The Shadow Guard

by Diane Whiteside

  He could dimly hear boots pounding through the corridor but it never hurt to make things official. He’d bet the marshal by the control panel was dead, though. The fellow had never moved or spoken after the attack began. Plus, the stench coming from that corner told its own unmistakable tale.

  She lightly touched her fingers to the back of the rat’s hand.

  “Sleep,” she ordered in a tone the good nuns at Blessed Sacrament School would have approved.

  The vermin promptly went limp and blessedly silent.

  Holy crap. Had she worked magick once again to pull that off?

  Jake didn’t work vice squad, so his eyes weren’t trained to spot every flicker. But he should be able to spot any sleight-of-hand from this close.

  “Are you a sorceress or did you just pop him some drugs?” he demanded.

  “Sahir—what you would call a sorceress.”

  Jake stared at her. What exactly was she admitting to?

  She yanked the first guard’s Kevlar vest open and slid her hand over his left shoulder. Blood still spewed from his wound, but she made no move to bandage him. Her attitude sang of listening.

  Jake crawled over to the second guard. He had a nasty bullet wound alongside his head and lots of blood loss. The guy was still out cold, which suggested a possible concussion in Jake’s very inexpert opinion. Come on, Jake, remember First Aid 101. How the hell could he treat this?

  Fists drummed on the door.

  “Hammond? Can you hear us?” Chief Andrews yelled.

  “Loud and clear.” Thank God the cavalry was here.

  “The bad guys locked down every elevator door in the building.”

  Shit. The son-of-a-bitch assassin had made sure nobody would find out what he’d done or be able to quickly follow him. God bless modern technology: the courthouse designers had made sure that simply tugging the doors open wouldn’t work here.

  “We’re going to have to either cut you out or come in from the roof.”

  To the sixth floor of a twenty-five-story building? “Can’t think of a better way to have fun, sir.”

  “Knew you’d feel that way, sergeant.” There was a brief pause, filled with indistinct muttering on the other side.

  “You said three officers down, Hammond?” the chief asked.

  “One is dead, sir, and one is critical.” Goddamn the sneaky bastard who did this.

  Astrid hummed a chant and the first guard’s breathing eased a little.

  “We’ll do our best to hurry, Hammond. I’ll let you know what our plans are.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  He studied Astrid warily. It might be the lighting, but she looked more drawn than she had in the garage. Maybe magick—if there was such a thing!—knocked the hell out of its user in real life, the way it did in Argos.

  Jake took his helmet off and laid it on the floor. He didn’t need an extra headache-inducer for the next hour. Then he began to strip down to his T-shirt.

  “How is he?” he asked her gently. Her fancy wool coat and trousers were soaked in blood.

  “Dying. I give him five minutes at the most.” She stroked his forehead with her free hand, her expression very pensive. “Did you know he’s about to get married? They’re rushing the ceremony so his pregnant fiancée will have insurance coverage.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stopped ripping up his T-shirt for bandages and lightly squeezed her shoulder to offer comfort.

  For a moment, something sparked between them. Fireflies trailed across his arm to her throat and then vanished.

  “What the hell was that?” Jake demanded. “Static electricity? That could kill us in here; we’ve got no place to go to get away from it!”

  “Not electricity.” Astrid sat back on her haunches and eyed him like a housewife studying a display of gourmet chocolates.

  Jake frowned at her. What the hell was she up to now?

  “Will you help me save his life?” she asked bluntly.

  “Even if the two of us strip, we probably don’t have enough clothes to bandage both of them,” Jake returned, equally blunt. “Not when he’s losing that much blood.”

  “Not first aid.” She shook her head. “Magick.”

  “I don’t believe in it.” No way he’d trust anything he hadn’t personally seen or touched. “If you need a credulous dupe—”

  “I need a kubri and that’s you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The first guard’s breath rattled in his throat.

  “Give me your hand!”

  Jake’s hand locked around hers before his brain caught up.

  “Now think about your home or another piece of Virginia that you love.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, Hammond, picture someplace that’s magickal for you. Where you always go to find refuge and comfort.” Her hand tightened on his hard enough to hold fast in a hurricane. “I need that magick to save this man’s life.”

  Her eyes blazed at him, fierce and green. Lights swirled within her iris, brighter than gemstones.

  His heart shifted and warily opened a door.

  “St. Anne’s,” Jake murmured. The Hammond family’s first parish church in Virginia, the place where his parents were buried. “The churchyard always has something in bloom. In springtime, the dogwoods look like candles lighting the way.”

  His mouth curved, remembering all the hunting and fishing trips down to the Northern Neck with his father. The summertime trips to the church fair to help clean up the grounds and buy local produce. All his visits as a grown man, when he’d discuss difficult investigations with a silent headstone—and pray his brother didn’t fill the plot next door too damn soon.

  His family had peopled that cemetery for four centuries. They’d been buried in that land for far longer, thanks to marrying into the local tribes.

  Astrid brushed her lips across his hand and Jake smiled faintly.

