When I stepped back inside, I saw Stephanie in the kitchen.
She turned to face me as soon as the door opened.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Lyle, look.” She stepped out of the way, revealing an empty chair in front of the table. “He’s gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone?” I stepped past her, picking up the three cables that lay at the foot of the chair. “Where did he go? I was just in here with him. Did you see him leave?”
Stephanie shook her head, and shut the glass door. “Did you leave this open?”
“No. It was closed when I left, and I was only outside for a couple of minutes. Umara!” I called out to the back room.
Umara came out, eyes groggy, as did Carter who apparently must have been asleep himself.
Umara’s expression faded from exhausted to confused to mortified. “How did he get out? Give me that.” She took the cables from me, lacing them through her hand, examining them. “Look at this.” She showed me the metal connectors on each of the cables.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
She showed me the cables again. “Somebody let him out. The connectors were lined up with these black markers on each of them.”
“Who would have done that?” I looked at each of them. “Maybe he did it himself. Maybe the goblins did it? You said that if the goblins aren’t satisfied, they’ll turn.”
“These cables are Shaman-proof, Lyle. Somebody let him out, and I can tell you this, it wasn’t me. And look around. The goblins are all out on errands. None of them have been here for the past few hours.”
I opened the glass door, stuck my head out, peered around. There were no signs of Zakhar anywhere, and there were only two ways out of the apartment. I had been at the front door, and Stephanie had been at the back door.
No. No, no, no, no, no. Not her. Not Stephanie. I shut my eyes, stepping back into the kitchen. “Maybe he used his powers and got out. Maybe the cables failed. They could have failed, right? Can you check again?”
Umara pulled out a small pen from her pocket, then slid on a hefty rubber glove. “Stand back.”
She pressed a button on the pen near the first cable. Immediately, a violent spark snapped in the center, making electric blue lines like a spider web. She did the same with the other two. “See how loud that was? We would have at least heard it.”
“What’s the pen do?” Carter asked.
“Gives off ultrasonic waves—the same waves that Shamans use to channel Empyrean. These cables are super sensitive to Shamans.”
“Okay, well….then…try to check the scanners,” I said, gesturing to the counter.
Umara shook her head. “No need. Each of the cables works, Lyle. The scanners were here for backup. Somebody let him out, and we need to figure out who that was right now.”
I couldn’t accuse Stephanie, but everything seemed to point to her.
She touched the black elastic band around her thigh, then looked up at me, confused.
“What is it?” I asked.
Without a word, she hurried into the living room. “Oh no. Oh no,” she said. “Not good.”
“What’s not good?” Umara asked, standing next to her.
“The ankh…” Stephanie cut glances at each of us. “It’s missing. I promise, left it right here!” Stephanie pointed emphatically beside the Tiffany lamp where she claimed she’d laid the ankh.
“From what I know,” Carter said, “seems like ya’ had the ankh on you ever since I been around ya’.”
“Lyle, tell them,” Stephanie said, eyeing me. “You saw me, didn’t you? Didn’t you see me place the ankh right here before I went to bed?”
“I was in the kitchen when you went to bed, remember?”
“Yeah, but…” She ran her hand through her hair. “I’m telling you truth. You can’t possibly think I let Zakhar loose, do you, Lyle? Do you think I let him go? Do you think I was the one who took the cables off?”
I sighed heavily, hands on my hips. “All I know is that when I went outside, he was tied up, and when I came back in, he was gone, and you were standing in the kitchen.”
“You can’t be serious,” she exclaimed. “You’re blaming me for this? You’re blaming me for Zakhar getting free? If I wanted him to go free, why would I have ever come to you in the first place to help me get rid of him?”
“Because you wanted the formula,” I said.
“What? The Focus Formula?” Her face scrunched up as she backed away, exasperated. “I couldn’t care less about that stupid formula.”
“Then how do you know about it?” I asked her.
“Are you interrogating me? You really think I did this, don’t you? You really think I let him go.”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “I know what I’d like to think. But right now, it just doesn’t add up.”
“I could have given Zakhar the ankh days ago, Lyle. But I didn’t. He took it from this apartment.”
Carter’s lips twisted, and his fangs were out. “How do we know that ankh wasn’t part of the ploy? That you just wanted to pretend that it was somethin’ you had that belonged to the Shaman, so it looked like you and him was at odds.”
“We are at odds!” She axed her hands forward. “He came here to get his ankh, and he hoped that Lyle would kill me, because he can’t kill me himself, since we’re connected through the artifact.”
“But you were the one who brought up Dr. Ubala,” I said. “How did you even know that was why he came looking for me?”
Stephanie seemed flustered by that question. One hand went to her forehead, while the other fist met her hip. “Listen, Lyle. Zakhar came to me before I called you. Okay? We talked, Zakhar and I did. He never told me why he was here, only that he was looking for a Decanter. I didn’t even have to tell him that I knew one, because he figured that out just by talking to me.”
