City of Secrets (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 5)

by Sonya Bateman

  “Yes.” Ian didn’t look too happy about that. “This was an ancient practice. Most clans have ceased the use of blood manipulation, save for the Morai.”

  Whatever that last word meant, he really hated them.

  “Well, this guy’s definitely not a snake,” Donatti said.

  “No.” Ian scrubbed his face wearily. “We must know his clan. That knowledge alone can inform us of the next steps we should take.”

  Taeral looked at me. “Were you able to identify the animal with this new victim?”

  “Couldn’t,” I said. “This time, he slaughtered the guy while he was in human form.”

  “Impossible.”

  Everyone looked at Ian, but it was Donatti who explained. He looked just as shocked as Ian sounded. “Djinn can only kill humans when they’re in animal form.”

  “Is that a rule, or more like a guideline?” I said. “Because this one did.”

  Taeral leaned forward a little, toward Ian. “You are unable to kill humans?” he said. “That must be incredibly frustrating.”

  I expected another outburst. But Ian laughed. “It is, on occasion,” he said.

  “Yeah. If he could, he would’ve killed me a long time ago.” Donatti drummed his fingers once on his thigh. “We’ve got to find out what clan this guy is. Even if we aren’t going to destroy him.”

  “He is obviously dangerous,” Ian said. “At the least, we will need to determine his intentions. We cannot engage him without knowing which abilities he may possess, and how to counter those abilities, if necessary.”

  Damn. I knew it’d come to this, even if I held out faint hope that it wouldn’t. “I know how to find out for sure. There’s one person who can identify the animal.” Christ, just thinking the name made my skin crawl. “Orville Valentine.”

  Taeral stiffened instantly, and Sadie’s face crumpled. “Oh, God,” she said. “Gideon … do you really have to?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s the only way.” I ignored Donatti’s and Ian’s apparent confusion for the moment. “Problem is, Agent Frost decided they don’t need my help anymore, so they won’t let me get to him,” I said. “I guess we’ll just have to break in.”

  That got Donatti’s attention fast. “Break into the NSA?”

  “Well, it’s a temporary headquarters. But yes.”

  He grinned. “I’m all over that,” he said. “So once you get in, is this Orville guy gonna cooperate or what?”

  “He has to,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  Both djinn treated me to shocked stares.

  “A dead guy’s going to tell you what animal killed him,” Donatti said eventually. “That’s what you’re going with?”

  Taeral smiled grimly. “Gideon is the DeathSpeaker. The dead cannot lie to him.”

  “Hold on. You can really talk to dead people?” Donatti bent his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, it’s not as great as it sounds,” I said.

  Ian seemed impressed, in a reserved, you-might-be-full-of-shit way. “This is an incredible ability,” he said. “I was not aware the Fae could speak to the dead.”

  “Well, they can’t. It’s just me.”

  “I can’t even … wow.” Donatti breathed in deeply, and then pulled himself together. “Okay. So when are we going to talk to the dead guy?”

  “Guess we should make it tonight.”

  No one disagreed with that. At the rate this djinn was dropping torn-apart corpses, we couldn’t afford to wait much longer.

  CHAPTER 23

  Donatti and I drove off just before midnight, headed for trouble.

  At least I’d finally gotten some sleep. It hadn’t been easy hashing out how to handle this little break-in. Ian and Taeral were both acting like overprotective fathers, insisting we’d get ourselves killed without them. And Sadie wanted to maul some Milus Dei for what they’d done to Eli. She’d insisted any one of them would do.

  Eventually we’d come to an agreement. This particular mission called for stealth, not brawn. And there was no way all five of us — six, if we’d brought Eli along — could sneak into a building that was a federal agency and Milus Dei unnoticed.

  Donatti had to go because he had experience breaking into stuff. I had to go because no one else could interrogate the corpse. So we elected ourselves to handle it alone, and outvoted everyone else.

