“Why does it matter what I want?” she gasps out. “You’re a psychotic murderer, killing everyone you please how you please. It doesn’t matter what I say or do—you’ll kill me how you want. I’d rather go out in style than cowering in fear. Especially if my killer’s a worthless son of a bitch like you.”
“Oh, shut up.” Sartell suddenly clenches her throat so hard she can’t breathe at all. “You’re just like those damn Crows, cawing at me with their false bravado. They all die cowards, you know? Pissing themselves in fear. You don’t get any points for acting like them.”
Ella opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She kicks fruitlessly at Sartell’s legs and torso; she doesn’t have enough brute strength to knock him off balance. Her vision blackens at the edges, and she feels unconsciousness approaching fast, so fast, too fast. Going to die. Going to die. Won’t be able to stop him. Won’t be able to win. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Mom, I couldn’t…
Sartell loosens his grip. “You look like you have some last words, girl. Come on, then, cough them up, so I can send you along to your mother and get back on track.”
A baleful, liquid fire, burning so much hotter than Sartell’s magic, floods through Ella’s veins. Here he is, this wizard, blessed with power no normal human could imagine, and he’s using it to kill and torment as he pleases, to kill lawyers and cops and defenders of the peace, to kill teenage girls who run their mouths, to kill neighbors with whom he has trivial disputes, to kill anyone who displeases him in the slightest. That’s how pathetically petty Abraham Sartell is. And he’ll be that way until the moment he dies.
If it’s the last thing she ever does, Ella will make sure he knows that.
She wets her lips with a dry tongue and rasps out, “They aren’t cowards.”
“What?” Sartell draws his brows together. “What do you mean?”
“DSI,” Ella says. “They’re not the cowards here. You are.”
The wizard’s face darkens to a nasty shade of purple. “I’ve had enough of you.” He tightens his grip on her throat again, and as her lungs start to spasm in panic, Sartell whips around, winds back his Ella-occupied hand like he’s preparing a javelin toss, and throws her almost fifteen feet, onto the charcoal-strewn patio. She hits the concrete shoulder first, the joint popping out of its socket, and then slides across the patio, shearing off every exposed patch of skin. As she rolls over, something hard and metallic punches her gut, and she nearly vomits up the acid in her stomach. She comes to rest face down atop the still-hot pile of coals, shielding her face from their bite with a bloodied arm.
Sartell stalks up behind her, the fireball held over his head. “Well, I can’t say it’s been fun, Dean, but I suppose I’ve had worse chats in my life.” The fireball shrinks above his palm, like hot gasses drawn together into an infant sun, becoming an almost solid ball of white-hot flame. “When you arrive in the afterlife, do tell your mother I said hello.” He tenses his arm to release the fireball. “Goodbye now. Enjoy your trip—”
A blast of invisible force shoots through the air like a cannon ball and strikes Sartell in the side. The wizard spirals out of control, losing command of his fireball, and the spell flies off into the wooden fence at the back end of the yard, setting it ablaze. Sartell staggers to the right and falls to one knee, blood welling up his throat and pouring from his mouth. “Bastard!” he shouts, spraying red spittle.
From the wall of smoke next to the garage emerges the proclaimed bastard: Nick Riker.
Ella, her skin burning, her shoulder aching, her entire body overwhelmed with pain, can’t help but crack a grin. Her plan worked. It actually worked. She used up all of Sartell’s time by challenging his ego.
The reinforcements have arrived.
From around the other side of the house storms the rest of Riker’s team, save the captain. Chantel and Nakamura quickly block off the flaming back fence, so Sartell can’t jump it to escape, while Siobhan blocks one side of the house and Riker the other. As a team, they move in unison, slowly closing the distance between themselves and the wizard who suddenly has no way out and will act, Ella is sure, like a cornered animal. Because he won’t sacrifice his pride and surrender, she thinks wearily. He’ll lash out. He’ll fight to the death rather than admit defeat.
Ella slips her right hand underneath her stomach and runs her finger along hot metal.