I stepped towards her. “So you lied to me? You told me that you weren’t hiding anything, but you were. You met with Zakhar, and you were willing to endanger all of our lives? How am I not supposed to believe that you didn’t set him free? That you didn’t put the ankh out specifically for him to take it?”
Stephanie’s eyes shuttered, and with the hand that she’d braced on her forehead, she did something that seemed to silence all of my arguments. She stuck out her wrist to me. “Do it. It’s what you want, right?” Her voice quivered, and she palmed her tears away with the hand she offered me, then offered me the arm again. “Do it. You don’t trust me. So go ahead. Decant me, read my thoughts, and figure it out for yourself.”
No one said a word.
Carter spoke up. “Do it, Lyle. We need to know.”
Umara agreed with him.
When I touched Stephanie’s arm, I could feel her trembling. Her green eyes filled with tears, but this time, she didn’t wipe them away. She let them fall—one by one—meet under her chin, and drip down her neck.
“I have to be sure, Stephanie,” I said.
She nodded quickly. “Just do it, okay. Just get it over with.”
I pursed my lips, concentrating, rubbing my thumb back and forth on the inside of her wrist.
“Do it!” she shouted.
I shook my head. “No.”
Her arm dropped to her side, and she slouched on the couch, sobbing into her hands.
“Yer’ makin�
�� a mistake, Lyle. I’d have done it in a heartbeat. We got a psycho on the outside, and from what I can tell, a mole on the inside. Decant the girl, and get this over with.”
“I said no, Carter. I’m not decanting her.”
Umara grabbed me by the arm. “What is your problem? For all we know, this could be part of the plan. Get you to feel sorry for her and—”
“And what if it is her plan, Umara? What then?” I asked, knocking her hand away. “Carter, you said it yourself, you don’t go after children, because it’ll turn you into something you’re not. And Umara, you said that problems weren’t meant to be solved, and that’s how you went to sleep at night. Well this is me. This is who I am. I trust my friends, and I always will. If you want to get answers out of her, then by all means. But I will not be taking part in this.”
I brushed past Umara and grabbed the front doorknob.
“Where are you going?” Umara asked.
“I’m going to find Zakhar. If you’re coming with me, then stop badgering the Druid, and let’s go.”
The door shut behind me, and I kept on through the parking lot. From behind, I heard the door open again, and checked over my shoulder to find Carter and Umara coming after me.
“He has the ankh, Lyle.” Umara hurried to catch up with me.
“I know.”
“We’ll have to think this through,” she said. “We can’t just bait him like we did before. He’s way more powerful now.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I turned sharply to her. “What I also know is that if he gets the Focus Formula to the Fairy Godfather, then we might all be in trouble.”
“Did you give it him?” she asked.
“No, but if he got the ankh, then there’s a great chance that he might already know it. And that’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”
“Okay, fine,” Umara said. “Fine. Let’s regroup, get a plan together, and we’ll go after Zakhar.”
“Phone, internet,” Carter grunted.
“Yeah, what about it?” I asked.
“If he’s got the formula, then he’s probably already sent it, don’t ya’ think?”
That gave me pause. I stopped in the middle of the parking lot, eyeing both of them. “He doesn’t have it, and I’ll tell you why. I’m still alive. He took the ankh, and he left the apartment. But if he had the formula, then he could have just killed me right then. No, he’s missing something—something that he still needs from us.”
“Lyle’s right,” Umara said. “If Zakhar were done, then he would have killed us in our sleep, but he didn’t.”
“Then I guess it’s up to us to find out why,” Carter said.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
There was no need to hide out anymore, not with Zakhar gaining possession of the ankh. If it made him as powerful as Umara said it did, then he probably could approximate down to the minutest decimal point what decisions we were planning to make. It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest. But this is stuff that you already know.
Because Umara had more items at her disposal back at her place, we decided to go there. It only made sense, considering that Zakhar probably knew where we were anyway. Why he didn’t just barge right in and kidnap me was beyond me. Maybe he just knew that I wasn’t going to go willingly. And, even with the ankh, he’d gotten this far, so why start taking chances now?
We were in one of Umara’s many planning rooms. A polished oval table with ten chairs surrounding it sat in the center of the floor. Walls were far out of reach, and each of them sported racks and racks of modified weapons that I had never seen before. Rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, though each of them had multiple modifications, making them highly unfamiliar to me.
Carter was upstairs with Umara who had begun his detoxification process, so that he could resist the urges to kill. She’d explained to him that the more he resisted it, the more he’d curb his appetite. She also assured him that by going through the process, he would actually lose over a hundred pounds, which was a bit of a relief to me, because something was grossly unsettling about the implications of an overweight vampire. And even though he and I had worked through our differences, I still wasn’t at a place where I felt comfortable commenting on his size.
I sat near the end of the oval table, with Stephanie sitting next to me. She’d since gotten herself together, and the shock of the unexpected accusations had all appeared to have worn away.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” I said.
