“Have they caught them yet?” he asked.
“Nope. No sign of them. Not the mad scientist, nor the other three that attacked Todd that night either.”
Nick looked at her and shoved to his feet, looking at the sky. The wind had picked up; a dark patch of sky moving closer. A storm was brewing.
“As interesting as this conversation is, I think maybe we should continue it on the way back?”
I smiled. “Yeah, for sure. I was planning on a warm shower to wash off the dirt.” We took to the forested trail as the sky darkened behind us.
“How bad was the building?” He wondered aloud.
“Total loss, I guess. Franz says it’s under investigation, that the cops are being real secretive about it. Makes me wonder what else was in that building we didn’t find. But whatever the case, they aren’t sharing.”
“I’m glad we could get Janice out like we did. I’m not sure I could have lived with myself if we’d had to leave her there.”
I agreed. “Yeah, it was a good thing Niel could call his Dragon and break those chains. None of the rest of us could have done it.”
I knew as soon as I’d said it I should have kept the last part to myself.
“Yeah, good old Niel, there to save the day,” he mocked bitterly, expression turning dark.
Some part of me felt the need to defend my new friend. “It was a marvelous thing. You’re just sour you weren’t the one that did it. Who cares who saved her, just that one of us could.” I shot back, peeved at his selfish attitude.
I stared at his rigid countenance as his pace picked up. My long legs struggled to keep up. The anger helped.
I added, “You know, I just don’t get it. What has crawled up your butt regarding Niel, anyhow? I just don’t see why you seem to hate him so much. He’s a nice guy...”
He slammed to a halt and whirled, shouting in my face. “Oh sure. Niel’s a real peach. Always there in your business, everywhere you go he just happens to be too. In... the... way!”
I stared at him in shock. Was that what he thought?
“Look, it’s not like that...” I tried. He cut me off, his voice rigid.
“It’s just like that! But It’s okay. I’ve got to learn to live with it. It’s why I came up here. If Niel is what you want, I won’t stand in your way. If he makes you happy...”
It was as far as he got. An avalanche of bitterness welled inside of me.
Was he giving up on me? Like my dad had? Just letting me go.
With a growl, I pulled back my fist and hit him with a solid punch to the gut, putting a surge of magic behind it and sending him sprawling in the dirt.
He landed with an Oof! He held his stomach, glaring up at me in bewildered shock!
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you give up on me, damn you!” I screamed. I snapped my mouth shut. What the hell was that?
In the next instance, my feet were flying out from beneath me and I was on my back beside him, staring up at the canopy of leaves above our heads with dizzy wonder.
Before I could get up, he covered me with his weight and had me pinned, arms straining as he held my struggling wrists and leaned in to shout in my face.
“I didn’t give up on you! You gave up on me!” he shouted back, deep blue eyes sparking with hurt.
And just like that, suddenly all the fight went out of me and I stopped struggling.
Ashamed of his own outburst, he released my arms and pushed away to get up.
I was having none of it. “You are such an idiot, Seul.” I whispered. Before he could escape me, I reached both hands up and grabbed his angry face and closed the distance between us, planting a hard kiss on his unyielding mouth.
It was brief and I pulled back, shocked at my own boldness.
“I’m sorry...” was all I managed before he closed the gap and his mouth was heavy on mine. It was hard to think about anything after that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TODD STOOD AT A CROSS-roads. Should he go down the mountain and follow his heart after Jayne, responsible, at least in part, for who knew how many deaths? Or did he go up the mountain and let Franz know what he’d found out. He’d made so many poor decisions of late, it seemed. Each landing him deeper into the quagmire of trouble he found himself buried in. Time for a decision he could stand behind.
With one last wistful look down towards Purdy, Todd Tuttle went up. He wasn’t giving up on Jayne, but he had something else to do first.
WHEN HE BURST IN ON Franz Hubert, he was in the middle of a meeting with the other counselors. Not a one of them was smiling, and he didn’t get the impression it was because he’d just interrupted brunch. They stared at him in alarm when he burst through the door, but with no actual surprise.
