Once Darkness Falls (Preternatural Affairs #7)

by SM Reine

  He was sparring with Gary Zettel. Hell of a match-up.

  I hung by the door to watch, mostly because if Zettel smeared Fritz across the mats, I’d feel it later.

  They looked evenly matched. Fritz was taller, more experienced. Zettel was more muscular and meaner. They were both fast as hell, though. They were attracting an audience.

  I caught a familiar face in that audience. The one woman who wasn’t dressed for training, but wearing a Cabo Wabo t-shirt and feathers in her hair.

  Isobel.

  She cheered Fritz on the way a good girlfriend should. Having a woman like her in your corner was guaranteed to get a guy fired up, make him perform his best.

  I stepped away from the gymnasium and into the locker room. I hadn’t taken the time to shower before visiting Malcolm, and, unlike the commander, I didn’t have the option of showering in the privacy of my room. Even the penthouse suite didn’t rank a private bath.

  A woman was changing in the locker room for kopides. I had to double-check the door to make sure I’d walked into the right place.

  She was facing away from me, and she was down to her underwear, which wasn’t particularly lingerie-like. She had black boy shorts and a sports bra. More coverage than most women had at the beach.

  But most women at the beach didn’t have a body like hers.

  Her legs were long with thick thighs, just the way I liked them. I’d never had “sculpted back and shoulders” on my wish list for a woman’s body, but now that I had an eyeful of that, I had to tack it on. Every inch of her was stacked in the way that only an athlete could be.

  And judging by the view of her backside, she didn’t neglect her squats.

  I was so busy staring at her ass that it took me a second to realize how awkward her movements were.

  She turned. It was Krista, the woman kopis.

  “Wipe up the drool and get out of here,” she said, flinging a towel in my face. “Aspides have separate locker rooms.”

  I caught the towel. It was moist. I was going to choose not to think about what might be dampening it. “Don’t women have separate locker rooms too?”

  “There are three locker rooms. Kopides, male aspides, female aspides.” Krista pointed at two other doors in turn. “I’m not changing with the witches. I’m a kopis, and I won’t be segregated.”

  “If you don’t mind being naked at the sausage factory, then who am I to judge? But you better not peek at me when I’m showering, you creep.”

  “I’m the creep?” Her boobs jiggled when she laughed. They were the only jiggly part of her body. Okay, I was definitely the creep in this scenario. “I promise I’ll resist the urge to check out Fritz’s arm steak.”

  “Yeah, you better.” I grabbed a towel off the shelf. But a thought struck me before I could shower. I lifted the thumb drive. “You’ve got access to Union terminals, right?”

  She ripped her headband off and started brushing her hair. “If you don’t explain why you’ve got a commander’s USB stick before I get all the tangles out, I’m going to kick your teeth in.”

  “Malcolm,” I said.

  Her hairbrush stilled. “Don’t flash that around. You’ll both get in trouble.”

  “You going to tell on me? Fritz’s harmless, innocent arm steak?”

  “I’ll see if I can check a Union laptop out for you.” Krista stepped into a pair of cargo pants, which, tragically, were baggy enough to hide the shape of her muscular legs. “If the commander thinks you need access, I trust that you do.”

  I opened my mouth to thank her, but she cut me off.

  “You can do me a favor by not telling me which rabbit holes your investigation is taking you down, Agent Hawke.”

  “The less you know, the better.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She tugged a black polo on, flipped her hair out of the collar. “Make sure to lock up that thumb drive so it’s not unattended while you shower. And meet me in the hallway after you’re done being naked and wet.”

  “You could meet me in the showers,” I said. “Nice place to have a secure conversation.”

  “Dream on, arm steak. Dream on and never stop dreaming.”

  Krista headed out.

  The lockers were keyed to thumbprints rather than requiring padlocks as most gyms did. I had no doubts that the Union could open anything that they wanted, though. I wrapped the thumb drive in my sweaty socks and stuck it on top of a soap dispenser by the showers so I wouldn’t have to take my eyes off it.

  I had only gotten my shirt off when I heard the murmur of voices from one of the doors to the other locker rooms. It wasn’t a quiet, happy murmur, but more like a couple of people were arguing fiercely and trying not to be heard.

  My nosy private eye instincts had never been trained out of me.

  I grabbed my filthy socks, thumb drive and all, then nudged the door open to peer through the crack.

  There was a woman in the locker room for male aspides. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that it was Suzy. She had never been interested in things like “rules” or “gender segregation” or “not laughing at men’s dicks at the gym.”

  The guy she was arguing with didn’t belong in the locker room for male aspides any more than she did, though. Aniruddha Banerji wasn’t assigned to a kopis.

  “We could use the backup,” Aniruddha was saying. “It’s going to be risky.”

  “Then get one of your friends to do it. You’ve fucked things up enough by spreading information where it doesn’t belong.”

  “He could be helpful.”

  “I don’t give two shits if he’s helpful or not. You’re not dragging him on the operation,” Suzy hissed. “We’re doing this together. You and me. Nobody else, unless they’re with the movement.”

  Why did I get the feeling they were talking about me again?

