by Anne Bishop
Simon rushed into the Liaison’s Office, vaulted over the counter, and disappeared. He returned in less than a minute, his amber eyes turned red with rage.
Blair stayed outside guarding Skippy and watching all the humans as if they had just transformed into enemies.
“Maybe this was a crime of opportunity, but I don’t think so.” O’Sullivan scanned the area. “I do not think so.” He focused on Monty. “Where is Cyrus Montgomery at this moment?”
No. Jimmy couldn’t be that selfish, that stupid. What O’Sullivan was implying . . . Gods above and below. Would the city be torn apart because of Jimmy?
A crime of opportunity? He thought about the ruckus at the apartment and felt sick that they might have fallen for a distraction a second time. “Let’s be sure,” he began as Simon slammed out of the office.
“We’re sure,” Simon snarled. “That Cyrus’s scent is in the office—and Meg is gone.”
CHAPTER 23
Thaisday, Messis 23
Vlad looked around the table in the consulate’s meeting room. He’d expected Captain Burke to arrive as soon as he’d heard the news, but he hadn’t expected Mayor Walter Chen and Police Commissioner Raymond Alvarez to be part of this meeting.
He also hadn’t expected to be outnumbered. Besides Chen, Alvarez, and Burke, Montgomery and Kowalski were also in the room. He and Elliot Wolfgard, who was the Courtyard’s consul, were the only terra indigene at this meeting.
“Mr. Simon Wolfgard will not be joining us?” Chen asked Elliot.
Elliot hesitated. “He’s too upset to be around humans right now.”
Chen nodded as if that was the expected response. He looked at Alvarez, then at Burke. “What are we doing to find this young woman and return her to her family?”
Interesting choice of words, Vlad thought. But he detected no hypocrisy in Chen’s voice.
“We’re doing everything we would do for any abduction,” Burke replied. He looked Vlad in the eyes. “With some help, we can do more.”
“What kind of help?” Vlad asked. “I’ve contacted Stavros Sanguinati. If that Cyrus goes to Talulah Falls, Stavros will find him—and Meg.”
Burke nodded. “I called Roger Czerneda. He’ll patrol River Road between Ferryman’s Landing and the Lakeside city line. It’s not likely that Cyrus will go there either—too easy to get boxed in—but that route away from Lakeside is covered.”
“I have contacted the station chief of every precinct in Lakeside,” Alvarez said. “All the stations are being mobilized, and roadblocks are being set up as we speak.” He hesitated. “But we still need a starting point, especially if this man is already beyond the city limits.”
“Starting point?” Vlad asked quietly. He could think of two places to start. Wouldn’t need to break too much of that Clarence for the pup to wail everything he knew. He’d prefer breaking the Sandee, who had been so hopped up on something that just contact with her skin had injured Leetha. The Sanguinati bodywalker was optimistic that the wounds in and around Leetha’s mouth would heal without permanent damage. Vlad hoped that was true.
And he wondered: was the Sandee’s life force as contaminated as her skin or could she be a meal for a Harvester?
“Jimmy . . .” Lieutenant Montgomery stopped. He looked ill and angry. “Cyrus couldn’t take a struggling woman on public transportation. We’ve checked with the taxicab companies. None of them sent a taxi to pick up a fare near the Courtyard’s Main Street entrance. Right now we have people at the Chestnut Street station making calls to all the car rental places in the city.”
“He might have stolen a vehicle,” Burke said, looking at Vlad. “That’s what Commissioner Alvarez means by a starting point. Cyrus Montgomery can’t have used any kind of public transportation—not taxi, bus, or train. Which means he’s in some kind of private vehicle. You need papers to cross borders these days, so Cyrus can’t travel to another region. And Agent O’Sullivan already spoke with Governor Hannigan about the situation. All the official border crossings are on alert, and I just don’t see Cyrus having the skills needed to try to go off road through the wild country to reach another region.”
“He could drive north to a town and take a boat across Lake Tahki,” Alvarez said.
“Possible,” Burke agreed, “but all the villages along the Northeast side of Lake Tahki are Intuit, terra indigene, or human settlements controlled by the Others. I talked to Steve Ferryman, who is the mayor of Ferryman’s Landing. He’s sending out an e-mail alert to every Intuit village he can reach, informing them that Meg Corbyn was abducted.”
Burke leaned toward Vlad. He wagged a finger to indicate the humans at the table. “First we need to identify the car. Then we need to know what help you can give us. It’s possible that Cyrus has found a hidey-hole in the city and is lying low, thinking the search won’t stay hot that long.”
“It will stay hot forever,” Vlad whispered. “Or, when Winter hears of this, it will stay very, very cold for a long time.”
Burke paled—the only sign that he understood exactly what the threat meant. “Cyrus won’t want to stay in a city where he can’t exploit Ms. Corbyn’s abilities. Assuming he’s already beyond the city limits, he’s in the wild country. We’ll figure out how he got Meg out of the city, what kind of vehicle he’s driving. What information is most useful to the terra indigene in the wild country? A shape? A color? I’m assuming make and model of car means nothing. I’m also assuming not everyone understands human letters and numbers.”