Sartell, enraged his ingenious plot has fallen to pieces, lifts both his hands, and with a mighty bellow in a guttural language, summons not fireballs but enormous whirlwinds of fire that tower almost two stories high. “Take one step closer to me,” he screams, taking one step closer to Ella without realizing it, and then another, and then another, until he’s only two feet away, “and I’ll burn the whole damn neighborhood to the ground.”
Riker’s team stops advancing, and the four agents exchange quick, calculating glances. They all have guns drawn, and they each wear those magic rings, but if they make a move, Sartell might unleash his spell and kill every innocent bystander on the block. But, Ella considers, if something disturbs him before he unleashes the spell, won’t it simply fly in whatever direction it’s pointing? Like his last fireball did?
Sartell’s magic doesn’t have a mind of its own. It relies on him for instructions. So, if it stops receiving instructions while the whirlwinds are pointing straight into the air…
Ella wraps her hand around hot metal.
“That’s right,” Sartell says snidely to the DSI agents, who are now standing stock still. Snide because he believes with his black, dead heart that he’s won. And worse, because he believes with his black, dead soul that he’s right. That everything he’s done, is planning to do—that every depraved act is a matter of honest retribution. The mad wizard is so deluded he truly believes he’s the victim here. That he deserves to wreak havoc and take lives because these stupid mortal creatures decided to call him out on his psychotic behavior. He’s so…He’s so…
Absolutely incapable of redemption.
“Don’t any of you make a single attempt to attack me,” he continues, teasing Riker’s team. “Not one. If you do, I’ll roast you all alive. Burn down every house. Every man, woman, and child. Every pathetic hope and dream you have of saving Braun and all the other worthless shits in this city who decided to treat me like garbage. Don’t you make a single move, or so help me all the gods, I’ll ruin—”
“Sartell,” Ella says dully, “shut the hell up.”
The mad wizard balks at the sound of her voice.
Because, in his hubris, he forgot she was there.
“What?” he says as he looks down at the teenage girl he just tried to kill. “What did you say to me?”
“I said,” she replies, in the same fatigued tone, “shut the hell up. And while you’re at it, you can go to hell too.”
Ella Dean yanks the handgun out from underneath her and shoots the mad wizard, point blank, between the eyes.
Abraham Sartell falls, and his fire spirals away into the sky.
Chapter Eleven
The aftermath comes to her in fragments.
A fire burns hot behind her, Braun’s house crumbling to ash. Thick smoke chokes the air, a hot tang at the back of her throat. Black-clothed bodies move around the ruined yard in a frenzy. One of them kneels before her and gently coaxes the gun from her hand.
All the while, Sartell lies motionless—dead—on the ground nearby. There’s a neat hole in his forehead, but a mess of gore paints the ground where the back of his skull used to be. Ella would vomit if she could dwell on the grotesque mess, but she can’t think at all.
She blinks slowly, and someone is draping a heavy coat over her shoulders. She blinks slowly, and a man is carrying her around the side of the house. She blinks slowly, and she’s lying on a gurney, a paramedic asking questions she doesn’t comprehend. She blinks slowly, and a man in black, sans coat, is standing over her, his face lit by the flashing lights of two dozen emergency vehicles, the glare casting his concerned expre
ssion in stark relief.
Nick Riker.
His face is streaked with ash, but he’s not injured. His gray eyes swim with worry as he observes her, and his gloved hand softly runs through Ella’s hair. When she makes eye contact with him, he bends closer to her and murmurs, “Hey, Miss Dean. Can you hear me?”
Ella tries to nod, but finds her neck restrained by a brace. So she whispers, “Yes.”
“Oh, thank god.” He sighs. “We didn’t know how badly Sartell hurt you before we arrived. The paramedics thought you might have a head injury.”
“He threw me onto the patio,” she says, “and he choked me. But I don’t think I hit my head.”
