“It wasn’t me. It was Tanner running from the manticore.” Saul gasped. “But if he can see the manticore, that means he has the Sight.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” Jack replied. “You’re identical twins. The odds of both of you possessing the Sight is almost a hundred percent.”
“I know.” Saul shook his head. “It’s just that, if the Sight doesn’t wake up in early childhood, then it remains latent until a person experiences a traumatic event. Tanner’s Sight was still latent when we were sixteen. If it’s active now, then that means…”
“The stress from his abduction, and what followed,” Jack finished, “probably woke it up.”
Saul beat his fists against the wet asphalt. “Muntz hurt my brother, and now that fucker is trying to kill him with a manticore. We have to find Tanner. We have to save him.”
“We’ll do both,” Jack said. “And we already have a head start on the first. We know exactly where your brother is going to be in the near future.”
“The goblin market.” Saul scrambled to his feet. “We’ve got to get there.”
“There’s no need to rush.” Jack stood as well. “The vision was for five thirty. We have plenty of time to get down to the market and prepare for the arrival of your brother—and the manticore. We’ll come up with a strategy to extract Tanner from danger and destroy the manticore without anyone getting hurt. Okay?”
Saul let out a haggard breath. “Okay.”
Jack led Saul over to the car’s front passenger seat and opened the door for him. “If you don’t think you can keep your cool for a problem this personal, I can call in some backup and you can sit this one out.”
Saul shook his head emphatically, slinging water to and fro. “No, I can do this.” At Jack’s skeptical look, he added, “Frasier’s team is going to be at the goblin market anyway, along with two SWAT teams. We can commandeer some of them to help us wrangle the manticore.”
Jack considered that. “I would prefer not to interfere with their raid—goblins are slippery bastards, no matter how much firepower you’re packing—but if that manticore’s going to run right through the market, they’re going to have to alter their tactics regardless. So you’re right. We might as well ask them to help. I’ll make the call.”
With that, everyone piled into the car, and then they were off, the downpour beating against the windshield like war drums.
As he wove through traffic at a speed just south of hydroplaning, Jack summarized the situation for Adeline and Jill. The two shot Saul baffled looks, but before a deluge of questions could spill from their mouths, Jack shushed them and yanked his phone out of his jacket. He set the phone on the console and dialed Frasier, hitting the speakerphone button so that the ringing noise filled the car.
The phone rang seven times, almost going to voicemail, before Frasier begrudgingly answered. “What do you need, Jack?”
“Jill had a vision,” Jack said.
Frasier’s voice sobered instantly. “What about?”
“Peripherally, your raid on the goblin market.” Jack jerked the wheel to the right, sliding them through a busy intersection just as the light turned red. “It seems that an abduction victim in a case we’re working is going to enter the market around the same time that your raid is scheduled to begin. With a manticore hot on his tail.”
Frasier choked on air. “A manticore? Those things are extremely rare. Are you sure that’s what the vision showed?”
“It’s Jill, Braxton.”
Frasier was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “Point taken. So what do you want to do?”
“We’re heading your way now.” Jack changed lanes on a dime and zipped past a slow-moving tractor-trailer. “I think the best course of action is for my team to head off the manticore and rescue the victim, perhaps with a few of your SWAT agents standing by in case the creature tries to go for any of the mundanes who happen to be in the market at the time. I suspect the goblins will be just fine on their own.”
Frasier let out a displeased grunt, but said, “All right. I’ll give you four of my SWAT guys and rework the raid strategy to account for a smaller force. But I expect your people to keep that damn manticore out of my business. These goblin crooks have evaded arrest twice over the past year. I don’t want to lose them again because some necromancer’s pet decides to crash my party.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “We’ll do our best not to inconvenience you.”
“That’s all I ask,” he said. “Anything else I should know?”
“No, that’s it for now.” Jack made another hard turn, taking them toward the Karthen Street Bridge. “We can touch base when my team arrives. You’re at that closed pawn shop on Bellmore Lane, yes?”
“The parking lot behind the shop. That’s our staging area.”
“Well, assuming no detours, we’ll join you there in fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Okay, Jack,” Frasier grumbled. “Whatever you say.”
Jack stifled a snort. “That’s all I had to say. Goodbye, Braxton.”
Frasier hung up without reciprocating.
Three seconds of blissful silence passed after that. Before Adeline shoved her head between the front seats and shouted at Saul, “You have an identical twin?”
Saul flinched away from her. “Yes, I have a twin.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jill asked, sounding hurt.
“For the same reason I didn’t tell you anything else about my family,” he answered. “Because I left them all behind over a decade ago, and I never planned on reconciling with any of them.”
Adeline drew her face into a pinched expression. “And what if we’d come across your brother randomly at some point in time? We could’ve accidentally spilled top-secret information to a guy without clearance.”
Saul threw up his hands. “Seriously? What were the odds that my brother would end up running into one of the limited number of PTAD agents who know what I look like, much less that he would end up in the same exact city where I work?”
“Hm.” She scratched the side of her neck. “You do have a point. It’s kind of bizarre that he wound up in Weatherford. Are you sure he didn’t track you down somehow?”