He waited for Franz to blast him for bursting in unannounced. Instead, Franz took one look at his edgy face, wiped his chin with his napkin and stood up.
“If you will excuse me for a moment, this may be information that cannot wait. I’ll be right back.” To Todd, he nodded. “Let’s take this out on the porch, shall we?”
Outside Todd paced, unsure where to begin. “Jayne, or whatever her name is, is their sister. She’s mixed up in this whole mess. It’s her father and brother’s, the Sawyers, that have been terrorizing the town and others too up and down the coast. She’s been helping them all along. I don’t know how I could have been so blind. Sadie was right, she was lying to me from the start.”
He choked the last out, struggling to believe he’d been so easily duped.
Franz looked grim. “Where is she now, how are you here and telling me this?”
He shook his head. “There is a third brother. Special needs—autism, she said. She takes care of him. We didn’t know it, but he may have been in the building when it went up the other night. She went screaming down the mountain to find out what happened to him... do you think that’s the secret the authorities have been keeping? It makes sense.”
Franz nodded. “Probably, they would want to protect him if he made it out and wait to see who comes forward. She may be running straight into a hornet’s nest.”
“Hope so. She deserves what she gets, what she’s done...” Todd hissed, his stomach rolling with bitter acid.
“What about the scientist, the man that set the fire? She say anything about him?” Franz wondered.
“Yeah, said they picked him up along the road. He experiments on the Magicals to see what makes them tick, what their weaknesses are, how they can be killed. She said he’s always been off in the head. She thinks her crazy relatives picked up some serial killer hiking the highway. He was insane enough the night we saw him to qualify for sure. That was one scary dude.”
Franz nodded. “We need to check into the brother, I think. Maybe he will lead us to the sister and a few more answers. I’m worried about what the brother’s and father will do now. And the other one as well. That family may be dangerous, they may be killers... but they are by far not the most dangerous group out to destroy the Magical community and all it stands for. There are sects throughout the world that have banded together in secret, working to eradicate the disease they call it—that’s us. My fear is that they will call one of those much larger groups in. We don’t have a lot to fear from one small family, but the sheer numbers and firepower of the Hunter’s Guild? They could destroy everything we’ve built in this valley.”
Franz closed his eyes, and an overwhelming sadness crossed his features. “It would be like before, when the dragons were forced to flee in the middle of the night, all the senseless killing and bloodshed. I am getting old, but I haven’t forgotten all the stories my great uncles and grandmother used to tell me of that night. I have no desire to repeat it.
“What will they do to Jayne, I mean, anything she gets she deserves...”
Franz stared at him and shook his head. “Ah, Todd... were it that simple? What, I wonder, would you do to protect your family? What lengths would you go to? If it came down to it, would you break the law to protect th
em?”
Todd scowled, “That’s dumb. This isn’t the same thing. My family aren’t criminals, they didn’t break the law...”
“Neither did my family and the Others over 300 years ago. And still they hunted them like dogs, like they were worse than nothing. They killed men, women, and children Todd. None of them were guilty of anything but raising families and crops and living their lives peacefully on that mountain. And Jayne? What about her? Maybe she’s evil and in on the entire thing and deserves the worst she gets. Or, and you have to think hard on this one; perhaps she is doing what any of us would do and protecting what’s most important to her.”
“Her mad as hell family?”
“No. The brother that needs her and depends on her. The brother that was left in the fire. She’s not protecting her criminal family at all, she’s trying to save the good brother, the sibling she loves. Maybe it’s still wrong. But maybe she felt she had no other choice. If nothing else, I think you should listen and ask her. We all have shadows in our past we aren’t proud of, but we all deserve to be heard.
“But for now, I have to get back to my meeting. Now we have more to discuss. You’ve brought us useful information. We are right now discussing what would happen in the event of an unsolicited attack on the valley. There are steps that have to be taken to prepare and I believe we are running out of time, so if you will excuse me.”
