Silence thickened between us. The hum of the computer and the ticking of the office clock the only noises in the room.
“But what?”
I thought about the look in Anne’s eyes from the pictures. She was mad, of that I was certain. Was it because of her Necromancer abilities? Was it the same kind of curse Giselle had, where the more Anne used her abilities, the more she lost herself to the madness?
A tired sigh slipped out of me. Lately, there had been no open and shut cases. Nothing that was 'just find the kid and take him home'. I felt like someone was out to test me, to push me to my limits and see what would make me break.
Life could be a bitch like that.
“Kyle, round up Deanna, Will, Pamela, Alex and Agent Valley. I’ll brief them and then we’re going in.”
He ran to do as I asked, my now ever faithful servant, the little rat bastard. Leaning against the wall, I did a mental run-through. I had more than enough weapons, and I had plenty of help, but still, I felt as though it wasn’t enough. Like I was missing something.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, again feeling fatigue creep up along my vertebrae. Blame it on the jet lag. Or the lack of sleep the night before. Or the fact that there was so much to do once this case was done.
O’Shea.
Berget.
Jack.
Pamela and Alex came into the room, followed by Deanna, Will, Kyle, and Agent Valley.
“Kyle,” I said, and he looked up as he sat down. “Get out. This isn’t a meeting for you.”
He frowned, caught himself, and then gave me a weak smile. “Right. Sorry.” He scooted back out the door—his face red—and closed it behind him with a click.
Did I feel bad that I’d embarrassed him? Not for one instant.
“The Necromancer we’re dealing with is, for lack of a better term, nuts. She’s stealing the children—”
“Wait, she?” Deanna asked.
“Yeah, she. Her daughter died, and now I think she’s trying to replace her daughter with the bodies of other children.”
Will leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “How are we going to catch her?”
Thanks the gods he could get straight to the point. “I’ll Track the kids, when we get close, Deanna you will block her access to the Veil.”
Deanna nodded. “I can do that.”
I shrugged. “Then we go in and put her down.”
Agent Valley choked. “Put her down?”
I laced my fingers in my lap. “Okay, we go in and kill her. That better?”
His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “You can’t do that.”
“You can’t keep her in an institution. She’s broken out once,” I snapped. “Besides, Necromancers live for a long time. Very, very long. As in hundreds of years. How are you going to explain that to the institution, assuming you actually managed to keep her in one?”
The FBI agent was shaking his head. “No, I can’t let you do that.”
“Then kids are going to continue to be snatched in their final moments, the ones that they should be spending with their families.”
Agent Valley continued to shake his head and I knew that it was over. Whatever tenuous relationship the FBI and I had was done. Finito. He was always going to revert to what he knew best: rules. Rules I only knew how to break.
“That is not how we work,” he said.
“I thought I had free rein.”
“Not like this.”
Shrugging, I stepped away from the wall. “Fine. You explain to Interpol that the one person who could Track this baby-raising bitch down just quit.” I strode past him, deliberately butting my shoulder against his, shoving him with my body. Sure, it was immature, but he was pissing me off with his flip-flopping. First I was in charge, then I wasn’t. I should never have brought him in on the details. Lesson learned.
Pamela caught up to me first. “You aren’t really going to leave those kids with her, are you?”
I shook my head, and called back over my shoulder. “Will, Deanna. You coming?”
Will gave me a wink. “Of course. We wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Agent Valley stepped out of the office just before I turned my back on him. “Adamson, don’t you dare cross me on this!”
I put a hand over my heart. “Me? Oh, hell no. I’m going to have a nap. No rules against that, is there?”
His eyes narrowed, a sign that he knew I was still going after the Necromancer, regardless of what I was saying. We’d have a tail, at the least.
Of course, I’ll admit I was kinda looking forward to them trying to tail a Harpy.
22
Will and Deanna sat on the battered up blue couch in my suite while I spread out my weapons on the floor.
My hand hovered over the crossbow. I hadn’t had a lot of time with it, but what I’d been able to see so far was promising. The bolts had been firing straight and clean, hitting the targets when I’d practiced.
I slipped the strap over my shoulder. A little distance between me and the zombies was not a bad thing. The remembrance of my flesh being yanked from my body with teeth was still too fresh to deny the shiver of fear of it happening again. Torn apart by dulled and rotting teeth. Not a pretty thought.
“How are we going to shake them?” Will asked.
Leaning to the left, I could just see out the bottom half of the living room window and the pair of uniforms that were standing at the edge of the walkway.
“Subtle, aren’t they?”
Wringing her hands in her lap, Deanna shifted in her seat. “I don’t see how this is going to work.”
I sat back on my heels. “The kids are to the south now, way south.” I concentrated working out the distance in my head. “I’m going to say close to two hundred miles.” Deanna’s mouth opened, and I talked over her head. “Will, Pamela, and Alex are going to go for a drive. Round about. Lose the tail, and then they’ll head south to meet us.”
Will cleared his throat. “How will we find you?”
“You won’t. I’ll find you. Just head south.”
Frowning, the Druid stared at me. “And what about us?”
“We’re going to go straight there.”