“Miss Dean…” Riker frowns at the list of Sartell’s abuses. “Ella, what the hell are you doing here? You shouldn’t have been in a position for Sartell to hurt you in the first place. And look, I’m not diminishing what you did—you really saved our asses back there—but honestly, you’re a child. You shouldn’t be fighting in a war zone.”
“This city is a war zone,” she rasps, “and I live here.”
Riker stops short, on the cusp of more criticism. He looks away from her, up at the smoky sky. “This city is a war zone sometimes, true enough. But attacks on the scale of Sartell’s are uncommon, and most days, most citizens of Aurora are safe. Most days, you are safe. I promise. Don’t take your knowledge of the supernatural as a reason to become cynical at the age of sixteen. Please don’t. I know first-hand just how much that mindset can fuck you up.”
“Happen to you?” Ella runs her tongue along her dry lips. “How old?”
Riker shakes his head. “Twenty-one. Saw a witch summon a monster that ate her alive. Messed me up real good for a few years. Couldn’t hold down a job to save my life. Mortimer, who worked the witch case, offered me a job at DSI, if I wanted it. Couldn’t figure out what else to do, so I said yes. Weird how I’m in a better place, mentally, now that I deal with this supernatural shit all the time. I guess the shock value eventually wears off after you shoot so many—”
“I shot Sartell,” Ella blurts out. “Am I in trouble?”
Riker stiffens, then leans against the open door of the ambulance Ella’s gurney is parked in front of. “For shooting a wizard who was about to blow up an entire neighborhood? No, Ella, you’re not in trouble. At least not with the law. Real question is, are you in trouble with yourself for taking someone’s life?”
Ella raps her fingers on the padding of the gurney, trying to pull her scattered thoughts together.
Is she bothered by the fact Sartell is dead? No, he deserves to be dead, after killing so many innocent people.
Is she bothered by the fact that she’s the reason he’s dead? A much harder question to answer, and one that might warrant different responses as more time passes from the moment she chose to pull that trigger.
“I-I don’t regret it,” she answers honestly, biting her lip. “I just feel kind of numb about the whole thing. Does that make me a bad person?”
Riker strips off his glove and cups the top of her head. It’s the most comforting gesture anyone’s given her since the dozen half-empty hugs from distant relatives that were forced on her while she was in the hospital. And it’s the first comforting gesture she’s felt compelled to accept since the day her mother died. Nick Riker leans close to her and says in the most caring voice Ella has heard in months, “Absolutely not. You’re not a bad person by any measure. And don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
Ella doesn’t know what happens exactly, but it’s like a dam bursts inside her heart. Suddenly, all her bottled-up feelings from the past half year come gushing out. Tears cascade down her cheeks. Sobs rack her chest. She curls up into a ball on the gurney, and cries, and cries, and cries. For her mother, long dead. For herself, scarred forever. For all the agents who died here tonight, trying to stop Sartell. For Braun and her family and her friends, traumatized by the violence that took place outside the home now burning before their eyes. She cries harder than she’s ever cried in her life.
When Riker offers her an awkward hug, she wraps her arms around his neck and clings to him, pressing her face into his shoulder. He rubs circles into her back, and whispers reassurances into her ear, but she doesn’t regain control of herself until the paramedics return.
Riker gently pushes Ella away and settles her back on the gurney. He turns to face one of the paramedics. “Are you leaving now?”
The man nods. “I apologize for the delay. We got called over to the other ambulance to assist with an elderly man—he’s having a cardiac incident. But he’s been stabilized for now, and they’re off to St. Bart’s. So we’ll be on our way too.” He glances between Ella and Riker. “Are you coming along, sir?”
Riker shoots Ella a questioning glance.
Ella sniffles. “I…I don’t want to be alone yet. If that’s all right.”
Riker’s composure warps like a piece of foil, and he fakes a cough to gather himself before he replies, voice thick, “I would never leave you alone, Ella.”
“Thank you,” she says.
She means it.
