Dead Man Stalking

by TA Moore

  West, visibly sweating despite his best efforts to be calm, raised his hands. “Obviously what we all agree on is that we don’t know enough. That’s why we haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet,” he said. “If we—”

  He was shouted down by the mayor, who wanted assurances that the Proverbial churches and their missionaries would be “left out” of any statements. “It would be irresponsible to publicize their involvement and demonize whole congregations who had no idea.”

  The district attorney countered with an indignant plea for justice. “If they ignored the evidence of what went on, then they’re just as guilty.”

  Only Chief of Police Graven had held his tongue so far. He stood at the end of the table with his arms crossed across his chest and watched Madoc through hooded eyes.

  “VINE has started to work on the logistics of the situation,” West said. “There are obviously a lot of moving parts to consider, and we cannot risk acting too quickly.”

  Another round of agreement and disagreement—the static of Isaac’s electronic indignation hard on Took’s ears—kicked off. Graven finally broke his silence. The rough growl of his voice compelled attention without being raised.

  “This pantomime is wasting time,” he said. “Why don’t you just tell us what we’re going to do, cardinal.”

  Madoc raised his eyebrows and started to say something diplomatic. Before he could get more than the “I’m just an agent—” out, Dale interrupted him.

  “Save the false modesty and the fake deference for another time.” Dale had been caught in his twenties for the last two hundred years. He added sharply, “The Biters do what needs to be done. That’s what they’re for. So what needs to be done?”

  This time Madoc didn’t bother to hedge. He pushed himself off the wall and stepped forward. West held his ground at the head of the table as he straightened his back and spread his knees, as though he thought Madoc would just pull him bodily out of the chair.

  He shouldn’t have worried. Madoc didn’t need the chair to claim the attention of everyone in the room, physically or electronically. The focus shifted naturally to him as he started to speak. Took felt an odd tickle of smugness as he watched everyone’s eyes shift to Madoc. He’d always enjoyed watching Madoc work a room, but now he felt a little bit more… possessive.

  “We still don’t know what this group wants with these children,” Madoc said as he braced his knuckles on the table.

  “Cult,” the mayor interjected. “I have seen no evidence that the leaders of the Proverbial Church have had any involvement in this terrible situation.”

  Madoc gave him that point with a tilt of his head and a midexplanation correction. “This cult wants. The mayor is right, the abduction of dhampir children is far from the public doctrine of the Proverbials’ mission. Whatever aim the cult has, however, they want these children.” His attention flicked to the Anakim faces in the room, physically or not, and he smiled thinly. “Some of us are old enough to remember what excuses were made in the past when they stole our children. To save their souls. To raise them to kill their own. I remember the platitudes my own family used as they tried to starve the Devil out of me, beat it out. Whatever their motivation, however, they have gone to great lengths over the years to bring them here, to raise them and we can use that to draw them out.”

  It was West’s turn to interrupt as he shifted in his chair. “I still say the best option is to press Waring for this information. Once he spills his guts about what he did or didn’t do, we can decide how best to proceed then.”

  He always favored caution. It had been West who told Took that he didn’t have enough—any—evidence against Madoc, that he couldn’t afford to make any accusations until he had something concrete to back him up.

  It had seemed like good advice at the time, but now Took wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to just rip the Band-Aid off back then. Madoc would still have been hurt by the accusation, but Took wouldn’t have wasted two years trying to resolve whether he could trust the Biters or not.

  Of course, his dark little voice of paranoia murmured to him, that wouldn’t have suited West’s purposes.

  It wasn’t a lie—West had been upfront about his ambitions to clear some of the old blood from VINE’s upper echelons—but it wasn’t relevant either. Maybe Took had just gotten so used to suspicion that he needed to slot in someone he didn’t trust.

  Took leaned forward and cleared his throat to catch the attention of the assembled dignitaries.

  He saw the flicker of morbid interest in a few eyes, the recognition and dark fascination about exactly what had happened to him, but for once, it didn’t make his brain claw at the inside of his skull to get out of there. Maybe the psych panel would bounce him from the team at the next eval, but for now, he was an active agent and he was still the best at what he did. They could pocket their prurient curiosity until he was done.

  “Waring is willing to help,” he said. “But the price for him is pain.”

  “It’ll harden him,” Graven said dourly.

  Took cocked an eyebrow at that. The bits and pieces he remembered of his torture hadn’t particularly improved his life.

  “Maybe,” he said. “The problem is that each time he speaks, the magic backlash knocks him out for hours. By the time he tells us anything useful, he’ll be cognitively impaired or dead. And we might be too late to find any of these children.”

  Graven scowled but nodded. “So what do we do?”

  “We get one actionable piece of information from Waring,” Madoc took back the meeting. He gave the assembled dignitaries a dry smile. “Then we act on it.”

  Dale snorted and curled his lip enough to show the fine white point of a fang. “That’s not a plan. That’s a declaration you don’t trust us.”

  “You?” Madoc inclined his head in a faintly courtly nod. “Perhaps, but who do you trust? We know this… cult… had someone in the Charleston fire department, and they were willing to burn down an entire neighborhood to cover their tracks. It’s more than likely there’s also sleeper agents in the police force and possibly even in VINE itself.”

