There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6)

by Sharon Hannaford

  It was the entertainment room. She was on the thick shagpile rug on the floor near the fireplace. Julius was curled around her, spooning her from behind; from the heaviness of his arm he was in daysleep. It was daylight. A small rug covered them, though just barely. She moved his arm and sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her clothing and Julius’s was strewn haphazardly around the room. She groaned as reality flooded in and threw herself towards the jacket hanging over the back of the sofa to find her ringing phone.

  “Kyle,” she rasped before clearing her throat. “What’s new?”

  Razor yawned and stretched, rising from where he’d been sleeping on one of the single sofas.

  “You managed to get some sleep?” Kyle sounded surprised as she switched to speakerphone and put the phone on the nearest table while she searched for the rest of her clothing.

  “Yes, a bit,” she hedged. “What’s the time?”

  “You sound like you could do with some more,” Kyle commented. “You haven’t sounded this grumpy for ages.” She was groggy enough that she knew she’d had less than three hours’ sleep. She was pretty lucid on four hours these days and could get by on three, but less than that wasn’t good. She located her undies, a minor triumph, but her bra was AWOL.

  “Kyle.” She put all the deadly warning she could muster into her tone.

  “Okay, okay, kid gloves today, I promise.” But she could hear the grin in his voice. “It’s just before seven.”

  “AM?” she groused, her voice going up several octaves in indignation. “This better be good.”

  “Benedict called me,” Kyle said. “Apparently he couldn’t get you on the phone and needed to get on a plane.” The mention of the Princep sent a shot of adrenalin through her, clearing the last of the fuzziness from her brain. She found her bra behind the bar counter.

  “Does he have any information?” Gabi asked, anxiety taking up residence in the pit of her stomach again. “What did he say?”

  “He’s dug up some rumours about the Decuria and their Number One,” Kyle explained as she pulled on her rumpled blouse and pants. Her sensitive nose told her that she urgently needed a shower and some clean clothes. “He found out about a secret online forum that Trish is trying to crack into. I figured you’d want to come down here as soon as possible. We’re at CenOps.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes to freshen up, and I’ll be on my way,” she told him, grabbing her jacket, boots and the phone as she headed towards the door with Razor at her heels.

  “Oh, shit,” she cursed as she tried the door handle.

  “What’s up?” Kyle asked, immediately on the alert.

  “Never mind,” she said through clenched teeth. “Make that twenty minutes.”

  “Gabi?” Kyle said, drawing out her name. “What have you done?” There it was, the ‘big brother just caught little sister doing something stupid’ tone.

  “None of your business,” she said, her finger hovering over the ‘end call’ logo.

  “I’ll get Trish to access the mansion’s security footage,” Kyle warned.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed.

  Silence met her statement.

  “Fine,” she huffed. “I’m locked in. Julius locked the door to the bar with his mind last night, and now he’s in daysleep. There is no key.”

  A weird garbled sound came over the speakerphone.

  “You had better not be laughing, Mr Kyle Robson,” she ground out, but the ridiculousness of the situation even had her working not to laugh.

  Patrick, Julius’s pragmatic head of daytime security, had taken her situation perfectly in stride after her call asking if he had a master key, though she was sure she’d detected a glint of amusement in his eyes as he’d opened the door for her. Fergus had brought him up to speed on the events of the previous night, so he didn’t hold her up with questions, just assured her that Sicarius was well guarded and everything else was under control. She’d paused only long enough to fill him in on where she was going and asking him to keep the cleaning staff away from Julius while he slept, before hurriedly feeding Razor and rushing upstairs for a shower and clean clothes.

  She made it to CenOps in less than an hour, only one step short of a miracle in early morning traffic. The central operations hive of the Werewolf Alliance was housed in an underground bunker. Walking down into it was like stepping into an unusually comforting amalgamation of the starship Enterprise control deck and Home & Style magazine. State-of-the-art tech equipment filled a large, warm, well-decorated space, including a small seating area complete with sofa beds and a well-stocked kitchenette. Gabi knew there was also a small sleeping chamber with a couple of bunk beds and a shower room. Trish had added a few more decorative touches since Gabi had last been there, and there was a new, extra-large projector screen hanging from one of the walls.

