The Mark of Kane (A Thaddeus Kane Novel Book 1)

by LW Herndon

  I felt her hand jerk in mine as she received the image, but I held her firmly and showed her the movement of the mini-organisms, the growth, and the process. Task complete, I pulled away from the image and released her.

  She let out a ragged exhale, moved the hand I’d held to her lips, and stared at me, eyes wide. “That’s what I need to look for?” she murmured from behind her fingers.

  “Anything unusual or similar.” I held open my hands. “It may not look exactly that way, but you know what normal looks like. For you both. If you see anything that isn’t normal, let me know immediately.”

  “And then, what happens?” I knew she was revisiting Sol’s image, all that blood, and his death.

  “We will find a way to fix it.”

  “But not for him?”

  “We had nothing then. Now I’ve got someone working on a solution.”

  She nodded slowly. “How often do I…look?”

  “Try once a day for a few days. Just to get used to doing it. Then, it depends on whether you guys go out or not. If you do, check every time you come back inside.”

  “Be simpler if I just kept them in?” said Ray.

  I shook my head and looked at him. “They’re not hamsters. They’ll need to have some air outside this house eventually.”

  He pursed his lips and considered the idea. “Preferably later than sooner.”

  I waved a hand in defeat. It was his call. His neck was on the line watching these kids.

  Decibel had been silent, lids lowered. She’d watched the process with the scrutiny of a guard dog, but she’d done nothing.

  Taking blood samples turned out to be easier than the scan for parasites, because they were exhausted from the process. I carefully took the blood and repackaged the vials in the small padded box and had Decibel incinerate the additional supplies we used. Better safe than sorry.

  Ray looked uncomfortable with the incineration, but he was uncomfortable with most of my actions that reminded him that I wasn’t entirely human. I left his discomfort to him and his god.

  Finally done, Decibel sat in the car beside me, staring straight ahead. Her silence weighed a ton and became heavier with each mile we drove farther from Ray’s house.

  “I need your promise you will stay clear of those kids. You won’t give them a surprise attack. No turning them over to the Consortium, nothing deceitful.”

  She finally crossed her arms and turned to look at me. “Demon. What did you expect?”

  I rolled my eyes. I expected a lot. Despite the agreement I was asking for, I trusted her not to hurt these kids. I just wanted her verbal commitment. “Work with me here.”

  “The same way you’ve worked with me? You’ve hidden more information in the last several days than I could have thought humanly possible.”

  “Not human.”

  “Such delusions.” She disappeared.

  CHAPTER 17

  I called Jez, told her to take my SUV and meet me a block from Anne’s house. I managed to beat her to the location. After a wave from my car window, she followed me and drove down the back alley to park next to Anne’s car in the garage. I parked my car in the alley behind her, closed the garage door, and ushered her through the adjoining door into Anne’s backyard.

  “You bring the laptop?”

  She patted the satchel over her shoulder as I opened the sliding door from the patio to the family room and preceded her inside.

  “Anne.” I nodded next to me. “This is Jezrielle.”

  I glanced back. The skin between Jez’s brows wrinkled in confusion, but she only looked at me and waited for clarification. We were evidently making headway in the trust department or else she didn’t sense any fear from me and was shielding her distrust.

  Anne, on the other hand, spoke right up. “As long as you don’t send a fireball my way, you’re welcome to come in and sit down.”

  “Anne’s isolating the organism to target a cure.” I spoke over my shoulder to Jez and lowered the cooler I’d brought with me onto the dining room table in front of Anne. “I brought samples from the two kids. I think they’re clean, but you need some way to protect yourself and the space when you work on them. Any thoughts?”

  She motioned me back to Jez and snapped her fingers. Candles flared to life in sequence around the perimeter of the dining area. Four in the center of the table finished the display.

  “Do you know this will work, or have you just developed a thrill for fire?” I asked.

  She moved the cooler between the four table candles and stepped back gingerly. “I’m not willing to nick myself and test against the parasite, but flame definitely repels the organism.” She gave me a small smile. “I do like the control, though.”

