The second I touched the handle, I knew it would be bad. The door I had locked so carefully stood ajar.
“Cole.” I reached for my service weapon before remembering I no longer carried one. These days, I was the weapon. “Cole.”
A quick check of the bathroom confirmed it. Abandoning his room, I ran to where Thom and Maggie had bedded down. There was no sign of them or Phoebe. Miller and Rixton were absent too. Santiago’s room was last. I searched every inch, but I found nothing to indicate where they had gone or why they had left without touching base with me.
“They’re not here.” Wu braced his hands on my shoulders. “Luce, stop. Listen to me. They aren’t here.”
“Who did this?” Heart pounding in my ears, I missed his answer. “Who took them?”
About the time I was ready to break every one of Wu’s fingers for daring to comfort me, I heard a melodic beep that reminded me of a text chime but not. I didn’t have to look far to uncover a tablet he had slipped beneath his pillow.
“Santiago left us breadcrumbs to follow.” I picked it up and checked the home screen. Messages kept coming through, hard and fast, the newest crowding the screen before I could read the oldest, but the last was the one that turned my blood to ice. “It says run.”
Heavy footsteps announced the arrival of four Malakhim kitted out in gleaming golden armor.
“Your reign of terror has ended,” the first one intoned. “This is your last day on Earth.”
Unlike when Wu cosplayed Ezra, these guys meant the rhetoric.
“As much as I enjoy the melodrama of dealing with your kind,” I said dryly, “I’m going to cut to the part where I kill you.”
Santiago’s self-indulgence paid off when the dragon claimed my skin without asking permission. I wouldn’t have fit in any of the other rooms, I barely managed to occupy this one without bumping my shoulders on the ceiling.
In the back of my mind, I sensed Conquest’s rage. Cole and Phoebe mattered to her, and they were missing. Until she set eyes on them, she wouldn’t rest. Neither would I. On this one matter, we agreed. For once, our goals aligned, and it was liberating to stop fighting with myself even for a few minutes.
With my mobility limited, I cut them down with my tail, a signature move I was coming to love. For the ones who got too close, I snapped my jaws shut over their forearms, forcing them to drop their swords in their severed hands. While I finished them off, Wu fought in an elegant dance with a blade he had taken from its master. Within minutes, we had killed them all. Thanks to Conquest, I could taste the cold place, a crisp tang on my tongue, and I had no pity for the dead at my feet.
Movement in the corner of my eye spooked me into a strike, and Wu narrowly missed me having wings for dinner.
“Luce,” he snapped. “You’ve got to focus.”
I didn’t like focus. It was hard, and I was hungry. The man with feathers looked tasty, and I preferred live prey. I ran my tongue along the edge of my upper teeth.
“Bloodlust is getting the better of you.” He put up his hands like that would stop me. “You need to get out, to fresh air.”
A rumble built in my chest, and ice plumed on my exhales.
“We have to find your coterie.”
I hesitated, shook my head to clear it, and advanced on him.
“Where is Cole? Where is Phoebe? Where is Thom? Where is Maggie?”
He hurled the names at me, rapid fire pings against my mind I couldn’t comprehend but couldn’t shake.
“Your mate, Luce. Your child. Your best friend. Your coterie.”
I crunched through the ice in my mouth, and reason blasted through me. Before I lost the thread of my personality again, I tugged on the string and unraveled to my human form. I ended up in a heap on the floor with the mother of all headaches. The bangles burned against my skin, frigid as chips of ice.
“I’m back.” I waved him off when he tried to come closer. “Just give me a second.”
Focused on my breathing, I settled into my skin and tamped down Conquest. For now.
“I checked the tablet.” He chucked it across the room. “It’s smoking. Totally fried.”
“Lovely.” I shook out my arms, the left one still tender. “That means there’s no way to tell if the coterie were the ones warning us.” A thumping noise overhead shot tension into my spine, and I shot to my feet. “What is that?”