Todd watched the door close behind Franz Hobert. Now what. He wanted to hate Jayne for the lies and the deceit. But he also had to consider what Franz had shared. What would he do to protect his family? The answer wasn’t long in coming.
Anything.
He trotted down off the porch and set off in a ground-eating lope for Purdy. If he’d been thinking more clearly, he might have remembered there was safety in numbers.
His mind was a whirl as he entered the outskirts of the little town. His breath was sawing in his lungs and he was out of breath as he angled up the street towards the hospital. The real hospital for humans and Magicals who didn’t need special treatment only a doctor versed in Magic could give. If they had the brother anywhere, it would be there.
He needed to talk to Jayne, hear her side of the story. He wasn’t ready to forgive her, but he needed to hear her version. Was she only protecting her brother? Why not turn her family in? Surely there had been other, better choices. He wondered if there was more to the story.
Preoccupied with all the twisting thoughts keeping his brain in a muddle, he never saw the dark shadow that stepped away from the corner of the building until he was nearly abreast of it. When he did, his last thought as he stared into Terrence Sawyers cold black eyes was that maybe he’d never have a chance now to ask her. And then Terrence shot him.
SOMEWHERE THERE WAS a leak. He could hear the plop, plop, plop, of water dripping off pipes and hitting the concrete below. And the smell was musty and old. He was really getting to hate basements and being underground. Seems he’d spent way too much time there in recent months if you asked him. He opened his eyes just a slit, waiting for the room to stop spinning and the grey fog to clear from his eyes. Partly, it was due in fact to the dimness of the basement. He could feel another cold table at his back, and he didn’t have to move to know they had him tied down—again. The burn at his wrists and ankles told him the restraints were too tight, cutting off his circulation and making his hands go numb.
He opened his eyes wider, and then they went wide when the pain coursed through his left thigh like liquid fire. He let out a yowl and bucked on the platform, staring at the four men. The two brothers stood back and to the side, one of them looking overtly satisfied at his current predicament. The older man, the father he guessed, stood grim and watchful. But it was the crazed maniac with the small sharp scalpel that stood over him, the slim blade dripping with his blood, that held his attention. One look in Jonah Whiting’s icy dead eyes told him the only thing that stood between him being carved up and living to take his next breath was what happened in the next few minutes. He turned to look at the father.
“Terrence Sawyer, I presume?” Todd gasped, keeping track of Jonah out of the corner of his eyes.
If Terrence Sawyer was surprised that Todd knew his name, he hid it well.
“Good, I’m glad to see you’re awake, and we have your attention. We need some information from you. How much you share determines how long I hold Mr. Whiting off. As you may have discovered, he enjoys his work. Right now he’s not real fond of the way you helped destroy his lab the other day. Lucky for us, he’s willing to work anywhere.” He shook his head with a rueful smile that did not reach his eyes.
“So, first thing. Where is my daughter, where is Lucy?”
Todd frowned. Who the hell was Lucy?
“I don’t... Ahh!” he screamed as the knife sliced downward, cutting another ribbon of agony along his thigh to join the first.
His brain scrambled to catch up. “Um, do you mean Jayne? Where is Jayne?”
Terrence held his hand up to stall the freak who frowned in annoyance and hesitated, hand in the air, scalpel at the ready.
“That’s her middle name, but yes. Where is my lovely daughter, we need to speak to her? I’m trying to find my son, Blaine.”
I struggled to think past the agony. “I don’t know. Maybe he burned up in the fire... Grrruck!” he screamed once more, this time the slice bisected the meaty part of his upper shoulder. More dripping reached his ears, but he was sure it wasn’t leaking pipes this time.
“I don’t know where she is, okay? She ran down the mountain to find him...”