The ride to the hospital is silent, except for the quiet murmurs of the paramedics as they work on her. In the emergency room, after “relocating” her shoulder, a plethora of doctors and nurses check and recheck her vital signs, perform numerous exams, and ship her off to scan after scan, until they’re sure she’s not going to bleed out internally or develop a deadly clot in her brain. When they’re satisfied she’s not at death’s door, they move her to a small single room for observation. Once they settle her in the bed and hook her up to all the necessary IVs and equipment, the doctors bid her goodnight and the helicoptering nurses finally retreat to their station down the hall.
During all this chaos, Nick Riker remains in her vicinity. As soon as the last nurse exits the room, he slips in, closes the door, and trudges over to a visitor’s chair next to her bed. “Think you’re up for a chat? I don’t want to strain you after all you’ve been through today, but there are a few things I need to know…”
Ella holds up her hand. “You want to know how I knew Sartell was going after Braun.”
“Yes. I very much do.”
She takes a sip of water from the cup on her nightstand and then recounts in detail her chance encounter with Sartell at the bookstore, her impromptu spying operation, her discovery of his complex scheme laid out inside the squat, and how she made the decision to go to Braun’s house to warn her of Sartell’s planned attack. When she finishes talking, her voice is scratchy and raw, a consequence of the mad wizard almost strangling her to death. She downs the rest of her water and stares at the little clear cup until she stores up enough courage to look at Riker again.
The man sits, arms crossed, in the chair, his lips skewed sideways. “So, wait a second. How did you know Sartell would be attacking Braun today?”
Ella shrugs. “He had this air about him when he left the squat. Like he was so pleased with himself. Like he was anticipating an easy victory. I just…I just knew.”
“Hm. You just knew?” Riker rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Damn. You wouldn’t make a bad DSI detective with an intuition like that.”
“Funny you mention that, because I was wondering…”
“Oh, hell. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, really.” She presses the switch on her remote to raise the bed about twenty degrees. “How do you become a DSI agent? Do you apply? Like with a normal job?”
Reluctance pinches his face as he debates whether or not to explain. Finally, for some reason Ella will never figure out, he concedes. “It’s like when you join the police. There’s an academy. Once you graduate from the academy—takes about two years—you become an active agent in your chosen role: detective, analyst, archivist, etc.” He frowns deeply. And here it comes. “But really, Ella. You have a future ahead of you that doesn’t involve evil men and monsters. A good college. A safe, normal job. You can travel the world with an orchestra
, or join a band, or be a solo artist, or…There are a thousand incredible things you can do with your talents. You shouldn’t throw it all away to join me and the rest of the soldiers in the shadows.”
“First off, you make it sound like I’m going to give up the piano.” She points an accusatory finger at him. “But no matter what path I choose in life, the piano will always be with me. That is nonnegotiable. And secondly, how the heck do you know if I’m even any good at the piano. You’ve never heard me play. I could be terrible. My Julliard dream could be a joke.”
A light flush comes over his cheeks. “Actually, I might have…well…”
“What?”
“We had some things recovered from your mother’s office in our evidence lockup.” He smiles sheepishly. “Including some old video tapes of your recitals.”
“You didn’t.”
“I might have watched a few of them.” He hides his grin behind the back of his hand. “You’re very good, I must say. And also very adorable in those cutesy frou-frou dresses you used to wear—”
She smacks him with her pillow. “Shithead! Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.” He bats the pillow away. “I’m being serious, Ella. You’re extremely talented, and I don’t want to see all your hard work go to waste. DSI isn’t a cushy affair, where you spend most of your time in an office, churning through paperwork. It’s dangerous at the best of times, trying to force supernatural creatures to bend to human law, and as you saw today”—the humor fades from his voice—“when a case goes bad, it goes very bad.”
Ella clutches the pillow to her chest. “You lost four people.”
“We did.”
“What about the woman who got away? Is she all right?”
“In surgery. She’s expected to live, but…” He gazes forlornly out the window, at the darkening sky. “She’ll probably be disabled for the rest of her life. Her left arm is practically ruined.”
Dream Snatcher Page 9
