by AR Colbert
He disappeared between some cars in a parking lot up ahead. I ran harder to see where he went, when my owl flapped down and landed on a curb. I frowned at the creature. “I already know this guy is probably bad news. You don’t have to tell me. But I need to talk to him.”
The owl tilted its head at me, and I swore I could hear my conscience yelling at me to go to class again. But I was so close. I just needed to see where the boy went.
I took just a second to catch my breath and rub at the spot on the back of my head. A headache was ramping up again, throbbing with my heavy breathing. Ignoring it the best I could, I stepped over the curb and looked both ways in the parking lot. An engine started in the next aisle over, so I hurried toward the noise. A blue sedan backed out of a narrow spot, and the mousy brown hair of the mortal boy was visible through the back window.
“Hey!” I called out, though I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me. Even if he did hear me, he had no reason to stop. I certainly wouldn’t have stopped for some panting girl who’d chased me across campus and yelled at me in a parking lot.
I knew what I was doing didn’t make any sense. And yet, I couldn’t stop.
I moved forward with the intention of tapping on his trunk, but a pair of sturdy arms caught me before I could get near the car. I froze, knowing who it was before he even spoke. A buzz shot through my limbs, and my heartbeat quickened.
“What in the world are you doing?”
I turned to face Tate and the sensation strengthened. He quickly released me, and I suspected he’d felt it, too. “I’m trying to catch that guy.” I turned to follow the car, which was headed toward the exit of the parking lot.
“Why?” Tate jogged up to my side.
“Because he… he has some information that I need. It’s important.”
“You’re not making any sense. That guy doesn’t know anything. He’s a mortal.”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s fractured.”
Tate’s eyes widened just a fraction. “Are you sure?”
“Yes... I mean no. I strongly suspect it.”
“Then we’ve got to follow him.”
“Yes. Wait—”
Tate was already gone. He ran ahead to a young woman who’d just set her water bottle on top of a car as she loaded the backseat with her books. He leaned in and spoke quietly to her. Next thing I knew, she grinned widely and handed him the keys. Tate glanced over his shoulder and hollered at me to get in.
This wasn’t how I pictured my morning going. Not at all. But I wouldn’t object to Tate chasing after the fractured boy, as long as I could tag along. I would just have to find some way to speak to the boy privately before Tate stole his soul.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t such a great idea after all.
I pulled the car door closed behind me as the vehicle was already rolling forward after the fractured boy. “Do you steal cars from unsuspecting mortals often?”
He cut me a sideways glance. “About as often as you chase people across campus.”
“Well played,” I mumbled with a grin.
“So why do you think this guy is fractured?”
I chewed on the inside of my lip. Should I tell him the truth? On one hand, I wouldn’t mind throwing that pretty little Olympian girl under the bus, but I didn’t want to upset him.
Nevermind… he was a hunter. I didn’t care about his feelings. “Your girlfriend gave him some drugs.”
“Who?”
“Viv. I saw them doing a deal yesterday. He’s definitely not a Keeper, so I assume he must be fractured.”
Tate made a choking sound. “First of all, Viv is not my girlfriend.” He shuddered. “Second of all, if you’re sure you spotted her giving him something, then he’s most definitely up to no good.” He cut his eyes over to me again. “I’m glad you didn’t take the stuff she gave you, by the way.”
“Would it have killed me?”
“Definitely, and your fractured soul would have been permanently lost.”
We’d caught up to the blue sedan, and we drove quietly for several minutes. My head was really pounding now, and I could see my pulse inching in around the edges of my eyesight with every heartbeat. Thankfully Tate was driving—not me. He did a good job of trailing the car without drawing the driver’s attention. I wondered if he’d trailed many fractured souls like this before.
After a bit, I dug a little deeper into the pills, asking the question that had been dancing on the tip of my tongue. “Would those pills kill a Keeper, too?”
“No. We’re immortal. Nothing short of a century can kill a Keeper.”
“That’s not true.”
Tate’s brows wrinkled and he shot me a quick glance again. “Who told you that?”
“Does it matter?”
He sighed and continued driving, ignoring my question. His face remained tense though, like there was more he wanted to say. But he didn’t.
We drove on for quite some time until we reached an industrial part of the city. Worn buildings lined the road with broken glass windows and boarded up doors. The car turned down an empty road of warehouses toward the Long Island Sound, and stopped at an abandoned looking building at the end of the road. Tate moved past the street and parked around the corner. “You stay here.”
“Okay.” There was no use arguing. If I refused, he’d glamour me and force me to stay put. But if I played along, there was still a chance I could act on my own accord.
Tate climbed out of the car, but he paused before closing the door. Leaning back in to face me, his expression grew serious. “I mean it, mortal. Don’t leave this car. If there are other hunters here, they’ll assume the worst about you. They won’t wait for proof.”
“Got it.” I swallowed, waiting for his eyes to glow or his voice to change. But after a long pause, he closed the door and jogged around the corner toward the fractured boy.
I released a pent up breath the moment he disappeared from my view. If Tate thought there would be other hunters here, this was a much bigger deal than I thought. Could that sick mortal boy be meeting with Rasputin himself?
