The Darkest Edge of Dawn cm-2

by Kelly Gay

My fist curled around the letter. I was going to kill them both.

  13

  I pulled into the driveway and parked. Will’s truck was gone. Emma was still at practice. I called and left a message for Bryn to see how the support meeting went, and then I shoved the collections letter into my bag, slung the strap over my shoulder, and got out, but as soon as my feet hit the concrete, I had that feeling again of being watched.

  I closed the door, slipped the keys into my front pocket, and then slowly put my hand on the hilt of my sidearm. I turned to scan the park area across the street, regulating my breathing, trying to focus and open myself to my instincts. I took a few slow steps, hand moving to my Hefty and finger sliding the frequency setting to low as I felt an aura prick my senses.

  My footsteps brushed the driveway, sounding loud. The aura became clearer. Blues. Greens. The woods. The water. The tangy scent of grass. Then, like looking down a rifle scope, my sense zoned in on it. Nymph. Oak Tree. Across the street. I turned and fired. The Hefty was silent, except for the small hiss the tag made as it ejected from the barrel.

  A black shadow the size of a large predatory cat fell from the tree and hit the grass with a faint thud. I jogged across the street, finding what I had guessed, a nymph. A naked male, Orin to be exact, clutching the tag in his shoulder. “Goddammit,” he hissed, and jerked the tag out. “Did you have to shoot me?” The nymph whispered the words that would clothe his naked form.

  “It was only low stun.” I reached down to help him up, but remained on guard, my Hefty still clutched in my hand.

  “Did that address I gave you help?”

  “You first. You’ve been following me, haven’t you? You were there this morning on Solomon Street. Is this you acting alone or is it on behalf of Dragon Boy?”

  “It’s part of my service for lying. Believe me, I would much rather be fulfilling the funeral rites than following your ass around Underground.”

  “So that was you in the back alley.”

  “No, that was Killian. I’m rotating with him. Pen’s getting restless. He wants answers. Wants justice for Daya. We all do.”

  “Tell him to let us do our job. We want the same thing, too, but if you guys start interfering or distracting us from our work then it could jeopardize everything. You need to back off.”

  He snorted softly. “You try telling the Druid to back off. He wants a report.”

  It was my turn to snort. “You can tell him that I don’t—”

  “Charlie,” Orin said with a gentle smile, “if I may … If one of your family had been murdered, what would you do?”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it. I did that twice, my ire completely deflating. “Look, I understand,” I admitted. “Believe me, I do. Tell him I have a strong lead on who did this and to give us a chance to do our job. This is what we do. We catch bad guys. He needs to trust me on this.”

  “Kinfolk trust only Kinfolk.”

  “Might want to start expanding your circle of friends. You can tell Pen this: it wasn’t a jinn. So he can stand his ass down and forget about starting a war.” I hiked the strap farther up my sore shoulder, feeling echoes of the horrible pain I’d felt earlier. “I’m beat. Stay out here all night if you want, but I’m going inside.”

  I didn’t look back to see if Orin stayed or disappeared. I meant what I said. I was beat. Falling off a high rise and making water tornadoes sort of does that to a girl.

  With Rex gone, Em in school, and the hellhound in the kennel, the house was a blessed space. No noise, no distractions. Just me, my bed, and hopefully a long nap. Before I went upstairs, I rooted through the junk drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a red marker and wrote FIX THIS on the collections envelope. Then I went into the guest room downstairs and left it on Rex’s bed.

  With every step upstairs, it seemed an old ache reappeared. By the time I reached my bedroom, all I could think about was lying down and shutting my eyes. As I sat and toed off my shoes, I saw that Rex had been at work, sweeping up the debris on the bathroom floor and boarding up the stained glass window that had shattered, and my busted bathroom door was gone.

  After removing my damp clothes and putting on dry lounge pants and a T-shirt, I dropped onto my mattress and pulled the down comforter over my cold body.

  What I got instead of sleep was a good, long look at my ceiling fan.

  Aaron’s words kept echoing in my head. Divine being. Divine.

