Fallen Five

by Erica Spindler

  Arianna took a bite of her sandwich, expression thoughtful as she chewed. “They usually travel in pairs. I don’t know the specifics, other than the gift of transformation is rare and it runs in families. Not every Lightkeeper with the gift becomes a chameleon, but when one sibling does, often the other does, as well. It’s actually quite tragic for the family.”

  “Pairs,” Zach repeated, looking at Micki. “The other dark energy I picked up, at Major Nichols’ office window.”

  Micki nodded. “By any chance, can they transform into birds?”

  Arianna looked surprised. “Yes. Other animals as well. Some are basic shifters, and others are more gifted. They’re the ones who can imprint their intended victim.”

  Zach took the last bite of his sandwich, crumpled the wrapper and dropped it in the bag. “Let’s just say, there’s nothing basic about the one we’re dealing with.”

  “Show me.” Arianna held out her hand. “Maybe I’ll recognize her.”

  He clasped it. His palm tingled, then heated. He closed his eyes, visualizing the flow of memories as ribbons of light, running down his arm, through his hand and into hers. He focused on the transfer, knowing what to do and how to control it—he and Parker had done this many times before. And he knew from those times, that because of their familial, shared light, she wouldn’t just “see” his memories, she would re-live them—the sights, smells, and sounds. Even his emotional reactions.

  Nichols plunging from the window. The hospital, what he’d learned from Sue. Kicking in the door at Mick’s. Arianna’s body jerked in response to the scene that had greeted him—Mick, the gun to her head, expression devastated.

  He tightened his hand around hers. All that Mick had shared with him, his every reaction, complicated feelings, ones he wouldn’t want her to know.

  He refocused his memories, jumping back in time. Thomas King’s suicide, Mercedes King’s. The amber-eyed woman, each time he had seen her. The black feather.

  He broke the connection, stopping the flow abruptly. They sprang apart. Arianna took another step back, eyes wide, rubbing her hand against her thigh. She looked at Micki. “I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”

  “For what?”

  “The way I treated you. I was wrong to act that way.”

  “We were all played, there’s nothing to forgive. Did you recognize her?”

  “Unfortunately, no. By the way, they’re born with blue eyes like ours, but they turn that honey color as their light force dims. Since their eyes give them away, they often wear colored contacts.”

  Micki checked the time. “This thing has set her sights on me, and when she finds out I’m still alive, she’s going to be really pissed off.”

  “Which means,” Zach said, “she’s going to try again, this time maybe through someone close to you. To make you suffer.”

  “We have to stop her.” Micki looked from Zach to Arianna. “I think it’s time to wake Angel up, don’t you?”

  “Agreed.” Arianna started toward the bedrooms. “I’ll get her.”

  Zach looked at Micki. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “Will we? Without the law to back us up?” She shook her head. “Maybe I should kill her? Kill her and not worry about what happens to me.”

  “Not even as a last resort. You hear me, Mick?”

  “I do, but think about it. She’s going to go on hurting people, wrecking lives. If I’d pulled the trigger, she would have moved on.”

  “Yes, you, Arianna and Angel would be safe, but she would have set her sights on someone else. We have to stop her. Permanently.”

  Arianna returned to the room alone, Angel’s sketchbook in her hands. Zach’s heart sank at her expression.

  “Angel’s gone. This was on the floor by her bed.”

  She held out the art tablet, opened, Zach saw, to a drawing of a couple embracing, their lower bodies depicted as roots, twined together.

  The man and woman portrayed in the drawing were easily recognizable—the happy couple was Angel and Seth.

  Scrawled on the bottom of the page was the message: I’m coming for you.

  Chapter Forty-six

  8:42 A.M.

  Angel came to with a broken heart. Seth had betrayed her. He had betrayed their unborn child.

  She opened her eyes slowly, afraid he would be beside her. Smiling down at her, pleased with himself. Celebrating her complete devastation. Instead, only darkness greeted her. Absolute and unnatural. Like a tomb.

  Buried alive? she wondered, terror rippling over her. Never to see light again?

  She wouldn’t put it past him, not anymore. He had proved what he was. And that she had been so very wrong about him.

  Angel breathed deeply, fighting the urge to cry. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to survive. Not if she wanted her baby to survive.

  No watch or phone, so no connection to the outside world. She couldn’t even hope for help from that direction. She focused on her surroundings instead. She lay on a cot. Head on a pillow, sheet and blanket over her. She held her breath and listened. The soft whir of a fan. Air, she thought. Some sort of ventilation system.

  She moved aside the blanket and sat up. As she swung her legs over the side of the cot, she hit something and knocked it over. She reached for it and discovered it was a camping lantern.

  With a squeak of relief, Angel switched it on. A warm, reassuring glow surrounded her. She stood and held it up. A rectangular space, she saw. Like a box. No windows, no doors.

  Her dream. The one she’d been having when Seth came for her. There had to be a way in and out. There always was.

  Her gaze landed on a small table. Under it, a box of provisions. Beside the box, three gallons of water.