I wouldn’t wait to find out.
CHAPTER 9
I counted to thirty before slowly easing open my car door. The sun shone brightly, and two slow clouds lazily crawled across the blue sky. The calm, quiet, atmosphere definitely did not match the excitement surging through my bones.
In fact, it seemed a little too quiet. There were millions of people in this city. Why wasn’t anyone around mid-morning on a Monday? We were in an industrial zone. It should have been bustling with trucks and deliveries and hard-working men and women carrying out their daily tasks.
Shaking off the uneasy feeling trying to settle into my gut, I snuck up to the corner and peeked around, staring at the empty road where Tate and the fractured boy had disappeared. There was just… nothing. Where had they gone? Aside from a few other cars parked at the very end of the road, there was no evidence of life anywhere.
I crept forward, trying my best to stick to the shadows cast by the dilapidated building to my left. There was a doorway about halfway down the block. My guess was that they’d gone inside. A moment later I reached the door—large and rusty where the old blue paint had chipped off. There was no handle. No knob. No knocker and no peephole. It must have been an exit only. Even so, I wedged my fingers into the edge and tried to pry it open.
It wouldn’t budge. I exhaled and looked around again. Nothing had changed. The street was empty, and the area was quiet aside from the waves and a cool breeze I could just barely make out coming from the Long Island Sound at the end of the road. I took just a moment to enjoy the quiet, grateful that my already pounding head didn’t have to endure honking horns and sirens and shouts.
My eyes settled on the boy’s blue sedan. Unsure of what else to do, I dashed over to the vehicle and crouched down low. The passenger’s door was locked. Keeping myself near the ground, I inched around to the other side. The driver’s door was locked, too. What no
w?
I rose just enough to peek inside the windows. I don’t know what I expected to find—ambrosia? Keeper paraphernalia? A book of spells?
This was silly. With no other clear options, there was nothing else to do but go back to the car and wait for Tate. I stood to move in that direction when a flapping sound drew my attention overhead. A flash of white feathers flew low and landed on the chain link fence at the end of the road.
“What are you doing here?” I asked my owl.
The bird swiveled its head on its small fluffy body, turning to look at rows of giant metal shipping containers stacked up on the other side of the fence. The water of the sound glimmered in the sunlight just beyond them.
“It’s locked,” I said, noting the heavy metal chain wrapped around the gate. The owl tilted its head hard to the right and blinked at me. I shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to.”
The bird turned its head again, taking its time to deliberately look toward the shipping containers and then back at me.
“I can’t just climb over.”
Its sentient yellow eyes narrowed.
“You seriously want me to jump a fence? In broad daylight? As if that won’t draw any negative attention…”
The owl looked back and forth down the empty road before settling back on me. He had a point. There was no one around.
“Fine.” I marched up to the fence, cast one final glance warily over my shoulder to be sure no one was around, then scrambled up as quickly as I could. Swinging one leg over the top, I became instantly grateful for two things. One: there was no barbed wire. And two: I wore jeans today. I wasn’t a child anymore, and climbing fences was a lot rougher than I remembered it being when I was a girl.
Finally, my feet touched concrete on the other side. I glared at the bird. “Now what?”
It launched into flight and landed in between a couple of the shipping containers a few yards away. Hesitantly, I followed it. There was no kind of rail or anything around the edge of the cargo dock the containers were stacked upon, and the water made me nervous. It shouldn’t have been too deep, but I didn’t like being so close to it anyway. I’d just stick to the center of the slab.
As I neared the first row of containers, I heard the soft hum of voices, but I had no idea where they were coming from. The stacks of metal boxes made a labyrinth of dirt and grime, and the noise bounced off the sides of the containers in strange ways, leaving me thoroughly confused. All I knew was that I didn’t want to get close to the water. I didn’t want to accidentally stumble upon those voices, either.
And to make matters worse, my owl had essentially disappeared. I could have sworn I saw him land right where I stood, but he was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t dare call out to him. Perhaps he’d landed in the next aisle over.
Carefully, and oh-so-slowly, I eased around the corner of a container, keeping my back flush against the metal, and tried to get a glimpse of the other side. I needed to make sure the coast was clear. But I never expected to find the pair of golden eyes waiting on the other side.
Osborne was inches from my face, waiting for me. And before I could even think about moving, he spoke in the entrancing tone of a hundred different melodies. “Freeze.”
I had no choice but to obey.
“I knew it,” he said, moving around the edge to get a better look at me. I was still motionless, held in the same awkward position I’d been in when he commanded me to freeze. My back was flat against the shipping container, and my head was crooked in an unnatural position around the corner. The pose combined with a racing pulse did little to help my headache. It had grown into an all-encompassing pain now, my vision blinking in and out with every beat of my heart like a strobe light.
“Knew what?” I asked, swallowing down my panic. Tate said other hunters wouldn’t wait for proof. And no other hunter wanted me dead as much as Osborne did.
“Knew I’d find you here, with the rest of your kind.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not fractured. And you can’t hurt me.”