  “There isn’t enough time to get others from the movement reassigned to Reno before Friday,” Aniruddha said.

  “Tough cookies. Now get out of here before someone sees us.” She shoved his shoulder, spinning him toward the door.

  Then Suzy headed in the opposite direction—my door. Trying to exit in two separate ways so that they wouldn’t be seen skulking around together.

  The door swung open. I pulled Suzy aside, shoving her into the corner behind a locker. She looked surprised to get manhandled by a shirtless Cèsar in the locker room. I was always careful with her, real careful, since I was like an orc to her hobbit, and I wasn’t the kind of guy who used that to intimidate women. But Suzy had finally managed to push my buttons a little too hard.

  The surprise didn’t last long. She folded her arms. “Why are you holding smelly-ass socks?”

  “I heard you talking about me and some operation.”

  “Get those socks out of my face,” she said. “You smell like donkey nuts.”

  “Tell me what you’ve got planned and I’ll spare your olfactory glands,” I said. “You have to keep me in the loop so I can save your ass.”

  “So you can fuck up my operation,” she said.

  “Calling it an operation makes it sound like official business.”

  Suzy glanced around my shoulder at the empty locker room and lowered her voice. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Cèsar, but you’re best friends with the director of the Magical Violations Department. I’m not going to say I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust Friederling.”

  Man, a guy sent her to prison once and she would never forgive him for it. That’s women for you. “I want to help you.”

  “I don’t think your idea of ‘help’ is like mine,” Suzy said. “Knowing you, you’ll tell Commander Gallagher and Director Friederling and get Lucrezia de Angelis pulled down on our heads. Do you think that would be helpful?”

  If she’d had any clue that I’d already tried telling Malcolm, Suzy would have ripped my testes off with her teeth.

  “How’s this?” I asked. “Tell me what you’re doing or else I’ll report you.”

  Her eyes n
arrowed. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe I would. You’d be safer in detention than trying to subvert the Union.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Come on, Suze.”

  She heaved a sigh. “Grip this.” She offered a charm to me—a wooden circlet that would have passed for a bracelet if not inspected too closely.

  When I grabbed the other end, magic showered sparks around us. Felt like cotton balls got shoved in my ears. The world went muffled, quiet.

  “Surveillance won’t be able to record our conversation now,” she said.

  “Is this a portable warding charm? That’s fucking amazing.”

  “I know it’s amazing. Of course it’s amazing. I made it. But we can still be overheard if people come in, so admire me later.”

  “That’s kind of a flaw,” I said.

  “Big magic doesn’t come easy,” Suzy said. “I haven’t figured out how Allyson works. Yet. Give me a few more days.”

  She probably wasn’t exaggerating by saying she only needed a few days.

  Suzy lowered her voice again, so quiet that her lips barely even moved. “We’re going into the data center on the UNR campus Friday night.” That must have been the squat white building I’d seen Allyson dragging infected demons into. “We think that they’re holding the missing people there—among other things.”

  “At a data center?”

  “It used to be a lab where they ran medical tests. I think it is again.”

  Malcolm had suggested that what we were doing to the missing people was worse than making them disappear in the first place. Medical testing didn’t sound too bad. Of course, the kind of medical testing that had to be done in secret was probably not as simple as a few cheek swabs.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said. “I’m better to have at your back than Aniruddha.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since you’ve been training me.”

  A little of the hardness in her glare softened. “No fucking way, Hawke.” Suzy yanked the charm out of my hand. My hearing returned to normal.

  I didn’t dare argue with her more—not without the protection of magic. So I shoved every ounce of pleading I felt into her name. “Suzy. Please.”

  “Get back to your investigation. Or having drinks downtown with Commander Gallagher. Or seducing Isobel Stonecrow away from Director Friederling. Whatever the fuck you feel like doing today.”

  She stormed out of the locker room. I was only a couple of steps behind her.

  I nearly bumped into Krista on the way out.

  “Hey, Hawke,” she said.

  All I could do was watch Suzy stride away over Krista’s shoulder.

  Going, going…gone. I’d catch up with her later.

  “You get what we need?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t get a Union laptop for you, so you’ll have to access the database from my computer,” Krista said. Her nose wrinkled. “You didn’t shower.”

  “I got distracted,” I said.

  “Your socks smell terrible.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  Krista shook her head. “Whatever. Come with me. Let’s get digging in the database.”

  I’d followed her a whole six feet before a thought struck me. “Where is your computer?”

  “In my room.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not afraid of being alone with me, are you?” She actually made that sound kind of teasing. Krista was probably joking about her disability, but I couldn’t help but steal a look at her ass.

  I cleared my throat. “Nope. Not afraid at all.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KRISTA’S ROOM REALLY DID make mine look like a penthouse suite. Compared to the places they had the Union kopides sleeping, my space was fucking Trump Tower. She’d practically been shoved into a closet with her bed jammed in the back, a tiny locker under it for her guns, and a desk wedged into the corner by the door.

  “At least it’s private,” she said, standing aside so I could sidle in with her. “I couldn’t be put in the barracks with the men, and I refused to be relegated to aspis quarters, so…”

  “They gave you a coffin instead. Cozy.”

