by Dianna Love
Almost getting impaled by that steel lamp pole would officially make this the worst Sunday-before-Memorial Day that she’d ever been through.
Opening her hand, she used Witchlock spinning at tennis-ball size to scout the surroundings for any unexpected energy.
“Do you detect anything?” Daegan asked, unbothered by water splashing on his head, face and body.
Turning to Daegan, she closed her fingers and said, “No.” Nodding at the post, she said, “Cut the landing a little close, didn’t you, dragon?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps you should stand right next to me in the future, witch. I would have destroyed anything in the way of landing.”
Was he serious? “How does that work when it’s a human being or one of the Beladors?”
“My energy naturally pushes anything living out of the way.”
“Of course. What was I thinking to question an arrogant dragon?” she grumbled.
He’d teleported the team to the west side of Atlanta. They stood in a rutted parking lot next to what might have been a garage for car repairs at one time, based on the old-style garage doors. The crumbling metal building had a rusty screen door hanging off the hinges of a walk-in doorway and was fronted by a two-lane road.
Wind swirled the steady rain.
Tristan, Storm, Quinn and Reese stepped close to form a small circle with Adrianna and Daegan. Storm had his arms crossed and his lips tight in a grim line. Water ran off his carved features. That man wouldn’t care if he stood in a downpour of acid rain right now.
Quinn asked Adrianna, “What’s next?”
“Isak said he’d watch for us and ... ” She angled her head to look past Storm. “That’s probably him now.”
Five dark images emerged from the deepest shadows across the street, taking form as a black ops team with Isak in the lead.
With the night-vision monoculars they wore, each one reminded her of a cross between cyborg and human.
She’d take her chances with a cyborg over Isak in full battle mode. He and his men stopped ten feet away.
Why did her heart hold a dance party at the sight of that human? He was covered in black from head to toe and she could only see one eye.
She reminded her foolish heart that he would never fully accept a nonhuman woman.
Isak began reporting. “I’m thinking you know that my people used facial recognition to track the two humans on traffic video to this location, but we have no live confirmation it is them. They were seen walking the downtown accident location twenty-two hours prior to the collision, which leads me to think they were scouting the site. We normally would have inserted into their apartment building first to confirm the target identities and that both are still inside, but you asked that we not approach until you arrived.” He sent a pointed glance at Adrianna when he mentioned being asked to wait.
Fine. She’d give him points for doing as she’d asked, since Isak was not one to take direction from anyone else.
Pausing only to wipe water off his uncovered eye, Isak said, “I want to make one thing clear. Until we have an opportunity to interrogate these men, we can’t pin Evalle’s kidnapping on them.”
Daegan rumbled a noise and Storm growled, both sounds she took as threats if the human didn’t move this along.
Adrianna had asked the team to allow her to take the lead in dealing with Isak since she was the most experienced with this particular person, barring Evalle being present. She addressed Isak, explaining, “If you’re concerned that we’re going to kill a human without determining if they’re guilty of anything, we aren’t. Interrogating them will be simple as we’ve brought our own lie detector.” She nodded at Storm who stood very still, like an earthquake before it destroyed an entire city.
Adrianna knew better than to take Storm’s extreme silence as a good sign.
For that reason, she warned Isak, “Time is of the essence and we will tolerate no one standing in the way. Thank you for locating the humans. Once you point us in the right direction, you would be wise to leave.”
Isak’s lips curved with an all-knowing smile not meant to be confused with a happy expression. “Not going anywhere. Follow me.” He turned and strode down a long alley.
When he reached a building that advertised used vehicle tires, Isak initiated a series of hand signals, sending his men to each end of the building.
Adrianna stayed close to Isak. Too close. She kept catching the scent of him. Not aftershave or cologne. As a black ops soldier, he never wore those when working. No, this was the scent of Isak alone, some deadly combination of unscented soap, shampoo and sexy man. Witchlock seemed to heighten all of her senses at times, just from her connection to it.
Still, how could one tiny smell find its way through all this rain and wind outside?
Shaking off the distraction, she studied a light on inside a room on the second floor.
Isak whispered, “That light was reported illuminated as soon as my men arrived, but we have no traffic cam in this area. We got nothing with our thermal scan, so this could be a bust with no one there.”
“I understand,” she replied. “But even if it is empty, Storm can track the scent if someone hasn’t teleported them away. We need something, a lead, anything that gives us a place to start looking.”
Daegan walked up. “I’ll teleport in and determine what’s going on.”
Isak stiffened and swung his gaze to the dragon king. “That’s not how we do this.”
Just as quickly, Daegan said, “This is how we do things. Adrianna suggested you leave. If you stay, you work with us. If anyone gets in my way, I’ll teleport them out of my way.”
This is why Adrianna had suggested she take the lead.
Could the air get any more polluted than having an overload of human and preternatural testosterone?
She kept her voice soft, but snapped, “Daegan is going in. He’s pretty indestructible when only humans are involved. We need intel. He’s not going to kill our only chance at getting that intel. Everyone clear?”
Isak’s posture eased. He arched an eyebrow above the one exposed eye. “Yes, ma’am.”
