The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  Chapter Nine

  It felt like someone had hit a giant reset button. Sarah had taken her car to the park and drove us back to the police station where we were reunited with everyone who’d been there before. The Woodhurst PD had called Sarah and asked her to come in. Since I was with her I was along for the ride and we let everyone else know where we were going. Them showing up hadn’t really been part of the plan but here they were.

  Lexus and Victoria weren’t really a surprise—damn I owed them both a huge apology—nor was Bob Avery or Eleanor. He was her lawyer, not mine. He just happened to be representing me. But Reagan was there again as well. I didn’t know what to make of that. Or any of it really.

  I’d never had a support system like this. Since being adopted by the Marshals my only real support had come from Sarah, and she had been limited in what she could do. And now here I was, surrounded by people who wanted to make sure I was okay. Even after I’d basically ditched them all to go have a pity party in the middle of a crisis. God I was such an asshole.

  “Feels kind of like we were all just here, doesn’t it?” I said as we all converged on the doors to the police department. It was the best I could come up with. There were so many words I needed to say. Apologies to make and gratitude to express. Nothing I could do would be sufficient.

  Lexus snorted. She and Victoria didn’t stop moving, they walked straight into me and pulled me into a three way hug. A shuddering gasp escaped me and a relief swept through all of us. I needed them. Fuck my heritage. Fuck whatever the binding that held us together. It was there and we were here and we needed each other now and I wasn’t letting them go. I’d been a complete and utter idiot.

  And I couldn’t think about any of that now because there was a very real crisis at hand. I started to pull back when both girls froze, then gave me a deliberate sniff. They had fae-hound and werewolf noses. Which meant they probably not only smelled the forest on me from the park but the smell of sex still on me. Oh. Oh damn, I hadn’t even thought.

  Both of them turned to look at Sarah, who blushed but held their gaze.

  It was actually Reagan who spoke first, addressing Sarah. “Your eyes. Weren’t they blue before? They look just like….”

  She trailed off, looking from Sarah’s eyes to the matching set in her daughter and our girlfriend’s face. Her mouth made a little O.

  “She’s hot,” Lexus said. “Your eyes look good on her.”

  Bob Avery cleared his throat. “Would somebody please explain to me what’s going on?”

  Eleanor patted the lawyer’s arm. “Later, Mr. Avery. Over tea when there are less pressing concerns.”

  The door to the police station opened and Officer Jenkin strode out. He froze when he saw us. “Guess that makes this easy,” he muttered, though not so quietly that we couldn’t hear. “Mr. Marshal, I’d like to ask you a few questions inside if you don’t mind.”

  Sarah rushed forward to meet him. “Do you know where Dad’s taken Mom?”

  Officer Jenkins cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. He glanced down at Sarah’s chest. I remembered that I’d ruined her bra earlier and her breasts did absolutely fascinating things to her t-shirt without one, her plump nipples making little tents in the fabric.

  “We are looking into every possible lead,” Jenkins said, making a visible effort to look at Sarah’s face and not her unrestrained breasts. “Which is why I’d like to talk to your brother. Find out where he’s been all afternoon.”

  “With me,” Sarah said. “We just spent the last few hours together.”

  Jenkins grimaced. “And before that?”

  “He was with us,” Victoria and Lexus said at the same time.

  Lexus kept going. “We went for a walk in the National Park right after leaving here.”

  Officer Jenkins clenched his jaw and said nothing.

  Bob Avery stepped up beside me and place a hand on my shoulder. “Surely you weren’t about to suggest that my client might have had something to do with his mother’s kidnaping?”

  “Just trying to get all that facts,” Jenkins said.

  Sarah’s phone rang with the Imperial March. She froze like a startled rabbit.

  “That’s Albert’s ring tone isn’t it?” I asked.

  Slowly, she nodded.

  “Everyone be quiet,” Jenkins barked. “Please answer it and put it on speaker, Ms. Marshal.”

