Knights of Black Swan, Books 7-9 (Knights of Black Swan Box Set Book 3)

by Victoria Danann

  “Thanks. Keep this talk to yourself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Glen handed Rosie her phone. “Next move?”

  “You think he’s going to an airport?”

  “Yep. Question is, which one?”

  “You think he’s going commercial?” Glen gave her a full teeth grin. “Okay. Private. So we need jet charter with international service.”

  As Glen typed on his phone, he glanced over at Rosie’s chest then back to the screen in his hand. “Get that demon stone to tell us which direction.”

  Rosie pulled the crystal out and whispered a few unintelligible words. Glen watched the crystal defy gravity and move of its own accord. No matter how often he was exposed to the paranormal world, such things still amazed him.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “That way,” she pointed.

  “Are you sure? That’s northeast.”

  “Positive.”

  Glen whistled. “He’s dipping deep into the piggy bank. He backtracked to New Jersey, which was smart. If we’re right about where he’s going, he’s headed for Teterboro. Gonna charter a private jet. Apparently he was mulling over what to do when we found him at the movies. I guess somewhere between there and Washington Square he decided he’s going after her.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s head back to J.U. We can get a few hours’ sleep and still get there ahead of him. We can also let Baka know we’re coming just in case Falcon gets there before we do.”

  Rosie’s eyes were wide. “You’re going to commit to the passes for that long? It’ll take twenty minutes, Glen.”

  “That’s the job, right? I’ll manage.”

  “Macho, macho man.” He made a face. “I’m not complaining. You’ve managed to be civil for,” she looked at her watch, “five minutes.”

  “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “Which just goes to show that you have to work at being a bad guy.” Glen scowled at that. “You ever been to Paris?”

  “Yeah. I worked there for a little while.”

  The way he said it left Rosie with the impression that he hadn’t enjoyed his post there, but she knew she wouldn’t get anywhere asking a personal question about how he’d spent his time.

  “Did you see the sights?”

  He laughed. “Only if we were passing them while chasing down a biter.”

  “Oh. That’s a shame.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Of course. And the fact that you speak French so well…”

  He dialed a number like she wasn’t talking. “Two need a ride.” Pause. “Yes.” Pause. He looked at his watch. “Seven minutes.”

  Glen signed the check and scooted out of the booth. Conversation was over.

  “Let’s go.”

  Rosie hurried toward the door so she could go through first, and made a show of holding it open for Glen. As he passed her, he said, “Such a lady,” in the most sarcastic way possible.

  Out on the street the wind had picked up. Glen stuck both hands in the pockets of his jacket and pulled up the hood of the lightweight hoodie he’d worn underneath.

  Rosie simply sent a thought to regulate her body temperature so that external circumstances were irrelevant.

  By the time they reached the entrance to the building with the closest whisterport, Glen’s teeth were chattering. Rosie, on the other hand, looked like she could be ordering an umbrella drink from a beach side bar, and it didn’t escape Glen’s notice.

  “See,” he said. “That’s exactly why things never would have worked out between us. Everything comes too easy to you.”

  “So says the only person to ever come close to being named acting Sovereign of an elite Order facility at the age of NINETEEN! Most people would look at that and say that’s impossible, that everything must be way too easy for that kid.”

  “I worked hard at stuff.”

  “So what? You worked hard and succeeded where almost everybody else in the world who worked just as hard would have failed. You need to face the fact that you have innate gifts, too. You don’t get to take credit for how smart you are, or how likeable, or how good-look…”

  He grinned. “What was that?”

  She looked away feeling embarrassed in a way she didn’t think was possible after all she’d been through the past few years. “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  Rosie followed Glen into the elevator reserved for Order passengers. The one that would only operate with Order I.D.

  On the ride up, he glanced over at her. “I was good at being Sovereign.”

  She looked straight ahead, but said, “I know you were.”

  Glen hated that his heart responded to Rosie’s praise by swelling up and forcing him to take deeper breaths. She was old news. Old, old, old, old news. And she didn’t mean anything to him. At all.

  They waited for the whister in awkward silence and made the flight back to Jefferson Unit without speaking another word. When they stepped out onto the roof at J.U., Glen walked away without a goodbye or a last look.

  Rosie stood there staring after him, wondering what had happened to make him so angry and distant, apart from her abandonment.

  When the pilot passed her, he said, “Fighting, are you? Don’t worry. The making up part makes it all worth it.” He winked at Rosie.

  “No. Um. We’re not together like that.”

  The pilot smiled. “Right.” Then he disappeared into the little building known as the crew hut leaving Rosie standing on the whisterport wondering if she really wanted the tracker job. For years she’d wondered if the day would come when she’d have to face Glen. She’d never expected that he’d just say, “No harm done,” but she hadn’t expected it to be so hard. She hadn’t expected him to be so hard.

