Moscow Mule: Phantom Queen Book 5 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries)
Page 4
“You do not remember?” he asked, facing me once more. He reached out and wound his fingers around one of the bars. Before my eyes, his hand began to change, fur emerging along his skin in waves that reminded me of wheat springing up after a strong wind. He gripped that iron bar, and I heard the metal groan under the pressure of his hold. In a matter of seconds, a paw, and that’s what it was, sat comically large at the end of his wrist. Unfortunately, there was nothing funny about what I was being shown, because I instantly recalled exactly who—or more specifically what—I was talking to.
“Hello, Captain,” I said, studying the werebear. He’d shaved since I last saw him and was dressed more casually. I’d never caught a name, but—as the de facto leader of a special operations unit known as The Fighting Bears, an undercover arm of the Russian government that had survived the various political upheavals that had plagued the Motherland over the last few centuries—the title was enough to go by. Several months back, he and his squad had come to Boston looking to capture my friend Christoff, using Christoff’s wife as bait. Near as I could tell, they’d succeeded, but not before me and mine had wiped out their entire squad.
Excluding this son of a bitch.
“Hello, devushka,” he replied, ducking his head in acknowledgment of the moniker I’d given him.
“Come to let me out?” I asked casually, as if the idea were only slightly appealing.
He shook his head, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Nyet, this is not why we have come.”
“Oh,” I replied. “So ye aren’t authorized to let me out. I guess that makes sense.” I rose to my feet and dusted off my hands. “I have no idea what the perks of your job are,” I said, slipping my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and rocking on the balls of my feet, “but after ye got all your men killed, I can understand why they don’t let ye make command decisions. I wouldn’t.”
The politician made a choked noise and spluttered, moving to step forward, his face visibly red with anger. “Why you suka, you—”
The Russian officer grabbed his companion’s shoulder, holding him back with his human hand, his strength more than enough to pin the man in place. “Do not let her upset you, Minister. Besides, she is right. We underestimated Alexei and his newfound friends. His resources were...considerable.”
Alexei, as I recalled, had been Christoff’s name when he was one of the Fighting Bears, before he’d cut and run to go to America and carve out a life for himself. Before he’d met his wife and become a father twice over. It was his children I thought about in that moment, being brought up by strangers in an unfamiliar city. Sure, I’d done what I thought best by sending them to Shift—a school in St. Louis for young were-animals coming to terms with their abilities—but I knew it wasn’t the same. They needed their mother and father. Fresh from my own loss, I knew that better than anyone.
“Where are they?” I demanded.
“Who?”
“Christoff and his wife. Or Alexei. Whatever ye call him. What d’ye do to ‘em? To Hilde?” Hilde, Leo’s second-in-command, had also disappeared, sucked into a vortex while trying to save Christoff from the Captain. The subsequent trail had led Othello—and now us—here. In a way, I was lucky; I’d never expected finding the Captain would be so easy. Of course, I’d planned on him being the captive, not me.
“I would not worry about them, now,” the Minister said, his mouth curling in contempt. “You and your companions have other concerns.”
I frowned, realizing he was right. Frankly, I’d merely assumed the others were stuck in cells of their own, somewhere. But what if they weren’t? What if, while we were here chatting, they were in true and immediate danger? I cursed. A voice tickled my psyche, chastising me for being so callous and self-involved that I’d neglected to think of my friends. This, the voice insisted, is what got Dez killed. If you’d thought of her first, instead of yourself, she might still be alive.
I shook my head, chasing the voice away. The voice was probably right but worrying about my friends wouldn’t save them. If I wanted to help them, I needed to get out of here, first. I eyed the bars, wondering if I could fit my arm between them. If I could get hold of the Minister, I could potentially use him as leverage to get out. Or at least to find out where they’d taken Lakota, Leo, and Jimmy.
“We should move this along, Minister,” the Captain said. “You have a busy schedule today.”