We followed the racket into the bedroom as a crash happened in the bathroom.
“Announce yourself,” I shouted. “Or I will eat you.”
“How did you know I was charun?” Santiago called back. “I could have been a poor human maintenance worker who had the bad luck to fall through the ceiling during a routine exam only to find myself threatened by a guest who wants to get her cannibalism on.” He emerged covered in white dust and spiderwebs. “That’s not very human of you. Tsk. Tsk. You’ve been hanging around with charun too long if your first impulse is to skip the questions and whip out the teeth.”
I flung myself at him, which he wrongly interpreted as violent intent, and flipped me over his shoulder. I hit the floor on my back, the air knocked out of my lungs and stars winking in and out of my vision.
“She was going to hug you,” Wu explained.
“Oh, I know.” Santiago dusted off his shirt. “I’m not a hugger.”
“Good to know,” I wheezed, accepting the hand he held down to me. “Where are the others?”
“Not here.” He held a finger to his lips. “Let’s get moving. I promised I would have you home in time for dinner.”
“Lead the way.” I fell in step behind him, cocking an eyebrow when he hit the stairs. “Wu, you with us?”
Silent as a wraith, he drifted in my wake. “Yes.”
We descended two flights then stepped into a hall identical to the one leading to our previous accommodations. Santiago walked four or five doors down, knocked, then let himself in using a keycard.
“Hey, Bou-Bou.” Rixton stood and stretched his arms over his head. “I was starting to think you’d stood us up.” Maggie was sitting on the bed. Until I arrived, she had been flipping through a photo album I saw from the doorway was chockful of pictures of his daughter Nettie. “Did you bring us good news?”
“I don’t understand.” I whirled on Santiago. “What the hell is all this?”
Rixton shot me a concerned look, but Maggie just stared at Santiago in expectation.
“I moved everyone two floors down after you left. I got a ping off a sensor on the roof. A group of Malakhim scouts found us, and I had to act fast. I scanned the area, and it came up clean. I don’t know — yet — if that means they got lucky, or if they knew where to find us.”
“Sariah?”
She had stuck her fingers in his technological pie. He hadn’t noticed when it happened, and I wished anyone other than me had thought to ask. Coming from me, he would take it as an insult, as me throwing his past mistakes in his face. Santiago was big on looking for reasons to be offended, and it was never hard to find one.
“I burned my infrastructure to the ground.” Amazingly enough, he didn’t bristle. “I started over from scratch after Sariah outed herself. No one has an in to the system I’ve been operating out of for the past week. She couldn’t have found us through me, or any tech she might have pocketed while staying with us.”
“Good work,” I praised him, earning a scowl that accused me of patronizing him.
I could not win with him. Could not. I don’t know why I bothered trying.
“Whose idea was it for you to play ninja and drop from the ceiling after we killed the Malakhim?”
Now that I thought about it, this scenario explained his crack about having multiple rooms on multiple floors under multiple names.
“Say what now?” Rixton cocked his head. “What is she talking about, Santiago?”
“Cole told me to stay behind and relay our new coordinates,” he said innocently. “That’s what I did.”
“He climbed up in
the ceiling —” giving me hospital flashbacks to the time a journalistic vulture did the same to snap pictures of me while I slept, “— and watched the scene unfold. Four Malakhim were waiting for us in the bedroom of his suite, and we killed them. Only then did he grace us with his presence.”
Failing spectacularly at innocence, he dusted his hair. “I honored the letter of the agreement, if not the spirit.”
“I’m going to check on Cole.” I rocked back on my heels. “What room is he in?”
“He’s down the hall, third door on your right.” Rixton reclaimed his seat beside Maggie. “I dropped off breakfast about thirty minutes ago. His eyes might have been closed, but he answered the door.”
“Good deal.” I regretted rushing through my own breakfast. “One last question for Santiago. Why didn’t you call me? Make that two questions. Why shut down the lines of communication at all?”