  “Promise me you’ll learn to manage water with as much intensity.” That my suggestion hadn’t occurred to her was obvious. I stifled a groan, took a deep breath, and scrubbed at my face.

  “I’m learning as fast as I can.”

  “Kane, why am I here?” asked Jez, finally voicing the concern I could feel swell inside her.

  “I need you to perform some research. Anything you can find about the final end of the Irin and help Anne, if she needs questions answered while she works. Don’t even rule out conspiracy theories. Hopefully, combined brain power can bust through the wall for answers.”

  “You a demon?” Anne asked.

  “No.” Jez glanced at me and rolled her lips, clearly deciding how to proceed in the conversation. I didn’t give her any prompt one way or the other. “If I survive, I’ll be an Irin, a Watcher. And you?”

  “Wizard.”

  Jez froze. She didn’t even look at me.

  I leaned close to her ear. “Wizard, not sorcerer. The same way that Decibel and I are demons who aren’t trying to kill you. Just wizard.”

  She licked her lips. “Strange group of friends you’ve collected, Kane.”

  “That’s my hope, Jez.”

  “I don’t know where Decibel is, but I expect she’ll be back,” I said.

  “Great.”

  At Anne’s sarcasm, Jez’s eyebrows shot up. I nudged her with my elbow until she looked at me. “Hopefully your being here will encourage Decibel to temper her outrage and enable us to work on this together.”

  Jez looked a little dubious.

  “You two want some iced tea?” Anne headed back into the kitchen, as if recognizing the need to give Jez a moment to settle. She had maturity and social skills. It gave me hope that we could all get through this without murdering each other.

  “No.”

  “Sure,” I said and nudged Jez again.

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe a small one, thank you.”

  I accepted the cold glass and took a swallow, feeling a bit like I had with Aisha, convincing Jez there wasn’t poison in every good gesture. My cell buzzed in my pocket. A text message from Moloch—double sighting two miles southeast of my current location. I sent a reply and turned to Jez. “I need to go for this, but I’ll be back.”

  “What if they come prepared with those organisms?” She gave a quick glance at Anne, but I got the distinct impression Jez considered my course of action more dangerous than my leaving her here alone.

  “The demons we lost to the summons weren’t destroyed by the organism used on Samuel or Sol.” They were bound to a master and starved to death, denied the ability to feed from their bound host. A long, cruel death. I hadn’t intended for Jez to know, but I forgot to shield myself fast enough, and she closed her eyes as she deciphered the truth from my thoughts.

  “Perhaps they’re immune to the organism?” Jez said softly. “Can the sorcerers absorb the demon powers?

  “High Demons were creations of the rank and file of the Fallen, or before, not true offspring of humans, like wizards. Demon power passes to progeny, but it’s not transferable to mortal beings. On the other hand, once bound, the sorcerers control the demon. Perhaps they are able to share an increase in energy from their demon slaves.”

  �
�If the Consortium’s plan is broad in scale and spans species and groups, I’m not sure we can rule anything out.” Anne sorted through the contents of the cooler but looked at both of us as she spoke. “They could adapt this organism to demons if it suits their purposes. It’s possible that the courses of action we now consider safe could evolve into unexpected and dangerous avenues.”

  Jez nodded and turned back to me.

  “I don’t have a choice here, ladies. My clan’s going in, and I’m not as vulnerable as they are. I can’t take the risk one of them will fall because I was afraid to show up.”

  Anne stood up; her chair screeched on the floor with the move. “Kane, you’ve admitted the Consortium knows you saved the boy and his sister and that you’re linked with the demons. You’ve got two strikes with these men. I can think optimistically, but I really need you to come back.”

  I nodded to Anne and squeezed Jez’s arm in reassurance. “Let Jez know what I’ve told you about the kids, and just keep focused on finding answers.”

  My phone buzzed again as I reached the backyard.

  Where r u?