  Angel crossed to the table, pulled the box out and rummaged through it. Some fruit and packaged snacks. He expected her to be here for more than a day. Three days? she wondered. A gallon of water a day? Or a week? Longer?

  Her stomach rumbled, and she grabbed the banana, peeled it and wolfed it down. She went for a package of peanut butter crackers, ate several of them, then went for the water—and found a bag with more supplies. In this one: paper cups, a roll of toilet paper and paper towels, and a box of Kleenex.

  It was the last that hit her like a ton of bricks. Seth expected her to need the tissues, he expected her to cry. Bastard! Betrayer! She’d show him!

  After downing a glass of water, she began a careful search of the space. She started at the far short wall, feeling her way, counting her steps. Every couple of feet, rapping on the wall and calling out.

  Metal walls. Angel tipped her head back and held up the lantern. Ceiling material appeared also to be metal. Like a shipping container.

  Imprisoned in a shipping container.

  Seth had done this to her. Something dark and terrible rose up inside her, full of fury. The tattoo on her thigh throbbed. She tipped her head back and howled.

  The sound bounced off the walls and shook the container. The power of it brought her to her knees, her hands to her ears. Her baby stirred, as if disturbed. Or excited.

  Angel felt sick, realizing what she had done, recognizing the part of her she had awakened. That she could use it to escape.

  If she did, she would be lost. Her child would be lost.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle and began to rock. This baby would be a child of the light. The darkness could not have it.

  Even if they both had to die.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  10:15 A.M.

  Micki paced. While she did, she kept telling herself that Angel really was with Seth, that just like she’d said over and over again, he loved her and had come back for her.

  Micki kept telling herself that. Problem was, she didn’t believe it. She knew to her core and with every fiber of her being that it was the chameleon, masquerading as Seth, who had her.

  For Seth, Angel would go anywhere. Because of that, she had been the most susceptible of them all to the chameleon�
�s lies.

  Micki checked the time. They had decided she and Arianna would wait at LAM while Zach headed to the Eighth to put his mind-bending-powers to work getting authorization for a city-wide BOLO for Angel. After that, he was going to check in with her friends and at all her favorite spots, on the unlikely chance he found her.

  Non-existent chance.

  Micki stopped pacing and brought her hand to Hank’s medal for what seemed like the hundredth time since putting it back on before leaving her house that morning.

  She curled her fingers around it. Please, Hank, let her be okay. I don’t know what I’ll do if I caused her death, the way I caused yours.

  Nothing. No response. She felt ridiculously let down.

  “All the pacing and worrying in the world won’t change this outcome,” Arianna said softly.

  Micki looked at the other woman, sitting to the side, serenely watching her. “So, I should sit calmly by and do nothing?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Trust, Michaela.”

  Micki drew her eyebrows together in a fierce frown. “Trust in what? Not this crazy, unpredictable world. It was bad enough when I thought humans were the monsters.”

  “We decided Zach should go alone. Trust our decision and Zach.”

  “I know what we agreed, dammit.”

  “No need to snap at me.”

  The famous Lightkeeper calm, Micki thought, glaring at her.

  As if reading her thoughts, Arianna shook her head. “All that anxiety is just your need for control. It’s wasted energy. Control is an illusion.”

  “More freaking mumbo jumbo,” she muttered. “Try carrying a gun. There’s some control.”

  Arianna shook her head. “You have to let go, Micki. You have to trust that good will win out in the end.”

  Arianna stood and crossed to her. She caught her hands. “Darkness cannot exist in the light. We can be the good, the light, the world needs. Each one of us.”

  Normally she would have scoffed. Come back with a cynical retort. But looking into Arianna’s endless blue gaze made her cynicism seem mean.

  “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “I do. If I didn’t, I’d be dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was imprisoned in a very dark place. My light force could have been extinguished, but instead I used it to help others hold on to hope.”

  For a moment, as she gazed into Arianna’s eyes, she saw that place—and the reality of it settled over her like a shroud, heavy and suffocating. A place of unimaginable cruelty, a landscape of despair and destruction.

  But because of Arianna, not hopeless.

  Micki blinked, and the sensation passed. She sucked in a deep, cleansing breath. “I wish I could be like that, I really do. But I can’t.”

  “You can. You just don’t know it yet.” Arianna lowered her eyes to her chest. “Your medal—may I see it?”

  Micki slipped the chain over her head and handed it to Arianna. “It’s St. Michael. It was a gift from a friend.”

  “Yes, I know.” She curved her fingers around it. “Protector of the police and military, slayer of the Dragon and guardian to all Lightkeepers.” Arianna closed her eyes, a soft smile curving her lips. “I know this energy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He was a friend of mine, too. A long time ago.” Her voice grew faraway. “I loved him very much.”

  The woman was officially freaking her out, and Micki held out her hand. “If you don’t mind.”

  But Arianna didn’t move toward giving it back. “A gift you said?”

  “Yes.”

  She let out her breath in a wistful-sounding sigh, and handed it over. “It was a generous one.”

  Micki slipped it back on. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “Your friend shared his light force with you.”

  Micki opened her mouth to tell her that wasn’t possible. That the friend who’d given the necklace to her had been, like her, just another human.