Daegan snorted. “I’ll bring all of my people inside if it’s safe.” He told Isak, “I assume your team would prefer the steps.”
“Yes.”
Daegan lifted a hand and vanished.
Quinn walked up, hair dripping with water. “Are you our dragon whisperer, Adrianna?”
She said, “No. I’m more like a dragon irritator.”
Quinn cocked his head as if hearing a telepathic message, then told the team, “Prepare to teleport.”
She stood outside one moment and after a short blast of energy, she stood inside a squalid room. Sure, it was dry in here, but putrid stench hit her hard. Rotting food sat on the counter and in the sink along with dirty dishes and trash. She didn’t want to look too closely at what was littered on the floor. She gagged and covered her mouth.
As Storm, Quinn and Reese appeared in the middle of the same kitchen-living room space, Reese doubled over.
Tristan pinched his nose, but he was too macho to throw up in front of Daegan.
Pigs lived cleaner than this.
But that wasn’t the only thing turning her stomach.
It was also the disgusting smell of dried blood and expelled body fluids along with lingering nasty body odors.
Storm’s nostrils flared.
Isak and his men pounded through the quiet building and hit the door once, knocking it open. He told his men to stand outside, then flipped up his monocular as he entered. His gaze went first to Adrianna before taking in the macabre scene.
Quinn had Reese turned away from the bodies and was holding her at the waist as she unloaded her stomach. It wasn’t as if she could damage the floor.
Daegan studied the two men without seeming to notice the revolting odors. Probably a more common smell back during the days of dragons and battles fought with swords.<
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Adrianna peeked. Both men they’d come to interrogate had their throats sliced and their abdomens had been cut open.
Once she breathed through her mouth, Adrianna asked, “If this was done by a preternatural, why kill them that way?”
Storm walked over to take a closer look, which had to be even more repulsive with his strong sense of smell. He said, “That was to hide any majikal signature and probably to make it appear to be a human crime. Whoever did this is still masking their scent, but that takes energy just like any other supernatural action. We need to find a place where the killer was comfortable enough not to expend the energy to mask his smell.” He raked a hand over his hair. “Damn. We’re at another dead end.”
Reese coughed and stood up as Daegan produced a glass of water out of thin air to hand her. She pinched her nose to drink.
Adrianna had to give him his due. That dragon shifter had some kind of old majik.
Isak said, “These men match the images my people used to identify them.” His blue eyes moved past everyone to reach Adrianna, then he said, “I’m sorry. I want Evalle found, too.”
Storm turned raw eyes toward Isak at the mention of his mate.
Isak said, “Any resource I have is yours to help you find her.”
Storm managed to say, “Thanks.” Then he stepped out of the room into the hallway.
Ever the smart mouth, Tristan said, “Those two speaking? Brace for an apocalypse next.”
Adrianna gave the Alterant a sharp look. “You’re not helping, Tristan.”
Reese was arguing with Quinn in terse whispers over something and finally said out loud, “I can do this!”
They all turned to her.
Reese’s face had turned the color of a faded paper doll. Standing straighter, she kept her nose pinched and sounded as if she had a cold when she spoke. “I want to try my remote viewing to see if I can figure out if the killer went somewhere next, but I won’t see anything if he teleported again.”
Storm returned. “The only trail I found belonged to these two and is almost a day old. No preternatural scent trail.”
Nodding, Daegan turned to Reese and asked, “What do you need to try your remote viewing?”
She grumbled, “Killing the smell would help, but not if it’s going to block my access to the energy left behind.”
Daegan took a hard look at the two dead guys as if he hadn’t realized that had been an issue. He lifted a hand, his lips moved with a silent word and a film formed over each body. Next, he did the same thing to block the sink, counters and most of the floor debris.
Adrianna’s next breath drew in cleaner air. The room still stank, but without the nasty taint from the bodies.
Everyone made a sound of appreciation.
Reese sniffed a little and let out a big sigh. “Thank you, Daegan. That knocked down the smell significantly.”
“You’re welcome.”
She walked toward the bodies with Quinn dogging her heels.
Adrianna wasn’t the only one to notice Quinn’s attention. On the other hand, his daughter did live with Reese. Everything about that situation seemed odd, but Adrianna didn’t pry into other people’s affairs.
She respected everyone’s privacy because she was guarded about her own.
Turning her back on the gory scene, Reese closed her eyes and lifted her fingers to her temples. In a matter of seconds, she was moving her head a little this way, a little that way, and then she stilled.
When she lowered her hands and opened her eyes, she seemed to still be looking at something.
Storm cautiously asked, “Did you see anything?”
Reese chewed on her lip then released it. “Maybe.”
“He didn’t teleport away?”
Her face closed down as she pondered that. “I don’t think so, but I didn’t see anyone in particular. Based on what I’ve encountered in the past, I shouldn’t be able to see anything once he teleported away, but this time I followed a path, which makes me think he might have taken off on foot.”
Storm swallowed. “Can you explain?”