  We’d been on the road maybe five minutes when Donatti said, “I get the idea you knew the dead guy. Orville.”

  “Was it that obvious?” I smirked. I’d gotten over my utter refusal to discuss my past, but I still didn’t enjoy it. Unfortunately, he was bound to hear some unpleasant shit leaving Orville’s mouth while I questioned the bastard. Might as well give him a heads-up. “Yeah, I knew him,” I said. “Grew up with him, actually.”

  “Damn. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” I failed to keep the disgust out of my tone. “When I said Abe was my other dad, I meant besides Daoin. He might’ve thought otherwise, but Orville Valentine was never my father. In any sense of the word.”

  Donatti winced. “I can tell this isn’t your favorite subject.”

  “No, but I have to tell you. You’re going to hear it from him.” I made myself calm down with a few deep breaths. “Ever hear of changelings?”

  He started to shake his head. “Vaguely, maybe?” he said. “It’s something like fairies swapping their babies for human ones. I think there was a movie about it.”

  “Huh. Never caught that one,” I said. “But yeah, that’s basically it. And that was me — I got switched at birth with the Valentines’ baby, and they never knew. I didn’t either, until I met Taeral.” I wasn’t going to explain exactly how that happened. I’d never blamed Taeral for it, and I didn’t want anyone else to. “That mass slaughter you heard about, the one that brought you guys out here? Those were the Valentines.”

  “Holy hell. So they were with Milus Dei?”

  “They worked for them, but it was a recent development. When I was a kid …” I trailed off and tried to collect the whole ugly story into as few words as possible. “They were poachers. Big game hunters, the nasty illegal kind. They lived in campers and moved around all the time, all over the country, slaughtering animals. People too, if they got in the way. But they never really considered me part of the family.” My jaw clenched, and I stared straight ahead through the windshield. “I was pretty much their slave, and their favorite punching bag.”

  Donatti didn’t say anything for a while. He looked at me, but at least it wasn’t an expression of horror or pity. Then he smiled a bit. “So when did you start punching back?”

  My own laughter surprised me. And it felt damned good to laugh in the face of the memories that controlled my life for so long. “Got away when I was sixteen,” I said. “Then last month — well, there was a bad patch. They found me, and they didn’t remember me too fondly. But I won that round.”

  I could still see the looks on their faces when I finally got to spit those awful words back at them.

  I think it’s time for target practice.

  “Anyway, expect to hear a few metric tons of bullshit from Orville,” I said. “He’s going to be furious that he can’t get to me anymore.”

  Donatti grinned. “I hope he chokes on it,” he said. “Well, if he wasn’t dead already.”

  “Yeah.” And I was actually upset about that. Damn it, I’d let those assholes go. I’d wanted them to live, knowing I was strong enough to take them down if I felt like it. That I wasn’t the weak, pathetic waste of flesh they’d tried to make me believe I was.

  If nothing else, the mystery djinn had taken that away from me.

  “Oh, there was something I meant to tell you,” Donatti said. “About our killer.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “What about him?”

  “I read through all those reports in his file,” he said. “Horrible shit. They were cutting his organs out while he was awake, trying to transplant them into huma
ns and other … Others. Kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, whatever they could take out. Everything grew back, so when it did, they’d just cut them out again. None of the transplants took. And there was a bunch of stuff, I think it was supposed to be psych evaluations or something. Things he said when they bothered to let him talk.”

  I heard the anger in his tone, directed at Milus Dei. Exactly my feelings on the subject. “Any things in particular?” I said.

  “Most of it seemed like crazy rambling. But there was something he kept repeating, every time.” A troubled look crept into his face. “It was about voices in his head. Singing. He said … there were too many songs, too much noise. And when he got out, he was going to destroy the voices of the world.” He crossed his arms tight. “All of them.”

  Damn. That really didn’t make it sound like Milus Dei was his only target.

  Maybe we’d have to stop him after all.