  What the hell did that mean?

  I let out a loud groan, threw my arms wide, relaxed my muscles until it felt like I was sinking into the mattress, and then I began my breathing techniques. My gaze stayed on the fan, turning slowly. Around and around.

  Eventually my mind began to clear. My eyelids fell, all my focus on my breathing.

  Did you see what Jen wore to school? I’d never let my ten-year-old wear that.

  This is Doctor Harmon’s office calling to remind you of your appointment next Monday at eleven.

  Carrie! Who the hell is running the water? I’m in the fucking shower!

  Words became clatter. The clatter of a thousand conversations. Louder and louder. Building and building, until I shot up, gasping, my ears ringing and my head throbbing with leftover vibrations.

  Jesus! I rubbed both hands down my face, catching a glimpse of my forearms. “No. Oh, no …”

  They weren’t blood vessels. How could they be? They were faint and blue, though, running beneath the surface of my skin in patterns, patterns eerily similar to the ancient, unknown script on the warehouse walls.

  I sat there in a stupor, my arms out in front of me, resting on my legs, as the panic rose higher and higher. My throat closed, so dry and thick it felt like sand had been poured into my mouth.

  “No, no, no, no …” I started to rub my arms, noticing that the patterns were everywhere, and, becoming frantic, I tried to rub everywhere, erase them, get them off me. And slowly, very slowly, the higher my panic rose, the dimmer the images became until finally my skin returned to normal. I let out a laugh, like some demented old witch. Normal. What the hell was normal anymore?

  I lay down, curled onto my side, and pulled the covers to my chin, hoping I’d eventually fall asleep and determined to stay like that until I did.

  When I woke, it was to Emma’s kiss, telling me she was heading to bed. Must be after dinner, I realized, lifting my head slightly off the pillow to eye the clock. “Did you eat and do your homework?” I asked, half in sleep.

  “Yes, Momma,” she said, using her best impression of her grandmother. The gentle caretaker, the southern voice. “You keep right on resting now, ya hear?”

  “Hah,” I slurred and let my head sink back down into the pillow.

  “I am not moving to the League. And that’s final.”

  I stood at the kitchen counter with my morning coffee. We’d been at it now for thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of trying to tell my kid that, despite the ward room, I thought she’d be safer at the League while I dealt with the Llyran situation. You’d think being kidnapped by a deranged noble would’ve instilled a sense of self-preservation in her.

  But then, I had to remind myself, I was dealing with an irate preteen who could go from fine and reasonable one minute to hellbent and irrational in the next. Though I was the only one who seemed to have the ability to affect her moods like this.

  “Jesus, Emma. Why does everything have to be a fight?” I asked tiredly. She stood by the table, still in her white tank and plaid pajama bottoms, hair down and in its usual early morning, cave-girl disarray. “I haven’t even asked the League yet, but don’t you think it’d be best until this blows over?”

  Rex sat at the table, silently eating his cereal. Smart guy.

  “No. What about school and the play? You just want me to give up everything every time you work a stupid case?!”

  “You know, you’re lucky I don’t ship you off to Orlando with your grandparents,” I shot back. I did not want to do this. Not this early in the morning.

&nb
sp; Em laughed. “At least it’s sunny down there.”

  “Great. You can go to Orlando, then.”

  Her eyes narrowed and pink bloomed on her cheeks. “No, Mother, I will not. I want to stay right here. Not the League. Not Orlando. Here in my own goddamn house!”

  “Emma!” Rex and I exclaimed at the same time.

  Her lips thinned. The coiled tension coming off of her was palpable. “I can take care of myself. I have Brim. I can take him to school with me. He can be like my bodyguard.”

  “They are not going to allow a hellhound in school, Emma. He isn’t even supposed to be here. It’s illegal to keep them in the first place!”

  Her hands fisted at her sides. She knew she wasn’t winning this argument. “You make me so angry. I hate you!” she forced through gritted teeth, and then spun on her bare heel and stomped out the back door, slamming it as hard as she could.

  Immediately I went for the back door, her comment only firing my blood even more.