  She logged on to her computer, then allowed me to sit in front of it. “I didn’t join the Union to be comfortable.”

  I slid the USB key into the port. The screen flashed a couple times, a few windows appeared and disappeared, and the screen greeted me as Malcolm Gallagher.

  “What are you looking for?” Krista asked, leaning over my shoulder to watch.

  I didn’t type while she was looking. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. “You said you didn’t want to know anything about my rabbit holes.”

  “I guess I don’t.” But she didn’t move. The urge for a kopis to act heroic was strong. She’d sensed that I was honing in on action, and like a beagle chasing bunnies, she struggled to let it go.

  “Lucrezia de Angelis is concerned about how smoothly operations are flowing at the base. She wants to reorganize. What if I told you that the only need for reorganization I’ve seen so far is in the alcoholic commander?”

  “That would be a hell of thing to do to a man who’s doing favors for you.”

  It also wouldn’t save my ass if Allyson and Zettel told Lucrezia about Ann Friedman.

  I searched for the Union’s files on the MOAD incident and did some reading.

  There wasn’t much information I didn’t already know. The Mother of All Demons had been discovered when she started trying to enter the gates to Heaven. It had violated the Treaty of Dis and began to unravel the universe, which made the mirror city appear. People had died, demons had died, chaos ensued.

  And then it had stopped.

  What I hadn’t realized was that the Union hadn’t killed the Mother of All Demons. It had been that dead woman kopis that Isobel showed me in the refrigerators. Malcolm and Bellamy had only recovered her body after the fact, and they’d been performing cleanup in Reno ever since.

  I took notes on that. I’d brought my Steno pad, of course—it had everything I knew and might be able to compile into a report for Lucrezia. It was embarrassing how little space my notes took up. I filled in a few pages with facts about the MOAD incident from the Union database, since I wouldn’t be able to refer back to it once I gave Malcolm his thumb drive back.

  The files also claimed that all the people who had gone missing in Reno were civilian casualties of the battle against the Mother of All Demons. If that was a lie, then who knew what else they were lying about?

  None of that information could save my ass.

  It also didn’t answer any of my questions.

  For instance, why had the Mother of All Demons come to Reno? How had she known to go looking for that ethereal gate?

  And where did Allyson with her ribbon magic fit in?

  Krista had finally sat back on her bed where she couldn’t see the monitor as easily. “You aren’t going to report Malcolm, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, angling my body to hide the search bar. I typed Allyson Whatley’s name in. “It depends on whether it’s for the greater good or not.”

  “Malcolm is one of the best men working for the Union.”

  “Considering I just found him passed out drunk on his bathroom floor, you’re not saying much about the Union,” I said.

  Krista sighed. “He has some issues.”

  That was putting it lightly.

  The computer scraped the Union database with Malcolm’s credentials and came up with Allyson’s file. There were pages and pages of data. Cases she’d worked. Verified kills she had gotten. Even the number of times she’d discharged her goddamn firearm.

  Nobody did bureaucracy quite like we did.

  However, there were no notes about ribbons or special skills or whatever.

  “What do you know about Allyson Whatley, as far as her witchy thing goes?” I asked.

  “She’s a four,” Krista said. I assumed she was referring to Ally
son’s ranking in the database, not her attractiveness. We assigned number values to witches to make it easy to tell who was strong and who was weak. “She has a thorough understanding of how magic is constructed and designs spells well.”

  “But she’s not a powerful witch on her own.”

  “Being able to augment other witches is very useful.”

  “Not powerful,” I pressed.

  Krista shook her head. “She was assigned to be Gary Zettel’s aspis on the usefulness of her non-magical tactical skills.”

  But she obviously had a few useful magical skills, too. Ones that the Union didn’t know about.

  I started scrolling through the section of her files containing security footage. The Union had surveillance on all its employees, just like the OPA did. Both organizations made an effort toward logging their employees’ every motions, but Allyson’s security footage had a surprising number of holes in it. She was good at evading cameras.

  Or magically removing the records.

  I pulled some ritual supplies out of my pocket. “You don’t see me casting a spell right now.”

  “I see nothing,” Krista said dryly.

  I’d learned to modify security footage from my brother, Domingo Hawke, who was a master of screwing around with tapes. It wasn’t particularly difficult—just an odd spell. Pushing Krista’s keyboard back, I made a tiny circle of power with the salt, sprinkled some herbs on the desk, the thumb drive, her desktop tower.

  “What are you doing?” Krista asked with too much interest for someone who was pretending that she couldn’t see me doing anything.

  “Digging,” I said.

  Data and magic flowed together all throughout the warehouse. Once I tuned into it, I had no trouble seeing where modifications had been made. Someone had gone smashing through Allyson’s records like an orc hopped up on speed. I was willing to bet that it had been Allyson herself, since her ribbon magic had demonstrated a similar sloppiness.

  Missing records popped to life on the computer monitor. A lot of them.

  “Wow,” Krista said.

  “Allyson obfuscated her surveillance around December fifteenth,” I said. “Let’s find out why.”