“I beg to differ.” Osborne sneered and began pacing before me. “All I have to do is prove that I put forth my best effort. Mortals don’t stumble around fractured meeting sites. And I’m sorry to tell you this, but the meeting is a farce, anyway. Rasputin isn’t even here. I put out the lie myself, to draw out the other evil souls like yours. That’s how a real hunter gets the job done. I never expected such a large turnout, though.”
“I told you. I’m not fractured.”
“Prove it.”
“I have no powers. Isn’t that proof enough? Fractured souls, by definition, have partial powers. I have none.”
“I’ll coax them out of you.” He grinned and pulled something metal out of his pocket, then slipped it onto his hand. Brass knuckles. “They say all it takes is a little trauma. Too bad your prince isn’t here to save you now.” He reared back his fist and I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing for impact.
CHAPTER 10
The hit never came. My eyes opened again to find the world as utterly frozen as I was. Osborne’s hateful face was frozen in a perpetual sneer, just a foot from mine, his fist pulled back above his shoulder.
This couldn’t be real. There was no way something like this was possible. But there he was—unblinking. Unbreathing. It was as if the whole world had stopped.
No. Not the whole world. I gasped as I watched my owl flutter down and land on the shipping container behind Osborne. It blinked at me, and suddenly I knew the freeze was about to break. It was like I heard that voice in my head again, giving me a ready, set, go… and we were back to normal.
The sunlight glinted off of the metal knuckles adorning Osborne’s hand as his fist reached prime position. But just as he prepared to swing it forward, a flash of white appeared from the sky, flying a hundred miles an hour and dive bombing straight into Osborne’s head. The owl connected with Osborne before he could hit me, and a flutter of white feathers went flying as he cursed loudly.
The glamour broke along with Osborne’s concentration, and I ran. Hard. His footsteps were hot on my heels as I rounded the corner, no longer fearing who else I might run into. No one would be as terrifying as Osborne.
I ran the length of two more shipping containers and turned the corner again, finding myself in a small open area with a crowd of about ten or twelve men and women—mortals by the look of them—squished together in the center. They were silent, frozen just as I had been moments earlier, and their clothes flapped in a wind that only seemed to affect their small group.
“Stop!” Tate’s voice yelled out from somewhere overhead. I looked up to find him standing on a stack of containers beside a tall, dark skinned man who appeared to be carved from stone. The man was inhumanly handsome, and the lines of his muscles were sharp as the sun cast shadows over his shirtless torso.
Agarthian. Another hunter? This was bad.
Electricity danced over my skin as I drew nearer to Tate, but he wasn’t watching me. His eyes were on Osborne as he called his command again, this time with a thousand layers of intricate harmonies. “Stop right there,” he said, his words laced with glamour.
But it didn’t work. I could still move. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder as I reached the shipping container Tate and the other Agarthian stood upon, and saw Osborne, motionless before the group of terrified humans.
“Give me your hand.” Tate was flat on his stomach, reaching down to me over the edge of the container. I didn’t hesitate. My skin came alive where his hand wrapped around mine, and the ground fell away beneath my feet as he pulled me effortlessly to the top of the stack.
“What did you do to Daniel?” Osborne’s wicked voice drew my attention back to the ground. He was struggling to move, fighting against Tate’s glamour and looking like his feet were stuck in wet cement.
I turned to the other Agarthian man beside us, Daniel, and noticed that he, too, was frozen. A small sweat glistened off of Tate’s forehead as he worked to maintain his con
centration and rescue me at the same time.
“I told you to stay in the car,” he said.
“I’m not a very good listener.”
“Understatement of the year…”
“Daniel…” Osborne’s voice took on a tone of glamour now, too; magic rolled off of his tongue. The man beside us turned slowly to face him. “You are released from Thaddeus’ control. Do not let the girl escape.”
“No!” Tate cried out, but he was too late. He and the Agarthian man shrank away as I was swept up high into the air, arms pinned to my sides by an invisible and powerful wind. Below me I could see the small group of humans, staring up with mouths agape. Daniel stood on the roof of the shipping container, arms extended above his head, holding me in the air with wind that came from his fingertips.
Tate could do nothing to Daniel without also injuring me in the process. One major hit would drop me from the sky, and there was no way my frail mortal body could sustain that kind of impact. I would splat like a bug on the front of an eighteen-wheeler.
Rather than risk the danger associated with Daniel, Tate focused his efforts on Osborne, who was freely moving again now that Tate was too distracted to hold the glamour. He leapt down from the roof and dove for Osborne. There were shouts, but nothing I could make out from as high as I was in the air. There was absolutely nothing I could do. I was trapped.
Glancing over my shoulder, I remembered that I was also surrounded by water on three sides, and I didn’t know which would be a worse way to die. Hitting the ground would be messy, but there was a chance it would be over before I realized it even hurt. But the water… I wouldn’t die from impact if I dropped into the sound. No—I’d sink slowly to the filthy bottom, holding my breath until my lungs burned and cried out for oxygen.
Choking and drowning would be the worse option. No question.
