Hexbreaker - Jordan L. Hawk

by Jordan L. Hawk

  The wild fury drained from her face, and her mouth twisted contemptuously. “Those fools? Thinking they’re going to bring down society with a few bombs, as if the police and the army wouldn’t crush them like insects. They might be useful tools, but nothing more. But you…we could have used your help. If you hadn’t turned traitor.”

  She reached into the pocket of her shabby coat and pulled out the gun they’d taken from him earlier. “I had to talk to you, one last time. Just to know for sure. But now we’re done.”

  “Yes, we are,” said Cicero from the stairs.

  Tom flung all his weight to one side, bringing the chair crashing down—and hopefully making his head less of a target in the process. Heavy boots thudded from above, and a swarm of witches poured into the small basement.

  Molly didn’t waste time fighting a losing battle. She shifted into goshawk shape and took off. An owl and crow—Athene and Rook—cut through the air to intercept her, but she was far more agile than either of them. In a moment, she’d vanished out the broken window. The other two familiars went after her, but Tom’s heart sank. Molly was fast as an arrow—they’d never catch her on the wing.

  Cicero knelt by him. “Tom? Tom? Are you all right?” His fingers caressed Tom’s face frantically.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just untie me.”

  “I’m so sorry I left you, but I didn’t know what else to do,” Cicero said as he set to work on the knots. All around them, the MWP detectives fanned out through the room. Several headed down into the tunnels, while the rest inspected what little there was to see in the basement. “I sent Rook to get reinforcements for a raid and used our bond to track you here.”

  Tom sat up, rubbing his wrists. Cicero flung himself into Tom’s arms. “I was so afraid for you,” he whispered against Tom’s neck.

  Tom closed his eyes. He embraced Cicero, pulling him close. Trying to memorize the feel of Cicero in his arms, the smell of his hair.

  Because it was the last time he’d ever hold his lover. His familiar.

  Ferguson stood in the midst of the room, tapping his foot impatiently. “Report, Halloran,” he ordered.

  Tom gently disengaged from Cicero and crossed the room to Ferguson. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and looked the chief in the eyes.

  “My name is Liam O’Connell, and I have a confession to make concerning the Cherry Street Riots.”

  Tom sat in yet another chair, although this time it was handcuffs and not ropes binding his wrists in front of him. Much like the basement he’d been held in, the interrogation room was a small chamber beneath the Coven, with only a table and a few chairs.

  He’d been photographed, and the old picture brought from the rogues gallery to compare. The MWP familiars who had photographed and escorted him were strangers, which was a blessing. He couldn’t have stood it if the judging eyes belonged to Dominic or Rook.

  The respite had only been temporary, of course. Once he’d been secured, the others had come into the room. Ferguson and Athene. Dominic and Rook. A secretary to take notes.

  And Cicero.

  He’d hoped—truly hoped—that they wouldn’t let Cicero in, since he’d quit the MWP. As it was, Tom stared at his hands, unable to bear to look at his familiar. How could he stand to see the disappointment, the misery, the hurt, and know he was the cause?

  “All right,” Ferguson said. “You have a confession to make. Confess.”

  “My name is William O’Connell,” he said heavily. “My parents were Michael and Sally O’Connell, of the O’Connell gang. My brother was a witch, Danny O’Connell. Molly—the goshawk—was his familiar.”

  There came the creak of a chair as Ferguson shifted. “Have you been working with her all along?”

  “Nay!” Tom looked up in shock, glimpsed judging, angry faces, and hurriedly dropped his gaze again. “I didn’t know she was even alive until tonight. I thought she’d died in the riots with all the others.”

  “Yes, what about the riots?” Ferguson asked. “I take it there’s some connection?”

  Tom nodded. “We were a tunnel gang,” he said. “For the most part, anyway. We’d steal cargo from the docks, from other river pirates, from wherever we could. I’m a hexbreaker, so the official cargo seals and the like were easy enough to get through. We could open any crate. Then one day, another gang came around, looking to make an alliance in exchange for use of my power.”

  He talked until his throat was dry. Told them everything: about the Muskrats, and Da stealing the book when Liam sensed the hexes, and Molly figuring out what they were for.

