by Jasmine Walt
Yes. Your body is my vessel. Your body is my weapon. Cut the skein and knit anew.
“Bind her. Do it now.”
Paint the room red . . . I had to paint it red. Red was vibrant, red seeping from my core, red the color of life, the color of death. Red would be a treat.
I slammed back into myself, my pulse like thunder in my ears. Velocity lay still, her bony body trembling. A low whine seeped from her dry, cracked lips. She scrambled from beneath me and grabbed something off the ground.
Her doll.
Cradling it to her chest, she backed away, her gaze pinned on me as if I were a viper ready to strike. And then she turned and ran until she was swallowed by the shadows.
“Dammit, Malina. You could have been killed.” Ajitah grabbed my elbow and hauled me into his arms. He cupped the back of my neck. “We couldn’t get to you. I thought . . . I thought you were dead.”
“What happened?” Drake asked. “This black stuff just covered you both up, and we couldn’t break through.”
I pulled away from Ajitah. “I saw what happened to her. What your covens did to her.” My tone was acerbic, and I didn’t give a fuck. “Your stories are lies. She had a human lover and got pregnant, so they tried to use the skein to kill her child. She had no choice but to embrace the void. But the void tricked her, too. It claimed her child’s life.”
“Shit,” Drake said. “And then they banished her. They locked her away here so the truth would never come out.” Drake ran a hand over his face. “Fuck, it makes sense. The laws surrounding witch and human relationships were altered just over a century ago, around the same time the aberrations started being born.”
Maybe the aberrations were a result of the covens upsetting the balance.
Drake swallowed. “I can’t believe they’d be so cruel.”
Parker cursed under her breath. “We can debate the coven motives later. Right now, we have a mission to complete. And we’re another operative down.”
One of her men checked Harper’s pulse, his hand trembling. “He’s dead.”
“Fucking great.” Parker exhaled. “Let’s move out.”
The patrol continued in silence, empty buildings going by much quicker than before.
“We’re here, Parker,” the guy with the map called out.
“Shit,” Drake muttered.
I moved ahead to get a better look at our target location. A concrete monolith reached proudly for the sky. The warehouse was tall and thickset, its surface covered by purple, thorny vines with a slight fluorescent sheen.
“Are you sure this is it?” Drake questioned.
“Positive.”
“Malina, what are you thinking?” Aaron asked.
“If I’d realized rescuing Carmella would be a sleeping-beauty job, I’d have brought my trusty sword.”
He frowned.
“Forget it. I don’t know.” My heart sank. There was no way to get through those thorns, no window or door left uncovered.
“Well, this won’t do. Not at all. You don’t belong here, do you?” The little guy strode off toward the building.
“What is he doing?” Parker hissed. “They could have lookouts.”
Unlikely, considering all the windows were covered in vines. But still. I loped across the ground toward him, keeping low and close to the shadows. “Wait up.”
He paused. “The periwinkle vine is indigenous to the eastern part of the world. Not here, not in the west. It doesn’t belong. This is not where it belongs.” His left eye twitched.
I grasped his shoulder and pulled him into the shadows. “Listen, buddy, there are a lot of things that are out of order with the world these days. If you get your knickers in a knot over them all, you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
He exhaled and nodded. “The name is Kosmos, not buddy.” He looked back to the vines. “Everything, even the Red Zone, should have its own kind of order.” He glanced back at the vines. “And this is not part of that order. It must be returned.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course.”
If he had the power to remove the vine, that was great, but would removing it alert whoever was inside? “Is there some way you can get it away from an exit so we can get in? Just leave the rest of it until we get the witch bloods out?”
He stepped back, his shoulders tight. “Yes, yes, I can see why. You must go in undetected. But then I need to remain to put things in order once you are done.”
Parker joined us. “What’s going on?”
“Kosmos can help us get past the ivy.”
Ajitah, Drake, Aaron, and the remainder of the units joined us by the ground-floor window, which was covered in vines.
“So what’s the plan?”
Parker pulled out a piece of paper from her vest pocket. “Okay, this is a layout of the inside of the warehouse.”
The building had three floors and a basement. It seemed as if the window led into a small office space. I just hoped it wasn’t occupied.
“I’ll go in first, subdue any occupants,” Parker said. She pulled a Sig from her holster and fitted a suppressor. “Wait for my signal.”
Kosmos held up his hand, and the vines covering the windows shivered and parted. I quickly cut out the glass, and Parker climbed through. She reappeared at the window a few seconds later.
“Clear.”
Yeah, it was all clear, the whole damn floor and the level above. Open, dusty space with the odd empty crate lying on its side and a rusty-looking forklift. The building had been cleaned out so thoroughly it was impossible to tell what kind of stock it had held.
“I don’t get it.” Drake stood hands on hips. “Why the vines?”
“A decoy?” Aaron suggested.
That didn’t make sense. “Hugo came here. To this spot. This has to be the place.”
“The basement.” Ajitah strode across the room, searching for an access. The IEPEU operatives fanned out.