  Chaz. Shit.

  I didn’t need confirmation to know he was already at the site.

  ***

  I parked on the perimeter of the deserted high school. Deserted, vacant, and, from the foot-high vigorous weeds that riddled the wrinkled cracks in the blacktop, long since decommissioned.

  Empty mom-and-pop businesses surrounded the school grounds for six consecutive blocks. Small billboards announcing the construction of a strip mall and adjacent parking garage were in the same disrepair as the buildings. Evidently, urban progress had hit a wall with the economic slowdown. All lack of progress worked in the Consortium’s favor to provide them with a nice isolated space and plenty of protection from prying eyes.

  I checked the shadows, moved to a doorway half a block up the street, and waited for Moloch as I texted Abraxas about Chaz.

  A beat-up Chevy pickup drove by the school and disappeared around back, the sound of the gummed-up carburetor falling silent after several minutes. A couple of heartbeats later, the driver moved along the brick perimeter of the building to a blackened side door. The scout stood at attention, head at an odd angle and hands dangling, impossibly still. Several minutes later, two more joined the soulless shell, and the door opened outward to give them entry.

  I’d waited on Moloch, but he’d run out of time. If Chaz was inside with the three scouts I’d seen, and it stood to reason that more might exist inside, then I didn’t have the luxury to waste time on my new partner.

  Before I could move from my position, Moloch sauntered from the shadows of the alleyway opposite me, Brazko and Zepar at his back. He’d evidently been there the whole time, but Moloch was old-school. He’d survived several thousand years with humans by being cautious. He wasn’t as old as Shalim. However, he was seasoned and honed through decades of mankind’s highest advancements and worst atrocities. He’d developed a walking list of rules for dissociation and had trained me in most of them. It had saved my skin on more than one occasion but that didn’t mean he cared for me or considered me harmless.

  “How many before I got here?”

  Moloch raised four clawed fingers and pointed to a spot farther down the street, the opposite direction from the three scouts that had just gone inside.

  “Chaz is in there.”

  Moloch’s eyes widened. His skin was mostly black, with gradations of purple. In normal light, the purple formed into hundreds of lightning bolts, all active and pulsing on his skin. Tonight all I saw was the fire in his eyes.

  “Don’t proceed until I’m in place,” I said.

  Moloch nodded. Whatever his personal feelings about me, we’d been on enough missions together for him to understand what I offered. I would be the shield and stand between whatever was inside and the clan members here tonight. I wasn’t a hero. This plan had worked successfully many times before. The first time by accident, but we’d refined our strategy over the years. Everyone didn’t always make it out unscathed, but usually the Consortium took a hit, and we came out with nicks and bruises.

  Moloch vanished. Not old enough to possess teleportation skills, Brazko and Zepar headed quickly to the far end of the school grounds on silent feet.

  Before I could move, a claw gripped my shoulder, and Abraxas yanked me back into the darkness. “You know he’s inside?” he hissed beside my head.

  “Yes.” Chaz had only sent me a message, but I could feel him here, the result of the years hauling his tattoo around and I had an inkling of his location. What humans would equate to a gut reaction to Chaz’s presence, except with a little more specificity in exact location—the exception being in a heavily shielded area such as Shalim’s compound.

  “Where?”

  I nodded to the large square section of the building toward the far side, the gymnasium. Having had time to think before Moloch had shown himself, I’d determined that was the only space large enough to contain the energy surges the sorcerers recklessly let loose. Moloch was handling reconnaissance from the fifty-foot-high windows. He was one of the few in our clan with wings. Brazko and Zepar entered from the school’s kitchen. Even with the appliances gone, there should be enough metal counters, backsplashes, and doors to scramble their vibrations long enough from them to shield and maneuver closer.

  “Can you get me into the locker room?” I asked. I could use any running water to give myself cover, given that the plumbing still worked. The water would also briefly interrupt the sorcerers’ energy field and give me cover for entry and an escape route to get Chaz out. The sorcerers might sense a break in their perimeter, but based on the number of scouts, last count seven, they’d have their hands full maintaining order.

