by Kelly Meding
A sudden inhalation cleared my vision of the red, and I worked to get my breathing back under control. Cole already had a shield in place around the theater. Shit on toast!
I crawled to my feet, using the brick wall for support, and battled a brief wave of dizziness. Not a good way to start a fight. I raced back to the street, where the lingering pair of smokers was trying unsuccessfully to gain entrance to the theater. A man in a tuxedo kept reaching for the door and yanking his hand away as though burned. The woman with him looked around, panicked, and then she saw me. Her overlined eyes widened.
“Patrick,” she said, clawing at the tuxedoed man.
Patrick turned, mouth open to say something, and froze when he spotted my bloodied, disheveled figure. And my weapon.
“Do yourselves a fucking favor,” I said, with enough menace to melt anyone’s brass balls, “and go home. The party started without you.”
He didn’t argue, just grabbed his date/wife/whatever and bolted down the street. Hopefully toward their car or limo. Maybe they’d call the police, too. As a Hunter, I had worked hard to keep the regular cops far outside of our business. Today I wanted them there.
I tested the doors myself and received the same shock. No help. The glass fronts were painted opaque, making it impossible to see inside the lobby. The music was a little louder, a new song with the same wailing trumpets. I swung my bat at the glass. It bounced off the shield with a burst of red and another dance of electricity up my arms.
This was bad.
A shadow fell on the sidewalk, swooped low, and then a familiar kestrel landed next to me.
I scowled. “I thought I said—”
Her cry was ear-piercing and seemed to tell me to shut up. She cocked her head, then took off again. I moved out from the safety of the marquee, watching her fly low to the street. She landed on the front stoop of an apartment building two doors down and across the street. Opposite end of the block from where I’d left Wyatt.
“Thank you, Aurora,” I said.
My transport to those steps left me lurching to my knees. I vomited what little was in my stomach, hands trembling, chest quaking. The constant pounding in my head was a dull roar. The nail wounds in my ass and the gashes on my ribs were starting to itch, and my shoulder still felt raw. So much transporting was using up my tap into the Break, preventing whatever healing magic I possessed from working to its fullest potential.
No longer in kestrel form, Aurora looped thin arms around my waist and hauled me to my feet. I let her help me into the tiny glass lobby of the apartment building, then lean me against rows of silver mailboxes.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Good, because I feel terrible. Which room?”
“Fourth floor, apartment F. It faces the theater, so he may have seen you.”
“Cole?”
She nodded.
“Phin’s with him?” Another nod. “Is he hurt?”
“Yes.” Something hot and dangerous flared in her round eyes, and I realized that she was still in bi-shift mode, her long wings tucked back. As if waiting for a fight. I remembered what Phin had once said, about the strength of the Coni, and how fiercely he’d fought at the gym. She’d make an excellent partner upstairs.
Then I remembered Ava.
“You might want to get out of here. The police are on their way,” I said.
“They won’t be able to get into the theater to help.”
“They will if I can get that shield down, and I can probably do that by getting to Cole.”
“Probably.”
“Unless the protection spell is written on something inside the theater. Then we have to hope the Triads make it inside via the underground tunnels that are supposed to have been filled in years ago and somehow manage to find the spell and know enough to destroy the object it’s written on.”
She blinked, lips parting.
“Please stay here,” I said.
“All of this is happening because of what was done to my people. I feel responsible.”
“No, all of this is happening because of two crazy men’s misplaced senses of justice. None of it is your fault.”
I started toward the stairs, resigned to taking them up four flights, when the distant sounds of screaming stopped me. I darted back to the glass lobby doors, just able to see the front of the theater. Dark blobs blinked in and out of sight against the opaque glass—pounding fists? My heart hammered. It was starting.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and ran for the stairs.
Panic and pain pushed me up those steps faster than I should have been able to run, taking them two and three at a time. My lungs ached for a good breath. My head felt six sizes too large and ready to pop like a zit. I hit the fourth floor at a dead run, jamming my hand on the fire door, which opened into a dingy hallway. The walls were cement block, covered in graffiti, and the floor badly needed new carpet. It reeked of waste and humidity. No one was in the hall, and I didn’t stop to listen at apartment doors for neighbors.