“Well, now. That wouldn’t be good news for you. See, I’m counting on you being able to tell me where she is. I figure; find her... and find the brother. We are kind of eager to have us a reunion. We aren’t quite convinced that Lucy is on the same page as we are anymore.”
The taller brother came in close, running his finger along the long thin slice on his arm and holding the smear of blood up to the dim light and rubbing it curiously between thumb and forefinger. “Hmm. Looks like ours. But it’s not, is it? Magical blood. Different, dangerous... evil. We’ve been experimenting, you see. With the drugs in that dart? Added something to prevent the change; in case you wondered why you hadn’t.” He looked thoughtfully at Todd. “Well, if you’ve had your first change yet. You’re what, 18? If you haven’t already, you will soon... or would have...” he smiled.
The other brother, staring at the first in disgust, spoke. “See, you burnt our home down and we had to move. This... house... isn’t near as big as that warehouse was, or as nice. But it’s plenty big enough to wait for our back-up to arrive. Did you think you had it bad when you were dealing with just the four of us? Well, things are about to get real exciting... for us.”
They were sharing way too much information, came the unbidden knowledge. Way too much to let him out of this alive. He gave a vicious pull at the restraints holding his arms down. It wasn’t looking good, not for him, and not for everyone else, either. Silently he cursed his stupidity in coming alone, not telling the others. He’d led with his emotions and left his brain on the back-burner.
“Just to be clear, those are the questions we most need you to answer. But we have a few more.” Terrence smiled.
And Todd continued to scream.
THE KISS MADE SADIE walk around in a cloud of warmth, reliving the experience as she tucked into bed and rolled over to face the wall. They’d walked back together, Niel never mentioned once. She might have told Nick he was an idiot for assuming and never asking her the right questions. He might have, for once, agreed with her.
The next morning she took just a tad more care with her appearance, applying her liner with a judicious hand and dressing in her newest shirt. She followed Sirris and Fern to breakfast, aware that they were shooting her perplexed looks.
“Okay Cross, what gives. You never smile this early in the morning.” Sirris asked.
I glanced at Fern, who was staring at me with suspicion as well. “
Sirris is right. You are a real bore when you get up. What’s with the cheesy grin? Who’d you kill?”
But I didn’t answer, my slight smile widening into my own little secret I hugged close.
We entered the dining hall and joined the others at the table. They were just starting to serve breakfast when Thomas burst into the room, looking madly around and then making a beeline for our table.
“Where is he? Where is my brother?” His hair stood up in spikes and his eyes flared werewolf yellow.
My smile slipped sideways and the butterflies of euphoria flitting around in my chest dropped like little pebbles of white-hot lava to roll around in my empty stomach.
“He’s with you, isn’t he? Slow down Thomas, you aren’t making any sense.”
“Dammit, pay attention then. Todd never came in last night, he never slept in his bed. I’ve checked everywhere—he’s missing.”
I could feel the blood fading from my cheeks as my eyes met Nick’s across the table. His were cold with knowledge.
They had Todd.
I KNEW AS WE PACKED for war that time was not on our side. They’d had Todd in their clutches before. I figured maybe the only thing that might afford us a sliver of time was that Todd would have information they needed. I grit my teeth. We needed Todd to hold them off long enough for us to get there.
My vision clouded and I straightened my shoulders. Wherever there was, because we had no idea where they were holding him, not with the warehouse burned.
I slung my pack over my shoulder and ran for the door, Sirris and Fern right behind me. The boys were just heading up the path from their own cabin. I looked at the hastily penned note in my hand and almost reconsidered. Then I was running up the steps to Franz Hobert’s cabin and slapping it on the door. The sliver of duck-tape would hold until he found it. After we were gone and it was too late to stop us from our foolish mission. I’d had a lengthy conversation with Franz the night before. He’d confirmed much of what I already had suspected concerning Jayne Martin. She was smack in the middle of the entire mess. Sometimes it sucked to be right.
Valley of the Dragons (Rule 9 Academy, #3) Page 19