“I was testing your reflexes,” he said blithely. “Now I know how you react to crisis situations in which the coterie is endangered.”
Waiting to hear the results, I cocked an eyebrow.
“You kill and/or maim anyone in your path.”
“You really had to field test that?” Maggie exhaled through her teeth as she slid into Portia. “Why are you such an asshat? Seriously? Why?”
“You can thank me later,” Santiago intoned, “when we’ve all survived because of these emergency preparedness drills.”
All too happy to turn my back on them, I crossed the hall and knocked on Cole’s door. He answered wearing boxers and smelling like coffee and waffles. My mouth watered. I invited myself in, slid my arms around his waist, and dipped my fingers into the elastic of his waistband near his spine.
A throat cleared behind him, and I froze. “Thom?”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “Phoebe too.”
Of course Cole would have moved her in with him, taking her favorite babysitter with her, after the Malakhim breached. Guilt clogged my throat that I hadn’t asked Santiago for her location. I had been too wrapped up in finding Cole, in quieting the tension strung between us when we were apart for too long.
“I didn’t get the memo.” I popped Cole’s waistband. “Yep. The elastic works. Just checking.”
I dropped my arms, face on fire, and found myself the recipient of a lingering — if chaste — kiss.
“Later,” he murmured against my lips, and my face flushed for an altogether different reason.
“I have an update on Death.” I forced my knees to firm up and support my weight. “We should gather the coterie so I only have to give it once.”
Granted, I had been willing to give Cole a private update, but now that naked charades had been cancelled, I might as well give the appearance of being a team player.
“Let me get dressed.” He backed away, clearing the path for a tiny missile to launch. “Phoebe —”
The force of a miniature dragon smashing into my chest sent me staggering out the door, into the hall. I regained my balance with the help of the wall we crashed into, and I had no sooner wrapped my arms around the writhing bundle than the elevator pinged at the end of the hall.
“You are a menace.” I nuzzled her quickly then sprinted for the safety of Cole’s room and locked us in. She might be capable of invisibility, but I would still draw notice for juggling air. “Dad used to tease me, but I’m for real. You’re always up for trouble, aren’t you, short stuff?”
While Cole dressed, and I pretended very hard not to watch, I cozied up to Thom. “Did she behave?”
“Once she understood you would return shortly, yes.” He scratched under her chin. “She wants to be wherever you are, but her father was a worthy substitute it seems.”
Cole grunted what sounded like ungrateful child, but the curve of his mouth betrayed him.
That was when I lost all pretense of not ogling him. I found it nearly impossible to glance away when he let himself be happy. I might have ignited the spark, but Phoebe had fanned the flames. I cut myself a break since I was no longer sizing him up like a hunk of beef I wanted to sink my teeth into, more like I wanted to give him a good nibble.
Oh, wait. That was kind of the same thing.
Never mind.
“She enjoys getting in trouble almost as much as I did when I was a kid.” I took a moment to be thankful she had no antlers on which to impale her enemies. Or, you know, stray cats. “While the gang puts on pants, I’ll check in with Dad.”
Moving to the window, I dialed him up and tried not to imagine what I might be interrupting between him and his mermaidlike girlfriend. Girlfriend sounded wrong, too young and weird when you took their ages into account. Womanfriend? Ladyfriend? Charunfriend?
“Hey, baby girl.” He yawned. “Are you calling to ask for an update or to give one?”
“Just wanted to hear your voice.” I cradled the phone, felt myself relaxing to hear him safe and sound … and alone. “Phoebe has made me regret ten times over all the grief I put you through when I was a kid.”
“She’s cute as a button.” Pride sang through his voice. “I ordered a cat toy for her.”
“Um.” I rubbed my forehead. “The coterie is highly susceptible to stimulants for cats.”
Famine’s use of valerian had me ready to hump Cole’s leg while the whole department watched.
Not one of my finest moments for sure.
“I don’t mean for a cat. It’s a plush cat. You put batteries in it, and it meows and rolls around on wheels hidden in its paws.”
