Once Darkness Falls (Preternatural Affairs #7)

by SM Reine

  “It’s for your protection,” Suzy said, cheeks flushed red. “You’re the kind of moron who would learn that I’m working to dismantle a secret government organization and jump in to save me. You’re a dumbass. You’ll get killed and it would be my fault and I couldn’t live with that!”

  I opened my mouth to argue then closed it again. “I’m not a moron.”

  “The word she usually uses is ‘oaf,’” Aniruddha said.

  Suzy punched him again. “Shut the fuck up, Banerji. You’re officially on my shit list.”

  My head hurt, and it had nothing to do with my allergy to Ann Friedman’s magic.

  The Union helping disappear people—well, that wasn’t a wild idea. When witches and demons caused enough trouble, the Union had a tendency to black-bag the baddies and toss them into a detention center.

  Fritz had said that hundreds of people were going missing, though. Hundreds of random, normal people.

  That didn’t strike me as something the Union would do.

  What they would do was black-bag Suzy for causing trouble. They’d done it once. She wouldn’t come back a second time.

  “How long has this independent investigation been going on?” I asked.

  “She joined me not long after her arrest,” Aniruddha said.

  Suzy had been arrested for a murder that I’d committed. It had only taken a day to sort it out, but the day she’d spent in a Union detention center had changed her. I just hadn’t realized how much.

  “You’ve been running around with this fuck for two years?” I asked. “Without telling me?”

  “Sorry not to keep you updated on my personal life,” Suzy said. “I forgot that I’m supposed to report every goddamn thing I do to you.” But her cheeks were still red, and she looked kind of guilty.

  “I’d just think that it would have come up in conversation at some point when we were abusing Hot Wing Wednesdays at Canyon Creek,” I said.

  “You know that place is riddled with OPA surveillance, right?” Aniruddha asked.

  To be frank, I expected that the OPA had surveillance everywhere across the entire fucking country at this point. I wasn’t allowed to piss in privacy anymore.

  “You didn’t come to this house so that you could investigate, did you?” I asked. “This has nothing to do with the assignment that Fritz gave you.”

  “I needed to see what kind of magic Allyson Whatley’s been developing,” Suzy said reluctantly. “I needed to know what I’m up against.”

  The idea of Suzy going “against” Allyson was horrifying. Suzy’s personality was bigger than a gibborim’s, but her body, not so much. Forget about magic. Allyson would only have to park her blocky body on Suzy’s chest and crush her to death.

  “The Union’s behind the disappearances,” Aniruddha said again, real patiently, like he needed to help me through the logic. “Months of disappearances, all because of the Union. We believe Allyson Whatley is leading the operation. We agreed to meet here, where someone had disappeared, as plausible deniability. But really it’s just because this house is close to Whatley’s patrol. We wanted to watch her in action.”

  “She’s up to something,” Suzy said. “That magic with the ribbons—it’s new.”

  “I can’t believe you dragged your ass out of the medical ward for this flimsy shit, Suze. You could kill yourself.”

  “Like you care,” Suzy muttered.

  “We’ll prove it,” Aniruddha said, speaking over her. “The disappearing people have been taken to UNR, and we’re going to prove it.”

  That was where she’d taken the demons…wasn’t it?

  Aniruddha’s accusations rang a little too true for my tastes. I wished they didn’t. I also wished that I could wipe my memory of the last ten minutes.

  “I’ve got an investigation of my own to do. A sanctioned investigation. But for now, you’re both coming back to the base with me.”

  “I’ll have your balls if you tell anyone, Hawke,” Suzy said. “I’ll fuck you up.”

  “Jesus, Suze.” Did she really think I’d turn her in? I knew exactly what the Union would do if they caught on to her internal investigation.

  I might as well shoot her in the face myself.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I HAD NO INTENTION of reporting Suzy and Aniruddha’s mutiny. I wouldn’t tell a single goddamn soul, not even Fritz, just in case the words drifted on the wind and were caught by a microphone plugged into Lucrezia de Angelis’s brain.