  Sarah lifted the phone, but didn’t answer it. She only stared at the screen. She hadn’t assigned Albert a photo so the screen was all black except for the word DAD at the top.

  I put a hand on her upper arm. “You don’t have to answer it. I can if you want.”

  “No,” Jenkins said. “He’s calling her. We don’t want to throw anything unexpected at him if he kidnapped her.”

  If? I glared at him, not only for that comment but for pushing Sarah to talk to the creep. She shouldn’t ever have to think about him again, let alone talk to him.

  “It’s okay, Caleb,” Sarah said. She took my hand, squeezing my fingers tight in hers, and answered the phone with her other, holding it face up for all of us to listen in on.

  “Sarah Bear,” Albert said. “Where are you?”

  She glanced at Jenkins who shook his head.

  “Where’s Mom,” she asked.

  Albert sighed. “Sarah. Mom died two years ago. You know that. What has that hooligan told you?”

  She swallowed. “Dad. Where is Mom?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re asking me this, Sarah. Mom is dead. Where are you? Did Caleb hurt you?”

  Sarah bit her lower lip and her eyes flashed. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to scream in rage or fear or both.

  “I think he actually stole some things from me when he kidnapped you,” he went on. “Some video files. Nothing too important since I have backups, but still, it shows a profound lack of character. You need to get away from him and come home.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. Tears spilled out of their corners. When they opened, the fear was still there, but now they also shone with determination. Without thinking she spun away from the group, marching as she spoke into the speaker. “I am safer with him than I ever was with you. I know what you are. I know what you’ve done. And you’re not getting away with it any more. Where have you taken Mom?”

  The phone was quiet for moment after that.

  “You’re his creature now,” he said. The concerned, fatherly tone he’d been using was gone. He sounded cold and hollow. “I can see it in you.”

  He hung up.

  “What the hell was that?” Jenkins said, striding up to Sarah. “If he had her—”

  I stepped between her and the police officer. I didn’t say a word, just glared at him.

  “Son, you do not want to get on my bad side tonight,” he said, squaring off with me.

  I wanted to say something. Everything in my surged forward, hungry to address his challenge. I pushed the urge down. He was a police officer. He could arrest me. He was fucking useless but he could get in my way. Especially if I understood Albert’s threat about backup files correctly.

  I stepped away, putting an arm around Sarah and pulled her back to Lexus and Victoria. Jenkins made to follow but was intercepted by Bob Avery, who began doing his “I can always find a way to interrupt you and make you look stupid” trick.

  “We have find her ourselves,” I said. “Damn, if I’d been smart I’d have asked you to drop me off at the hospital and the pair of you to meet us there.”

  Sarah frowned. “What do you mean you can find her?”

  “It’s part of my magic,” I explained, speaking quietly so that Officer Jumps-to-Conclusions wouldn’t overhear. “Or, our magic really. If we can get hold of something that smells like…like Mom…you all can transform and my magic will help you track her down. We’ll move fast and catch him completely off guard.”

  “You all…wait.” She dug into her purse and pulled out a li
ttle compact makeup thingy. She flipped it open and looked in the mirror, gasping when she saw her eyes. A hand reached up, touching her face all around them.

  “You told me about this, but I—I didn’t think,” Sarah said, then she smiled. “I hated that I had his eyes, you know.”

  I’d always thought of them as Caroline’s eyes but both she and Albert had blue eyes now that I thought of it. “You’re not mad at me?”

  She rolled her newly green eyes. “Caleb, if what you’ve done to me will help us find Mom, then what you did to me in that park is only just the beginning.”

  Victoria smirked. “You might have to make a performance of it.”

  Sarah’s face started to light up with heat and then went pale, her expression becoming horrified. “Performance. Caleb he has—”

  “I know,” I said, cutting her off before she could say anything that Jensen might overhear. “We’ll take care of them after we’ve get Mom back.”

  She gave a little nod. “Thank you.”

