Chicago, IL - On the Road
Liam turned to look out the back window when he heard the sound of the siren behind him.
“Fuck,” he said. He turned to Katina in the driver’s seat. She’d taken the wheel as soon as Liam sent out his magic to knock a bunch of police officers on their asses. “A cop behind us.”
“I see it,” Katina said. She stepped on the gas and blew a red light up ahead.
“Try not to get us killed,” Patrick said from the other side of the back seat. Eoin was in the middle, and Liam was happy for that. Liam wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to snuggle up close to Patrick again. Any time soon, even. Especially not in their current predicament.
“Give me some credit,” Katina said as she wheeled into a sharp turn down another side street.
Liam turned to see the cop car turn not far behind them. He’d give it a try. It had come so easily before. As they passed a parked car, Liam focused on the front end of it. He had the stone, too, and that seemed to make calling the power to him that much easier, especially after the bubble.
The front end of the car Liam focused on flipped up, and the entire vehicle did somersaults in the air until it came down in an arc. As Liam watched, the overturning vehicle stopped falling. It hung in the air for an impossible moment, then it changed direction so that the trajectory of the vehicle spun off and hit the sidewalk. There, it landed on its top and knocked out a fire hydrant. The cop car swerved, and they squealed to a stop. Which was what he wanted. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He only wanted to make it harder for them to follow.
When Liam turned back, Eoin stared hard at him.
“Did you do that?” Liam asked him.
“What?” Eoin said.
“Stop the car from falling.”
“It would have killed them.”
“I didn’t plan on killing them.”
“Dropping a car on them would have killed them,” Eoin said.
Liam faced forward again, unable to hide his frustration. He felt Eoin staring at him.
“You shouldn’t throw your magic around like that,” Eoin said. “But I didn’t stop the car from falling.”
Then who did? He let it go and turned away. “Somebody had to do something,” Liam muttered. He had to save his aunt and Nina, and he wasn’t about to let a couple of cops get in the way.
Eoin turned forward again without saying anything else, and Liam got the sense that he was being judged. Not that he cared all that much when he considered the reason why he did it. If Eoin wasn’t on board with helping them escape, then fuck him.
Still, the question nagged: If Eoin didn’t stop the car from falling on the cop car, then who did?
Zach narrowly missed the car that flew up from its parking spot and came right for them. He swerved as the shadow of the car hung over them, and he almost hit another parked car when the police cruiser squealed to a stop. She was there again. The woman.
And the car crashed down on the sidewalk. Soon the police cruiser was doused in water spouting up from a crushed fire hydrant.
When Zach turned to look for the woman, she was gone.
“What the fuck?!” Glenda gripped the dashboard.
“Did you see her?” Zach asked.
“What?” Glenda was still white-knuckling the dashboard. “Who?”
“A woman. In the street.”
Glenda stared at Zach like he’d lost his mind. In that moment, he was almost inclined to agree with her. Maybe that was the explanation for everything that happened over the past few days. “I saw a fucking car flip up out of its parking spot and almost kill us. That’s what I saw,” she said.
At least, if he was losing his mind, that part of this particular experience had a witness.
Zach’s heart pounded in his chest. “It just…”
“Yeah, I know,” Glenda said. “What the fuck have we gotten into?”
There wasn’t time, though, to try to figure out that answer. There wasn’t much he could really come up with in the spur of the moment to even explain what they’d both just witnessed. But he did pick up the police dispatch radio, and he called it in. He’d gotten the license plate number at least, and he called it in as a high-priority target.
And, while talking on the radio, he put the police cruiser in reverse and straightened out on the road again to continue the chase. He had a job to do, and something in his gut told him that Liam Yates was involved in it somehow.
Soon there were more police sirens nearby. Too close for Liam to feel comfortable. He assumed they were all heading toward the stopped cruiser and the flooding street. But, when a cop car, lights flashing and siren wailing passed them in the opposite direction then turned around, Liam knew what the sirens were coming after.
“Dammit,” he said.
“There’s another one,” Katina shouted from the front.
Liam turned around to look. They were starting to get a convoy of flashing lights. “How did they know to look for me in the first place?” Liam asked.
“Well it was your aunt’s house,” Brodie said.
“But that cop called my name. He knew what I looked like.”
“Doesn’t your aunt have pictures on her wall? Maybe he saw a high school photo hanging on a wall and did the math.”
It still didn’t make any sense.
He watched in the direction they were going. And he was one of the first in the car to scream.
Everyone else did too. Katina slammed on the brakes, and Brodie braced himself on the dashboard. Even Eoin and Patrick shouted warnings.
Apocalypse Annie was there again, standing in the middle of the street, directly in the path of the car. They were going to hit her. There was no way to stop in time to miss her.
They were all slammed forward. Liam didn’t have his seatbelt on, and he ate a mouthful of headrest. Katina grunted from the front as her seat was shoved forward by Liam’s impact. Everyone else had been smart enough to buckle up for safety. He was the only one who neglected that little public service announcement reminder.
“You saw her, right?” Katina shouted when they finally came to a stop.