  But then I got back to the base.

  By the time I passed through the gates and all the magic that made me sneeze, I’d changed my mind.

  I jumped out of the SUV Aniruddha was driving and headed for the med bay.

  It was easy to find which bed was assigned to Fritz. I was his aspis, and there were regulations about how much information we were allowed to have. When it came to hospitalizations, I had open access to his files. His bed was at the end of the ward. The penthouse side, Malcolm probably would have said.

  I threw open the curtains around his assigned bed.

  It was empty. Fritz was gone.

  I turned to search for a nurse. Instead, I came face-to-face with a gorilla of a man. Gary Zettel was the kopis counterpart to Allyson Whatley, and he looked about as happy to see me as she had been. “Hawke.”

  “Sir,” I said politely, because it’s usually a good idea to be polite to people who look that angry.

  Being addressed respectfully only made his features cloud with anger. “Haven’t heard about my demotion?”

  I wasn’t sure if I should admit that I had or not. Instinct told me that nothing I said could make the guy happy. “Have you seen Director Friederling?”

  “He left,” Zettel said.

  No shit. What was it with my friends being incapable of staying in bed for longer than five minutes? “All right. I’ll go looking elsewhere.”

  “I’m supposed to show you to your room. Commander’s orders.” He said that with all the ease of a man struggling to drop a rock-hard deuce after too many opiates.

  “I’m fine,” I said. Not because I didn’t want to go to my room—where I might have been able to find Fritz—but because I didn’t want to go any damn place with Zettel.

  “We don’t argue with the commander,” he said. “Now, Hawke.”

  He marched out of the med bay.

  Gary Zettel talked as he walked, all in that same strained tone of voice. “What brings you to Reno weeks after the fall of the gates?”

  “I’m here to provide support,” I said.

  “You’re doing an internal investigation.”

  How many people knew about that? “I have an assignment here, yes.”

  We turned a corner to an empty hallway. It was long and lonely, lit by two lanes of harsh fluorescent bulbs that reflected against the polished concrete floor. Didn’t look like we were heading toward the barracks. It looked like we were headed…down.

  “What’s Friederling want?” Zettel asked.

  Much as it made me hate myself, I took a page out of Aniruddha’s book. “I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation.”

  “Is it about the missing artifacts?” Zettel never missed a step, walking much more briskly than I’d expect a guy of his squat stature to be able to walk. “Are you looking for the swords?”

  “As I said, sir—”

  “You can’t discuss an ongoing investigation. You should. You’ll need help to get it done before this is all wrapped up and the evidence is moved to HQ. We’re relocating everything there soon. Artifacts, evidence…prisoners. Whatever you’re here to investigate will be gone before you know it. If you were smart, you’d let me help.”

  I had a feeling that anyone who could be described as “smart” wouldn’t ever deal with Zettel.

  He led me down another hallway, and another. They all looked the same, but darker. As we got deeper into the base, more lights had burned out. Everything was less polished.

  And then Zettel stopped walking. He f
aced me.

  “Are you smart, Hawke?” he asked.

  “Depends on whom you talk to.”

  There was no humor in his tiny eyes. “I’m talking to you.”

  I was effectively cornered.

  Now, I’m a big guy. Over six feet tall, muscular with magical augmentation. I was big enough that more than two guys like me wouldn’t be comfortable in an elevator together.

  I don’t get physically intimidated by humans, even kopis humans.

  But I don’t have the urge to fight to go along with the size. There’s a lot that attitude can do for a smaller person like Zettel.

  He wanted to be intimidating the way a pit bull wanted to take down a bear.

  It took him far.

  “Tell me now, Hawke. What’s this investigation about?” He stepped close enough that our chests almost bumped. He smelled sweaty. Bet the guy hadn’t showered since the apocalypse. “Is this about the portal to Dis? Or is it about what happened with Malcolm?”