  “And your father decided to use them?” Ferguson asked.

  It sounded so stupid now. “He thought he knew what they did. He didn’t realize.” Tom’s eyes ached, and he wondered dimly what time it was, and how long it had been since he’d slept in his bed, Cicero curled beside him. “Da challenged the other gangs for control of the waterfront.” Tom closed his eyes. “I argued with him, before the fight started.”

  “Not to use the hexes?”

  “Don’t be daft. He was my Da, wasn’t he? I got mad because I was left out. Da said there weren’t enough hexes to go around, so he and Danny and the others would take the ones we had. I was a better fighter than Danny, or so I thought.” He laughed, but there was no humor to it. “When you’re seventeen, you want to think you’re the best at everything, don’t you? I was so angry when Da said no.” He cleared his throat against the sudden constriction. “I guess he saved my life.”

  Ferguson made a note. “These hexes didn’t depend on taking a second one? Just the single hex?”

  “Right.” The cuffs around Tom’s wrists chimed softly as he shifted his hands. He stilled quickly. “The new ones are different, somehow. They don’t look quite the same.”

  “You knew.” Dominic’s voice, thick with anger. “The whole time when Owen and I were trying to unlock the secrets of the hexes, you knew, and you didn’t say anything.”

  Tom’s heart felt like a lump of slag in his chest. “Aye. It seemed like Owen and you had worked it out pretty well. I didn’t think…”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “Detective Kopecky,” Ferguson said. “Allow me to remind you that you weren’t supposed to be working on this case at all. The riots, O’Connell.”

  It took Tom a moment to realize the last was directed at him. He’d been Tom Halloran so long, his proper name seemed like something foreign to his ears. “You can imagine what happened. Everyone who used the hex went insane. Their eyes turned bloody, and they just started attacking everyone around them: friend, enemy, it didn’t matter. And not with knives and cudgels—with their nails, their teeth. Like mad dogs.” He swallowed, but there was no moisture left in his throat. “Ma and some of the others who didn’t fight were watching from the side. The hexed men turned on them, too. Da tore into her face with his teeth.”

  His voice cracked. The silence in the little room was utter. Not a shift of cloth or even a whisper of breath interrupted it.

  “Old Mogs knocked over a lantern, chasing after his sister when she fled into the nearest building to escape him. It was a tenement, and the fire hexes hadn’t been kept up. The whole thing was ablaze in minutes, the downstairs at least, so nobody could get out.” He swallowed. “People were screaming. Innocent people, women and children, who didn’t have nothing to do with our fight. They jumped and died on the street, or else burned to ashes inside. And while it was burning, Danny came after me.”

  He didn’t dare shut his eyes, for fear of seeing his brother’s face in the darkness behind them. “I held him off, but it was only a matter of time before he overwhelmed me. Molly started screaming at me to break the hex on him. So I did.”

  “And?” Ferguson prodded when Tom paused too long.

  “He died.” A tear slipped down Tom’s face, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away. No one else was going to cry for the dead of the O’Connell gang, were they? Just Molly and him. “It killed him. I kil
led him.” He licked dry lips. “And then I did the same to Da, knowing it would mean his death. And to all the rest who were still alive, men I’d known my whole life.”

  The chair creaked beneath him as he shifted his weight. “When it was over, they were all dead. Danny, Da. Ma. I figured Molly was dead too, but I didn’t have time to look for her body. I grabbed all the hexes I could find, and I ran before the coppers could arrive. And I burned the damn things first chance I got, because they weren’t from Saint Mary like we thought. They were straight from the devil himself.”

  “I see.” Ferguson shuffled some papers on the table in front of him. Tom’s file, maybe? Or Liam’s? “And Thomas Halloran?”