“I saw her,” Brodie said from the passenger side.
“Yeah,” Patrick said.
“So where the fuck is she?” Katina shouted.
“I saw her,” Liam said. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t tell them that she’d become something of a fixture for him. But, if they were all seeing her now too, what did that mean?
By the time they got their bearings—and they all understood that there was no dead body in the middle of the street, no woman’s bloody parts splattered on the windshield—there were four cop cars screaming to a stop around them. And, as soon as they stopped, police officers were out with their weapons drawn, aiming at the car.
“What do we do now,” Katina said as she peered out the front window.
Liam knew what he was going to do, and he concentrated on building the power to do it. But Eoin put a hand on his arm.
“No,” Eoin said. “That’s not the way.”
Liam turned to him. “You know why we need to get moving.”
“I do, but there are better, more subtle ways to get out of this.”
Liam shook his head. “I can’t lose them. You get that, right?”
“Yes, I do. But, what you did back there? That’s not our way.”
The cops spoke on a loud speaker. “Get out of the car with your hands held above your head!”
“We don’t have time for this,” Liam said.
“Well, we don’t really have any choice,” Patrick said from the other side of the back seat.
Liam bent to get a better look at Patrick. “You don’t have a dog in this fight. If it wasn’t for you, my aunt and best friend wouldn’t be held by a magical maniac right now.”
“You don’t know that,” Patrick said.
“Well, I have a pretty good idea that if you hadn’t marked me for the dogs to come sniffing, Cyril might never have even
found me.”
Patrick didn’t say anything back. If anything, he looked like he’d been punched in the gut.
Liam huffed back into his seat. He stared out the window. Already there were more cop cars pulling up with their sirens blaring. People on the street were running for cover. This was Chicago, after all. Gunfire wasn’t out of the question in a lot of cases like this. Even so, there was a small contingent of rubber-neckers gathering on the sidewalk to see how everything played out. And Liam knew how it could play out. He gripped the stone in his hand. It could play out very easily, and they could just as simply be on their way.
Eoin reached up and tapped Katina on the shoulder. A silent communication passed between them, and Katina nodded. She turned and rolled down her window, and she stuck her hands out. “Coming out!” she shouted. “We’re unarmed.”
Brodie did the same, followed by Patrick.
Only Liam remained where he was, still holding onto the stone. He was reluctant. Surrendering like this felt like giving up, and that sprung tears to his eyes. He turned to Eoin. “If they die…” he said.
“They won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
Eoin took a deep breath. “I know that we’re still going to do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Liam stared at him for a moment longer. He met Eoin’s gaze, looked into his brown eyes for any sign that Eoin was just blowing smoke up his ass. But he couldn’t find any.
“Fine,” Liam said. He rolled down his window and held his hands out so the officers could see them.
“Out of the car! Slowly. One at a time,” the voice on the loud speaker ordered.
One at a time, they got out of the car.
When Liam got out, he left the stone on the back seat. If he carried it, they might mistake it for a weapon, and that was the last thing he needed to have happen. If he was shot dead, then his aunt and Nina would be killed for sure. Out of anger from Cyril if nothing else.
Eoin was the last one out of the car.
When Liam was ordered to his knees, he looked up and found Apocalypse Annie staring back at him. “Why?” he mouthed to her. As he watched her, she faded away.
And behind her was the man Liam saw briefly. The man who had called his name back at the house.
Now that Liam was able to get a closer look at him, he began to understand something with that man. He was older, perhaps in his mid to late thirties. Not bad looking at all, almost as if he could fit comfortably on a fashion magazine geared toward older men. A breathless feeling came over him, a sense of recognition not unlike what he’d felt with Patrick, though not that extreme. He didn’t think there’d be any passing out if they touched hands.
Truthfully, the man had that look about him that reminded Liam a lot of everyone else he was with. He had the look of Fae blood.
Thirty-One
Chicago, IL - Harwood Heights PD
They were taken to a nearby police station, each of them put into separate rooms. Liam waited in a rather featureless gray room with a table on one wall and three chairs. One of them was stiff and uncomfortable. The others were swivel chairs like desk chairs. Liam had a pretty good idea from watching police procedural shows which chair was his for the time being. He sat down in the stiff chair.
It wasn’t a long wait. The cop he’d seen when they were stopped, the man he was sure had Fae blood, came into the room, wordless and with a stuffed file folder underneath his arm. He was accompanied by a woman he’d seen with her gun drawn too.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Yates,” the man said. “I’m Special Agent Zachary Shepard, and this is my partner Supervisory Special Agent Glenda Alvarez.” They both offered their hands, which Liam shook, almost as if it was a meeting for a job interview or something. There was no exchange of power like with Patrick.
“FBI?” Liam asked.
Agent Shepard nodded. “There’s quite a bit of interest in you, it seems.”
“Am I under arrest?” Liam asked.
“We just have some questions,” Agent Shepard said. He took one of the office chairs while his partner, Agent Alvarez, took the other chair and rolled it back and away into the corner. She stared at Liam like he was already guilty. “The chase this morning and the property damage involved might come into play at some point, but as of right now, we’re not placing you under arrest.”