We’d checked all the exits, but the map clearly showed a basement space, so there had to be access somewhere on this floor. Our group tried the exits again. They all led to stairs going to the upper floors.
“There has to be a way down there,” Aaron said.
“Maybe the access is outside?” one of the operatives suggested.
Or not. The yellow forklift stuck out like a sore thumb. Why clear out everything and leave that sitting there? Unless . . . Ajitah followed me over to the equipment, joining me on the ground as I peered beneath it.
“A door,” Ajitah said.
Hell yeah, it was a door. “We need to get this thing out of the way.”
Moving a forklift without a key was just as ridiculously hard as it sounded. It took six of us plus Drake’s magic to shift the thing, but voilà, a door.
A padlocked door.
Looked like they, whoever they were, didn’t want anyone using this entrance—which meant if they were operating down there, it must be another exit. That one was probably guarded. Retrieving my trusty laser pen, I cut through the thick metal and shucked off the padlock. The door opened with a rusty creak, revealing a grimy metal staircase descending into darkness.
Parker pushed forward. “Good work, Hayes. Bennett, you stay here. If we’re not back in thirty, grab the little guy outside, get your ass out of the zone, and call for backup.”
Bennett, a slender, sharp-featured woman, nodded. She was the one with the radio—communications department, I guessed.
Parker fixed her gaze on me. “Hunter, arm the civilians.”
Aaron smirked, taking the Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistol. “Finally.”
I took the Sunshot and turned it over in my hands. It was set to maximum—kill, not just incapacitate.
“It disables vamps, but it’ll hurt anything else like a bitch, too,” Hunter said.
Good, because whoever took Carmella—whoever was behind this fiasco—had a world of hurt coming their way.
The patrol went first, then Ajitah, me, Aaron, and Drake. The clatter o
f our boots seemed too loud in the dank dark.
“It’s locked,” Parker said from up ahead.
Obviously, there’d be another door. We were in a dingy access, a four-by-four room that reeked of mold and damp.
My boots hit the ground. “Here. Let me.” I wove through bodies to make it to the door.
Parker waved me back. “No, we got it.”
Hunter was crouched by the lock, face screwed up in concentration as he picked it. It wasn’t a sophisticated barrier, but they probably weren’t expecting anyone to get past the vines around the warehouse. The lock clicked, and Hunter stepped back. He nodded at Parker before turning the handle and slowly pulling open the door.
We stepped into a vast room. Whitewashed, clinical, and filled with sleeping witch bloods.
16
“Motherfucker!” Hunter said.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
A neat row of tables ran down the center of the room, each holding a body, except I didn’t recognize any of them.
“Hilary?” Drake stepped toward one of the tables. “I know her. She’s with the Piccadilly Coven.”
“None of these witches are in our files . . .” Ajitah scanned the faces.
“Which means this is a new batch,” Drake said. “One the high witch doesn’t know about yet.”
Carmella wasn’t present. I really hoped that was a good sign.
Tall cylindrical containers lined the back of the room, swirling with a strange substance, like the inside of a lava lamp. The fascinating whirl and surge drew me close. From a foot away, the inside of the cylinders became completely still.
“What the—”
The essence smashed against the glass, pressing itself to the smooth surface as if desperate to get to me. My pulse jumped in my throat. I stumbled back, like way back. The lava-lamp activity resumed.
Aaron joined me. “What is it?”
“I have no clue, but it’s freaking me out. I count . . . ten of them.”
“We have ten witch bloods, too.”
They had to be linked somehow.
While the medic on the team checked the bodies, and the remaining operatives secured the area, I scanned the tech. A bank of monitors with squiggles showing heart rate, blood pressure, and something else—a line I didn’t understand.
“Hey, medical person, what’s that line for?”
The medic looked up from the witch blood he was checking and squinted at the monitor. “I have no idea.”
Well, that was encouraging.
Drake joined me at the panel. “It’s getting dimmer and thinner.”
“There’s something attached to their solar plexus,” the medic said.
Leaving Drake at the monitors, I joined Parker by the body.
“Can you identify it, Nolan?” Parker asked.
Nolan shook his head. “Not sure. It’s made of some kind of conductive material, not anything I’ve ever seen.” The body on the table went into spasm, convulsed, and lay still.
“We have a flatline here,” Drake called from the monitors. “Screen two.”
Yep, this must be table two, subject two. Shit, I had to do something, but CPR wasn’t in the required training for an assassin. Nolan shoved me out of the way and began compressions.
“Wait, there’s something here.” Ajitah was crouched at the head of the table, peering underneath. “Another one of those pipes. I think . . . I think it’s attached to her head.”
The medic faltered.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She’s already so cold.”
“The cylinder. Look at the cylinder!” Drake pointed to the wall.
One of the cylinders was empty.
And then the witch blood’s eyes opened, bloodshot and wild.
Nolan fell back.
Parker trained her gun on the witch blood. “What the fuck is going on?”
“The line, it’s getting brighter and thicker,” Drake said from his station at the monitors.
The witch blood shuddered, her eyes rolling back in her head before going completely still.
Something shifted in the periphery of my vision. A figure. A large male figure. I turned my head, but he was gone.