  The DA glanced between Graven and the mayor as he weighed where the backlash from that would land. “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

  “It’s what I’d do,” Madoc said. He glanced at Dale, and something in his expression made the Senate representative carefully fold his lips back over his fangs. “It’s what I’ve done before.”

  It was the director who picked a side first. She rapped her finger hard against the table. “I trust my people,” she said harshly. “But I trust them to accept that there are children’s lives on the line here too. Madoc can tell us what we need to know, but I will expect a full report afterward.”

  It was only the mayor and West who objected in the end, and they were both outranked by the yes votes from the Senate reps. In the end they had to bend their heads and agree.

  “You understand how this works, Agent Madoc,” the director said as she leaned forward and fixed him with her remaining bright green eye. A wing of hair hung over the side of her face and hid the socket, although she’d made no effort to disguise the raw, red scar on her jaw. “If you get these children back, then we’ll be happy to claim responsibility. If you don’t, then anything dubious you do was done without our knowledge.”

  Madoc smiled at her.

  “That’s how it’s always worked, Director Lawrence.”

  She snorted and glanced past Madoc’s shoulder to her daughter. “This could end your career. If you aren’t willing to take part in this, nobody will make you.”

  Lawrence crossed her arms. “I’m a Biter,” she said. “I’d think less of me.”

  A faint smile touched Director Lawrence’s mouth. “Good girl,” she said. Then she glanced at Madoc and arched her eyebrow. “Although I think you’ve stolen my daughter, Agent Madoc. This assignment was just supposed to season her in the field, not make her yours for life.”

  M
adoc shrugged. “I have a knack for finding talent.”

  Director Lawrence glanced over the assembled Biters and sighed. “That will be a shame if you mess this up.”

  She killed the vid-link and the screen flickered to black.

  “Do we have a plan?” Quick asked. “Because my backup plan to this career path is crime, so….”

  Madoc just smirked as he strode out of the briefing room. As the rest of them followed, Took wondered if that was how people felt when he chased a theory. Maybe, but as he glanced down Madoc’s back from shoulders to lean hips, he doubted they got such a nice view when they followed him.

  WARING LOOKED tired. He was slumped over the table, his head on his arms, and he looked up with a sigh when the door opened. Heather Waring crossed the room at a run and tackled him into a hug. Her slim arms wrapped around him, bitten nails caught in his shirt, and she buried her face in his shoulder.

  “Oh, Dom. My baby. My baby,” she sobbed into his shoulder as she tried to rock him as though he were still a baby. “I told them they were wrong about you. I told them you were a good boy.”

  After a stiff moment, Dom awkwardly hugged her back. When the magic didn’t backlash into him, he sighed out two years of tension and slumped into his mother’s embrace.

  “He still has to help us,” Took said as he slipped into the seat on the opposite side of the table. After a second, Waring looked up and gave him a bleak look, as though Took had finally worked out a trick that Waring couldn’t resist. It hadn’t worked the first time VINE tried it on him—Took had watched the videos—but two years under The Salt was a long time to be alone. “If he doesn’t, then all we have is a theory that we can’t prove. People will protest and your husband will rouse opposition in the Senate and maybe even stir up some old hostilities. At the end of the day, though, he’ll still be executed out there, and no protests will bring him back.”

  Waring glared at him. He was lucky that he didn’t know the truth. There were a dozen sorcerers in the Senate worth their keep, plenty of street-corner oracles who traded an hour’s blindness for a five-second peep into the future, and warlocks with hex bags that, nine times out of ten, just rotted on the string. A true sorcerer, though? They’d wrap him in iron and send him to the New Scholomance to either learn his craft or serve as magic’s tithe.

  From what Took had heard over the years, a clean death at Tac’s knife in The Salt might be a better choice. But it wasn’t one that he could offer. They needed Waring.

  “We can’t tell your father about this yet,” Took said as he glanced toward the black glass wall where Madoc waited. “But we thought it would help if your mother was here with you?”

  For a second, Waring buried his face back in his mother’s shoulder, but then he pushed her away. He gently stroked her cheek, tears wet on his fingers, and then shook his head firmly as he turned away.

  Took raised a hand to get the guards to open the door.

  “No,” Heather protested. “He’s my son. I won’t leave.”

  “He has the right to decide who’s here,” Took said. “I’m sorry.”

  Heather balked as she clutched her son’s arm and shook it to try to make him look at her. “You need me here, Dom. Please,” she said. When that didn’t work, she looked at Took. “He’s just a child. He can’t make these decisions.”

  “He’s an adult now,” Took corrected her. He glanced at the door. “It’s his choice.”

  One of the guards abandoned their post by the door and came in to escort her out. She resisted at first, head twisted to look over her shoulder as if that might be the last chance she got to see her son. But then gave in and let them march her out.

  Waring waited until the door closed and then finally looked up. The expression on his narrow face was unfriendly but expectant.

  “I’m going to tell you what I think I know,” Took said as he set a manila folder on the desk. “Unless you correct me, I’m going to assume I’m right. Don’t correct me unless I get something important wrong.”