“Then I really need to be going,” Liam said.
“We can’t let you leave just yet,” Agent Shepard said.
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand that there was a murder on your campus yesterday and that you were seen on video both entering the area and leaving the area after it happened.”
That shut Liam up. The murder on campus, scar face chasing him down. It seemed like it was an eon ago, and it caught him off guard. “I had nothing to do with that,” he said, and he looked down at his hands on the top of the table.
“But you know about it,” Agent Shepard said.
Liam looked up at Agent Shepard. He was about to deny it when Apocalypse Annie appeared again.
She stood in the middle of the room, in front of where Agent Alvarez sat in her chair, and he was able to see through the woman to Alvarez. Liam turned to look at her. What did she want? And why did she never say anything?
When Liam turned back to Agent Shepard, he thought at first that he was looking at his partner. But he slowly came to realize that he was looking at the woman.
“You see her too?” Liam asked him. “Apocalypse Annie?”
Agent Shepard looked as if he was going to say something else, but he stopped short. He leaned back in the chair and assessed Liam. “Apocalypse Annie?” If he was wrong, then maybe he could put this whole thing behind him with an insanity defense.
“That’s what I call her.”
The other agent, Agent Alvarez, leaned forward, a look of confusion on her face. Liam already knew that she wasn’t a part of this, except maybe peripherally somehow due to an association with this man, her partner.
Agent Shepard swallowed. “I guess I never thought to give her a name.”
Liam straightened. “Then you do see her.” At that comment, Apocalypse Annie disappeared again.
For a moment, Liam believed Agent Shepard was almost relieved. “Several times. All over the place.”
“Dirty leather jacket, scuffed black pants?”
“And beautiful,” Agent Shepard said.
“What are you talking about?” Agent Alvarez said.
But Liam ignored her. “Then you know something else is going on, something completely out of our control and that we may be in some kind of position to stop it.”
Shepard leaned closer to Liam. “I don’t know what’s going on at all, to be completely honest. I only know there are a bunch of people dead and that it’s not entirely normal how it happened.” Shepard opened the file. “And I know that this was found at one of the crime scenes where nine people were murdered with their heads cut off.”
Liam stared down at his high-school yearbook photo. His stomach sank. Nine people murdered. Was he talking about the house? “Where did you get this picture?”
“In Seattle,” Shepard said.
A small sense of relief, even if it was tempered with a question of why his picture was found in Seattle. At least this wasn’t about the house where he’d been taken to. But he had an idea that this could help him. Maybe Eoin was right and there was some way to make this turn work in their favor. “There are a bunch more dead,” Liam said, “and one person is behind everything.”
A gleam struck in Shepard’s eye, a moment of clarity as Liam read it. “Kyriakos Holder.”
“Excuse me?” Agent Alvarez said from the corner. She stood to come closer. “Agent Shepard, can I talk to you outside for a moment?”
“Who?” Liam asked. He and Zach exchanged confused glances. “I was going to say Cyril Holder.”
“Who is Cyril Holder?”
Liam leaned forward
. He was getting somewhere. He felt it. Agent Shepard was someone who could understand. “Cyril Holder has my aunt and my best friend in captivity right now, and I need to get to them. That’s why we didn’t stop. That’s why I threw a car in your direction.”
“What the hell is going on?” Alvarez said.
“Threw a car in our direction?” Zach said over her.
Liam sat back and dipped his head. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Alvarez slammed her hand in the middle of the table, causing Liam to flinch back. “Everybody stop,” she said. Both Shepard and Liam looked at her. “I demand that somebody tell me what the fuck you two are talking about. Now!”
“Right,” Shepard said. He turned to his partner. “Remember back in San Diego when I went a little strange?”
She stared at him. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Shepard rolled his eyes. “Down in the basement area, that weird ritual room. I stepped over the circle, and I got a splitting headache.”
“Okay,” she said. “Yeah. I remember.”
“Circles are dangerous to these people,” Liam said. Shepard stared at him for a long moment.
“I saw a woman, a vision or something. I don’t know,” Shepard said.
“Apocalypse Annie,” Liam added. “I’ve been seeing her too. And it’s all tied to a stone called a lockstone.”
“A lockstone?” Shepard said.
Liam groaned inwardly. He tried to remember everything. “Look, Eoin can explain it much better than I can, but in short, there’s a big conspiracy going on to bring down a thing called the Veil, something that separates our world from Tir na Nog, a world where the Fae live.”
“Come again?” Alvarez said. She was clearly the skeptical one. The Agent Scully of the pair with Shepard turning out to be Fox Mulder.
Liam looked to her. “There’s a queen. Her name is Morgauna, and she’s head of this court called the Unseelie Court.”
Shepard looked to his partner, and something went unspoken between them, like they shared a common memory. But when Shepard nor Alvarez did anything to bring him in on the silent conversation, Liam went on.
The Stone (Lockstone Book 1) Page 36