  Unless the Consortium was in strong attendance. Given the territorial ambitions that propelled them to kill their young for power, I doubted they cared to expose themselves to each other in large groups. Ponderous greed, exalted egos, and rampant paranoia coupled well in a predictable pattern.

  Abraxas clenched me with both claws. The air split before my face. My hands and knees caught cold tile as the split closed behind us. Gripping the countertop, I stood and tried the first faucet. Nothing. Then the next. A small trickle of water. Pathetic, but I didn’t need much.

  It wasn’t lost on me that he’d dumped me in the girl’s locker room, doors on all the toilet stalls and a distinct lack of urinals.

  “Wait here,” I said

  “Do not think to order me, human.”

  The clan was at more risk if they captured Abraxas than Chaz, but I didn’t have time to argue with him. “Fine, then, I’ll take you in.”

  His grumble didn’t bode well.

  “We’re wasting time. Change now.” I’d snarled the command a little too forcefully, but concern for Chaz took precedence over my commander’s ego.

  Abraxas’s eyes turned to pure flame. Fortunately, a sound from outside the locker-room door permeated his anger. He elongated, swirled, and aimed his flat tattoo dragon straight for my neck, making a point to circle several times around my body and sear my skin with his touch.

  Ancients are such touchy creatures.

  As if he heard my thoughts, he tightened his hold over my skin with a brief crush to my ribs. Not a subtle warning. I held my breath for a minute and then grasped the door handle and glanced into the hallway.

  The flicker of flames from the gym cast long, shimmering shadows, but the hallway was clear of guards or scouts. I made my way to the main entrance and took stock.

  Assembled around the centerline of the basketball court were the same three sorcerer amigos from the Walmart. More aged than the last time I’d seen him, Perry hunkered stoop-shouldered, the point of his athame tapping a brisk rhythm on his thigh. Several paces away, Langston stood over Bart’s squatted form, monitoring his focus on a pendulum suspended over a map on the floor. With an unintelligible mutter, Langston pointed at a different grid, and Bart moved his suspensio
n to the new area. Even minutes after relocation, the pendulum refused to tighten its circular swirl and pinpoint a location.

  I could think of several people they might be searching for and hoped a protection shield covered everyone on my list.

  Candles on several metal footlockers lit a fifty-foot diameter patch for their activity, though the space beyond was visible in deeper gray. The dimpled floor barely showed the foul lines and end zones. However, clearly depicted were the black outlines of several large hexagrams.

  Close to me, a luminous white demon body lay constrained within one set of floor markings. Inert on its side, the creature’s tail was wrapped the extent of its body and tight enough over the head that I couldn’t make out the facial features. The ribs protruded at painful angles from the chest cavity. The white skin, bare parchment over the bone, and the hoarse rattle of breath made me cringe. The markings on the shoulder were familiar but not of my clan or of any in close proximity to Shalim’s holdings. I gained no peace from the knowledge.

  A set of expanded bleachers spanned one side of the gym. Ancient construction explained wooden planks missing on several risers, leaving black gaping maws of dead space. Twelve to fifteen scouts stood lined up like marionettes at the base of the bleachers. They neither moved nor blinked.

  Human guards with assault rifles, posted at each end of the bleachers, were seriously out of place against the backdrop of magic in the room. The steel in their eyes reflected harsh, cold disinterest. Mercenaries, no doubt, halfway to soulless themselves.

  Perry paced before the line, the tense stomp of his unsteady gait and the twitch of his white hair as he muttered were a testament to his state of mind. While he moved along in his unhappy inspection, I caught a glimpse of the occupant of the farthest hexagram.

  Coiled in layers, creating one large shiny black pyramid with a head like a lighthouse beacon, was an enormous serpent. The width of each coil was thicker than my waist, the length probably ten times my height. Eyes closed in rest, the beast’s tongue quivered in rhythm with its breathing.