  CHAPTER 24

  The basic plan was for me to handle all the locks, and Donatti to handle making us both invisible — something he assured me was easy.

  I wasn’t quite convinced of that yet.

  I parked a good five blocks from the building. Even if Frost happened by and recognized my van, she couldn’t do anything about a legally parked vehicle. I still hoped we were long gone before that could happen.

  We got out, and Donatti scanned the area for a minute or two. “Seems kinda quiet around here,” he said. “I thought New York was supposed to be the city that never sleeps.”

  “Times Square, yes. Midtown, not so much,” I said. “This place pretty much shuts down after eight or nine. Earlier when it’s cold.”

  “Huh. So how far is the place from here?”

  “Three blocks up, two blocks left.”

  He took another minute to look around. “Okay, we might as well go invisible now,” he said. “If they’re Feds, they have cameras, and we don’t want them to see us coming. Grab my jacket.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s that or hold my hand,” he said with a grin. “We have to be in contact for this to work. And keep in mind that if you let go, you’re visible.”

  I grabbed his jacket.

  I expected to feel something when it happened. Maybe a sense of weightlessness, or at least extremely weird that I wasn’t there anymore. But all that happened was I got kind of shimmery around the edges, like heat rolling off blacktop on a summer day.

  “Um. Does it take a few minutes to work?” I said.

  Donatti laughed. “Doesn’t look like it, but it’s working now.”

  “So we’re invisible.”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t so sure about it either, at least the first few times,” he said. “Ian told me I’d probably been doing it a long time without even realizing, because it’s instinct for the djinn. Basic magic they use all the time.” He shrugged. “It explained why all my partners kept getting caught, and I didn’t.”

  “Caught doing what?”

  “Stealing shit.”

  “Oh.” I noticed he said ‘they’ instead of ‘us’ when he talked about the djinn. Wouldn’t mention it right now, but I sympathized. I still didn’t feel that I could call myself a Fae. “So the invisible thing’s kind of like glamour,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “What’s glamour?”

  “Basic Fae magic. It changes their appearance, so they look more human,” I said. “I guess it’s something I’ve been doing by instinct all my life.”

  “Wait. You don’t actually look human?”

  I smirked. “A lot more human than a full Fae. But if I drop my glamour, yeah, there’s a few obvious differences,” I said. “You should see Taeral without glamour. He’s terrifying.”

  “More than he already is?”

  I laughed. “You know, I think he’d be way too pleased with himself if he heard you say that. So do me a favor and don’t tell him.”

  “My lips are sealed,” he said. “And we’d better get moving. Do you know where the body is in the building?”

  “In the basement. They have a morgue set up down there.”

  “Well, that sounds horrifying.”

  Sometimes I forgot that most people weren’t as used to dead bodies as me. “It’s not so bad,” I said. “But I’m going to have to talk out loud, once we find Orville. I’m guessing people can still hear us when we’re invisible?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “All right.” I figured as much. And I knew we wouldn’t be lucky enough to run into absolutely no one alive in there. “If there’s anyone around in the basement, I’ll take care of them. Okay?”

  He frowned slightly. “Sure, man. It’s your show.”

  I felt a little bad leaving him in the dark, but I hadn’t seen him fight yet — and I didn’t want anyone getting hurt. I could just put people to sleep. But there was another reason I’d asked him not to do anything.

  Milus Dei didn’t seem to know anything about the djinn. And it was in everyone’s best interests to keep it that way.

  CHAPTER 25

  Once we got to the building, I let Donatti take the lead. Breaking in was his specialty.

  Without speaking, he walked us around the outside of the place three times. He moved slowly, and seemed to inspect every inch of the building. He was right about the cameras. I hadn’t been looking when I was here before, since I was too busy fuming at Frost. But there were at least four exterior surveillance cameras — and probably more I didn’t see.

  One time when we came around the front corner, a harried-looking blonde woman in a trench coat rushed outside and headed straight for us. It was all I could do to remember I was supposedly invisible, hold still, and stay quiet.