She raked a handful of wavy hair off her face. “I saw a path from here to the trolley. Then I was inside the trolley going from this direction back into downtown. When the trolley stopped at Peachtree Center, the path pulled my attention off the train to the sidewalk and I followed along as it kept moving until everything stopped in the middle of some funky painted art.”
Quinn asked, “Did you notice a street sign?”
“No.” Scratching her head, Reese said, “I’ve never been trained to use my gift, so it’s a surprise to me any time it works even that much.”
“Thanks for trying, Reese,” Storm murmured. “If he didn’t leave a trail from here to the trolley, I doubt he left one once he exited the trolley.”
“Hey, don’t quit so fast,” she ordered. “It’s not over ’til it’s over.”
Storm’s mouth opened, then closed without a word.
Clearly, he didn’t know what to say to that verbal yank on his attention. Even Quinn gave Reese a wide-eyed look.
Adrianna nudged Reese with, “What else did you see?”
Scrunching her face, Reese grumbled, “That art thing ... I’ve seen it, but I haven’t lived here in a long time.”
Daegan asked, “Where do you think it might be?”
“I can’t put my finger on the street.”
Prodding a little, Tristan asked, “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about that art?”
Reese closed her eyes. “Seems like it’s at an overpass to the interstate in downtown.” Her eyes popped open. “I do remember that spot. I could find it if you put me close.”
Storm’s eyes sharpened with a thought. He snapped his fingers. “I bet it’s at Ralph McGill Boulevard and—”
“Courtland Street,” Quinn supplied. “It’s the overpass with folk art on display at different times during the year.”
Grinning, Tristan told Adrianna, “See? I’m very helpful, witch.”
Isak glowered at Tristan.
Adrianna quickly replied, “Whatever, Alterant.” That snarky comment calmed Isak, but why would he get upset over her being called a witch?
She would never understand that man. In hindsight, she’d been wrong to tell Daegan she should lead this outing, because Isak confused her more than ever, and she needed her attention on finding Evalle.
The man acted as if he cared.
She’d been there, gotten her heart trampled and had no desire for the T-shirt.
Daegan said, “We have to deal with these bodies before we leave.”
Storm had that ready-to-explode look on his face. He said, “Fine. I can get there on my own before you finish dealing with this.”
Isak stepped in. “I’m not teleporting with anyone. We’ll handle the cleanup. That way, you can all leave together.”
Adrianna wanted to hug Isak for the offer. It allowed them all to stay together when she feared letting Storm take off alone.
Evalle should be here to see Storm’s look of surprise. He stood there a moment, then seemed to come to a decision and extended his hand to Isak. “Thank you. I’ll repay the debt someday.”
Isak took his hand for a brief shake. “You don’t have to pay a debt when something is offered freely. I can’t help in your world, but we’ll keep looking for any lead to pass along.”
Daegan said, “You are an unusual human. You stepped in to give aid when your offer was first turned down. I never forget when help is given. If you ever need assistance from our people, all you have to do is ask. It will be known that you are a friend of the Beladors.”
Isak gave him a sincere sounding, “Thanks.”
Adrianna should be taking notes for Evalle. That was as close to being knighted as a human could get in the world of Beladors.
Quinn and Reese were in another quiet argument where she had her arms crossed and was shaking h
er head. Quinn had the frustrated expression of a man up against an immovable object.
Daegan, Tristan and Storm had decided to take one more look around just to be sure there was no additional evidence.
Isak walked up to Adrianna.
Her back turned rigid as a steel rod, but she schooled her features to show no outward change, maintaining her mildly interested expression.
When he stopped in front of her, Isak drew in a deep breath that expanded his massive chest before he exhaled slowly. “When this is done, I’d still like to talk with you.”
She wanted to lash out at him for hurting her, but her conscience evidently played for Team Isak because it quickly pointed out how he’d given them aid.
Where was the man who had told her and Evalle he never wanted his mother to be around nonhumans again after they’d all battled to save Kit and the twins in Blairsville?
Knowing Kit, she’d laid into her son as soon as she caught her breath from being captured by preternatural predators. No doubt she reminded Isak how the Beladors had lived here secretly for many years, protecting humans.
Even if that had happened, it would not change the fact that Isak did exactly what Adrianna had feared at the first hint of trouble. He’d declared nonhumans the enemy.
Yet he stood here among nonhumans in a roomful of carnage, waiting for her reply.
She swallowed the angry words that had filled her heart since they parted ways in Blairsville that rainy night. “Thank you for your help in finding these men.”
Isak said nothing. He was going to make her answer him.
She added, “Like the Beladors, I also consider you a friend.”
He arched one eyebrow at that.
Infuriating man. “I do not wish to repeat past mistakes, Isak. I told you before we got ... involved, that it was a bad idea. I was correct.”
Finally, he said something. “I’m willing to admit you were right at that moment, but it doesn’t mean you’re right about the future.”
Steeling herself, she stuck to her decision. “I am not willing to go through what happened again.”
At that, he looked at the ceiling, apparently searching for the right words. When his gaze came back to her, he admitted, “I screwed up. Big time. I just want a chance to talk about it.”