  Lexus looked back and forth between us. “Okay, we’ll work through all the details—and I mean all of them—as soon as we handle this crisis. Right after, you hear?”

  It was my turn to nod. So did Sarah.

  “Good enough,” Victoria said. “For now.”

  We rushed for Sarah’s car before anyone could try to stop us. Jenkin’s began shouting at us from the parking lot, but the four of us piled into her car and took off. First stop, Woodhurst Hospital. Next stop, Caroline Marshal. And when we found her, I’d do everything to Albert Marshal that I’d fantasized about on the trip back to Woodhurst.

  Chapter Ten

  Getting something of Caroline’s proved to be more difficult than we’d first expected. What I’d originally hoped for was to get to the hospital, go find the room Caroline had been in, and then use her sheets to get her scent for the girls. Sarah knew exactly which room she’d been staying in, and though we got more than a few odd looks walking through the sterile halls, nobody stopped us until we actually got where we’d been meaning to go.

  Then we ran into a problem.

  Four police officers loitered around the room like bored gargoyles in uniform, which was four more than I’d expected. Okay, maybe I should have expected at least one token guard to be there, but four? My best guess was that someone higher up on the food chain had taken an interest and let the Woodhurst PD know it. I mean, it wasn’t like Albert was just going to waltz in here and put Caroline back or something, and none of them were doing anything other than standing around looking bored. Then again, what else was there for them to do around Woodhurst?

  Sure there were meth dealers and let’s not forget that human traffickers frequently passed through town, but if my experience was any indication, the setups for those tended to be outside of the town proper, hidden on or around private property and kept out of sight. If you didn’t know they were there and nobody told you, you’d go right past them. Which was kind of the point and it kept the cops trolling students for traffic tickets and guarding empty hospital rooms because they had nothing better to do. Easy cushy job for them, problematic for us.

  One of them appeared to be sharing a mildly amusing anecdote, but their expressions were more glazed than animated. There had to be a donut joke in there somewhere.

  “Does anyone have a Plan B?” I whispered.

  Victoria pulled me back and stepped up to the front, pulling Sarah with her. “Be upset,” she whispered at her, then glanced at Lexus and me. “We’ll distract them. You get in there, grab what you need, and run.”

  Without another word she marched herself and Sarah out into full view of the cops and made a b-line for them. Sarah caught on quick and burst into tears.

  “Where’s my mom?” she wailed.

  I actually stood there for a full three heartbeats in stunned appreciation. I’d really thought we were screwed there. We still could be. There were, after all, four pairs of eyes and we weren’t exactly inconspicuous. The hospital didn’t exactly bustle with activity. We were on the third floor and most of what I’d seen of patients and visitors had been on the floors below us.

  The hospital hallways on this floor basically made a giant square. Lexus and I would need to double back to come down the hall from the other side while the cops were distracted by Sarah and Victoria. Risky as all hell but I guess that’s why she picked Lexus and me for it. We were easily the fastest in the group, especially Lexus, who ran track competitively.

  I wish she’d given us more heads up though. Damn. Wait, was she mad at me? Initiative or anger…double damn. I needed my head in the game—not be distracted by how I may or may not have fucked up the best things in my life. Wow…the girls were the best things in my life. I loved them. And I might have seriously hurt them by doing what I’d done with Sarah. I might have just destroyed my relationship with my sister and confidante.

  Fuck. I couldn’t spare the focus to pick at this problem and bury myself in morose indecision again. I had to act. One problem at a time. Or in my case one crisis at a time.

  Lexus and I moved as quickly and unobtrusively as we could around the hospital floor, circling around behind the officers. We were in synch, predators on the hunt. I felt like a ninja or super spy. This wasn’t so impossible. About halfway around the building, when we were on the opposite side of the building from the cops, Lexus threw me a look.

  “So, your sister, huh?”

  And so much for one thing at a time.

  “Adopted sister,” I clarified. “No blood between us.”

  She made a sound that could have meant anything. “You’re both taking it well.”