Stunned for a full second, I asked, “Are you telling me Amazon delivers to Haven?”
“All kids think their parents are idiots, but I do have a brain.” He sighed, and I recognized the tone as one I had used only five minutes ago. “They make deliveries to lockers these days. I’m not saying you should put saving the world on hold while you fetch a toy for my granddaughter, but I am saying if you happen to be in the area and pick it up that I expect pictures of her playing with it.”
Who was this man and what had he done with my father? I was supposed to be his baby. But here he was, shopping online, spoiling his granddragon from afar. As much as I wanted to blame Miranda for it, I suspected he was ga-ga over her the same as me. Guess that meant I would have to suck up my demotion and deal, as parents had before me, and accept there was a new baby in town.
Dad launched into a recitation of the address and strict instructions on what pictures he expected while I scribbled notes. I got off the phone quickly after that, before he added to his requests.
“How is your father?” Cole crossed to me. “Did he mention how Sherry and Nettie are doing?”
“He more or less asked if I would mind postponing the apocalypse long enough to hit an Amazon locker, pick up a toy he bought Phoebe, and then send him pictures and video of her playing with it.”
Emotion brightened his eyes, and I couldn’t stop myself from cupping his cheek.
“He loves her,” Cole marveled. “He’s only seen her in her true form, and it doesn’t matter to him.”
“Dad is like that,” I said dryly. “He’s got a soft spot for mischievous girls of mysterious provenance.”
When my phone pinged, I panicked it might be Dad again, but no. I was rewarded with a text from Santiago, who had miraculously repaired the lines of communication now that the coterie wasn’t in immediate danger.
One day I was going to pat him down and lock him in a cell with only a candle for company. I might even let Portia set up a card table facing him, so he could watch her play computer games but not see the screen. I bet he broke down in five minutes or less. In ten, he would be weeping. Twenty? He would be comatose.
Buoyed by that mental picture, I shooed the occupants of Cole’s room into Santiago’s much larger and nicer accommodations. Rixton, Miller, and Portia were already there, and their expectant looks put me on the spot before the door shut behind me.
“I had a sleepover with my littlest sister,” I informed them, though I was sure the ones w
ho had slept through it had already heard the news. “It appears we have a new game plan.”
Hitting bullet points, I ran down Death’s idea to use Hart Island for our showdown, and the others absorbed the suggestion with reluctant nods. The nods became smiles when I told them what she had spent her time away creating.
The aquatic charun would have limited utility, but they could make a difference before the fighting broke out, and every little bit helped. They would be our first line of defense, and our last, as they picked off any deserters or Malakhim attempting to return for reinforcements. Or, if our bait strategy failed, return to bring Ezra after we were good and wiped from the battle. He could finish us off in minutes if he let us exhaust ourselves with limited access to our allies.
God, it was a gamble. Every step, every detail. It all went counter to my instincts, which screamed to hunt Ezra down and end this before it got started. But Death had a good idea too, one less likely to kill or injure innocents in the process. She had done what the others were reluctant to do and advised me, put the weight of her experience at my disposal, and maybe that’s how it was always meant to be. The cadre counseling one another. Who understood the full burden we bore better than our own?
And just like that, I grasped the insidious whisper in the back of my head coaxing me to lean on my sister, solely because she was cadre, and to discount the counsel of others who were not.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled through my nose then exhaled through my mouth. The move let me pause, reflect, and fill the cracks gaping wider as Conquest threw herself into fracturing me.
A dull horror throbbed at the base of my spine when it hit me how easily she had swayed my viewpoint seconds before I grasped the line of thought wasn’t mine. All this time I thought she was contained, she was biding her time, chipping away at me, and only when she managed to dislodge a noticeable chunk of my morals had I sensed her before I crumbled.
When I opened my eyes, the entire room stared at me, and the coterie wore identical grim expressions.
End Game (The Foundling Series) Page 14