“Check her pulse,” Parker ordered.
Nolan swallowed and moved cautiously toward the table. He reached out and carefully placed two fingers on the witch blood’s neck.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
She was dead.
No, wait . . . “Did you see that? Her eyelids twitched.”
Nolan pressed his lips together. “It can happen post-mortem sometimes. The body is settling.”
“No, there, her finger moved.”
Nolan frowned and leaned in closer, reaching out to lift one of the girl’s eyelids. He didn’t get to make contact. She grasped his wrist and pulled him down on top of her. Nolan screamed, and I made a grab for him, tugging to pull him free, but the witch had her legs wrapped around him, his body crushed against hers before the whole mass began to heave.
“Shoot it, shoot it!” someone screamed.
Blood pounding in my ears, feet rooted to the spot, I watched as Nolan crumbled, as his hair turned gray and fell out, as his body shrank until he was nothing but skin and bone. A shot rang out, and a neat red hole appeared in the witch’s head. She released Nolan, and his body slid to the ground. The witch’s eyes rolled, and the wound closed.
“Shit!” Parker shot her again.
But she ignored the gaping hole in her body. The pipes slid off her, and she sat up, eyes blazing, lips open in a crazy smile.
The witch’s voice was deep and masculine. “Well, what do we have here? Interlopers? No? A meal for the hungry, then.”
She lunged at me. I raised the Sunshot and fired. She froze. Her body lit up with the heat of the sun before she crumpled to the ground.
I nudged the body with the toe of my boot. “Is it dead?”
Ajitah rolled it over so it could glare at me accusingly, its face contorted in a horrific grimace.
“I think so,” Ajitah said.
Nolan was too—his body a desiccated husk.
“What the hell is going on here?” Aaron said.
I picked up one of the pipes. The head was a long, needle-like tube . . . a huge fucking injection. I glanced at the empty cylinder. “I don’t know, but we need to disconnect these bodies from the pipes somehow. Whatever was in that cylinder went into the witch.”
“Vampire essence,” Drake said.
“What?”
He held up a folder. “Found this under the counter here. I don’t understand most of it, but the cylinders are built to house vampires until they can find a host body.”
“But . . . witches can’t be used as hosts.”
“No, they can’t. Not unless their magic is removed.” He tapped the blue line on the monitor. “Magic.” His eyes were tight. “I don’t know how they figured this out, don’t know who they are, but they have to be stopped. Looks like they’re siphoning the magic and killing the host before introducing the vampire. Once the vamp is in, they reintroduce the magic.”
“How do we get the pipes off?” Ajitah asked.
He was back on his knees, under another table, examining the connection.
“There’ll be a code. Some kind of override, but it’s not in the folder.”
Hunter crossed the room. “Parker, I think we may have a problem.”
The monitors were flashing, the blue lines dimming.
Drake began flipping pages. “It’s siphoning. We need to disengage them now!”
“Move back.” Parker aimed her rifle at the bank of machines.
“No! You could kill them all!” Drake said.
“They’re dead either way, at least this way they stay dead.”
The figure flashed in the corner of my vision, but this time he wasn’t alone. There were others with him . . . our witches. I blinked, and he was gone. What the fuck? No time to figure it out now.
; “Shoot!” Hunter cried.
A hiss filled the air as all the cylinders emptied at once.
Parker swung her gun and aimed it at the nearest witch body.
The bodies all opened their eyes.
17
We were killing them. Gunning them down, and making them stay down, with the Sungun. I was executioner, and I was in my element. Something surged to the surface, a comforting, dark blanket—my assassin skin. I shouldn’t love this so much. This wasn’t who I wanted to be, but the thrill was undeniable.
They were monsters. Vampires in witch bodies. These were righteous kills.
“Malina, watch your six!”
I spun and fired.
The vamp went down.
Parker punched holes into another witch, forcing her back, and I finished her off with the Sunshot. A gargling scream cut through the air as another one of our men went down.
Shit! I dodged the clawed fingers of a red-eyed witch and smacked the butt of the gun against her temple. She buckled, and I shot her.
Ajitah’s bellow cut through the commotion. Two vamps were on him, back and front. His body was covered in a deadly embrace. I couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t risk hurting him. But Aaron was on it, daggers out, slicing and dicing. The vamps screamed, and their grip loosened. Ajitah shucked them off and stood, legs shoulder-width apart, powerful chest heaving. I aimed and fired twice. The bitches went down.
The room descended into complete silence.
Ajitah locked eyes with me. His stormy gaze was dazed, but he was okay. How was that possible? Nolan had crumpled in a matter of seconds, and Ajitah had been attacked by two of the fuckers.
The lights went out, and a red glare filled the chamber.
Monitors flickered, and a face appeared on each screen. I knew that angular visage with its tight-lipped smile. He’d recovered fine from the triplets’ knockout spell.
The Kubera representative leaned in until his face took up the whole screen. “You can’t stop us. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is nothing. We are many. We are legion.”
He sat back and glanced to his left. A hand appeared on his shoulder, and another face filled the screen.
