“And what happens when you get caught? I don’t want some human knocking on our door asking questions.”
Nardo laughed and sat a little straighter in his chair. “I won’t get caught. I’ve been hacking into places I shouldn’t for years, places a lot more secure than this shit. I go in real quiet. Nobody knows I’m there and if somebody does spot me, I’m going to send them around the world looking for me and in the end they’ll wind up in Homa Hills, Wyoming. I know what I’m doing, boss. I’m careful.”
“You better be. So what do we have?”
“In the beginning, you match up pretty closely with the other sources. Okay, you missed a few here and there but that’s to be expected. You’re short handed and you’ve got a lot of territory to cover.” He pointed to a screen. “Right here is where things begin to diverge. You noticed that things were picking up, but look at this, here and here. You got more animal attacks or scavenging. They probably have Animal Control out there picking up every stray they can find and they’re worried about the rat population. Missing person reports are up and most of them are written off as left town with no forwarding address particularly in the poorer neighborhoods. They don’t cross reference this stuff and even if they did, nobody’s looking for the same pattern we are.” Nardo looked up at Canaan who was standing behind his chair. “Something’s happening, Boss. I can see it on the screen and I can feel it.” He tapped his chest. “In here.”
Canaan slowly nodded his head in agreement, never taking his eyes off the screen. “I know the feeling. Where do we go next?”
Nardo switched to another screen. “I’m mapping like Grace suggested.” He pointed to the different colors dotting the map. “Different sources. So far, I don’t see a pattern but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I’ve still got a lot to do and a lot more data to correlate.”
“No complaints here, Nardo. You’re doing great. How’s the training coming?”
“I love it. I always have, but it wasn’t enough, you know? The hardest part for me is keeping my mind in the gym. It keeps wandering back here.” He nodded to the screens and laughed. “But you get Dov’s head rammed in your gut a few times and it improves your concentration. I can hold my own against either of the twins now. Otto says I’m ready for you.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night. I also want you to carve a little time out for yourself. Hit the clubs or one of those internet places. Anywhere but here, okay?”
“I’ll try,” Nardo said but Canaan wasn’t sure he meant it.
Chapter 26
This wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. Once you got past the mechanics of it, the gas, the brakes, turn the wheel in the direction you wanted to go, the rest was really quite simple. It was so much easier now that she was alone without Canaan yelling at her, the twins laughing their asses off or poor Nardo sitting grimly in the passenger seat with that suffering look on his face. She was glad she’d stolen the car.
The twins were out in the Escalade with Canaan’s promise that it would be theirs if they could go two weeks without incident. Canaan was locked in the library with Nardo admiring the trainee’s newest equipment and the keys to the old junker were sitting on the counter almost crying out for her attention. She’d grabbed her coat and the keys, called to Canaan that she was going across the alley to visit and ran like the thief she was.
Thursday was Thanksgiving and she was going to serve a holiday meal that they wouldn’t soon forget. It was going to be her surprise. The twins had informed her some time ago that they didn’t celebrate human holidays but this was different. It might be Canaan’s House, but it was her home, too. She planned the meals and she cooked them. If she wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving with the first family she had ever thought of as her own then she would do it and they would enjoy it. They all had a lot to be thankful for.
She pulled into the parking lot and eased the car between the lines of a parking space. At two in the morning there were only five other cars parked out front and one fast looking motorcycle over in the corner. She’d be in, out and home before anyone knew she was gone.
When Grace entered through the automatic doors, she saw a woman with salt and pepper hair speaking with a middle aged man in an employee vest. This would be the perfect opportunity to practice her skills so she took her time disengaging the cart from the rack.
“Thanks again, Henry,” the woman was saying. “I can’t believe Fred called off again. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t stayed.”
Concentrating on the woman and blocking out the man, Grace recognized three distinct emotions, frustration with the unreliable Fred and appreciation for Henry intertwined with affection. She turned slightly as she pretended to search through her wallet and caught a glimpse of the man’s face. She immediately recognized the distinct features of Down’s syndrome. She cut off the woman and focused on the man but didn’t need the purr in her mind to feel his pleased pride. He beamed.
“You know me. You need help, you just call. I got six more boxes and I’m all done,” he said.
“You let me know when you’re finished and I’ll give you a ride home.”
Henry shook his head. “No, no. It’s only two blocks. I walk it all the time.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a large green key case. “I got my keys.” He looked at Grace and smiled.
The woman put her hands on her hips. “Henry, I’m not letting any employee of mine walk home at two in the morning. Now you tell me when you’re done.”
Grace freed her cart and headed down the aisle. She loaded up with all the fixings; potatoes, both white and sweet, carrots, corn, cranberries and the ingredients for a green bean casserole that she remembered from her childhood. Every foster family had served it on Thanksgiving. Now she had a family of her own to serve it to.
There were only three other customers in the store plus the owner, a cashier and Henry. Grace opened her mind and found that she could pinpoint the location of each one. There was one she didn’t like the feel of, a man whose hunger mixed with anger in a way that made her uncomfortable. She avoided the aisles where he shopped.