“No, I was bit hysterical, but after taking a moment to step back and look at it, I guess it made sense. Bad luck for me though, standing by an empty chair, especially with the mention of the doctor and all that. I may as well have painted my hands red.” She laughed.
I just smiled, sliding my arm around her and pulling her close.
“You didn’t do it—decant me, I mean?” It came out as a question.
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not? I would have.”
I looked her over, studying her. “I think I’m a pretty good judge of character, for the most part. It’s in my nature, I guess. You gave me your wrist because you wanted me to trust you.” I smiled at her. “I don’t need to decant you to do that.”
Stephanie blushed. “That’s sweet.”
“No, I mean it. I feel like I know you, and if we make it out of this, I’d like to turn that feeling into a reality.”
“There’s so much…so much junk in here.” She cringed, gesturing to herself. “So much that I’ve been through. I have to put on a mask every day just to keep it all together. And you know what? One of the dangers of taking off the mask is that a guy like you might not like what you find behind it.”
“And one of the dangers of wearing a mask is that a guy like me may never get the chance to see for himself.”
“You always know what to say, don’t you?” she asked, pulling away from me, albeit gently.
“Not always.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” she said.
“Me too,” Carter grunted, opening the door to the meeting room and rustling my hair before taking a seat.
A clear tube protruded from the back of Carter’s Sharknado shirt and dangled over his shoulder. A red liquid was in the tube.
“What in the world is that?” I asked.
“A bladder pack,” he said, scooting up to the table and putting his lips to the mouthpiece, taking a long draw.
I filled in the blanks from there. Umara had clearly given him a pack of blood, probably enhanced with some sort of supplements to push the hunger pangs away. Only thing was, he’d already begun slurping it. Thin red lines streamed through the tube as the bladder emptied.
“Not sure it’s much of anything,” Carter said, removing the pack and tossing it on Umara’s hardwood floor.
At least he doesn’t just make his messes with me.
“That’s his fourth bag.” Umara sat next to Stephanie. “The doses have been higher in each one. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but this is going to be harder than I thought.”
“Don’t bother me none,” Carter said, licking the blood off his fangs. “I say keep’em comin’. Don’t taste like the real thang, but when ya’ thirsty, ya’ thirsty. Heh, heh.”
“Anyway,” Umara said. “I just got word about something that might be of interest to all of us. A few of my goblins caught sight of an 18-wheeler on Hwy 40 heading towards Raleigh.”
“Trucks come this way all this time,” I said. “What makes this one so important?”
“The driver.” She pulled a small notepad out of one of her pockets and scribbled out a design of a triangle with a loop at the crest, pushing the triangle over to me. “Ever seen this before?”
“Yes, but probably not in this context. What does it mean?”
“Apparently the driver had it tattooed on his neck right here.” She pointed to the right side of her neck just below her chin. “My goblins tend to send out spy birds with telescopic eyes, and they zoomed in
and found this driver wearing this tattoo. That’s the same tattoo the Fairy Godfather forces all of his people to wear.”
“It’s true.” Stephanie peeled back her collar, exposing a triangle beneath the clear skin by her neck where Zakhar had struck her and she’d rejuvenated the flesh. The clear skin had clipped off the loop of the triangle, but I could see where the crest of the triangle was beginning to curve.
“Do we know what’s in the truck?” I asked.
Umara shook her head. “But I think that whatever they need with you, we might find our answer if we can get to that driver.”
“How far out?” Carter grunted.
“About thirty miles or so,” Umara said. “Just west of Chapel Hill right now. But if we get going, we might be able to intercept it right around the Apex exit or at least before it gets to Morrisville.”
“What about Zakhar?” Stephanie’s voice was solemn, like she still felt that the Shaman’s escape was her fault.
Umara must have sensed it too. “First off, Lyle says he trusts you. If I had to be honest, I don’t. I think you unscrewed those connectors. Otherwise, I don’t know how he could have gotten away. But for right now, our goal is to get to that truck and then go after the Shaman. You help us do both, and you will have earned back my trust.”
“Sure, whatever I can do,” Stephanie replied. “I want to find him as much as you do.”
Umara looked her up and down. “We’ll see.”
A fairy was not someone I would have dared to cross. They tended to know too much. I believed down in the deepest part of me that Stephanie was telling the truth. Convincing Umara, that was going to take some time.
“What we gone do?” Carter asked, hands in his lap. “Find the truck and ram it off the road?”
My first thought was that he was asking if we were going to hit that 18-wheeler with one of our trucks, but by the wicked grin he wore, I realized that he was suggesting that he smash into it himself headfirst.
“No,” Umara said. “Besides, you can’t shoulder through a truck without at least some internal damage. We need you at full strength, not sitting around healing from unnecessary injuries.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
Elemental Damage: Confessions of a Summoner Book 2 Page 16