  She wanted to explain that she’d just been a toddler throwing a fit. Like a child with a powerful sports car and no drivers’ license, she’d had no business making love to a man with a woman’s body. Hindsight is always perfect. Part of her felt like he had every right to his anger, but the other part felt like he was being unreasonable, holding her to a standard she hadn’t been capable of reaching at that moment in time. She knew he might never be ready to open up enough to hear that, which meant it was likely she’d have to cut her losses, with regret, and live with having hurt someone she cared about.

  Glen went straight to his guest apartment at Jefferson Unit feeling like he needed nothing more than to be alone and away from her. Hours spent with Rosie had been exhausting, an assault on all his senses and on all his defenses.

  He turned on the lights, sat down on the sofa and looked around. It was as generic as any upscale hotel suite. Nice, but designed to look like it belonged to no one. He realized that it had been years since he’d last slept in a place that felt like home. He didn’t “live” anywhere. He “stayed” in temporary quarters until the next transfer.

  On that despondent thought he pulled out his phone and sent Rev a text update.

  GLEN: We don’t have him, but we think he’s getting a charter out of Teterboro for Paris. We’re going to nap for a few, then head there. Maybe you could brief Jean Etienne and tell him to expect us?

  REV: Not what I’d hoped for.

  GLEN: We’re handling it.

  Monq had asked Rev to keep him posted daily on Glen’s activities. He wanted to monitor the situation closely because it could go either way. It could be beneficial or detrimental. Even someone with Monq’s perceptive abilities couldn’t make a prediction with a hundred percent accuracy.

  REV: Check in with Monq before you go. That’s an order.

  Glen sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was ‘check in with Monq’. He scrolled to Monq’s number.

  GLEN: Rev said to check in with you.

  MONQ: My office. Fifteen minutes.

  GLEN: I’ve already had dinner.

  MONQ: It won’t take that long.

  Glen looked at his watch, tossed the phone on the sofa beside him, and closed
his eyes. Moments later he heard the phone buzzing. He picked it up and looked at the text.

  MONQ: Where are you?

  Glen looked at his watch. It had been twenty-five minutes. He ran a hand through his hair.

  GLEN: Sorry. I dozed off. Be there in two.

  True to his word, Glen was standing at the threshold of Monq’s office in two minutes.

  “Come in,” Monq said. “Close the door.” Glen did as he was told, but didn’t sit. “You know,” Monq began, “the more you cooperate, the faster you’ll be out of here.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning sit yourself down and sack the attitude long enough to tell me how you are.”

  “How I am?”

  “The concept of asking how you are is foreign to you?”

  Glen sat. “It’s not a social call. I was ordered here.”

  “Well, that is true. But since you’re here, how are you?”

  “I. Am. Fine. Is that all?”

  “No, it isn’t. How is your pursuit of Sir Falcon going? I’m very concerned about his state of mind.”

  “We think he’s chartered a jet to take him to Paris. That’s not conclusive. Just a hunch.”

  “And you’re going after him?”

  Glen made a face. “Yes. In a couple of hours.”

  “Transportation via the Storm girl?” Glen dropped his chin and glared at Monq under his eyebrows. “Oh, that’s right. You’re sensitive about her name. Elora Rose, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sensitive about her name. Yes. She can get us to Paris ahead of Falcon. And I’d rather take a beating.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Nausea. It’s brutal.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? I have something for that.”

  Glen gaped. “You do?”

  “Of course. It’s a variation on common motion-sickness drugs. Wait here.” Monq left, but returned in a few minutes with a small rectangular tin. The pills were as tiny as miniscule breath mints. “Let one of these melt on your tongue at least five minutes before you need to travel. It should last for eight hours or so.”

  Glen took the tin, opened it, and looked inside at the little pink tablets. “This is probably the best gift I’ve ever received.”

  “Demon travel is that bad, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah. Thank you. So, on the matter of Falcon. I talked to him. He said he was coming in, then used a sucker trick to get away.”

  “You talked to him? How did he seem?”

  “To be honest, he seemed perfectly okay. Since it looks like he could be hours away when apprehended, what’s your proposal as to how to get him back here without injury?”

  “If we need to mildly sedate him for the trip, we will.”

  “Gods.” Glen looked away. “Doesn’t seem right.”

  “You think he should be able to walk away whenever he wants to.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would agree if I was satisfied that he was fully himself and knew what he was doing. Unfortunately I feel certain that’s not the case. You and I both know that, if he was in the right frame of mind, he would have accompanied you back here and gone through the process of discharge.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “So you think he’ll go straight to Baka’s unit looking for Jean Etienne?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “How are you getting along with the St… with Ms. Storm?”

  Glen grinned, showing all his very white teeth and canines that were just a tiny bit more pointed than normal. “None of your business.”

  Monq chuckled. “If this assignment is too much for you, now is the time to say so.”

