Brakes squeal. An abrupt change in direction slams me sideways. My shoulder collides with something hard—booted feet.

“Slow down, Seonu.” It’s the husky voice of the Viking guy from the bar. Flanagan. He’s crouching beside me.

“Alyona will soon be on our tail, Commander,” answers a female voice with an Asian accent—Japanese maybe.

“I am well aware. But I would still like us to arrive in one piece. Laasya, can you feel them behind us?”

“No, Commander.” This comes from a petite young woman in dark clothes sitting cross-legged on my other side.

The van slows. I realize Flanagan has his hand planted on my abdomen My skin prickles strangely beneath his touch, even through my T-shirt. A tingling current fills my belly, running the length of my legs.

“Who are you? Where are we going?” I struggle to sit up, but he presses me back to the floor. My head lands on something soft. A cushion or a folded coat.

“Stay calm, Michael. Your skull took a nasty knock.”

I reach up to check the wound at the back of my head. The crusty surface feels tender, but my fingers come away dry. My skull throbs, though, as if little men with pickaxes mine for gold in my brain.

“Shouldn’t we restrain him?” asks the stocky man from the alley, perched on the side bench. Metal glints from weapons around his belt. “This feels off to me. He’s old for a new Channeler, just like the one who went kamikaze on us last year. And how did he break away from Alyona’s Haze?”

“I agree,” the driver says. “We should’ve taken him to the safehouse and locked him down till we could assess his risk level.”

Locked him down?

I jerk up, determined to sit this time, but Flanagan pushes me back again with barely any effort, even though I resist.

“Settle. You are not in danger.”

I peer up at his face through my hazy vision. All I can make out are glittering eyes and the highlights in his dirty-blond hair. “What the hell’s going on?”

“My name is Gabriel. Commander Gabriel Flanagan.” He gestures to the other people in the van. “This is my team. We’re taking you somewhere safe. We are not going to restrain you.” He speaks curtly, the light accent I noticed in the bar more obvious now. Scandinavian, I think, but with an odd lilt to his sentences. He returns his hand to my abdomen, that peculiar sensation rousing again. Tingles surge from my lower spine as if rushing to meet his touch, causing a strangely pleasurable feeling. Like the burst of sherbet on the tongue, only magnified, streaming through the flesh of my belly and concentrating in my groin. In fact, it’s giving me a boner.

I grip his wrist to push him off me. “Get your hand off my—” Long bolts of silver static crackle between us. I jerk my fingers back. “What the hell?”

“It’s called Flame. It’s why Alyona tried to bind you. Why those men tried to take you. And it’s why we want to help.” He presses down on my chest till I’m lying flat, then settles his hand back on my abdomen. “I’m Grounding your Flame. Some types of Channelers, like you, store the energy. If I don’t siphon it from your body, the vehicle will stop working. I’m sure you’ve already experienced this problem.”