by Lindsey Duga
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. It had taken the better part of the day to drive all the way up from DC to New York. It hadn’t helped that technically we were both on the run, since I hadn’t really been pardoned and officially released.
I glanced at my watch. “When is McCarney showing up?”
“If you ask me that question again, I’m kicking you out of my car.”
With a groan, I leaned my head back against the seat.
“Look, I know you want to rescue your princess, but you were right not to storm the castle alone.” He gestured toward the lit-up skyscraper. “This place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. McCarney and some of the SOCD have been casing it for the past week and we don’t have much to go on, okay? So, keep a level head. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. You’re the best hunter there is, Clemmons. Act like it.”
I blinked at Jimmy, making out his outline through the gloom in the car.
Silence stretched on for a while, and I decided not to point out that he’d just delivered me an actual compliment. He might take it back or punch me or something. Hiding a smile, I said, “Okay, what do we have to go on?”
Jimmy narrowed his eyes at the building a block away. “The past few days, there have been a lot of trucks and delivery workers coming in and out of the garage. I’m talking flowers and tables and chairs, food and, naturally, booze. Tons and tons of it.”
“So, a party?”
Jimmy nodded. “A big fat one. The Moby Dick of parties.”
“Do you know who’s invited?”
Jimmy shifted, as if sitting on his ass for a good eight hours straight wasn’t agreeing with it. “That’s hopefully what McCarney has for us tonight. The guest list.”
At the far corner of the street, a black car pulled to the side and idled.
I straightened. “That it?”
“License plate checks out,” Jimmy answered as he started the car. Craning his neck over his shoulder, he checked the oncoming nightly Manhattan traffic and pulled out when there was a lull. We let the black car swerve into the traffic ahead of us, and then we followed it thirteen miles, all the way into Brooklyn.
Jimmy parked in front of an old brick house wedged between two others as the black car swung into the narrow driveway. Streetlights were positioned at either end of the street and silver garbage cans were left out front.
Jimmy and I got out of the car and headed up the steps. The door opened immediately, and I caught the screen door with my elbow as Jimmy ducked inside first.
The house was mostly bare with dusty wooden floors and drab walls. A brick fireplace sat in the corner and old furniture was pushed off to the side and covered in white sheets. Two men sat at a table full of papers and dozens upon dozens of photographs. My gaze homed in on my old boss sitting at the end, staring at the mess like it was a jigsaw puzzle he had to piece together.
The other man was Erickson, an agent and a manticore. I’d had his poison run through my veins every other night for five months before I built up an immunity to it. He was tall and in his late thirties.
Steps from the back alerted us to the arrival of the black car’s driver. A woman stepped into the light of the living room. She walked in, pulling off a platinum blonde wig, revealing her hair of writhing emerald-green serpents. Threading her hands through her snakes like they were nothing more than locks of hair, the gorgon let out a deep sigh. “Next time someone else gets to scout. This wig is driving me batty.”
Yet another one of my “torturers.” Rita Sharpe. The only female hunter in the SOCD and a powerful gorgon. Like Jimmy, she’d been unaware that she’d been involved in my so-called “training.” She’d just stared through two eyeholes for a few months. I’d fought against the lure of her magical stare until my muscles felt like they were melting. A gorgon’s stare turned people immobile. If they stared at her long enough, their skin would turn to stone… I’d never gotten to that point.
“Colt.” Her gaze softened as it came to rest on me. “It’s good to see you.”
“You, too,” I said, trying and failing to return her smile. I kept glancing back to McCarney. The last time I’d seen him I’d been sitting across from him in an interrogation room, chained to the table.
Finally, McCarney looked up, but when he did, he looked at Jimmy. “Any trouble?”
Jimmy threw himself on the sheet-covered couch. “It was duck soup, bosssssss.”
“Good,” McCarney grunted, then he shifted his gaze to me. “You look like shit,” he said flatly.