Henry was breaking down the last of his boxes when she passed him on the way to the meat department. She nodded to him and smiled then laughed as he tipped an imaginary hat.
Grace was rearranging her cart to fit a second turkey when the sickening wave of emotion slammed into the back of her head. She tried to block it but only managed to diffuse its force. She recognized the source at once and followed it to the doorway at the back of the store that led to the storage and work areas behind. She didn’t see him, saw only the long plastic strips swaying from the motion of someone passing through, yet the feeling grew that the awful buzzing was familiar. She gagged.
The cell phone was in her hand and her thumb was speed dialing Canaan before the thought finished crossing her mind. It rang three times before someone picked up.
“Canaan, I’m at McKenna’s grocery in the back of the store. Inside, outside, I don’t know. Help me.”
The phone was back in her pocket and she was moving through the door. She could feel the sweat beading on her forehead and the tears stinging her eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest. This was Alice and the club scene all over again, but she wouldn’t stand in terror this time. This time she knew what she was facing and it wouldn’t end the same. She couldn’t kill it, but she could keep the demon from killing someone else. She had to. For Alice.
She opened her mind and felt the two distinct vibrations, one of rage and one of fear. She followed and in the dim light of the fire exit she saw them, the elongated snarling face of the demon and Henry’s terrified eyes. As she ran past the meat cutting table she paused just long enough to reject the heavier cleaver for a thin bladed boning knife. The door exited onto a narrow drive that separated the store from a vacant lot and it wasn’t hard to spot the snarling demon dragging a flailing Henry deeper into the dark.
“Hey! Shit face!” She had to shout it twice before
her voice had the strength to carry. The demon looked back.
“Yeah you, fuck head. Come pick on somebody who’s going to fight back.” She screamed it.
The demon threw his victim aside and turned on her, moving with surprising speed on its misshapen limbs. Grace readied for the attack, blocking Henry’s fright and as much of the demon’s violence as she could.
She balanced on the balls of her spread feet and gripped the knife. All this in a second of time yet she felt as if her limbs were leaden and she moved in slow motion. She had only to hold it off until Canaan arrived.
The thing hit her with more force than she anticipated and bowled her over backward but her training took over and her legs came up to send the demon sailing over her head. She snapped to her feet and took the next charge head on driving her extended knuckles into the soft flesh of the demon’s throat and the knife into its belly. The knife stuck and she remembered too late Dov’s lesson on knives. Slash, don’t stab. She pushed off the now screaming demon, but it caught her hair and yanked her back toward its gaping maw.
Part of her psychic wall crumbled and the demon’s violent rage poured through. There was no pain, just a building of pressure within her mind until the demon rage met her own fury and the two mixed to form an explosion of power. She knew without thought that the pent up energy must be released or she would die.
“No!” she screamed against her impending death, against the atrocity of Alice’s assault, against the attack on Henry. She felt the release of power and saw it pour into the demon’s eyes. It grabbed its head and howled at the onslaught.
White light flashed along the gravel drive and Grace was torn up from the ground and thrown to land on her back ten feet away gasping for air as the wind was knocked from her lungs. She crawled to the slumped form of Henry and gathered him in her arms. She heard a harrowing scream of pain and saw the fist clutching the demon heart rise from the light.
She started to laugh and cry at the same time. She knew it was hysterics and she should get a grip but the laughter bubbled up and wouldn’t stop.
“You came, oh my god, you came. I love you. You came.” The words kept repeating interspersed with laughter and tears.
“It’s all right now. You won’t remember this.”
The laughter died along with the words. The golden eyes and chiseled granite planes of the face looking into hers weren’t Canaan’s. As tall as Canaan, this stranger was narrower with black hair pulled tightly back from his face. He was dressed all in black and his pointy toed boots and flowing leather duster made him look like a movie version of a vampire.
The laughter started up again when she saw him remove his glove and hold his thumb in front of her face.
“You’re wasting your time Mr. Paenitentia. Take care of Henry. This girl don’t thump.”
“With anyone but me,” growled a voice from behind the stranger.
“Oops,” Grace giggled drunkenly, “I meant erase. You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been a strange night.” She tried to rise but her feet didn’t seem to work. She sat back and messaged her temples with the tips of her fingers. “Got a headache here, Canaan, feeling a little woozy.”
“Your nose is bleeding,” Canaan said. He picked her up in his arms while the stranger saw to Henry.
Grace looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed since she left the store. She thought it had been hours.
Henry was cleaned up, erased and sent back into the store to seek his ride home. Nardo, who had arrived with Canaan, was dispatched to retrieve Grace’s Thanksgiving groceries. The stranger, who had yet to introduce himself or explain his presence, followed Canaan on a Harley-Davidson XR 1200 that looked straight off the showroom floor. Canaan drove the clunker with Grace as passenger.
“Canaan?” Grace wanted to explain why she was at the store, why she’d followed the demon.