  She passed within six inches of Donatti and never looked twice.

  By the time my heart started beating normally again, he’d stopped at a blank metal door around the back of the building. An experimental push didn’t open it. I whispered the spell, and the click of the latch seemed as loud as a gunshot.

  No agents rushed out with guns blazing. And the door opened onto grated metal service stairs, the kind that only maintenance people were likely to use.

  Either that was a lucky guess, or Donatti was really good at building layouts.

  We took the stairs down one flight. They ended at another featureless locked door, and beyond that was a service corridor that went straight ahead for twenty feet, then branched left and right. I figured we’d stop and decide which way to turn, but Donatti hung left without hesitation.

  He really was good.

  A few more turns brought us to a door with a diamond grille window. Through it was the makeshift morgue. I knew it wouldn’t be deserted, but at least there were only two living people inside. Neither of them Frost.

  One man in scrubs, gloves and mask worked on a mutilated body I assumed was Wurther. Hadn’t seen his face when I talked to him before. He looked like the decent guy he’d seemed … or at least he would have, if his expression wasn’t frozen in abject terror. The other breathing occupant of the room was an armed agent, leaning on a counter and talking on a phone.

  Donatti made an abrupt gagging sound. “Not so bad?” he whispered.

  “Well, I’ve seen worse,” I whispered back.

  “Ergh. Lucky you.”

  I smirked an acknowledgment. “Remember, I’ve got this,” I said. “Just walk toward them, okay?”

  When he nodded, I unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  The examiner looked up immediately and the eyes above the mask narrowed in confusion as we approached, but his stare was directed at the door. As far as he knew, it’d opened by itself. It took the agent another few seconds to catch up. He ended his call, frowned across the room and said, “Hey, Doc. You open the door?”

  Before the doctor could respond, I gestured at them. “Beith na cohdal.”

  Both men blinked rapidly and slumped to the floor.

  I felt Donatti tense in shock. There was a long silence, and I figured he was about to ask if I’d killed
them.

  The silence was broken by gentle snores from the agent.

  “You put them to sleep?” he whispered.

  “Yeah. This way.” I led him toward the fogged-over plastic strip curtain on the far side of the room. Once we were through, I released my grip on his jacket. The shimmer surrounding me disappeared. “That was easier than I thought,” I said.

  “It was.” Uncertainty etched his tone as he said, “But in my experience, if a place is easy to break into, it’s damn near impossible to get out of.” He flashed into view beside me and stared. “So, er … those are all dead bodies?”

  I nodded.

  Twelve sheet-draped wheeled tables lined the cooler, six to a side. Beneath the faint blue overhead lights, they looked like sleeping ghosts. The most unsettling thing to me was the absence of something that probably would’ve disturbed Donatti even more. A dozen gruesome murders, but not a single drop of blood on the sheets.

  “This is pretty much no-turning-around now,” I said. “Let’s hope we get lucky, and I can get this over with before anyone else comes down here.”

  “Yeah, I don’t have such a great track record in the luck department,” Donatti murmured.

  “We’ll be fine.” My words lacked reassurance, but at least they had good intentions.

  I hesitated just for a second before I lifted the first sheet. It was Jerilee, the girl who’d cleaned me up between beatings when the Valentines captured me in the swamps. She’d always been the least cruel out of the whole family — but even she’d accused me of being a monster.

  And I still felt sorry for her. It was obvious she’d died badly.

  As I dropped the sheet and moved down the line, Donatti said, “I’d help, but I don’t know which one you’re looking for.”

  “Black hair, black whiskers, big greasy bastard, mean as dirt,” I said without looking. Didn’t bother lifting the sheet after Jerilee. The slim figure beneath was just a kid, and I assumed it was Garth. Next to him, the pronounced bulge in the middle of the sheet indicated his pregnant mother. I couldn’t bear to look at either of them.