  Glen’s humor died abruptly. “I’ve never ducked an assignment and I’m not going to start now. Working with… Ms. Storm is not a problem. Not for her. Not for me.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Monq rose and opened his office door. “Thanks for stopping by. Let me know when you find Falcon, any hour of the day or night. Don’t worry about the time change.”

  “Yeah. Easy for you to say.”

  Glen left Monq’s office feeling a hundred pounds lighter. The dread of traveling the passes had weighed that heavily. His hand went to the little tin of pills just to reassure himself that he had them. He felt like he’d been armed with a magical object from myth, like a cup of immortality or a stone that makes its bearer invincible.

  He went back to his temporary quarters and texted Rosie.

  GLEN: ETD four hours.

  ROSIE: Okay.

  He set the alarm on his phone and stretched out on the sofa. He didn’t even bother to remove his jacket or his boots.

  After Glen left, Monq made a call.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Hawking.”

  There was a sigh on the other end of the call. “There’s no point in correcting you. I’m not playing that game anymore. You enjoy bungling people’s names. What do you want?”

  “That’s not especially friendly.”

  “That’s because I know you’re about to ask me to do something that I probably don’t want to do.”

  “A cup of tea and a brief conversation.”

  “What is the ‘brief conversation’ concerning?”

  “I’ll tell you over tea.”

  “You are not delivering these babies.”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “I can’t trust you. You always think you’re being crafty, but you’re not. You’re just being you and I know it.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  After a pause she said, “You’ll have to come here. My husband is on patrol and I’m watching Helm.”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Okay. If I don’t like what you have to say, I’m throwing you out.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I mean it this time.”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  As Monq passed through Elora’s open door, the tea kettle began to chug and toot. The kettle was housed in a red train engine. Most of the steam was forced out of the stack, but some of it was diverted to make the wheels spin. Ram had brought it home when Helm was still a toddler. While he still loved it, Helm was beginning to think that a boy such as himself should be too grown up for such things. So he rolled his eyes and made himself content with loving it secretly.

  Elora carried the wooden box of tea bags to the table and opened it for Monq to make a selection. When they’d both poured tea and complemented it with sweeteners or cream or lemon, she said, “What’s this about?”

  “That crème brulee creamer is very nice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Thank you. What’s this about?”

  “Still concerned with Sir Catch.”

  “Go on.”

  “This is classified.”

  “I have clearance.”

  “I know, but I don’t want it to get around to anyone who doesn’t.”

  When Monq looked pointedly at Helm, Elora laughed out loud. “Helm, you have permission to play Dungeons and Demons while I talk to Dr. Monq.”

  Helm grinned at Monq and said, “Stay as long as you like,” as if he was thirty. He grabbed a lemon poppy seed muffin on his way out of the room.

  Elora called after him. “Do not let Blackie have any of that muffin.” Lowering her voice, she said, “The room is secure.”

  “The Operations Manager is a vampire.”

  Elora looked serious. “That’s a shame. I liked her.”

  “Yes. Well. So did Sir Falcon.”

  Elora took a sip of tea. “That part is common knowledge.”

  “He didn’t take it well. Her becoming a vampire, I mean.”

  “Did he kill her?”

  “No. No. He didn’t kill her. He did everything in his power to protect her. Long story short. She left with Jean Etienne, who is going to keep her alive and in control by giving her his blood.”

  Elora’s eyes went wide. “Immortal blood?”

  “Yes, supposedly immortal. Anyway, Falcon didn’t take it well. He le
ft.”

  “You mean he left? As in, walked out?”

  “Not exactly. He flew out. Took one of the whisters and left it in New York. Rev sent Glen to fetch him back so that I can evaluate his mental state.”

  “Okay.”

  “The Sovereign also put the new tracker on the case.”

  “The new tracker,” she repeated. Then understanding dawned. “Oh. You mean…”

  “Yes. The Storm girl. You knew her mother had taken a leave of absence.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “So they lost Falcon in New York. Now they think he’s headed to Paris to find Jean Etienne.”

  “That,” she nodded, “seems like a logical assumption. Are you getting to the part where this has something to do with me sometime soon?”

  “Yes. Almost there.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Well, I was thinking Sir Catch and the Storm girl in Paris la ville des lumières… working together.”

  A smile slowly spread over Elora’s face as understanding dawned. “You old devil. You want to play Cupid and you’re here to get me to help with some crazy scheme.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Isn’t this a little outside the parameters of psychiatry? Never mind. I don’t care. I’m in! But I’m not really the one you need.” Her eyes flew open with the realization that she was being manipulated. “Ohhhhhh. You already knew that. You want me to use my influence as Litha’s friend to get her on board with your plan. Whatever it is.” She could tell by the satisfied look on Monq’s face that Litha was the ultimate target. “What is your plan anyway? Let me just preface this whole thing by saying that, whatever it is, if it backfires, there’ll be a lot of people out for your head.”

  “Well, all the minor details haven’t been ironed out, but I have a framework on which to hang a fully developed strategy.”