  Of all the gossip I’d heard while on base, that wasn’t part of it. It was easy to imagine Zettel fucking around with Malcolm, though. They were diametric opposites: Malcolm, with his love of life and booze; Zettel with his hate of everything that wasn’t the gun that had his name stamped onto the pommel.

  I kept my expression schooled. “As I said—”

  “Does this have to do with Ann Friedman?”

  Of all the people I would have expected to know her name, Zettel wasn’t one of them.

  I tried to compose myself and failed. I was sweating too much for that. “Who’s Ann Friedman?”

  “She’s the necromancer that you brought to Reno during our conflict with the Apple. Surprised that I know? You shouldn’t be. I found the paperwork submitted for an expense account. I couldn’t see who submitted it or why, but it was easy to track it to a new college student who appeared that spring semester. Ann Friedman. Who is now on the Union’s list of people who have gone missing in Reno.”

  Damn, it would have been easier if Zettel had been as stupid as the gorilla he looked like.

  I couldn’t think of what to say.

  “I wonder what would happen if I kept digging around Ann Friedman,” Zettel said.

  He might find that Suzy, Aniruddha, and I had recently been at her apartment. He might realize that Suzy was working on an investigation that had nothing to do with OPA orders.

  And he might realize that I was, inadvertently, responsible for triggering the fall of Reno.

  “I don’t expect you to speak,” Zettel said. “I can see your brain’s about to catch fire with both of its neurons firing so fast. I’m not going to investigate Ann Friedman. You just have to do two things for me.”

  This was starting to sound suspiciously like blackmail. “What two things?”

  “File a report declaring Malcolm Gallagher incompetent for command, and tell me what Fritz Friederling wants.”

  That first thing, the report, wouldn’t have been hard to do. It wouldn’t have even been a lie. But that second thing… “You should be asking what Lucrezia de Angelis wants. It’s her order that brought me here. Not Fritz’s.”

  Surprise colored his expression. “The vice president? She’s having you investigate the base?”

  I resisted the urge to say, No, the other Lucrezia de Angelis who orders investigations for the OPA.

  My self-control isn’t very good.

  But I was saved from having to mess with that self-control thing too much by the arrival of Allyson Whatley. She looked happier than I’d ever seen before. She was actually glowing.

  “Gary, I think I’ve—” She cut off when she realized that I was there too. The smile vanished as if hidden behind an iron door slammed shut. “Agent Hawke.”

  “Ma’am,” I said.

  She slipped something behind her back, but not before I saw that she was clutching those ribbons.

  “Do you need something?” Zettel wasn’t smiling to see his aspis. “I’m talking to Agent Hawke about an assignment he’s gotten from the vice president.”

  Allyson’s eyes lit up with interest. “Lucrezia?”

  They were on a first-name basis. That made me like both of them a hell of a lot less, and I hadn’t liked them much in the first place.

  “I’m compiling a report on the operation of the base since the MOAD incident,” I said patiently.

  “Lucrezia wants you to investigate base operations,” she repeated flatly.

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  “Interesting,” Allyson said. “Gary, we need to talk.”

  I briefly wondered if her “we need to talk” was anything like the “we need to talk” I’d shared with Isobel, which brought to mind these two sour-faced people having sex, which immediately made me need brain bleach. Gallons upon gallons of it.

  “Walk with us,” Zettel said.

  He wheeled on his heel and headed up the hallway again.

  The long path to the barracks suddenly got a lot shorter. Once Zettel wanted me to be at my room, we were there.

  The rooms that Malcolm had jokingly described as penthouse suites were more like the worst hotel rooms I’d ever been in, and I’d once spent months squatting in a Motel 6 to stalk Black Jack. That Motel 6 hadn’t even had a gym. It had been a dark few months.

  My room was small, like a studio apartment. The bathroom was shared with the room next to me. Hopefully that was Fritz’s room. I had to be good buddies with the guy I was sharing a shitter with.