“How could he have?” Saul said. “My address isn’t listed anywhere that a civilian can access, and I think I would’ve noticed a private eye staking me out.”
“So you’re saying it’s a total coincidence that your brother accepted a professorship here, out of the countless cities with colleges and universities in the United States of America?” Her words dripped with skepticism.
Saul mimed elbowing her in the face. “No, I’m not saying it’s a coincidence. There might be a logical explanation for it, but I don’t yet know what that explanation could be. I’ll have to ask Tanner about it.” He paused. “Assuming he doesn’t get mauled to death by the manticore.”
“We’ll save him, Saul,” Jack cut in as he coasted the car onto the Karthen Street Bridge. “Have a little faith.”
“It’s not that I don’t have faith in us. It’s just…” Saul massaged his temples. “Tanner was never the most athletic person. He couldn’t run a mile without wheezing like he was having an asthma attack. He never participated in sports, and he regularly forged notes from our parents to get out of gym class. He was, well, a huge nerd who always had his head in a book.”
Saul bit his tongue. “What I’m trying to say is, if Tanner hasn’t changed a whole lot from when he was sixteen—and I’m assuming he hasn’t since he’s a literature professor—then there’s no way he can outrun a manticore for long. And there’s absolutely nothing he can do to defend himself against one.”
Adeline cocked her head to the side. “So he’s basically the opposite of you?”
Saul shrugged. “We’re complementary, like two halves of a single well-rounded person.”
“Hold on. I’m still confused,” Jill said. “You didn’t get your tattoos until after you ran away from home, which means your brother can’
t have the same ones. So how could Muntz have mistaken him for you?”
Saul winced. “Can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing he thought I was working undercover again. Last time I did that, I removed some of my tattoos temporarily.”
Jill snapped her fingers. “Oh, that’s right. Laura has that spell that stores tattoos on paper. I forgot about that.”
Adeline choked up a laugh. “You as a college professor. Now there’s a good joke.”
“This isn’t the time for joking,” Saul snapped.
Adeline ruffled his hair. “Chill, Reiz. We’ve got this. Or should I say I’ve got this?”
Jill poked her in the arm. “You won’t be working alone.”
“No,” Adeline said, “but I am the only person on this team who knows how to disassemble necromantic chimeras. So I’ll be doing the heavy lifting.”
Jack clicked his tongue in reproach. “Don’t forget now. The only reason you know how to do that is because you used to be an unconstrained necromancer on the PTAD’s most wanted list.”
Adeline scowled. “Why do you always have to bring that up?”
“Because your penance is not yet complete,” Jack said.
“I don’t think you’re giving me a fair shake, seeing how long I’ve been doing the PTAD’s drudge work.”
Jack was unmoved by her complaints. “Cry me a river. And while you’re at it, keep a lookout. Benton Court seems livelier than usual.”
As they reached the end of the bridge and turned onto the street that ran parallel to the river, it became apparent that the people of Benton Court had been vexed. Groups of men and women, some of them human, some of them not, had gathered on front stoops, beneath rain-battered awnings, in the shadows of narrow alleys.
Their attention was split between Romano’s team, who had parked on the shoulder of the road and roped off an area of the riverbank with yellow police tape, and Berkowitz’s team, who were canvassing only the buildings on the waterfront.
Despite the limited intrusion into their neighborhood, every single resident looked ready to pull a weapon or cast a spell if any of the PTAD agents made a single move that could be construed as hostile.
This was why they couldn’t search the court for those missing girls.
“I’m guessing that sable wight is still on the loose,” Adeline said. “You think it’s in the court?”
Saul scanned the inimical crowd. “If it was, they wouldn’t all be standing there with twitchy fingers. They’d be mobbing the wight. Just like they did to those feral wyverns when that moron jackhammered a hole into the roof of the nest in the sewer.”
“The people of Benton Court will attack anything that threatens them,” Jack added. “Anything.”
“Including us,” Jill said.
“Yup.” Saul peeked over the edge of the bank as the car passed the sandy nook that Romano’s team had marked off. He caught a glimpse of blood. A lot of blood. “Maybe the wight went for a swim, and the river was nice enough to wash it out to sea.”
“Knowing our luck,” Adeline said, “the thing will wash up a few towns downriver, and we’ll have to send a team out to the boonies to stop it from devouring the local deer population.”
“Better deer than people,” Jill countered.
Adeline actually took a second to think about that before she murmured, “True enough.”
Jack took the car the long way around Benton Court, skirting the neighborhood’s outermost boundary, so they didn’t invite trouble to dinner with Romano and Berkowitz. Eventually, they left the court behind.
The buildings shifted from stained and rundown to old but well kept. The streets shifted from cracked and potholed to faded but filled in. The entire atmosphere around them seemed to brighten, even though the clouds above remained dark and the rain kept pouring down.
When they neared the docks, the pungent smell of dead fish wafted through the vents. But fish didn’t hold a candle to rotting, bloated human corpses, which they all smelled on a regular basis. So Saul just grabbed a pine-scented air freshener from the glove compartment, hung it on the rearview mirror, and called it a job well done.