  Trish bounded from her seat as soon as she saw Gabi and enveloped her in a just-shy-of-bone-crushing hug.

  “You holding up alright?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” Gabi assured her. And found it was true. The shock of the previous day had worn off, and steely determination had taken its place. They would get her mother back, and God help Eka and the rest of the Decuria if they’d dared to harm her.

  “You made it out of captivity, I see.” Kyle grinned at her, sitting up from his position stretched out on one of the sofas. He had dark rings under his eyes that matched his mate’s.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” Gabi retorted. “Coffee.” She pointed imperiously at the kitchenette, and Kyle obliged with a last chuckle.

  “What’s the news?” Gabi turned back to Trish, who had retaken her seat at her workstation.

  “Hang on, let me just…” Trish clicked a few keys on one of several keyboards, and a monitor to Gabi’s right flared to life. Murphy’s yawning face appeared. The dark rings under his eyes mirrored the rest of theirs but, by his rumpled appearance, he’d managed to get a couple of hours’ shut-eye. He saluted them all with a large, steaming coffee mug.

  “I’m just getting up to speed. Give me a minute,” he told them as the sound of computers and printers coming to life stirred up the background noise. “Right, I’ve got the IP address you sent, Trish. How far in are you?”

  “I’ve cracked the first two firewalls,” Trish told him, “but I’m going to need help with…” They spun off into computer geek talk and lost Gabi, so she turned to Kyle. He was balancing a tray with three cups of coffee and an open bag of cookies on one hand. He put a cup of coffee and a pile of choc-chip cookies at Trish’s left elbow and nudged Gabi over to the sofas. The warm mug felt good in her hands; even instant coffee smelled like ambrosia this morning.

  “Benedict was on his way back to Court to try to confirm a rumour he’s heard,” Kyle explained, dunking a cookie in his coffee and shoving the entire thing in his mouth. He chewed briefly and swallowed. “He thinks there’s a rift in the Decuria, that the rest of them are out to depose—i.e., kill or otherwise destroy—Eka. The forum Trish is trying to crack into is the place they leave messages for each other. Well, we’re hoping it is.”

  “How has Benedict come by this information?” Gabi asked, amazed and ever so slightly suspicious.

  “You know him.” Kyle grimaced, shoving another cookie in his mouth. “Secretive doesn’t even begin to describe that Vampire. I’m guessing it was through some use of his extra abilities, but he didn’t offer much explanation.”

  Gabi nibbled on a cookie, but realised she needed something more; she hadn’t eaten nearly enough the previous day.

  Kyle read her expression. “Are your protective detail outside?” he checked.

  She nodded; Ross and Rory were back on duty and waiting in their car.

  “There’s a great little place down the road; I’ll phone an order in for breakfast. Tell them to collect from Carla’s Diner on Wallace Street.”

  With a Werewolf-size helping of bacon, eggs, hash browns, sausages and warm English muffins filling her belly, Gabi felt ready to
take on the Decuria, the Centuria and anyone else who felt like fucking with them this week. She helped Kyle clear away the empty food containers before going to stand behind Trish, knowing that she wouldn’t have a clue what was happening on the screen, but needing to be involved somehow.

  “Yes,” Trish crowed.

  “That’s it, last wall down.” Murphy’s voice echoed Trish’s excitement.

  “Now let’s see what we have.” Trish’s fingers stopped their rapid key-tapping, and the monitor in front of her began filling with row upon row of characters. None of it made any sense to Gabi. “Hang on. Murphy, can you send me that master key for the decoding software I helped you create last month?”

  “Sure thing,” Murphy replied, swinging around in his chair.