  Zettel and Allyson waited outside my door while I looked around. They were a younger, meaner version of American Gothic.

  “I’m available whenever you’re ready to talk to me,” Zettel said, putting a finger on his Bluetooth earpiece.

  “I’ll remember that,” I said.

  They shut the door on me.

  Gary Zettel had asked me if I was a smart man. After some contemplation, I decided that the answer was irrefutably no.

  A smart man would have stayed in my room, kept my nose clean, stayed out of trouble.

  He wouldn’t have followed Zettel and Allyson down the hallway, through the armory, out the garage, and onto the lawn to listen to their conversation.

  It was held in whispers behind a couple of empty shipping containers. I stood on the opposite side and listened in.

  “You’ve got to be more careful,” Zettel said.

  Allyson shook her head. “I know, I know, but—”

  “They’re always listening.”

  “I know.”

  As a former private investigator, I knew how to read body language. There was nothing romantic between the two of them. It was a lot more intense than that, as all relationships between kopides and aspides tended to be. There was a saying about us: stronger than marriage, more fatal than family, closer than the oldest friends. I saw that bond between them, the way they moved around each other, the way they stared.

  They weren’t a couple. I didn’t need to purge the mental image of them fucking out of my head because it hadn’t happened, no more than Fritz and I had gotten down and dirty.

  “It worked,” Allyson said. “It fucking worked, Gary.”

  He gripped her wrists, beady eyes filled with fire. “And the tests?”

  “Going as planned.”

  “Tell Lucrezia.”

  “Should I ask about Agent Hawke?” she asked.

  The sound of my name made me draw back against the building. They hadn’t seen me, though.

  Zettel hesitated. “No. Lucrezia has something else going on. If she hasn’t told us about it, it’s for good reason. Agent Hawke can’t be so stupid to throw her name around unless she wants him to, and Lucrezia hates being questioned.”

  “I won’t mention him.”

  “Good.”

  Allyson lifted the ribbons again, shaking them to draw Zettel’s attention back to where it mattered. “Do you have any idea what this means? What I’m going to be able to do? The changes that we’re going to affect? Secretary, Zettel. You’
ll be—”

  He hushed her, slicing his hand through the air to force her silence. “I know.”

  They glanced around, like they were looking for someone who was watching them.

  Looking for me.

  I drew back so they wouldn’t see.

  My cell phone rang.

  I gripped it, terrified that Zettel would hear. But the two of them were walking off, and he was already out of range.

  Fritz’s name blinked on the screen.

  “What?” I asked when I answered it. Came out sharper than I’d intended.

  “You’re back on the base. How does the investigation fare?” Fritz asked.

  It was no surprise he knew where I was. The bastard knew everything. “Great. Just great.”

  “Excellent.”

  I remembered why I’d been rushing to look for him. “Hey, Fritz—”

  “We need to meet. Come to my room tomorrow.” And he hung up.

  For a long minute, all I could do was stare at the quiet phone in my hand.

  My resolve to report Suzy’s mutiny had vanished.

  I didn’t understand what kind of magic Allyson had created, no more than I understood what it meant for the investigation. The one thing I did understand was this: I had stumbled into something big, pushed by Fritz Friederling, and it was more complicated than I ever would have feared.

  And I didn’t want one goddamn thing to do with any of it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I WOKE UP EARLY the next day, which seemed like something that should never have happened, considering I hadn’t set my alarm clock. I’d been woken up early to ride in a helicopter, which had crashed, fought against infected brutes, gotten dragged all over Reno, and stalked a conspiracy. If anything would make a guy sleep deeply, you’d think that would be it.

  But I woke up well before dawn. Before the bell had been rung in the mess hall for breakfast.

  I’d fallen asleep in my suit and sweated through the shirt. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming about, but I thought they had been nightmares. Nightmares about Suzy vanishing into a black bag, drippy black demons eating Ann Friedman, Neuma clawing my heart out.