“How?”
I smiled. “Eve will take us.”
Her face paled. “You mean the Harpy? I don’t think that’s safe.”
“I’m sorry, did you think this was a picnic? Did you think that going after a mad Necromancer was going to be safe?” I laughed at her. “I can see why Daniels is taking over your coven or whatever the hell a bunch of Druids is called. You’re a fucking sissy.”
Will looked to me, and then to his sister. “Deanna, you knew what was going to be asked of you.”
“You’d side with her?” His sister glared at him.
“You sided with my Destruction against me.”
Deanna paled. Ooh, that was a shot to the gut.
I stood up, shouldering the crossbow, and checking all the sheath straps on my body. Everything was secure. Pointedly, I ignored Deanna and her outrage, her fervently whispered words to Will. Did I need the Druid? Yes, one hundred percent. But if she was going to question how we were doing things, she wouldn’t be a help; she’d just be a serious liability. Not exactly what I wanted, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone who was supposed to help me backed out at the last second. Of course, that made me think about Milly, which made me think about the fact that she’d ensnared O’Shea. Which only served to blacken my mood further.
“Are you coming with me or not?” I asked.
Deanna shook her head. “I’ll not come with you, no.” I glared at her and she held up her hand. “I said I’d help you and I will. I’ll go with William.”
Not exactly what I was hoping for, but better than a poke in the eye with a fork.
Pamela put her hands on her hips and glared at the Druid. “You know what, I’m glad you aren’t going. You just showed me what you Druids are really like. Even if you tried to take me to your stupid Dr
uids, I wouldn’t go. You’re a coward.”
My eyebrows shot into my hairline. The witch was a spitfire, I’d give her that.
With a flounce in her step, she moved to my side. “I’ll come with you.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, let’s go. Will?” His eyes met mine and I held his gaze. “Make it snappy.”
“You got it.”
Alex whimpered. “Alex wants to go with Rylee and Evie and Pamie.” His tail thumped weakly on the floor and he put his front paws together, begging. “Please.”
I crouched down, lifted up one of his floppy ears, and did a stage whisper into it, making sure Will heard me. “You need to keep an eye on the kitty and the Druid for me. Okay? Make sure they don’t do anything wrong.”
Before I let go of his ear, he was nodding, and then he wrinkled his lips up over his teeth in a ridiculous grin that made my heart squeeze. Gods, what would I do without Alex? What a horrible, boring, stale life I would lead.
Pamela and I headed out first to the police station. For once, the seemingly incessant rain had eased. Perfect for flying out in. Well, maybe not perfect, but better than being pelted with fat rain hundreds of feet in the air.
We nodded at the two officers who stepped in behind to follow us; I felt their footsteps stutter when Will, Deanna and Alex came out of the suite and headed toward the car.
Decisions, decisions.
I draped an arm across Pamela’s shoulders. “When we get to the police station, your job is to pin anyone who tries to stop us to the wall. Just hold them there. Can you do that?”
She smiled. “Yes. And now I can tie off the spell so I don’t have to be in the room to hold them.”
This kid was way beyond what I expected in talent. Giselle and her predictions; who knew that even in her madness she was trying to help?
“When did you have time to practice?”
“When I was sitting in the tree. I started pinning the bugs up so they wouldn’t crawl on me.”
Laughing, we walked into the police station. The looks we got from the officers ranged from outright disgust—I suppose a child hacking off zombie limbs would do that—to fear, to curiosity, right down to anger.
Of course, the anger was coming from one Dr. Daniels limping toward us. “There she is! She attacked me and sent me to the hospital with a sword wound! I have the hospital paperwork to prove it. I am taking the child away from her right—”
Dr. Daniels was picked up and slammed against the far wall. Pamela glowered at her. “I’m staying with Rylee.”
Then, of course, everything sort of hit the fan. Officers rushed to help the doctor; officers rushed us. Pamela did an admirable job pinning up people. Like flies on sticky tape they hung anywhere from three feet to seven feet up the wall. Some she hung upside down, sideways and diagonal.
Agent Valley came out of the main office, spluttering with rage. But it was the twinkle in his eyes and the quirk to his lips that told me I’d once again been played. I figured it out in the heartbeat before Pamela picked him up and pinned him to the ceiling.
He wanted me to do this, wanted me to break the rules. That way it wasn’t on the FBI’s shoulders if it went wrong.
The greasy little manipulator!
Well, we’d just see how smart everyone thought he was.
“Agent Valley, thank you for clearing the path for us. As always, it’s a pleasure doing business with the FBI. But next time, my fees will be double.”
His whole body spasmed against the ceiling and when he opened his mouth, Pamela gagged him.
“How did you know?” I asked as we sauntered through the building to the stairwell leading up to the roof.
“I thought he was going to say something mean to you again. And I didn’t want him to.”
Her words were an eerie echo of Alex. The two of them both wanted to protect me, and all I wanted was to make sure they were safe. A dark premonition trickled along my senses, making my gut twist. There would come a day when their loyalty would get them killed. Before that happened, I would have to send them on their way.