All I could focus on was getting to apartment F and stopping this. I owed nothing to the people in that theater, but it was my job to protect them. I was a Hunter in my heart, if no longer in title or occupation. The brass had turned their backs on Cole first, but he’d turned his back on his own people. Delivered three hundred–plus for execution.
Over my once dead body.
One well-placed kick next to the lock snapped the cheap wood and sent the door sailing open. I dropped to a crouch against the frame, half expecting a welcoming gunshot or two. Nothing. The front room/kitchen combo was barren, nearly empty of furniture. An overturned dining table and one chair were pushed against the wall, and a plaid chair with ripped arms that spewed stuffing were the apartment’s only occupants. No people. No new bloodstains on the marred carpet. Bat back and ready to swing, I crept inside.
The room had three doors. Closest to me was a coat closet, empty save a pile of rat shit in the corner. The next door was open—a dimly lit bathroom. Toilet and sink covered with grime, the curtainless tub streaked with water stains. It smelled faintly of urine.
Let’s see what’s behind door number three.
It was three-quarters closed. I peeked through the crack in the jamb. Spotted a curtainless window and the very edge of a chair and the shoulder of a man sitting in it. Not good. They had to have heard my entrance. I gripped the bat so hard my knuckles ached and the old wood crackled. The visible shoulder jerked. Had he heard that?
I shoved my way through, braced for attack, heart stuck in my throat. Scanned the room. Just a man in a chair—Phin, I knew that shirt—placed right in front of one of the room’s three windows. I checked the closet, sliding the mirrored door open with my foot—no one.
Fuck, damn, and shit!
I circled around to Phin and cried out. He wasn’t tied down, as I’d suspected. He was impaled to the arms of the chair with knives driven through the center of each forearm. Blood made twin puddles on the floor. His head was down, chin to chest, eyes closed. Broken nose swollen and nearly purple. Too pale.
A shudder tore through my chest. I cupped his cheek with my hand. His skin was so cool. “Phin?”
He moaned, head tilting into my hand. He muttered something.
“Phin, where’s Cole?”
More moaning, then his eyelids fluttered. He blinked and raised his head, blue eyes swimming with agony and fatigue. I kept my hand where it was, offering what little comfort I could and knowing it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Don’t know,” he whispered, lips curling back in a snarl. “He killed Eleri.”
“He tried to. How did he know she was spying on him?”
“She isn’t as clever as she thinks she is,” Cole said. I jerked upright, pulling the bat back, ready to swing. He stood in the bedroom doorway, hands at his sides. Nonchalant, even. He had the temerity to smile at me. “Neither is Phineas, although I had hoped to convince him to truly join me. Seems he now harbors some strange loyalty to you.”<
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I took a single step away from Phin, putting him at a safer distance from my swinging arm. Rage jolted through me at the mere sight of Cole, so smug about the events he’d allowed to unfold and the slaughter happening across the street. Any sympathy I’d possessed died with the first scream I’d heard from inside the theater.
“You, however, continue to impress me,” he said. “Your abilities are understated, to say the least.”
“Does that mean you’re ready to fight me yourself this time? Or do you have any more underlings I should dispatch first?”
“We’d make better allies than enemies.”
I barked laughter. “Because we’re so much the same, right? Slaughtering hundreds of people and stabbing Clan Elders to chairs?”
“I promised him a front-row seat.”
“Gee whiz, that makes it okay, then.”
“You are fascinating, Evangeline, truly. Keeping your wits about you after everything you’ve suffered. I admit, I think your tenacity surpassed even Tovin’s wildest expectations. He lost because he underestimated what people in love will do to survive. He never did understand that about humans.”
I didn’t know if he was trying to get a rise out of me and make me attack, or just making small talk to prevent me from stopping the theater assault. It didn’t matter, though, because it wasn’t going to work.