  I swallowed. “Yeah, well, we’re kind of in crisis mode. I don’t think it’s really hit either of us yet.” And maybe, maybe despite all my confiding in her, Sarah didn’t fully believe or understand what had happened between us and how she had changed. How we were now bound together.

  “Are,” I took a deep breath and swallowed down my nervousness. “Are you okay with it?”

  She visibly choked down a laugh. “Kind of late to be asking now, isn’t it?”

  Fair enough.

  Further conversation became impossible if we wanted to avoid being caught. And if it put off that particular conversation I owed Lexus and Victoria then all the better. Was I being an emotional coward? Absolutely. I’d fucked up and didn’t know what to do about it. Frankly it was a miracle that they hadn’t ripped me to pieces the second they saw Sarah’s new eyes.

  Or maybe they couldn’t? My power might not let them have an opinion on the subject. No, that wasn’t right. They definitely had opinions about what had happened. But how much of their reaction was them and how much was my magic? Dammit not all this again. Why did I have affinities that entered such a fucking grey area? Oh, right, because I was a fucking fae-demon-human hybrid. Maybe in a week I’d get another letter from the scientists at the lab saying they’d found an evil kitchen sink somewhere in my lineage too.

  We poked our head around the corner to the hallway with the cops. Sarah was balling in the middle of the floor a few yards down from the room Caroline had been staying in. She screamed and wailed and clung to two officers simultaneously while Victoria harangued the other two for not doing a better job. And for being cops. And for being incompetent. And insensitive. And…damn, she was really letting them have it. One of the cops’ ears had turned such a bright shade of red they looked in danger of catching fire. God, I hoped that wasn’t what was waiting for me after we got Caroline back.

  The two of them did such a good job distracting the cops that it took little more than a casual, if quiet, stroll to get to the room unnoticed and slip inside. A window opposite the door had been slid open so that a breeze could carry through a protective screen, erected as much to keep patients in as the bugs out. It overlooked the parking lot and the woods behind it. There were worse views to be had.

  The room itself was completely sterile, smelling faintly of ammo
nia, old people, and that special hospital cold smell that couldn’t be found anywhere else. I’d expected the room to be empty. I hadn’t expected it to be this clean. There was no sign of the clothes she’d been brought to the hospital in, either because she’d been wearing them when Albert kidnapped her or because the hospital staff had thrown them away. This…this had been done since Caroline had been taken. Didn’t that go against some kind of crime scene procedure? Dammit. There was nothing of hers left. They had even changed the sheets.

  I didn’t have a werewolf or cu sith’s nose, but I could tell that there was nothing left in the room that could give us Caroline’s scent. The only sign that anyone had even been in here was a cheap vase of flowers from the gift shop at the front of the hospital that looked like every other generic bouquet they had on display.

  “Dammit,” I swore under my breath.

  Lexus scowled and lifted the clean sheets from the bed, pulling them up to her nose. She took a deep breath, then sagged. Lowering the sheet she shook her head. No scent.

  I surge of red hot rage surged up inside of me, burning my eyes and flinging green sparks from my shaking fists. I spun, aiming a sparking fist toward the cheap bouquet of flowers, the need to break something overpowering my common sense—and I froze, only a few inches away from smashing the vase into the wall. There was something behind the vase. A reddish brown something that looked familiar.

  I moved the vase aside and came face to face with the eyeless Colin. The fetus stared up at me from the bedside table, expression impassive bordering on nonplussed. Slowly I picked the macabre thing up and held it out to Lexus.

  Her entire face wrinkled in revulsion and she shook her head, refusing to get close.

  Oh for fuck’s sake. In three steps I crossed the room and was in front of her, holding the fetus up for her to smell. She backed away. I followed, still holding up the dead baby.

  “Get that thing away from me,” she said in a hiss. “That is fucking disgusting, Caleb.”

  “I don’t care if it’s disgusting,” I said. “Can you get her scent off of it? She was clutching it to her the entire car ride up here.”