  Waring hunched his shoulders and chewed on the inside of his cheeks.

  “Whatever protection they had,” Took pointed out, “disappeared when you spoke in The Salt. It will be a year before you can recast your spell. Do they have that long?”

  They both knew the answer was no. After a second, Waring looked up and Took assumed that was agreement.

  “Annabelle Franklin was your friend,” Took said as he slid the photo over the table. “You met because you were both interested in alchemy, but when that didn’t work as reliably as you wanted, you started to explore real magic.”

  That was supposition, but Waring had to have started to study magic at some point. That gap in the timeline was as good as any.

  “At some point you or she worked out there was something off about her family—more than their piety and happiness to spend a son on the Proverbial’s mission back in Europe. Your family was less proactive, but they don’t think the Senate is right either. So something that was bad enough you thought you had to intervene, something that didn’t just affect Annabelle, but her friends.”

  Took dealt the missing-person leaflets out onto the table. Annabelle Franklin, the three Aron siblings, the Ford twins with their matched casts, Kerry Davison, Brendan Colt, and Paul Imran. Waring looked at the faces the same way he had his mother’s, like someone in a desert who’d just seen water.

  “This is what you did first,” Took said. Now that he’d seen the faces, the ghost images he’d picked up from Waring’s mind filled themselves in. The only Aron daughter they’d been able to get out pressed up against the window of the car as she cried for her sister. Annabelle was in the front seat, her face a terrifying mix of guilt and resolve. “You got the children away. Most of them were easy. Children do disappear, and no one involved could really kick up too much of a fuss. The Davisons could hardly tell the police that the connection between their daughter’s disappearance and that of Brendan Colt was that they were both dhampirs and their families belonged to a cult that had kidnapped them from Europe.”

  Despite all his practice, Waring couldn’t stall the flash of surprise that flicked over his face. Took wasn’t sure if that was because he was right or if Waring hadn’t known that detail. He wanted to know, for the sake of completion, but that could wait.

  “It went wrong at the Arons,” he said.

  A bitter smile tucked the corners of Waring’s mouth at what must have seemed like an awful understatement to him. “They were ready for you,” Took said. “And Hunters know about magic, know where to buy it from the alley witches and how to disrupt it too.”

  He’d spent enough hours in the river near their house as a kid, feet bruised and hands shriveled, as he caught toads for his mother to thread onto thorns. It was surprisingly easy to defang a sorcerer if you had prior warning. They might fight each other with storms and starlight, but a human with a dead, mutilated toad and a knife could end one easily enough.

  “After that….” Took paused as he took in the freaked-out expression on Waring’s face. It was ridiculous that a sorcerer who could hop bodies like a cuckoo hopped nests would be disturbed by just thinking things through. Madoc was the only person who’d always found it reliably entertaining as a party trick. “Well, I know you hid Annabelle and the others. Then you turned up bloody handed at the end of a trail of murders that nearly bisected the country.”

  Waring licked his lips but hesitated to say anything. He didn’t consider his own innocence important enough to break his silence. Took supposed he could see why Lawrence had read that as guilt. But he had some extra information.

  He took out a photo of one of the dhampirs that Waring had been accused of murdering and laid it on the table. Matthew Kennedy had the same stamp as the cult’s stolen children—eyes like green glass and skin like pearls—but he carried himself as though that made him exceptional, not a freak. He’d been eighteen, older than Waring but still a child as far as the Anakim were concerned.

&nbs
p; The first time Took had seen him was in that filthy trap house, hung up to bleed like a deer carcass. Guilt scratched at the back of his throat that he hadn’t realized the monster was just a boy in a box that Took couldn’t see. It was just self-indulgence. He couldn’t help Matthew anymore, no matter how much he beat himself up, but maybe he could make up for it a bit by rescuing the others.

  “I know the cult got him,” Took said as he tapped the image. “The Proverbial missionaries had kept them stocked with… new blood… for years. But ten dhampirs? Even in Europe that many vanished children would raise questions and the Empire ask those sharply. So they had to hunt closer to home, right?”

  Waring barely nodded, but the magic jolted through him anyhow, and his lips and fingertips singed. He shuddered, and pinched his lips tightly, and tucked his chin down into his chest.

  “You wanted to help,” Took said sympathetically. “You tried to, but whoever it was in Appleberg that was behind this had better information, better connections, right? They got there first, and by the time you caught up, the family was dead and the dhampir children were gone. That’s how you got caught red-handed in the mess these people had left behind.”

  He didn’t phrase it as a question. That might give Waring… wriggle room… in his bargain with magic.

  Waring opened his mouth cautiously, afraid of the backlash, and tested his voice with a ragged "I…” When nothing crackled under his skin, he exhaled slowly and tried again, his voice broken and rusty. “I tried to stop it. I wanted to warn someone, tell my dad or—”

  Sparks flickered in the pit of his mouth, and the smell of singed spit filled the room. He shut up, and Took finished for him.

  “You didn’t know who to trust,” he said. “And you couldn’t afford to trust the wrong person, because then the spell would be broken and the cult could find Annabelle and the others. You’d die rather than let that happen, right?”