The Minister glanced at his watch and tapped it once with a surprisingly thick, bony digit. “As always, you are correct, Mikhail.”
“Where are me friends?” I growled, freeing my hands from my pockets.
The Minister considered my question with a frown and tapped his lips with that creepy finger. “Kapitan?”
“The Bakhail Facility, Minister,” Mikhail replied.
“Ah, Father Grigori took custody, then.”
“Da,” Mikhail replied, folding his arms over his chest, his paw returning to human form in the blink of an eye. “He left this one with us as a courtesy.”
A courtesy? That sounded...ominous. I scowled, suddenly uncomfortable with how casually they’d answered my question. There was only one explanation for why they’d be so forthcoming: they had no intention of letting me go. Not good. Definitely not good. My wild side cooed to me once more, trilling on the edges of my psyche. For once, I considered listening to her. Ordinarily, I avoided collateral damage at all costs, but I was beginning to suspect I’d have little choice in the matter; I’d rather be dead than caged.
In the end, however, I shrugged her off. My best bet, at least for now, was to bide my time. To wait until I could use my superior, inhuman strength and speed to my advantage. Mikhail had no reason to suspect I was anything other than human, based on our last encounter. After all, had I been better equipped to go toe-to-claw with the werebears, I wouldn’t have had to pull the pin of his subordinate’s grenade to make sure we ended up with the element of surprise.
Still not the craziest thing I’d ever done, if I was being honest.
“I t’ink ye should let me go now,” I said, sounding remarkably calm now that I’d resolved to break free or die trying.
“You will never leave this cell for as long as you live,” the Minister said.
“I wouldn’t bet on that, if I were ye.”
The Minister began to snicker, though the laughter never reached his eyes. I knew in that moment that I’d gotten under his skin, and that he’d do everything he could to make me suffer. I smirked. I couldn’t help it. There was simply something so reassuring about looking into the eyes of someone who wanted you dead. It really put things into perspective.
Of course, I didn’t get to look into them for very long.
Because that was the moment when the lights went out.
Chapter 6
A second set of lights came on almost immediately—strobing orange lanterns that kept time with the sirens in the background. I fought the urge to cover my ears, which is all that saved me. A rumble, as deep and primal as thunder, echoed down the hallway. I flinched away from the sound, pressing my back against the wall of my cell. Mikhail and the Minister both turned to the noise, wearing identical expressions. Shock. Brilliant light spilled from that side of the hallway. The Minister shielded his eyes. Mikhail bared his teeth and roared. Then, in an instant, both were blown backwards by a tongue of lightning as thick as a baseball bat.
I blinked away spots and struggled to breathe. The air was heavy, charged and laden with the stench of burning ozone. The bars of my cell glowed red hot, like steel fresh from the forge. I coughed and inched forward, keeping an eye out for the tell-tale strobe of light that meant another lightning bolt was on its way. When nothing shone, I approached the bars, peering through on either side. Someone, or something, was out there. But what? A series of possibilities flashed through my mind, starting with elementals and ending with Thor. That was the problem with living in a world teeming with gods and monsters: you never knew what to expect. Of course, when I finally d
iscovered what had come for me, I realized just how wrong I was.
Never in my wildest dreams could I have anticipated what I saw.
Instead of a flaxen-haired, bodybuilding Thunder god, I saw a dainty bombshell dressed entirely in black leather, sporting what might have been a crossbow in one hand. Othello. She strode down the hallway, hips rocking back and forth like she was on the runway. I’d love to have said she was feeling cocky after loosing lightning on the two Russians, but that was simply how Othello walked; she strutted around like she owned everything. Although to be fair, as the CEO of a billion-dollar company and one of the most brilliant minds of her generation, that wasn’t far off.