“I know it counts for little, but I didn’t know what Kelsa had planned for you,” he said. “I wasn’t privy to her particulars.”
Okay, maybe it was starting to work. I had to put a metaphorical lid on my temper to keep from swinging the business end of that bat at his head. Not knowing was no excuse, considering Kelsa was a fucking goblin. They weren’t known for their niceties—especially toward Hunters.
“And I’m truly sorry about Jesse and Ash,” he continued. “They were my friends, too, but I had already agreed to help Tovin—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Heat flared in my cheeks. The rest of my body chilled. A tremor raced up my spine, spurred by rage and hate. “You don’t get to say their names or be sorry they’re dead. You could have stopped it. You could have prevented all of this!”
His joviality evaporated. He narrowed his eyes and stood straighter, mouth tight. “Perhaps, but there’s no changing what’s happened. They’re dead, and you’re not. You want to honor their memory by dying again?”
“Who’s going to kill me? You?”
“If it comes to that, yes. You’re an impediment to my vision for this city.”
I snorted. “Vision? You’re deluded.”
“Change is coming, Evangeline, whether you want it or not. And it’s up to you if you’ll be on the side making the changes or the side that gets plowed under by progress.”
Worse than the words themselves was the knowledge that he truly believed his own propaganda. He’d convinced himself his path was the correct one and he was doing this for the betterment of all the species. He seemed to have forgotten that, as a species, humans might outnumber Dregs five million to one, but their unique abilities and magical talents almost evened those odds. If we lost this city to goblins and Halfies—or worse—we’d lose others to the same. We’d lose everything.
“Can I ask you a question, Cole?”
He cocked his head. “Sure.”
“If Rain could see you today, and all the death and pain you’ve been party to, what would she say? Would she still love you?”
It was both the right and wrong thing to say. His complexion darkened with rage, and his entire body coiled to attack. I could almost see imaginary steam billowing from his ears.
“Guess that would be a no,” I said.
He advanced with a roar. I feinted to my right, as if preparing to swing. He moved perfectly, coming at me from my unprotected left side. I ducked the expected swing and jammed the nail-free end of my bat up into his gut. He staggered; I slammed it across his chin, whipping his head sideways. Continuing the arc of the wood, I drew it in a circle and cracked it across his right ankle.
He howled and crashed to the floor. One leg lashed out and caught me off guard. I tripped and fell onto my ass. Fingers of pain dragged angry nails up my back. Faster than I expected, Cole grabbed my ankles and pulled hard enough to unseat me, and the back of my head slammed against the floor. Colorful lights winked behind my eyes.
His weight settled on my hips and abdomen, low enough that I couldn’t raise my legs to kick my feet. I attempted a whack with the bat. He blocked my arm and used his free hand to grab my hair and slam my head against the floor. Everything went swimmy. Phin was shouting. Hands wrapped around my throat.
Fuck, not again.
Bracing for the agony to come, I teleported one last time. It felt like squeezing my body through a tube of ground glass. I ached and smarted, barely able to see for the roaring behind my eyes. Where was—? Just outside the bedroom door, facing in.
I blinked through blurry vision. Cole had stood. He was leaning over Phin, who shrieked when Cole pulled a knife out of one arm, its blade coated in Phin’s blood. I crawled unsteadily to my hands and knees. Cole drew his hand back to his opposite shoulder, knife blade aimed down. I knew that action, knew what he was about to do.
No!
With a primal cry torn from pain and desperation, I launched to my feet. Shot toward Cole. Didn’t feel the carpet beneath me. Barely felt the impact when I crashed shoulder-first into Cole’s gut. Was only slightly aware of glass shattering all around us. Cutting. Cole screaming. Phin hollering my name.
Then the sensation of free-falling, punctuated by an abrupt crash.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was the awful smell that drew me out of a comfortable, deep sleep. Not rotting-meat awful. More vinegar-tang awful. Smelled like that Korean sauerkraut Ash would make for dinner. Only Jesse would eat it; I got takeout those nights. Was she making it? That what I smelled?