  “I didn’t kill him, I swear,” Tom said. “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but it’s the truth. I’d had my fill of death. After the riots…I didn’t have anything. Anyone. Nowhere to live, no job, and nothing but screams and blood in my head every time I closed my eyes. It was winter, and cold as Satan’s heart. I was walking on Water Street, just trying to keep warm, when I found him. Not far from a saloon, so if I had to guess, the poor bastard got through Castle Garden and went straight to get a drink to celebrate making it to America. He’d passed out, and after a few hours in the cold with nothing to keep him warm but a threadbare coat…well, he wasn’t waking up again. I dug into his pockets, hoping for a few coins. Not like he needed them anymore, right? I found a couple of dollars—and a letter.”

  “A letter of recommendation,” Ferguson supplied. Tom’s file, then. “To a precinct captain here, from an Irish constable in Dublin.”

  “Aye.” Tom stared fixedly at his hands. “It was a job, wasn’t it? I didn’t figure it would last long, just until Halloran’s family back in Ireland started wondering why they never heard from him, and wrote to the captain asking if he’d arrived. But that never happened. Maybe they were all dead, or maybe they’d had a falling out, I don’t know. So I took a dead man’s name, and spent the last eight years pretending I was him and trying to forget the past.”

  “Until Barshtein’s death.” Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Ferguson lean forward.

  “Aye. It reminded me too much of what the hexes did to Danny and the rest. The bloody eyes. The biting and clawing. I didn’t want to believe there was a connection, but I had to be sure.”

  “Why?” Rook asked.

  “He was one of mine, wasn’t he? Barshtein, I mean. I didn’t know him well, but he was on my beat, and that made him my responsibility.” Tom shrugged. “Da always said to look after those as needed you. Well, it was too late for Mr. Barshtein, but maybe not too late for everyone else.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Besides, if you’d been on Cherry Street that night, seen what I did, you wouldn’t have to ask. I couldn’t let that happen again. No one could.”

  “Except, apparently, the familiar Molly,” Ferguson said. “What does she have planned?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ferguson’s voice rose and took on a hostile edge. “Sloane and Kearny have gone to ground, and there’s no trace of Janowski, either. What are they up to, O’Connell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are you holding back this time?”

  “Nothing!”

  “You lying son of a bitch!” Cicero shouted. Tom lifted his head, just in time to see Cicero’s hand flying at his face.

  The slap stung, and Tom jerked back. “Tell him, maledetto stronzo!” Cicero screamed. “Tell him, you fucking—”

  “Stop!” Rook grabbed Cicero by the arms, pulling him away from Tom. Unable to hit him again, Cicero spat into Tom’s face.

  It was far more painful than the blow.

  “Cicero,” he managed as spittle trickled down his burning cheek. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

  Cicero’s green eyes burned with rage—but tears dampened his lashes as well. “It was all a lie. Every word you spoke. Everything we had.”

  Tom felt as though his chest was nothing but a raw, gaping wound. “Nay. Please, don’t think that. It was real.”

  “Get Cicero out of here,” Ferguson ordered.

  Rook started to steer Cicero to the door. Cicero wrenched free and shook himself off. Then, without so much as a glance back at Tom, he stalked out.

  It felt as though all the air and light in the room—in the world—went with him.

  “As for you, O’Connell,” Ferguson said, “do you have anything else to say?”

  Tom felt as though the last hour had hollowed him out and left nothing behind. “Nay. I’m done.”

  Ferguson rose to his feet and turned to one of the familiars who had escorted Tom earlier. “Take him to the Tombs.”

  Hours later, Cicero curled up on the pillows in Noah’s apartment above Techne, his paws tucked beneath him and his heart full of misery.

  He’d stumbled out of the Coven, ignoring Rook’s urgent pleas to stay. What would have been the point? He wasn’t an MWP familiar anymore. If he hadn’t bonded, he could have returned, but a familiar bound to a criminal was of no use to them.

  There was nowhere left for him to go. Not the familiar barracks, or the apartment where Tom had made love to him…

  No. Where Liam had lied to him.

  Perhaps there was one place that might still welcome him, though. Assuming Noah wasn’t too angry about their argument on Christmas. If he was, Cicero didn’t know what he’d do.

  He’d staggered into Techne like a sleepwalker in a nightmare. And thank God, Noah had hurried to him. Taken him upstairs, told him to stay as long as he needed.

