, Brenna sat on the bed in Corwin’s bedroom. After some debate, it had been decided to move her there as the safest place in the house. It had taken a small army of housekeepers to clean his clothes and personal effects out and change all the linens and towels. But that was after the Protectors declared it safe. Rebecca took a bedroom next to Brenna’s in the suite, and Corwin’s grieving companion was moved into a room in another wing.
    A second bedroom, which had been used by Corwin’s valet, was given to Rhiannon, and she was resting there with a healer monitoring her. Rebecca and Morrighan sat with Brenna, sharing a glass of whiskey before going to bed.
    “Donny is stable,” Rebecca reported, running her fingers through her hair. “The healers tell me that he’s looking at a long recovery and rehabilitation. The four Protectors that were in the room are dead.”
    She looked at the ceiling and took a long shuddering breath. “He’s blind. They say there isn’t anything they can do for that.” Her voice broke at the end and she bit her lip, forcing back tears.
    “Exactly what happened?” Brenna asked.
    Rebecca squared her shoulders and assumed a straight-backed military posture. “Jeremy said there was a thermite bomb inside the ceiling. The light fixture was removed. They planted the bomb, then replaced the fixture. The trigger was wired to the bathroom door. When the door was opened, it went off. I think they wanted to make sure you were in the room, and they expected that you, or I, would be the one to open that door.”
    “Any idea who ‘they’ were?”
    “No, though Finnian and his followers are the obvious suspects.