Still, there was something different about her. The normally vivacious woman now practically reverberated with violence, the smile lines around her mouth forced into an unfamiliar configuration, her eyes dancing with anger. She fiddled with the crossbow as she walked, mounting a slender metal disc on the slide, a disc I recognized. A Galvanizer. The last time I’d seen one, I’d used it in a last ditch effort to stay alive. I’d electrocuted a handful of werebears in their human form and gotten Hilde and I out of a ridiculously tight situation. Of course, that had been a prototype. Judging from the lightning blast, Othello had worked out the kinks.
“Step back,” Othello warned, her voice a hiss that was barely audible beneath the wail of sirens. She fetched a vial from a belt at her waist and popped the lid off. “The nanobots aren’t supposed to eat through organic material...theoretically. But I’d rather not take any chances.”
Nanobots? I shuddered and stepped back. I’d seen Othello’s nanobots—mechanical insects capable of tearing through just about anything—at work once before, when they’d eaten clean through a pair of handcuffs she’d been put in by a Master vampire. Long story. Suffice it to say, I was even more wary of them than I was the iron bars; a rash I could handle, being eaten alive like one of The Mummy extras, not so much.
The steaming bars disintegrated, the heated metal disappearing like, well, magic. Soon there was an opening large enough for me to step through. “Come on,” Othello said. “Follow me.”
“Hello to ye, too,” I said, gauging the opening, waiting for it to spread a bit wider. I didn’t want to take any chances with the iron bars.
“Hurry up, we don’t have much time,” she urged.
Once the hole was large enough, I edged my way through it, like slipping past barbwire. Othello noticed, but seemed too pissed off to comment. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I had other priorities. I turned and strode off in the opposite direction, scouring the hallway for the two men Othello had taken out.
“What are you doing?” Othello hissed. “Quinn, we need to go!”
“That was the Captain ye hit,” I explained, still searching. “He’ll know where Christoff and the others are. If I can take him with us, I can get the answers I came here for.”
“I know where they are,” Othello said, disdainfully. I whirled around, but she was already heading back the way she’d come. I had to run a little to keep up with her. People think having long legs makes it easy to keep pace with someone, but in my experience short women tended to walk a hell of a lot faster than I did. Othello was no exception; she marched forward like she was on a mission.
In a way, I suppose she was.
“What d’ye mean ye know where they are?” I realized Othello’s abrupt rescue had left me with a host of questions. What was she doing here? Why hadn’t she reached out this whole time? Where the fuck were we?
“I cannot believe you and the others came here,” she said, without looking back at me. “You’ve jeopardized everything we’ve been working on.”
“We what?” I asked, baffled. “What d’ye mean we jeopardized t’ings? We came here to find ye!”
Othello groaned in frustration as we approached a bend in the hallway. No, not a bend. A gaping hole in the wall, a tunnel carved in the stone that proceeded in a straight line through several hallways, ending in a pinprick of light that must have been the great outdoors. “Did it ever occur to you that I wanted to be left alone?”
She charged through the opening before I could respond, slinging the crossbow over one shoulder and raising a gloved hand. Guards, dressed in grey uniforms, appeared along one of the breaks in the tunnel, emerging like ants from three hallways down. They shouted in Russian and raised their rifles. I recognized the guns—AK-12s, capable of firing 700 rounds a minute. And Othello was trapped in the mouth of a tunnel. When they fired, it wouldn’t be like shooting fish in a barrel. It would be like shooting a guppy in a teacup. I screamed, reaching out for her, knowing I wouldn’t make it in time.
They fired.
The noise was deafening, but not quite as loud as I knew it should be. Still, I flinched, trying to find cover behind the lip of the hole, expecting to be shot. But I wasn’t. I ducked my head around the corner, searching desperately for Othello. I found her right where I’d left her, her gloved hand outstretched. The bullets, which should have cut her to ribbons, were being sucked inexorably into a swirling vortex emitted by the glove. Like a fist-sized Gateway, it swallowed them whole, leaving us untouched.
They stopped firing.