  The front buzzer sounded, cutting her off. Micki checked the monitor, saw it was, indeed, Zach, then let him in.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nobody’s seen her. Not her friends or people at any of her regular haunts. But I do have some good news. The BOLO has been issued and given high priority.”

  “What do we do now?” Arianna asked.

  “I know exactly what our next move should be,” Micki said, glancing at her watch. “It’s just after ten. My guess is she’s waiting to hear the news of my death. And I bet, if we act now, we’ll still have the element of surprise on our side.”

  “What do you propose?” Zach asked.

  “I call her. And I let her know that not only am I very much alive, but that she lost, and I won. And I offer myself to her in exchange for Angel.”

  “No,” Zach said. “Absolutely not.”

  “Sorry, partner, I wasn’t asking your permission.”

  “Dammit, Mick! Think this through.”

  “I think she’s right,” Arianna offered. “It could get us Angel and her baby back.”

  Zach glared at his mother.

  “What?” she asked. “You have a better plan?”

  “Offering an exchange isn’t a plan. It’s an idea. We don’t know the first thing about capturing or killing one of these things.”

  “She can be killed like any other Lightkeeper, because she’s flesh and blood,” Arianna said. “But when you kill her, she won’t revert to her true self.”

  “So if I kill her when she’s Natalie King,” Micki said, “I’m the prime suspect and will most likely go to jail.”

  “Let’s take killing her off the table for just a moment.” Zach looked at Arianna. “Is there any way we can capture her and force her to transform back into her true self?”

  “That’s it!” Arianna snapped her fingers. “We bring her to LAM. It’s a safe house, so she won’t be able to transform or use dark energy in any other way.”

  “How do we get her there?” Micki asked, excited.

  “She won’t cross the threshold willingly—she’ll know it’s protected.” Arianna looked from one to the other of them. “We make her.”

  “Make her?” Mick repeated. “How do you propose we do that?”

  “Handcuffs?” Arianna looked at them both. “You have those, right?”

  “We handcuff her and force her into LAM?” Mick groaned. “In other words, we kidnap her.”

  Zach stepped in. “It’s not a plan, but it’s a direction.” He crossed to the front window, peered out at the street, then turned back to them. “So, once we have her here, nice and secure, then what? We can’t keep her here forever.”

  They looked at each other, the suddenly Micki knew. She smiled. “Arianna, you said chameleons make up part of the High Council’s Most Wanted list. And I bet ours is way up high on it.”

  “Yes!” Zach snapped his fingers. “We turn her in.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  11:55 A.M.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Zach asked.

  They stood in Professor Truebell’s office, the midday light cascading through the stained glass window behind his desk. It created a rainbow of color on the floor. Micki found it oddly reassuring, as if she was being watched over.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  “She’ll come after you, Mick.”

  “That’s the point. Right?”

  He lowered his voice. “I was there last night. I saw what she did to you.”

  “Not this time, Zach,” she said, ignoring the way her heart rate accelerated. “This time I’ll be ready.”

  He held her gaze. “And I promise, I’ll be right there with you.”

  “I know you will. It means a lot.”

  Micki dug her phone out of her pocket, and after letting out a determined breath, dialed.

  King answered right away. “Hello, Detective. I�
��ve been expecting your call.”

  “Not surprised your sick, little game didn’t work? It must happen a lot.”

  “On the contrary, you’re one of the few. However, I saw Detective Harris arrive last night and knew there was a very good chance he’d do something ridiculously heroic and save the day.”

  “He kicked the door in.”

  “Your hero. Very macho.” Her acid tone dripped disdain. “I had no choice but to move on to plan ‘B.’”

  “Angel?”

  “Of course. Your fault, Michaela. All of it.”

  Micki fought the guilt that rose up and threatened to choke her. That was what the chameleon wanted, and she wouldn’t give her the pleasure. “I want Angel back.”

  “Too bad. I have other plans for young Angel and her sweet babe.”

  Micki tightened her grip on the phone. “I propose an exchange, me for Angel.”

  “No.” She laughed. “Silly, Michaela, why would I do that? I hold all the cards.”

  King didn’t pull any punches, so neither would she. “You don’t have me. You make the exchange, or I’ll be the one who got away—again.

  King remained quiet for the count of four. When she spoke, her tone vibrated with something dark. “Back for more?” She clucked her tongue. “What a little glutton for punishment you are.”

  Micki smiled, knowing she had landed a blow. “It’s your turn to be punished,” Micki said, smiling. “And it’s been a long time coming.”

  “I’m surprised. A soft touch like you . . . putting your friends in danger this way?” She laughed softly, sounding pleased. “No job. Friends with targets on their backs.” She lowered her voice. “What do you have to live for?”

  “Vengeance,” she answered simply. “For Hank. And I guess, for everything else, too. But mostly Hank.”

  “And how’re you going to do that?”

  “That’s for you to find out. And you will. Because I’m stronger than you. You gave me all you had, and you didn’t break me.”

  “You were saved. If not for him, you’d be dead now. We both know it.”

  “Do we? Let’s meet. You can show me.”