A block off from the docks, they turned off a riverfront street and traveled three blocks deep into the Harley Point neighborhood. Jack then took a right onto a narrow road lined with shops that largely sold goods related to fishing. Among these businesses sat a noticeable sore thumb: a pawn shop that had shut down earlier this year, its windows boarded up, its clearance banner lying crumpled across the burgundy awning.
Jack squeezed the car between the pawn shop and the building next door, emerging into a cramped, overgrown parking lot. Three other vehicles were already parked there. Two FBI SWAT vans and the car assigned to Frasier’s team.
The ten SWAT agents had taken refuge from the rain under a small overhang that jutted out from the back of the pawn shop, while Frasier’s team had donned their navy-blue rain jackets with the yellow FBI logo emblazoned across the backs.
As Jack parked in the one available space, he said, “Look, I know you two have good reasons to hate each other, but please, Saul, try to play nice with Braxton this evening, will you?”
Saul glanced at Frasier, who was already glowering at him, and replied, “Sure thing, boss. I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tanner
The man in the black coat and the woman in the raincoat were either batshit insane—or they were preternaturals.
Hunkered down behind the pallet stack, Tanner caught pieces of their conversation through the roar of the rain. The most common word he heard was “spell,” followed closely by the terms “ward” and “ritual,” and he could tell based on their tones that they weren’t speaking in a figurative manner. These were people who could perform magic, akin to what Tanner had somehow done while fleeing from the sable wight. Only Tanner suspected they were a great deal more proficient at the practice than him.
If these people see me, he thought, I’m a dead man. I can’t defend myself against magic.
In the interest of remaining unnoticed, he squatted low behind the pallets and prayed that none of the people on the other side would take a peek around the stacks to check for eavesdroppers.
The men tasked to haul the wooden crate out of the delivery truck had deposited the crate in the mud at the end of the ramp. The man with the crowbar had then pried off the lid, and much to Tanner’s disappointment, there was nothing inside but a big metal box.
A box the men were now carrying toward the pickup truck like pallbearers, the four corners borne on their shoulders.
Between the mud and the driving rain, it was a monumental task. The men slipped now and then, nearly dumping the box onto the ground. Each time one of them made a mistake, the woman hissed something threatening to all of them, and the man at fault corrected himself as fast as humanly possible.
Despite the fact that all four men towered over the woman, they were clearly terrified of her. They had good reason to be, judging by the red sparks that danced at her fingertips and sizzled at the touch of rain. She was ready to throw a spell at a moment’s notice, and Tanner suspected that whatever spell she had in mind would seriously ruin someone’s day.
When the men finally reached the pickup, they hefted the box onto the bed and slid it back until the end touched the truck’s cabin. The men then climbed onto the bed and grabbed the assortment of straps that had been piled in the corner. Together, they secured the box so it wouldn’t fly off the truck and crush the front of someone’s car during transit.
Meanwhile, the man in the black coat and the woman in the raincoat looked on with a combination of boredom and irritation. Obviously, they hadn’t planned on doing this exchange in the rain.
Another peal of thunder rocked the ground, and the woman grumbled, “So help me god, this thing better be worth all the effort we went through to get it.”
The man in the black coat shot her a sour look. “Who’s this ‘we’ you speak of? I’m the o
ne who flew halfway around the world to retrieve it. I’m the one who had to fight a revenant witch to obtain it. And I’m the one who spent two weeks on a container ship in rough seas guarding the damn thing in order to get it here. All you’ve done so far is stand in the mud and complain about your hair getting ruined by the rain. Gain some perspective, will you?”
“What, do you think I hung out at the spa, getting massages and mani-pedis, while you were gone?” the woman retorted.
The man shrugged. “I have no clue what you did.”
“Exactly,” she snapped. “While you were out on your world tour, I was stuck indoors doing prep work for the ritual. Twelve hours a day for twelve days straight. I had to fast between dawn and dusk. I had to bleed myself at noon and midnight. And for most of the steps, I wasn’t allowed to sleep, so I had to sustain myself with so many caffeine pills that I started tasting sounds. So check your own perspective, pal. You aren’t the only one who’s had to suffer discomfort for the boss man’s grand plan.”
The man made a hand gesture that indicated he did not at all care about her discomfort. “Whatever. It’s all done and over with, so we might as well stop bitching. If we look like we’re mad at each other when we get back to base, the boss man might decide to punish us with another ‘friendship exercise.’ And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being transformed into a goldfish and confined to a tiny fishbowl.”
The woman shivered. “That was a terrible week.”
“Yes, it was. And I’m not hankering for a repeat.”
“Me either.” The woman grabbed the hood of her coat to hold it still as another gust of wind blew through the construction site. “He sure has lost a lot of patience over the years, hasn’t he? He used to have such a high tolerance for bullshit.”
The man slicked his wet hair back. “I don’t blame him. Guy had big plans and nice dreams, and mundane society tore through them like a tornado.” He glanced at the pickup truck. “Ah, looks like they’re done.”
A Knight of Cold Graves (The Revenant Reign Book 1) Page 14