“No, Grace.” He held up his hand to make her stop. “Right now I’m not sure if I want to pull over and make love to you ‘till you can’t move or pull over and bust your ass ‘till you can’t sit down.”
“I’m not a child, Canaan.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
“Then stop treating me like one.”
“I’m not the one who snuck out of the house and stole the car.”
He gripped the steering wheel so tightly Grace thought it might crack. This probably wasn’t the right time or the right place, but she’d rather have it now than in front of the whole House.
“You’re right. I should have knocked on your door and told you I was going grocery shopping. What would you have done then?” She folded her arms under her breasts.
“Asked you to wait until I was done and then gone with you.”
“If you were too busy? What then?”
“I’d have asked someone else to go with you.”
She threw her hands in the air and said in exasperation, “Exactly! Because I’m too incompetent to be let out alone!”
“Grace, you can’t drive.” His teeth were clenched.
“Yes I can. I did. You just don’t want me to. You want me to ask permission. You want me to stay in the House.”
“I want to keep you safe, protected. What’s so wrong with that? I thought that was one of the reasons you liked living in the House.”
Grace took a deep breath. She could still feel the energy swirling in her head and she knew it was feeding her anger. “It was, but not because I wanted protection from the world. I wanted protection from what was in my head. I can control that now. Not only can I control it, I can use it.”
Canaan reached over and covered her hand. He sighed. “There are too many bad things out there in the night, sweetling.”
“There are bad things out there in the day, too. You’ve just never seen them.” She turned her hand over to meet his, palm to palm, and entwined her fingers with his. “I love you Canaan and because of that I chose to live in your world, the world of the night. The key word here is ‘in’ not shut away from.”
Canaan found a parking spot and backed the car into place then went around to the passenger side and opened the door for Grace.
“I can still open your door, can’t I?”
“Treating me like a lady and treating me like a child are two different things,” she said as she stepped from the car and into his arms.
He held her close and stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. “When I think about what happened at that club and at the park, I can’t breathe, Grace. I should have been with you tonight. If that Guardian hadn’t shown up, you would have been killed.”
“When I followed that demon tonight, my plan was to distract him until you got there. I knew I couldn’t take him. Then something happened in my head and I understood, like a memory that had always been there, how to use the energy inside my head.” She looked up at him with a glow of confidence. “Canaan, if that Guardian hadn’t shown up, I’m pretty sure I could have taken that demon down. Maybe not enough to kill him, but enough to cripple him. I would have been all right.”
Chapter 27
They were gathered in the kitchen. Knowing that dinner would be late, Manon had prepared a tray of fruit and cheese which was quickly demolished by the younger members as Grace recounted her story of the demon attack to whooping cheers from Dov and Col and much head shaking from Otto and Manon. She ended with the miraculous appearance of the mysterious man in black.
His name was Nico or Nickolas, Nicolai, Nicklaus or just plain Nick. “These are the names I have lived under during my time in Europe. My name has changed along with my House and I have changed Houses many times.” His English was flawless, with only a hint of an accent that could only be described as European, the unique blend of someone fluent in many languages.
His coal black hair was pulled back in a short, tight ponytail with a narrow satin ribbon tied in a neat little bow that on another man might look effeminate. On this one it didn’t. The tailored silk shirt and black leather pants were custom fit to
a body that was long and lean. High cheekbones, eyes with a slight Slavic slant and skin with the texture of fine porcelain completed the picture of sophistication and elegance.
Once he began to speak, the twins and Nardo sat at the island looking a little awestruck. Otto and Manon stood shoulder to shoulder by the gym door with identical looks of suspicion that neither attempted to hide. Canaan leaned against the counter with Grace leaning against him, his arm wrapped possessively around her middle. The newcomer relaxed against the opposite counter, his legs crossed casually at the ankles.
He had discarded his black duster along with a variety of weapons upon entering the kitchen. Now, he unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt and pulled it aside to bare the skull and tears.
“I want no misunderstanding. I am a Guardian in good standing. I have never left a House with ill will. If you accept me into your House, you will have my complete loyalty for as long as I remain.” He smiled wryly. “I am very good at what I do, but I’ve always chafed under strict orders. I’ve heard rumors through various contacts that this may be a House like no other and as I found it necessary to leave Europe for a time, I sought you out.”
“You’ve been watching us for days.” Otto had his arms folded across his chest. “I’ve felt you around the neighborhood.” He looked accusingly at Canaan. “I told you it was a Guardian.”
One side of Canaan’s mouth curled in a smile. “Yes, you did and I said to let him watch. We’re not hiding anything.” He turned his attention to Nico. “I thought the Council might have sent you to spy.”
“I would be the last one they would choose.” Nico sipped his glass of wine slowly as his eyes traveled from face to face around the room. His gaze lingered on Grace who sipped her own glass of wine while a finger of her free hand drew lazy circles along the arm Canaan still wrapped around her.
“She is not your Mate.”
Canaan stiffened, lifting off the counter. Otto took a step forward. The three younger men’s eyes widened. Nico smiled slyly and lifted his hands in surrender.
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