  He could see all of it now—the trees’ delicate blossoms veiling the churchyard, the soft green grass waving over the ancient graves, the warm red brick, the soft white gravestones, and the ironwork’s tracery like a door between worlds. Nothing had seriously changed St. Anne’s—not the British, nor the Yankees, not even the two centuries since the new building was erected.

  He could feel its strength, surging into his bones like the walls rising from the rich soil to protect the flowers.

  The first guard wheezed beside Jake’s knee.

  “Hmm?” Jake questioned, still caught in his memories of St. Anne’s.

  “Look into my eyes, Jake,” Astrid commanded harshly.

  Jake opened his eyes cautiously—and blinked.

  Her irises blazed with light, more iridescent than any kaleidoscope. Was she real or was this a dream?

  Pinwheels of flashing color rotated around the tiny compartment, until it seemed like the inside of a genie’s jewel box.

  “Now hold onto me tightly, no matter what happens.”

  Jake shot her a disgusted look. Did she honestly think any so-called hocus-pocus could frighten a homicide cop?

  Her mouth was a thin line above a taut jaw. For the first time that day, she looked nervously determined, rather than confident.

  “Ready whenever you are.” Jake flipped her a casual, two-fingered salute. Hell, if she’d scared off the attacker, then just maybe they could pull this off, too.

  Her lips settled into a cockier grin and she winked at him.

  Jake settled down to give Death another damn good run for its money. He’d rather fight the bastard on this side of the grave, while the victim was still alive, than afterward when it became murder.

  Astrid’s free hand rotated into a different position atop the first guard’s heart until her index finger pointed upward. She chanted something in a language Jake didn’t understand.

  The lights brightened into a continuous glow and caught at Jake, like a pack of cops at a planning meeting who looked to their leader for confidence.

  Hell, he
could do this.

  In the afternoon, the sunset lit St. Anne’s churchyard in gold and crimson until dogwood blossoms became fiery jewels . . .

  The lights around Jake strengthened and settled into a steady gleam, vibrant as his flashlight.

  Astrid’s voice deepened until it sang through Jake’s bones.

  The glow tightened around Astrid and Jake, a soft woolen blanket shining against firelight.

  Astrid chanted again, this time singing something whose rhythm hinted of spring.

  The band of light began to pulse outward in a steady dance, ever obedient to Astrid’s voice. It lingered over the first guard and penetrated through his clothing until Jake could see his bones. He too glowed like Astrid and Jake by the time the light moved on to the second guard.

  The glow moved over this marshal like a ballroom dancer, in a far more lighthearted series of steps.

  Astrid ended her song with a series of rhythmic claps. The unearthly glow promptly blinked out, blacking out the elevator.

  Jake gasped and slumped back against the elevator wall. He’d spent days in the gym that took less out of him—but no workout ever left him with a goofy grin on his face like this one.

  “Jake?” Astrid sounded hesitant. Exhausted, too.

  “Yeah, honey? You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine. Tired, but not too much.” The elevator lights crackled then came back online, one by one. “How about you?”

  “Couldn’t be better, especially after I have some coffee.” He levered himself onto his knees—nobody designed elevators for somebody his size—and checked out the second guard. The fellow stirred and grumbled under his hand but didn’t quite wake up. His bullet wound was now a scratch across his temple, complete with small scab.

  Jake would bet that any potential concussion was probably ancient history.

  Astrid slid her hand out from under the first guard’s Kevlar vest.

  “How’s he doing?” Jake nodded at the dude.

  “Fine. Perfect, in fact.” Her smile broke open like sunrise on the first day of spring. “He’ll live to see his son born.”

  “Awesome.” Jake didn’t give a damn about the rat’s condition, wherever he was under that bloody heap. “Now would you mind telling me exactly how the hell you pulled all of this off?”

  “Ah—” Her expression shuttered faster than SWAT tactical helmets during a bad raid.

  Jake waited grimly to see if she’d try to make him undergo a memory wipe or whatever sorceresses called it.

  Fists pounded on the door again.

  “Hammond?”

  Shit.

  “Yes, chief?” Jake kept his voice more professional than his thoughts.

  “We’ve got the top elevator guy here. He says he can take you up to the sixth floor and cut you out. Just give us a couple of minutes, no more.”

  “Great.” Not enough time or privacy to get any answers out of Astrid.

  “We have to talk.” He shot his best interrogation glare at her. It was unlikely to have much effect, if half of Argos’s rules were true about sorceresses.

  Or sahirs, or whatever she called herself.

  She looked straight back down her nose at him, haughty as any high-born elf. No barbarian could have pulled off such an ice-cold survey.

  Then she knocked his world’s remnants around his ears.

  “Yes, of course. You need to know, if you’re to catch these bastards.”

  Bastards? There was more than one?

  Now didn’t that make the rat rustling at his feet look like a piece of cake, instead of a five-year manhunt’s prize?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The last two joggers hurtled past Jake, apparently on their way to dry clothes and warm food. An elderly Labrador and its aged master hustled up the path. Wind hurled waves against the parapet but a few rays of sunshine still dueled the racing black clouds.

  At least for the next hour.

  The forecasters swore this storm wouldn’t strip any incipient cherry blossoms from the trees. They’d also fired off enough foul weather warnings to blanket a weather map for the next twenty-four hours.