“Colors and shapes,” Elliot said. “Most of the terra indigene who would watch the land around the right-of-ways would know a big truck from a pickup from a car.”
“And the Crowgard are very good at recognizing faces,” Vlad added.
“We have a recent photo of Cyrus,” Montgomery said, sounding like he was swallowing tiny shards of bone. “From when he was brought in for questioning about the theft of meat in the Market Square. But Ms. Corbyn . . .”
“Ah . . .” Kowalski raised a couple of fingers. “I took a few pictures recently of Meg, Merri Lee, and Ruthie. I also have a shot of Meg and Sam. Before coming to this meeting, I gave my digital camera to Lorne at the Three Ps. He’s over there now, cropping one of the photos and running off some copies.”
“Well done,” Burke said. Then to Vlad, “With your permission, we’ll e-mail the shot of Ms. Corbyn to every police station in the Northeast.”
Vlad hesitated. Most of the cassandra sangue were well hidden from the humans who would abuse them. At least, the ones who had wanted to get away from the compounds were well hidden. Meg’s picture had been on a wanted poster a few months ago when her owner was trying to find her. He wasn’t sure it was smart or safe to remind too many humans that she was out here. After all, what she was learning about herself and how to cope in the outside world was the reason so many other blood prophets were managing to survive without benevolent ownership.
“No,” Elliot said. “Simon would never agree to telling humans that Meg was vulnerable. Someone else might kill Cyrus in order to take her. Then we would never find her.”
“We understand.” Mayor Chen looked at the other men around the table. “Perhaps the photo of Cyrus Montgomery and a description of Ms. Corbyn would be enough?”
Vlad nodded.
Kowalski’s mobile phone rang. He excused himself and walked away from the table. He rejoined them a minute later. “Ms. Lee remembered that students sometimes rent their cars to other students for a day or two. Some stores near the university have bulletin boards where notices are posted. Might be places like that around the tech college too. While it’s unlikely that a student would rent his or her car to a stranger who clearly was not a fellow student, it would be another place to look if the rental car companies don’t pan out.”
Burke pushed away from the table. “If there’s nothing else, we’ll get to it.”
&n
bsp; “There’s nothing else,” Vlad said. He waited until the humans left the building before turning to Elliot. “The meeting with the mayor, the reason you weren’t in the consulate, where you might have seen or heard a struggle.”
“It wasn’t an excuse or part of a plot, if that’s what you’re asking.” Elliot gave him a long look. “Katherine Debany had a dentist appointment—routine checkup. She made the appointment months ago and told me about it last week. Even wrote it in the day planner in my office in case I forgot she wouldn’t be in. And I gave Miss Twyla the morning off because the women had caught up on all the work.”
Ruthie’s mental health day didn’t matter. School in the summer ended at lunchtime. The children would have been outside playing regardless.
“We fell for the distraction when that Cyrus started a fight with Montgomery to give that Jack Fillmore an opportunity to find Theral.”
“And that gave us an opportunity to end that threat.” Elliot sat back. “Would so many of you have been focused on this fight if it hadn’t involved the children?”
Vlad thought about that and shook his head. The terra indigene protected their young. “It all happened in the time it took a stoplight to change. Simon believed Meg was safe in the daylight. We all did. And so many things could have gone wrong with that Cyrus’s plan—Nathan could have stayed until O’Sullivan returned with the food; cars could have jammed up, blocking that Cyrus’s escape from the delivery area or even delaying the time when he was able to pull into the delivery area; Meg could have insisted that Skippy wait to pee until O’Sullivan returned. If she had, the door would have been locked and she would have had time to call for help.” That was the only bit of information they had gotten out of Skippy—that Meg had opened the door and he had gone out just before the car leaped at him and bit his leg.
If Simon had run to the Liaison’s Office instead of preventing Merri Lee from getting crunched between two cars, he would have reached Meg in time to stop that Cyrus from taking her. But he’d protected the pack member who was in immediate danger—a truth that might make it difficult for him to be around Merri Lee in the future, depending on the outcome of this hunt.
Elliot looked uneasy. “I’m his sire, but I think you know Simon better, understand him better. If we don’t find Meg, do you think he’ll survive?”
“No.” The certainty of his answer made Vlad feel cold. “If we lose her, we’ll lose him too.”
• • •
In human form, Henry Beargard was a large man. As a Grizzly, he was massive. But when he walked in his true earth native form as spirit bear, he was much larger than the Grizzly—and still smaller than the two Elders who were visiting the Courtyard. That didn’t matter, because he was swelled with rage.
He found them in the part of the Courtyard that bordered Crowfield Avenue. Human eyes couldn’t see them, any more than those eyes could see the spirit bear, but some primal instinct sometimes told small predators and prey that something was there. Henry knew that by the way a few of the humans who were still trapped in the snow and traffic pileup kept looking toward the fence, searching for the cause of their alarm.