  “I’ll run this through the decoder,” Trish explained to Gabi. “Murphy and I finished developing the software just a few weeks ago, and this will be a beta test for it. If it doesn’t work, it could take us a while to decode manually. Hold thumbs.” A message icon popped up on the bottom of one of her screens and her fingers flew across the keyboard again. Gabi wondered if she ever got cramp or tied her fingers in knots.

  “Turn the camera, you’re killing me,” Murphy said, leaning forward in his seat, the tattoos on the side of his face leering at them from the screen.

  Trish adjusted a camera to her left, aiming it at her screen, and sat back a little. The characters on the screen began to flicker, some disappearing, some changing, several even changing colour.

  “Amateurs,” Murphy sniffed. “They were putting all their faith in the firewalls.”

  Trish nodded. “They’ve added some noise; let me just apply the filter…there we go.” The characters finally resolved themselves into distinct individual messages, each with a small icon at the side.

  Gabi’s eyes flew over the information. It was a conversation between at least four different people, each of them using an icon instead of a name.

  “This icon,” Trish pointed to one of them, “is the Chinese symbol for two.”

  “And the third one down looks like a representation of the major compass points,” Kyle mused. Silence fell as they tried to connect the dots.

  “Four compass points?” Murphy suggested.

  Ah, Gabi got it. “These are the other members of the Decuria; they each go by a number,” she said excitedly.

  Trish quickly highlighted the fourth icon and another screen came to life on Gabi’s right. A Google search page opened and the highlighted icon appeared. “It’s Zayden, number seven in the Hebrew number system.”

  “And that last one is the symbol for Gamma, third letter of the Greek alphabet,” Murphy said, the piercings in his eyebrow twitching in his excitement.

  “So,” Kyle leaned in towards the main screen, “we have numbers two, three, four and seven. That would be quite a powerful group.”

  “And this is only the conversation from the last couple of weeks. It’s possible there are more messages hidden somewhere and more of them involved,” Trish pointed out.

  “Right,” Gabi said. “Let’s see what mischief they’re planning.”

  “Um, wow,” Murphy said twenty minutes later. “That’s full on.”

  Gabi couldn’t disagree.

  “There is infighting and personal clashes in every organisation on earth, even the supernatural ones.” Trish was pragmatic about it. Being Alpha female of one of the fastest-growing Werewolf Packs in the greater region put her in a position to know.

  “This has to be good news for us though, right?” Murphy asked.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Gabi replied. “It’s drawn us deeper into a game we never wanted to be a part of.”

  “But an enemy divided…” Murphy persisted. He had more reason than most to want to see the Decuria get their comeuppance. They’d shattered his life, altered his perceptions of the world, and used him for their own gain. Though he seemed content with his new life, it hadn’t come about through his own choices. That had to be tough to swallow.

  “This should at least give us some insight into Eka’s motives,” Kyle mused. “I wonder what would happen if we fed him to the wolves? Figuratively, of course.” He grinned at his own joke.

  “I think that may bring dire consequences.” Gabi couldn’t find the humour in the situation. “If what they’re saying is true, then this Eka is the least militant of the bunch. He’s keeping the others from going to extreme measures. If he’s taken out, who knows what the rest of them may decide to do to shake things up.”

  “So you think we need to find a way to protect this guy?” Murphy’s voice rose an octave in his incredulity.

  Gabi sighed hugely. “I’m not sure what I’m saying,” she said. “We need to tell the others and see what they think, but I do agree that this is very important information to have. You guys are unbelievable.” And she meant every word. Without Trish and Murphy, life would be so much more difficult.

  She yawned then and stretched stiff muscles as Trish handed her a stack of printed pages, her cheeks a happy pink blush. And then Kyle’s phone vibrated loudly. Half a second later Trish’s did too, and then a bright red message box appeared in the centre of her main computer screen.

  “Hot dang it,” Trish whispered. Gabi had been threatening to teach her some proper curse words, but hadn’t found the time yet. She needed to make it more of a priority. “Demon sighting.”

  Kyle was already opening a large floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Dozens of weapons in neat, orderly rows lined the interior. Gabi noted a few old favourites, but mostly Mac’s newer creations, honed and perfected in a joint effort between him and Savannah. It was a serious arsenal.