I gave a harsh laugh. “Yeah, well, thanks for sicing the golem on me.”
“Frankly, you deserved it,” he grumbled. “You could’ve trusted me. Brought me into all this sooner and we wouldn’t have to be here right now.”
I stalked over to the table, slamming my fist down on it. The legs shuddered and the table rocked. “As if any one of you would’ve listened to me. The BOI would’ve taken Eris and broken her down—just like you did to me. And I’d do it all over again, too. Especially after I know what really happened in Boston. I only came to you because we have one enemy now.”
McCarney’s eyes narrowed. “What happened in Boston?”
“Don’t play dumb,” I growled. “The shootout. Through the hotel walls? At first I thought there were three groups after Eris. The BOI, her creator, and someone who just wanted her dead. But I had a lot of time to think about it while in the holding cell in DC. You were the only one who knew my location and you purposefully lured me out of the room to go get the car you sent.”
McCarney tapped his fingers on the table, not looking remorseful. “And if you would’ve just gone to get the car—”
“She’d be dead!” I roared.
“Exactly!” McCarney bellowed back. “My superiors wanted her alive so they could use her, but the country is better off with her dead, Colt! Look at what’s happening—someone else has her and God knows what they’ll do with her!”
“This was a mistake.” Burning with rage, I turned to go, but Rita was there with a hand on my chest.
“Colt, wait.” She removed it quickly, surely feeling the heat of my fire breath. “It’s like you said, we have one enemy now. We can work together to get her back.”
“So McCarney can kill her,” I spat.
“Then get there first,” Jimmy said.
McCarney turned his head sharply to glare at him while Erickson and Rita looked over at their fellow agent in surprise.
“Use the SOCD, Colt.” Jimmy’s serpent-like eyes cut to mine, holding them. He kicked his right leg up to fold over his left. “Use us to storm the castle then escape with your princess when it’s all said and done. This isn’t a full-blown operation. We’re rogue now.” He gave me a crooked smirk as he tilted his chin up at me. “You can do whatever you damn well please.”
McCarney stood. “That’s insubordination.”
“You used me to torture a kid,” Jimmy snarled. “Fire me, I dare you.”
Silence stretched on in the room before Rita patted the pile on the table. “Right. Time to focus. Erickson? Will you do the honors?”
Erickson leaned forward, moving a document out from under the pile. “James G. Brocker. He’s an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, or at least that’s what his birth certificate says, but it looks like it was forged. Basically, the guy popped up in tax records about twenty-five years ago. He started his company with a man named Robert B. Kurtz. Their holding company has boomed in the last decade and even more so after Kurtz mysteriously died. Brocker’s known to be rich, but instead of making money off oil or railroads, he made money off other people’s wealth.” Erickson picked up a photograph from the pile and tossed it in the middle. It showed a man with graying brown hair, in a fancy suit and fedora, getting out of a Rolls Royce New Phantom automobile. “Rumor is, he’s got a party two nights from now. Wednesday night, October twent
y-third.”
McCarney moved a sheet of paper forward with two fingers, cutting in. “The guest list is the who’s who of Wall Street. The country’s wealthiest men and women will all be present. They’re calling it America’s Royal Court.”
My gaze jumped from photo to photo as I looked at different shots of the building and of the man who had Eris. His profile burned into my mind and my chest heated with anger.
“Unbelievable,” Jimmy sneered. “We go from the top dogs of the criminal netherworld to the kings and queens of the United States? Will the arrogance ever die?”
Rita leaned her hip against the table and regarded Jimmy with a raised eyebrow. “Erickson managed to stun two of the waiters, and luckily their uniforms are roughly yours and Colt’s sizes. Anyone with a special pin of Brocker’s crest on their uniform is granted access to the building. You’ll be going undercover.”
Jimmy blinked at Rita. “No. No way. Why can’t you go and be a maid or something?”
Rita smiled and winked. “I wouldn’t fill out a man’s uniform like you would, hon.”