I peeked one eye open and spotted familiar stained wallpaper. Watermarks on what used to be white and yellow daisies, left over from the last people to rent the place. I wasn’t home enough to care, so I’d never bothered painting over it. The apartment was a place to crash and recover, not to nest. I was in my room, and it reeked of icky food. Terrific.
I rolled over, cuddling my pillow and tugging the blanket higher over my head. Every muscle in my body ached. Must have been a rough night. What had I done last night? Had we gone out on a warrant? Stayed in? Trained? Couldn’t remember. Were my partners even home?
Home … Home was gone. I couldn’t go back there, but why?
Because the were-cats had attacked me there, that’s why. Duh.
I shot up in bed so fast my head spun and the room tilted. I clutched the blankets tight to my chest, waiting for things to settle. It was my room, in the old apartment above the jewelry store. My room, my bed. The blankets and sheets were new, and something was burning on the table nearby. Looked like incense and was the source of that odd odor.
It was all a bad dream; it had to be. The last two weeks were just some elaborate drug-induced nightmare, and I was back at home, in my old life. That explained it. Only thing that could.
No, I felt it—the faint buzz of power from the Break. My hand flew to my chest and found the familiar smoothness of the cross necklace. The heavy weight of thick brown hair falling almost to my waist. Tears stung my eyes as confusion set in fast and sharp, roiling my stomach. My heart thudded hard. In the far corner of the room—how had I not seen it before?—was a hospital IV stand and two empty solution bags. How long had I been here?
“Hello!” My voice was raspy and thick, coming out more like a frog’s croak than a call for help.
The bedroom door swung open, and Wyatt rushed in, a paperback novel still clenched in one hand. He was clean-shaven and looked relatively healthy and pain-free. His entire face lit up when our eyes met. My heart leapt, relief warring with confusion in a dizzying battle.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” he said, in a mirror of his words only … well, sometim
e earlier.
Dozens of questions raced through my mind, each one demanding to be asked first. Stupidly, the one I asked was: “What’s that smell?”
He blinked, then smiled. After tossing the book on the foot of the bed, he came over and perched near my knees. “A gift from Isleen, actually. Those herbs over there promote healing. We figured it couldn’t hurt, given you took a four-story header onto the pavement.”
That’s right. I’d gone out a window with Cole. The entire night came back in a rush of pain and sensations. Everything we’d done, everything we’d tried to prevent. “The theater?”
His smile vanished, and he hesitated. “We were right about the tunnel access. Our teams met up with about forty Halfies down there. The tight spaces gave us an advantage, but it was a tough fight. Twenty or so still got up into the theater and started killing. Gina found the source of the barrier spell and destroyed it, so the regular police were able to get in. Not sure how the hell they explained it to them, though.”
“How’d we do?” I asked.
“Baylor lost his rookie. Two of Morgan’s Hunters were wounded, but they’ll live.”
I felt a small amount of relief knowing that the Triads had suffered only one casualty. It could have been much worse. I was even glad Paul Ryan had apparently survived the onslaught. He was a trigger-happy little shit, but he was a fighter, and the Triads needed every fighter they could hold on to. “How did Kismet’s boys make out?”
He flinched. “Tybalt …”
My mouth went dry. “Is he dead?” No. Say no.
“No. But he’s in pretty bad shape. A Halfie bit him on the hand, so Milo …” Wyatt grimaced, a little pale at what I could only imagine had happened in such a situation. “Milo cut his left arm off at the elbow to stop the infection. Nearly bled out before they got him to the hospital. So far, he’s not showing any signs of turning, but he lost half his goddamn arm.”
I felt ill and reached for Wyatt’s hand. He squeezed hard. They’d done the best they could to save Tybalt’s life. Still, what good was a Hunter with one arm? He’d never use his butterfly swords again. I swallowed, no moisture in my mouth. “Have you talked to her?”