  “Charlie,” Rex said. “Let her go.”

  I paused with my hand on the knob, swinging my gaze back to Rex. “I’m not letting her go, and don’t you tell me what to do or how to raise my kid! The only thing I want to hear from you is that you have a twenty-one-thousand-dollar wad of cash hidden somewhere!”

  I jerked the door open, ignoring Rex’s second warning to let her go, and followed my daughter into the backyard. “Emma!” She stopped in the middle of the yard and turned to me. “You can still go to school and still practice for the play. Rex will stay with you, and I’ll have Aaron add a warlock to guard you as well. But at night, you’ll be safer at the League.”

  “You have no idea the things I can do. I don’t need them. I told you I can protect myself.”

  The breeze blew her hair, but her entire body remained still and so damn quiet that it made me very concerned. She was trying so hard to be convincing, wanted so much for me to believe her. But I couldn’t. How could I when she stood there with her thin frame and narrow shoulders, looking like a hard wind could break her in two?

  She doesn’t really hate you, I told myself over and over again as her words sank in. “Emma.”

  I saw it building, her frustrated scream, her white-knuckled fists. I just never expected her to unleash a massive power surge aimed straight at me.

  It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to move. An invisible wave of energy hit me with such force that it knocked the wind out of me and sent me flying backward to land on my ass, leaves and small bits of lawn flying in my face.

  The scent of dirt and tangy green grass filled the air; some of it, I was certain, had gone up my nose. I scrambled up, body shaking, and spit a leaf fragment from the corner of my mouth.

  Emma remained still, like a tiny ball of fury. She wasn’t done. The only things that moved on her were her hair and her clothes, which fluttered with each strong burst of wind through the backyard. The trees bent and rubbed together. Green flashed in the darkness overhead.

  And then her lips started moving.

  “Emma …” I warned.

  A metal clang cut through the morning. I glanced beyond her shoulder to see the kennel door swing wide and Brim bound out. Four blindingly fast, gigantic strides later, he slid to a stop at her side, his claws cutting deep ruts into the grass. He was poised, battle-ready, looking very much like the pregnant hellhound in the warehouse. Defend to the death.

  “Emma Kate Garrity …” I warned again, hardly able to hear myself over the rush of my pulse.

  I had no weapons. Not even the protection of jeans and a jacket as I was dressed pretty much the same as my kid. My own hands flexed at my sides. Energy grew from my core and cut a vibrating path through my body. Wind whipped around my child and the snarling beast. Brim made her look so small, his back coming to her elbow.

  “I wanted to learn crafting from Aunt Bryn and you said no,” she said. “I wanted to learn how to fight and you said no. I wanted to … be like you.” Tears erupted in her wide eyes. Her lip quivered, and she couldn’t finish her sentence, her innocent face a canvas of despair and disappointment. “You always say no.”

  A dull ache coiled around my heart and a strong, sickening sense of foreboding came over me. I stepped forward. Brim growled. “Emma, please don’t …”

  Her head shook as the tears streamed down her face, making her nose bright red. “I never want to be like you.”

  And with that, she did the unthinkable, the thing that I feared the most.

  She leapt onto Brim’s back, flung her arms around his neck, and the two bounded out of the backyard.

  “EMMA!”

  I ran after them, fueled by panic, crashing through the bushes, into the neighbor’s side yard and across the street, as my daughter and her hellhound loped over the soccer fields, drawing farther and farther away from me until they were just a dark shadow disappearing into the park.

  Still I sprinted until I couldn’t see them anymore, until my lungs burned so hot and the air being sucked down my throat so cold that I felt sick to my stomach.

  She’ll come back. She’ll come back, I kept repeating to myself as I finally stopped.

  I jogged back to the house in my sweat-soaked tank, hair tangled, a nest for grass and earth and leaves. My bare feet were scratched and cold, covered in dew and dirt. Small pebbles stuck to the bottoms.

  Rex was standing on the porch, his face pale. “She’ll come back,” he echoed as I wiped my feet. “As soon as she cools off, she’ll come back.” It sounded more like he was trying to assure himself than me.