Jimmy’s cheeks colored and he made a noise in the back of his throat.
I turned to McCarney. “Do we know what Brocker’s play is yet? Any word on that vial? Or Dr. Durwich?”
McCarney shook his head. “Your girl just arrived in Manhattan. Even if she still has the vial of blood there’s not a chance in hell she would’ve been able to get it to Dr. Durwich yet. But he’s on standby.”
“What about more blood from Sister Adaline?”
“Tried that. Apparently the virus is different than before. She used the term mutated.” He scratched his chin. “Unfortunately, the original strand in that blood is what we need to develop an antidote that will counteract the virus in its early stages, which is when it’s the most contagious. As for Brocker’s plan…” McCarney jerked his thumb back at Erickson and the manticore nodded.
This time, he withdrew papers full of charts, graphs, and tables with numbers. “Got a friend of mine to look into BKH’s financials and what he found was…alarming.”
“In what way?” I asked.
Erickson pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and tapped the end, sliding one out and fixing it between his lips. He lit it with his Banjo automatic lighter, clicking the side button with his thumb and letting the flame catch on the butt of the gasper. He took a drag and I wanted to grab it from his mouth and stamp it out. He was taking too long.
“Ever seen a house of cards?”
We all nodded.
“That’s what this fella’s financials are like. A house of cards. Everything is built on one another. People’s shares and investments and money all carefully placed precariously.” Erickson took another pull from his gasper and blew smoke into the air. “One blow could knock this house of cards down. If any of these companies were to hand over even one more share to Brocker, he could actually be named as the main shareholder and, using his own money, he could buy the rest out.”
We stared at him.
He sighed. “I’m saying all these companies would be owned by Brocker. You’d be looking at the wealthiest man in the country. In the whole damn world.”
“And all he would need is one more share from each of his companies?” Rita asked. “The owners of the companies would have to know that, though. There’s no way they would do it.”
My blood turned to ice, a direct opposite of the intense heat that had been radiating from my chest and throat.
I pictured Eris’s face as she sat on the bed of the hotel room that night before the tommy gun’s bullets blasted through the wall. Her words drifted through my mind in a soft whisper.
“They’ll either kill me or use me for evil. I don’t want to be evil, Colt. Please.”
Closing my eyes, I swallowed. “Not unless a certain someone told them to do it.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Siren
The morning sun filtered through my white silk curtains and shone between the gaps, making me squint. Flipping onto my back, I threw an arm over my eyes. For just a moment, in the darkness I had created, I could imagine that I was back in my small room at Madame’s apartment above The Blind Dragon. I could hear the kettle’s whistle going off, screaming at her that the water was boiling for her afternoon cup of Earl Grey. I could smell the thick Ethiopian coffee blend that Stanley put on when he came in to unload liquor for that day’s bootlegging shipment. And the sounds of Manhattan were similar to the sounds of Boston. Sirens, dockworkers, cars honking, thousands of busy footsteps across pavement—all blurring together into a background symphony of which I knew every note.
All last night I’d tried, and failed, to come up with a plan. But no matter what scenario I could think of, my conscience kept going back to those children. If I somehow escaped, then Brocker would kill a child, or however many he chose until he had me once again.
A light knock on my bedroom door had me flinching, throwing my arm off my face to see my visitor, praying to God it wasn’t the devil himself.
The cyclops woman stood in the door. She wore a maroon day dress with a cloche hat pulled low over her brow to conceal her third eye. It had peacock feathers embedded into the velvet ribbon trim. “The maids told me you didn’t eat dinner or breakfast.”
I turned away from her to stare out the bedroom window at the crawling expanse of New York City. “If you just saw the only mother you’d ever known get her head blown off, would you be peckish?” I replied.
Footsteps on carpet, then a gentle touch on my arm. “I’m sorry about Helena Kurtz, Eris. I really am.”