We ran up the stairs, but I was lost in my thoughts. I knew why Jack was alone. There was so much danger involved with being a Tracker. And for some stupid reason we inspired loyalty in those we were supposed to be protecting.
Bursting out the top door onto the roof, I heard shouting below.
“The spell must have worn off.” Pamela frowned. “I’m sorry, I thought it would last longer.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I looked around for something to jam the door with. Eve could be tricky to wake up and if her head jammed under her wing was any indication, she was deep in sleep. Which meant I needed a little more time. The roof was littered with garbage pipe, leftovers from some renovation or another. I grabbed the closest piece that was about four feet long and jammed it under the door handle, burying the end in the loose gravel of the roof.
“Eve,” I shouted from where I was. “I need you to wake up. We’ve got problems!”
The Harpy grumbled in her sleep and lifted her head. “Rylee?”
“Yeah, we’ve got—”
The door thumped from the other side, the weight of a few officers behind it.
“You awake enough to take me and Pamela for a fly about?”
Eve ruffled her wings. She’d only gotten a few hours sleep and I knew I was asking a lot of her. Now I was glad she’d come, though I had been less than grateful when she’d first landed.
With a beak-clacking yawn, she nodded. “Yes, I can take you two.”
I pushed Pamela ahead of me and we ran to Eve’s side. We skidded to a stop and I was in the middle of boosting Pamela up when the door banged open. Agent Valley was at the front of the pack.
“ADAMSON!”
I gave him a wave, and then blew him a kiss. “You got it, boss. I’m on the case, just like you said!”
Leaping up behind Pamela, I wrapped my arms around her and buried my hands in Eve’s feathers. The Harpy launched straight up, her powerful wings sweeping out around us in a gust of wind and dust. When I looked down, the rooftop crawled with people. Denning had finally shown up, though he’d been MIA since before the zombie attack. By the looks of things as we banked to the south, Denning and Valley were arguing. At least, Valley took a swing at Denning just before we lost them from sight.
“Just head south, Eve. And stay high enough that we can’t be seen from the ground.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
Pamela shivered and I tightened my arms around her. Though in some ways she reminded me of Berget, in others she was completely opposite. Her coloring, of course, her age was close to what Berget would be now, and her loyalty. But Berget had never had a feisty bone in her; in that, Pamela was so different. I had to believe that whoever had taken Berget had treated her well, because I doubted she would have survived otherwise. Pamela, on the other hand, would survive with or without me. She was, in some ways, more like me than I’d thought at first.
Already, she was growing and changing, her acceptance of this new world she’d been introduced to as natural as if she’d been born to it. A blessing and curse all rolled into a tidy little package, one that she would have her entire life, however long that would end up being.
I Tracked the kids and sat bolt upright. Fuck, the Necromancer had moved them! I felt the pull as strongly as before, a tether that circled around and pulled me in the opposite direction of where we were headed.
“Eve, swing around. The kids have been moved.”
Pamela sucked in a breath. “How will Alex and Deanna and Will find us?”
I grit my teeth as Eve banked hard to the left, her body slicing through the skim of clouds around us.
“They won’t.”
23
Milly had him standing with his nose pressed into the corner of her hotel room, like he was some ill-behaved child. He could hear and smell, but that was it. The witch’s perfume was overwhelming, the scent of roses so heavy it felt
like he was suffocating in it.
The vampire was back, which was what had precipitated O’Shea’s current position.
“I’m telling you, I have complete control over him,” Milly snapped.
“Witch. I wasn’t asking.” There was the sound of a slap, and while O’Shea wasn’t overly fond of the vampire, he wished he could have seen Milly get smacked around.
“You bastard, I’ll make you pay for that,” she screeched. “Liam, kill him!”
He spun and leapt at the vampire, toppling him to the ground. For once, he agreed with the command Milly gave him, and it made all the difference. His body unleashed all the pent up frustration and need to kill, and teeth and claws ripped through flesh as he pummeled the vampire with everything he had. That lasted all of twenty seconds before Faris put an end to it.
Faris laughed, his hands shooting out toward Liam, clamping the agent’s arms flat to his sides, effectively stopping O’Shea from moving. As if he were a child.
“Oh, wolf, if only you knew the power you carried, you’d be a formidable opponent. One worthy of my time and efforts.” The vampire shifted his head to one side. “As it is, you are a royal pain in my ass— and until Rylee realizes you aren’t coming back, I think it’s safe to say you are very much in my way.”
With a quick flick, Faris removed the torc while Milly screamed.
O’Shea scrambled back from him, his hands going involuntarily to his throat. “Why would you help me?”
Laughing, Faris smiled down at him. “Is that what you think I did?”
Before he could say anything else, O’Shea felt it, the pressure that had been unleashed. Milly had made sure the wolf was buried—the wolf and whatever else lay inside of him.
With a pained howl, he grabbed his head, the force of the wolf building until his skin split and the beast roared forward, all sense of humanity fleeing.
Faris continued his lecture. “You see, wolf, when you stop the natural progression of something, particularly in our world, it builds. Like an avalanche growing as it scours a mountainside. And if you unleash it after all that time building.” He made a popping sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.
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