The Elders turned toward him in surprise.
they replied dismissively.
Almost blind with rage, Henry took a step toward them.
An odd, and terrible, silence.
Humans couldn’t see the Elders, but Henry could. He watched them stare at the buildings across the street, where that human pup had conveniently caused trouble. He watched their hackles rise. He saw their lips curl away from teeth that could tear apart something his size, let alone a human.
Namid’s teeth and claws turned away from the street and the puny humans and fixed their eyes on him. They had seen how a big distraction worked and, in turn, had used it themselves when Elders and Elementals had struck humans here in Thaisia to cause confusion before they crushed the enemy in Cel-Romano. They had seen big distractions but hadn’t understood that a small one could be just as dangerous.
Finally they said,
They didn’t like that. They didn’t like that at all.
They snarled at him, angered by his words. But they didn’t attack. Instead they moved past him, one on either side, leaving his back exposed no matter which one he turned to face.
He felt them heading toward the center of the Courtyard, where they had staked out a small area as their own.
The Elders had been intrigued enough by Meg and Simon to return to the Courtyard and observe. But they were so used to being the ones who knew what the world needed that they hadn’t listened to Simon because that Cyrus was no threat to them.
Henry dropped to all fours and returned to his apartment in the Green Complex. But none of the other residents were there, and a sadness seemed to cling to the building. A piece was missing and might never be found.
He knew Simon was at the Wolfgard Complex, looking after Sam and helping Jane deal with Skippy while she tried to fix as much of the damage to the juvenile’s leg and ribs as she could. No one knew yet if it would be enough.
He should go to the Market Square and help Vlad deal with the humans, but he couldn’t. Right now, he didn’t want to deal with the humans; he wanted to kill them. Better to stay away so that he didn’t lash out and gut one of the female pack.
He shifted from spirit bear to his Grizzly form. Then he left the Green Complex and its scent of sadness.
• • •
They had made a mistake. They had wanted to watch an insignificant two-legged predator that caused trouble for its own kind, had wanted to understand what that kind of creature might do that could pose a danger to the earth natives who guarded the edges of the wild country and came in contact with small human settlements—what kind of danger it might pose to the smaller shifters who were living in settlements with humans and might absorb too much human badness and become a small enemy to their own kind.
They had thought the male was a troublesome predator but not a particularly dangerous one. But the male had shown cunning and a disregard for his own young. Having observed the other humans who entered the Courtyard and had young, they had not considered that he would do such a thing.
And the not-Wolf was the Wolfgard’s chosen mate? When they told the Wolf to consider how much human the terra indigene would keep, they had not considered this because this was not how new forms of earth natives came into being. Earth natives did not mate with the form they were absorbing. They mated with others of their own kind who had successfully absorbed the form.
But the Wolf and the not-Wolf had changed things. Had changed each other. Could they make something this new? Would the world want what might come from such a mating?
The not-Wolf amused them, even when she sounded like a scoldy squirrel. Maybe then most of all. And the stories
of what she and the earth natives did here traveled into the wild country. But if she disappeared, there would be one last, sad story—because they, the Elders, had not understood that the troublesome male was truly dangerous.
They had needed to learn too much too quickly, and they had made a mistake.
Now they would fix it.
CHAPTER 24
Thaisday, Messis 23
Jimmy turned off the car’s radio and kept driving. The news was still talking about the weird snowfall that snarled up traffic on Crowfield Avenue in Lakeside. But he’d heard nothing that he needed to be concerned about.
His plan had worked perfectly, as he’d known it would. And he’d been lucky. He’d been a couple of cars back from the delivery entrance when that ITF agent walked out of the delivery area and dashed across the street. By the time he pulled up to the Liaison’s Office, the agent was inside the Stag and Hare.
His luck had held when he pulled in fast and clipped that Wolf, and the scar girl ran outside to help the freak. She didn’t even look at him until he grabbed her arm. Then she tried to fight, so he pulled out a blackjack and gave her a tap on the head. He opened the trunk and dumped her inside, taking a moment to feel her pockets and remove the folding razor. When his back was turned for those few seconds, the Wolf managed to get up on three legs and tried to bite him.
He hit the Wolf over the head with the blackjack, putting everything he had into the blow. Once the Wolf was down, he jumped into the car and pulled out onto Main Street, tires squealing as other drivers hit their brakes and their horns.
He was gone in a couple of minutes, with no one the wiser.
He’d been tempted to take the toll road once he left the city limits, either heading east toward Hubbney or following the shoreline of Lake Etu south and west. But toll roads meant people manning the booths. While there was no reason for anyone to be looking for him—not yet anyway—and no reason to think there was anything suspicious about a dark-skinned man driving an older-model car, the little cha-ching in the trunk might realize why they weren’t moving for that minute and start hollering and drawing attention to herself. Couldn’t have that, so he’d taken one of the roads that had a route sign and was going in the general direction he wanted to go.