Disgust rolled through me and I jerked away from her, pulling myself out of bed and stumbling against the window. I hadn’t realized how weak I was—I hadn’t eaten for almost twenty-four hours and I’d cried most of the night. My back against the cold glass, I glared at the monster. “You used your power to find me and bring me in. Why should I believe anything you say?”
Her red lips turned down into a frown. “Haven’t you considered I’m his prisoner, too?”
I opened and closed my mouth. No, I hadn’t. But I should’ve. She had been the one to tell me yesterday that there was more at stake than just my life. She’d known about the children and wanted me to help protect them.
Digging my hand into my messy curls, I sighed. “Okay, I believe you. But who are you? I don’t even know your name.”
She sat down on my bed, twisting her hands in her lap. “My name is Marjorie. Sister Marjorie,” she added.
Sister?
“I had come to St. Juliana a few months before you were adopted by Brocker and you received your pearl. We hadn’t known each other for very long, but still, you’d left an impression on me. I’d never liked the man who adopted you. A year after you left the orphanage, I went to look for you…to see how you were doing. I entered Brocker’s building, and…and never left.”
Raising a trembling hand to my mouth, I tried to repress a choking sound. She’d come looking for me? To check on me?
“At first, he kept me because he thought I might have something to do with your kidnapping, but then he decided he wanted to use me. Pumped me full of chimera agent and gave me this eye.” She tugged the brim of her hat a bit lower, her painted lips twisting to the side in revulsion.
“Then that means…because of me…you…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. How many more lives was I destined to destroy?
Marjorie pushed off the bed and grabbed my shoulders, giving me a gentle shake. “No, Eris. None of this is your fault. It’s all Brocker’s. But we have to think of those children. In fact, the truth is I’d suspected you were in Boston for quite some time. You’d spoken two years ago—something small—but I ignored it. I didn’t want Brocker to have you. And then he kidnapped all these children and threatened their lives if I didn’t find you, and soon. So when you started talking again, I traced you
all the way to that hotel. Don’t you see? I had no other option. We need to do what he says and maybe—”
“But if we do what he says, they’ll turn into monsters!”
“Better than one hundred and twenty children dead. Turning into a monster doesn’t condemn you to hell, your actions do.”
“But then they’ll be made to fight!” I fisted my hands in my hair. His words haunted me. What does every king need? An army. “He’s got some bonkers idea to become king of the United States. Like he can march on the capital with an army of monsters and just…” It sounded crazy and yet…what would the government do against a slew of monsters storming the Capitol Building? They might just be children now, but they would grow up and their powers would only get stronger with them. They could be unstoppable.
But I couldn’t let it get that far. I wouldn’t.
I glanced at Marjorie and the resigned hopelessness in her expression. She’d been Brocker’s prisoner for so long that she saw no other way out. Even with three eyes.
“You learned how to control your powers and find me,” I said slowly, the wheels in my head slowly picking up speed.
Marjorie nodded. “Eventually, with practice, I was able to control the eye.”
For so long, I’d been desperate to control my voice. To learn what I was able to do, and of course, how to suppress it. Colt had once said I was the most powerful weapon in the country. If that was really true then there had to be something, something I could do that didn’t involve taking my own life.
I’m ready to fight.
I wasn’t sure what I could do yet, or how to get the vial of blood to Dr. Durwich, but I had to start somewhere, and I’d been ignoring this great power for far too long.
Picking up Marjorie’s hands, I squeezed them. “Teach me what you know. Please.”
First, Marjorie walked me through her early training days as a cyclops. She’d told me how she pushed through the hours of migraines to shut off all other senses and focus on the magical trace that monster parts produced. She used her eye to follow the trace and home in on certain ones, flexing her ability to stretch across great distances. While everything she’d told me had been fascinating, I wasn’t sure how helpful it was. My power just came out no matter how hard I’d tried to suppress it. Hers had to be used and exercised, like a muscle. But how could I exercise my own emotions when they flowed out with every word I spoke?