  Once alone, Cicero took cat form, because it meant he couldn’t cry. He’d been humiliated enough; no need to add tears to the mix. But wearing his fur reminded him of yesterday in Tom’s apartment, when he’d rubbed his head on everything he could reach. Thinking it was the start of their life together…

  But it had been nothing but a lie, from beginning to end.

  Why had he ever let himself trust Tom? He should have clung to his first, horrified reaction and not given Tom the chance to worm his way into his heart. But he hadn’t. And Tom had spun his lies, convinced Cicero he was a decent man. The way he’d smiled, his kindness, his touch. It had all been so good. They had been so good.

  Except they hadn’t, had they? Because Thomas Halloran was just a fiction. Cicero had never seen anything but a mask, worn by a criminal who had tricked him into bonding.

  He’d fooled Cicero into feeling so safe. Safe, with a man who’d grown up in the violent tunnel gangs, who’d been responsible for who knew how many fights, how many beatings, how many robberies.

  Safe, with a man who admitted to murdering his own father and brother.

  God, was what he’d said true? Had he really seen his father tear off his mother’s face? Felt his brother collapse in his arms?

  No. No, Cicero could not feel bad for Tom. Liam. He couldn’t feel bad for Liam, because the man was nothing if not manipulative. Look how he’d convinced the people of his neighborhood that he cared about them.

  Although if he didn’t, then why had he been so determined to solve the mystery of Barshtein’s death, even when it jeopardized his deception?

  He’d rot in the Tombs until Monday, when the judges came back. Served him right.

  There wasn’t any heat in the jail. Was he cold?

  The door opened, and Noah stepped inside. “Cicero?” He shut the door behind him and crossed the room. “I closed the café early. Will you talk to me?”

  Cicero shifted back into his human skin. He’d been so angry at Noah’s assumptions, his possessiveness. But Noah had, in his own clumsy way, been trying to protect Cicero. And instead of listening to his friend, he’d gone off with Tom.

  God, what a fool he’d been.

  “Thank you for letting me in,” Cicero said, because he didn’t know how else to begin. How to start to unravel the hot ball of pain and rage and humiliation knotted in his chest.

  “Of course.” Noah sat
beside him and put his hand to Cicero’s shoulder. “Now, tell me what’s wrong, so I can help you.”

  “No one can help me.” To his horror, Cicero felt tears threatening to slip free. “I’ve made a terrible mistake, and now I’m stuck with it for the rest of my life, and I…and I…”

  Once the first sob escaped him, he couldn’t seem to stop. Noah enfolded him in a warm embrace, stroking Cicero’s hair while he choked out the whole sorry story.

  When he was done, Noah sighed. “I knew there was something off about him,” he said. “I don’t want to say I told you so, but…”

  “I know; I know.” Cicero sat back and wiped his eyes. His hand came away smeared with kohl. He must look a mess. “I should have listened that day, but when you said I was yours, it made me feel…I don’t know.” He sniffled. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Exactly right.” Noah caught Cicero’s head and tilted it up, so Cicero had no choice but to look at him. “Don’t worry. I forgive you.”

  Cicero let out a half laugh. “How generous of you.”

  But Noah’s serious expression didn’t change. “It is,” he agreed. “I could be angry at you, bonding with Halloran—O’Connell—instead of me. But we can put it to rights. Very soon, this will all be the past, and we’ll be together. I’ll have a golden collar made for you. It will look so pretty on your fur.”

  The words sent a little chill through Cicero, and he drew back. “Not funny, Noah.”

  “Am I laughing?” Noah caught Cicero’s wrist to keep him from pulling away any farther. “You’ve realized your mistake. Soon you’ll be free of Halloran, and once I’ve taken care of other business, you’ll bond with me.”

  “That isn’t how it works.” Cicero’s pulse beat hard at the base of his throat, because Noah knew that. “The bond can’t be broken—”

  It hit him like a spear sliding between his ribs; a sharp, tearing pain out of nowhere. He screamed involuntarily, and the world turned briefly red. Saint Mary, it hurt—was he dying? Having a heart attack?

  “Except by death,” Noah finished. “Exactly.”