Othello raised her other hand, only this time I couldn’t see the Gateway. I opened my mouth to ask her what she thought she was doing, only to hear the screams of the guards as bullets came ripping down the length of the hallway in which they stood. Had she brought backup? I frowned as the guards fell, their cries dying as swiftly as they did. Othello lowered her hand and the cascade of bullets dwindled, then stopped.
My mouth fell open as I processed what she’d done. Two Gateways. One to swallow the bullets, another to spit them out. I stared at the tiny woman’s back, her spine straight, hips cocked a bit, her assets making her tight leather pants earn their keep. Othello was a Regular. A normal, albeit above average, human being. And yet, at that precise moment, I felt a slight twinge of something that strongly resembled fear. The woman had taken a method of travel, a damn teleporter, and weaponized it.
I was suddenly very glad to have her on my side.
“Let’s go,” she said, glancing back at me with those rage-filled eyes.
I swallowed. “Aye,” I said, “whatever ye say.”
Chapter 7
Two vehicles were waiting for us on the outside, idling. Ordinarily, I’d have called them trucks based on their frames, but that would have been like calling an eagle a bird; these trucks were massive, military-grade rides complete with mounted machine guns and plenty of cab space. The instant we emerged, a man hopped out of the truck on our right, leaving the door open. A jaunty Russian song played on the radio, loud enough it made me wonder if the man was partially deaf. He wore heavy denim overalls over a coarse, brown shirt, and curly brown hair spewed out from beneath a mechanic’s cap. He grinned, waving an oil-stained handkerchief.
“Is nice to meet you,” he said. “I am Vitaly.”
I glanced over to Othello, but she was already headed towards the other truck. “Later, Vitaly,” she said. “We must go now, before someone comes to investigate.”
Vitaly snorted, rolling his eyes. “But you did not tell me your friend was so beautiful, cousin! How can I be expected to drive when I am in love at first sight?” He waggled his eyebrows at me, playfully. I found myself smiling, for some odd reason; usually when men hit on me, I find an excuse to hit them, but Vitaly seemed to be directing his banter at Othello.
Who he’d called cousin.
I glanced back and forth between the two, but it took a moment before I saw the resemblance. It was there in the cheeks, faint enough I’d have missed it if I weren’t looking. Vitaly, unlike Othello, had a crooked nose and the sort of thick, extended jawline that made boxers wince. But he had her cheeks—full and round, made more pronounced by a smile. Judging from the lines on his face, my guess was he smiled a lot.
“I mean it,” Othello said, prying open the door to her truck. “Quinn, get in.”
The truck smelled like diesel fuel, but it was cozy, even after Othello punched the accelerator and sent us careening across the prison’s shabby lawn. No one pursued us, not even as we cleared the fence—we followed Vitaly’s truck through a large hole they must have created when they got here. I frowned, trying to figure out how Othello had managed to break into a prison. No matter how efficiently she’d dealt with the guards back inside, we should have caused a bigger ruckus than this. “What was that place?” I asked, finally.
“A high-profile prison,” Othello said. “Very few prisoners, but maximum security. Or it was. It was officially decommissioned last year. The prisoners were moved elsewhere.”
I frowned. “So why were there guards?”
Othello made a low sound in her throat. “Just because something happens officially in this country doesn’t mean it’s the truth.”
“Ah,” I said. After several minutes of silence, I cleared my throat. “So, are ye goin’ to tell me what I did to piss ye off?” I asked. “Specifically, I mean?”
Othello’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, which looked almost comically large in her hands, as if she were a toddler playing at driving. But there was nothing playful in her expression. “You never think.”
“I—”
“Let me finish,” Othello snapped.
I nodded, too startled to get pissed off. Othello had never snapped at me, not even after finding out I’d stolen her Galvinator prototype. Sure, she’d been pissed, but she’d been more interested in finding out how it had performed than chewing me out. That was Othello in a nutshell; feisty as hell, but constantly able to roll with the punches. Or so I’d thought. “I’m sorry,” I said.