  Nobody with any sense visited Patriots’ Park when a storm was coming in. Located just north and upriver from the munitions factory where Melinda Williams’s body had washed ashore, the entire place would be underwater long before the factory’s great clock struck the turn of the tide.

  Which was exactly why Jake had agreed to meet Astrid here.

  He could understand why she wouldn’t visit the station. But his house? That refusal felt like a bullet to his gut.

  He’d offered Duffy’s, but she preferred an open space. So they settled on this, someplace even the gulls were deserting in droves.

  He shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets.

  At least two of the three marshals were alive and well.

  The terrorist rat was fine, too, and chattering faster than any social networking site about all his connections. He’d apparently decided whoever sent all those bullets ricocheting inside the elevator didn’t give a damn about his health. Now his only hope for a long life was to make friends with the federal government—and good luck to him.

  Crap, how much blood could one woman get on her clothes and still keep her head?

  Jake kicked a pebble into the grass and wished he could arrest somebody for loitering. Or vandalizing. Or something, anything, just so he could pretend he was setting the world straight.

  “Hi.”

  He spun around.

  She watched him from a few steps away, the wind whipping stray locks of hair around her face like a veil—or her avatar’s war garb. She was dressed in the same casual jeans and boots she’d worn last night. But he couldn’t penetrate her expression any better than he had in the elevator.

  How had she arrived so silently? Okay, there was a Metro station a few blocks away, but he should have heard her walking in. On the other hand, did he really want to ask that question yet?

  “Hey there.” He joined her quickly but didn’t touch her, not this time. “How do you feel?”

  “A little tired.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Mostly I’m glad the two marshals survived—and the first didn’t feel anything when he was taken down.”

  “Amen. That’s always the best way to go.” He brooded for a moment, then said his usual quick prayer for his own passing. After eighteen years as a cop, he had very strong opinions about how and when he’d like to meet his Maker.

  He glanced over and Astrid met his gaze silently, composed as a Roman battle monument.

  “Will you tell me the truth today?” he asked abruptly.

  “If you let me put you under compulsion to keep it a secret,” she answered calmly.

  “Put me under compulsion?” His jaw dropped. “You talk like casting spells is an everyday matter!”

  “It is.” She waited, relentless as his Sig’s ability to deal out bullets until somebody died.

  “What if you tell me you’ve committed crimes?”

  She blinked at him, then threw back her head and laughed. The sound rang through the skies like bells. Despite anything his old patrol sergeant ever told him about dames and their ability to lie, Jake found himself grinning.

  “Jake.” She wiped tears of glee from her eyes and tried again. “Sergeant Hammond, I give you my word that I don’t do crimes.”

  “Great.” His lungs started breathing normally again instead of hovering somewhere between guffaws and stentorian barks to obey the law.

  “At least not according to American law.”

  “Not according to . . .” That was a huge hole. “What about other countries?”

  “Take my word for it that you’ll never extradite me.” She took another step forward, then looked back over her shoulder when he didn’t follow. “Are you coming?”

  “Crap, you make it sound like there’s a whole underground world out there.” He matched her stride and took the next corner. He wouldn’t falter the next time, dammit
, no matter what nonsense she spouted.

  “There is.”

  “Riiight.” Like pigs flew and mountains walked.

  “They can, if we pour enough power into the spell.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Pigs flying and mountains walking. You shouted your thoughts.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Jake ground his teeth and swore he’d do better. He was a skilled interrogator; he could pull answers from her, no matter what she was.

  When his heartbeat stopped hammering his skull, he shoved his wrist at her. “Okay, let’s get this compulsion thing over with.”

  “I already have.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “You mentally agreed and were calm enough to accept the spell. So I’ve performed it.” Her voice was gentler when she spoke again. “I would have immediately reversed it, of course, if you’d objected when you spoke again.”

  “Thank you,” he said stiffly. Good God, what kind of prissy jackass did she think he was? He wasn’t afraid of anything Astrid could do to him. At least, not much.

  The river raged past them, angry enough to silence the tour boats. Two men chatted on the riverbank, but the waves’ white froth clouded their forms. One had long black braids and carried a bow slung over his shoulder. The other wore a low-brimmed, long-billed cap and leaned on his rifle, as if to make sure he’d always know where the weapon stood.

  Jake frowned and peered a little more closely at the two strangers. Reenactors would have to be certifiably insane to come out in this weather, even if a miracle birthed an event that elicited both an Indian from John Smith’s Jamestown and a soldier from Civil War Belhaven.

  “Do you see that guy in the leather?” he demanded. “I’ve got to call him in.”

  “Why?” Astrid’s question was sharper than the temperature.

  “Drunk and disorderly, public nuisance—something!” Jake reached for his phone. “Nobody sane would be out here wearing so little.”

  “You’re worried about him.”

  “Of course I am. Nobody goes to the ER with pneumonia while I’m watching.” He shot her a disgusted look, his thumb flying across the keys. Damn, sometimes he woke up from nightmares twitching in the same pattern. “The other guy will be okay. Those Civil War reenactors always have modern long johns under their old-fashioned duds.”