  Gabi glanced at her watch; it wasn’t even nine in the morning.

  “You guys don’t seem all that surprised to have a demon sighting in broad daylight.” She raised an eyebrow at Trish as Kyle strapped on weapons and protective clothing. Her friend shrugged a little and tried to hide a flash of guilt as she glanced at Kyle.

  “It’s been happening with more frequency over the last couple of weeks,” Kyle told her. “The Veil seems to be weaker at certain times of the day, but we can’t get a straight answer out of any of the Magi.”

  “How are you keeping this off of social media?” Gabi had never heard of demons crossing the Veil during the day before. This wasn’t good, and they’d been keeping it from her, probably worried that she already had enough to deal with.

  Trish blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s keeping us extremely busy. We’ve had to train extra staff, but Byron has been consulting and helping out. He’s an absolute gem when it comes to putting a spin on something unusual. The paranormal investigation groups are the hardest to deal with, but, fortunately for us, not too many people take note of what they say anymore. Even when the evidence is compelling, there’s always a human sceptic out there who will point out some imaginary flaw in it. Don’t worry, we have it under control.”

  Gabi made a quick decision. “Throw me some weapons; I’m coming with,” she told Kyle.

  “You have a much bigger problem to deal with, Gabs. Go sort that out,” he told her. “This may even be a false alarm; we get some of those too.”

  “It’s still early,” she countered, pushing him out of the way to peruse the repository. “Julius needs a few more hours’ sleep before I wake him and tell him what we found out; I’ll just be pacing the floorboards. I’ll take my own car. If this drags out, I’ll head back. But right now,” she hefted a MacDartgun in her right hand and a MacCrossbow in her left, “I feel like a fight.” The prospect of a good, physical brawl with a butt-ugly denizen of the Etherworld had her adrenalin pumping in a good way. A really good way.

  Kyle hadn’t paused in his preparations. “Fine, just make sure you can keep up,” he teased. “You’re probably a little rusty, and you know how I hate patching you up afterward. You’re such a ninny.”

  “I’ll be the one fixing you up, Wolf,” Gabi retorted, “just like old times.” They’d
patched each other up more times than Gabi cared to remember, at one time there’d been a running tally, but that seemed like a very long time ago.

  Gabi navigated the BMW through side roads and backstreets, impatience gnawing at her. Kyle had taken a motorbike, a new vivid green Kawasaki, instead of his van. The tail end of morning rush hour could be hell, and a car was a liability if you were in a hurry. Fortunately, there were no gridlocks, so she wasn’t more than a few minutes behind Kyle. It helped to know all the backstreets and rat runs of the City. The Magi warning had specified an old sports stadium; the derelict arena was a long-time favourite entry point for demons. As Hunters for the SMV, Gabi and Kyle had fought there more than once before. She hoped Trish had been successful in calling in more help to counter any media coverage from the area. The stadium was surrounded by light industry; there would be a lot of norms in the general vicinity at this time of day.

  She spun the BMW onto the gravel parking area, where several other cars and bikes were parked. She recognised Butch’s souped-up Subaru; did he ever take time off? Lance’s red Corvette was parked alongside it; she hadn’t seen the Fire-Magus in months. He’d been a fellow Hunter for the SMV, and his ability to burn just about anything with the power of his mind was second only to Julius’s. A small silver hybrid caught her eye on the other side of the Corvette. She only knew one person who drove a hybrid. The esteemed High Magus, Athena. Now that was an interesting development. Kyle hadn’t said anything about Athena attending demon attacks recently.

  She sprang from the BMW, quickly checking her weapons as she ran towards the well-used hole in the chain-link fence. She knew Razor would be pissed with her once he smelled the weapons and knew what she’d been up to without him. She actually missed his presence. They were rarely apart these days; he was her constant, shadowy companion. But he’d been as tired as the rest of them, so when she’d found him asleep on the foot of the bed after her shower, she’d left him there.