  I pushed past him, immediately going for the phone to put out an APB to every branch of the ITF in Atlanta to be on the lookout for my kid and her hellhound. The order was very clear: Locate only. Engage my kid and her protector and face serious fucking consequences. I was not playing.

  I sensed Rex behind me, but didn’t turn and instead went for the stairs. “Call Bryn, Aaron, Marti, the school, everyone we know …”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Look for her. What else can I do?” My eyes burned. “She doesn’t even have a jacket.”

  Rex took a step forward and grabbed the railing. “She won’t get hurt, Charlie. You saw what she can do. You’re overreacting.” He held up his hands. “With cause, though. Who can blame you after what happened with Mynogan? But we have the world’s strongest ward room. That kid is loaded down with protection amulets every time she goes anywhere. Give her some time to chill out. She’ll come back. You should go to work.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m not going to work while my kid is out there lost and—” My teeth ground together, forcing down the intense wave of loss and fear rising to the surface.

  “Well, you need to do something. No offense, but you’re the last person she wants to see or talk to right now anyway.”

  My fingers curled around the railing as my temper flared, blinding me for a second. The wood cracked under my nails. “Fuck you, Rex.”

  Ninety minutes later, after I’d driven around Druid Hills, and then tried repeatedly to connect with Emma only to be blocked by her every time, I got a call from Titus. My daughter had gone to Mott Tech. I had to take several deep, shuddering breaths with that one. Relieved beyond comprehension? Yes. But that she’d made it all the way out of the city where a thousand different, horrible things could have happened? Furious.

  Part of me, though, was glad for the darkness and the cover it had provided them. Besides Em being hurt, I’d begun to second guess my hasty decision to call in the troops and worry that some noob would find them, fire on Brim, and end up creating a really bad situation. That they ended up making it to Mott Tech unseen was a miracle. I supposed the darkness did have its uses on occasion.

  At first, I wanted to turn the vehicle around and race to the lab, but Emma didn’t want to see me or even talk to me on the phone just yet, which left me feeling stung, rejected, and hurt.

  If she wanted time alone, she could have it.


  I pulled my Tahoe to the curb on a residential street and just sat there for a long time. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to deal with this divide or her sudden anger. She meant more to me than anything else on this Earth, and it seemed like I was constantly doing the wrong things and failing miserably in her eyes. I only wanted to keep her happy. Healthy. Alive. And, yeah, maybe I was smothering her in the process, but under the circumstances, I didn’t think I was being all that protective.

  The ringer on my cell jerked me out of my thoughts. “Madigan.”

  “It’s me. You find her?”

  “Yeah. She’s at Mott Tech with Titus.”

  Hank’s sigh blew through the phone speaker like a heavy wind. “Thank God. How you holding up?”

  I laughed at that one. “Not even sure I can answer that question. Give me a distraction, Hank. Tell me we have a lead. Something. Anything.”

  He chuckled. “It’s your lucky day then, kiddo. I’ve got Llyran’s medical file. You want to meet at the warehouse?”

  “Sure. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  * * *

  I slowed my vehicle, flashed my badge to the officer in the patrol car, and drove into the parking lot, aimed for the double space between Liz’s black ITF van and Hank’s Mercedes.

  As I pulled into the spot, Hank ducked out of the coupe. He leaned against the car’s shiny black paint job, holding the file in front of him with both hands, one foot crossed over the other. He wore tan cargo pants and a long-sleeved, white crew. Calvin Klein could sell an incredible amount of underwear, or anything else for that matter, if they put Hank’s photo on a billboard.

  My stomach did a light flip. Last time I’d seen Hank, I almost killed him and kissed him all in the span of a few minutes. Hard to forget—

  Partner, Charlie, he’s your partner and your best friend. Just chill with the hormones.

  I shoved the gear into park and drew in an uneasy breath. No big deal. Just get it over with. I grabbed my jacket off the passenger seat and then went to face my partner.

  “Morning, sunshine,” he said, amused at what I knew was a fierce scowl on my face.