Raising Hell_A Hellcat World Novel

by Sharon Hannaford

  “I’ll go and help Adriana in the kitchen,” he said, checking his watch. Ben would be back soon after taking Lucy back to her apartment, but he didn’t like having a wolf out on his own with so many bad things happening.

  He’d tried comforting Breanna, but she wouldn’t settle without the pup, and the equally upset wolf tried to take a piece out of Kyle every time he went near it. It was easier for Gabi to take both of them than for her to keep a constant mental hold on the puppy. Gabi took to the role of comforter like a natural, something that surprised Kyle, and probably Gabi herself. Trish was the natural carer in the Pack, and she was stuck at CenOps for now.

  They were all exhausted, hungry and worried. Sleep was out of the question for the adults at least, and the worry would only abate once Flora had been found, but food they could do something about, so Adriana was making pancakes. Perhaps once Breanna had eaten, she would succumb to sleep. It seemed so wrong that she was embroiled in all of this. Kyle knew that, as a father, he should be sheltering her from all of it. She should be tucked in bed, fast asleep, dreaming of unicorns and rainbows.

  But Breanna wasn’t like other children.

  He gave Adriana a grateful smile as she glanced up from pouring batter onto a hot skillet; she returned his grin with a tired one of her own. She was holding it together for Breanna’s sake, but Kyle knew she was scared for Flora and worried about Jade. He squeezed her shoulder in silent comfort as he opened the cupboard beside her to find the syrup and Breanna’s favourite chocolate spread.

  He was itching to call Trish again, just to hear her voice. Even more, he wanted to go to her, to hold her, reassure her, comfort her. For once he and his wolf craved the same things. He’d tried to persuade her to come home, get a few hours’ rest while the others worked, but she’d refused. He’d heard the simmering fury in her voice, and he knew that it didn’t matter what rock these people tried to hide under, his Luna would find them.

  Adriana placed a platter of pancakes on the counter just as Gabi emerged from the lounge, holding Breanna on her hip, with Bear and Razor following close behind. They ate in silence, each mired in their own thoughts. Breanna seemed listless and distracted, but she did eat, and her silent tears had finally dried.

  When the platter was empty, Gabi caught his eye. “Get out of here,” she said, knowing where he needed to be. “Check on her. Make her eat at least.” They both knew who she was referring to. “I’ll stay here until there’s news. If either Jade or Sicarius become conscious enough to give us any information, I’ll call you.”

  He nodded, sending her a look that conveyed his gratitude. “Get some sleep if you can.” He came around the counter, giving Bear a wide berth when the pup gave a low growl, and kissed the top of Breanna’s blonde head.

  “You go see Momma?” she asked him with a small frown.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” he told her.

  “Then you go find Fowa?” she asked as another single tear ran down her face.

  “Yes,” Kyle told her without the tiniest hint of doubt, wiping the tear away with his thumb. “Then we’ll go and find Flora. I promise. Can you look after Bear and Aunty Gabi while I’m gone? I think they both need some sleep,” he whispered conspiratorially.

  Her face changed, a determined expression replacing the sadness. “Yes, Dadda, I pwomise,” she told him earnestly, with a stern glance at Gabi.

  He smiled, hugged her and hurried away.

  When Kyle walked into CenOps and dropped two bags of bacon and egg sandwiches and a large box of chocolate pastries on the canteen table, he was greeted with groans of ravenous gratitude. The smell drew the small team from the grunt room, and they fell on the offerings like wolves who hadn’t seen food for weeks, which was amusing, as the only two wolves in the bunker were the two hanging back. Kyle reached into the melee to save four sandwiches. He passed two to Riley, who was hovering in the grunt room doorway, and took the other two to Trish.

  She fell into his arms, pressing her face into his chest as she breathed in deeply. He put the food down on the desk beside her and wrapped his arms around her, dropping his nose into her hair and drawing her scent into his lungs. Both their wolves stopped their relentless pacing and rushed to make their own contact.

  “Make her eat,” Murphy called from the canteen, around a mouthful of food.

  He glanced over at the tattooed man with a wry smile. “I intend to.” He released his hold on her and pulled away enough to have a good look at his Luna.

  “How is Breanna? Jade? Sicarius?” she asked, worry lowering her eyebrows. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, and crescents underneath them had grown darker, but there was a determined fierceness to the set of her mouth.

  “Eat this and I’ll fill you in,” he said, handing her a sandwich and drawing her towards the back of the control room into relative privacy. He noticed that Riley had finally edged over to join the others and looked to be included in their quiet banter.

  “Adriana called to let me know that Casey arrived to take over day duty and that Gabi, Breanna and Bear were all asleep on the guest bed,” he reported, happy to see the slight smile lift the corners of her mouth as they pulled chairs over to the small conference table.

  “Gabi and Breanna both asleep?” she checked. “That’s some kind of minor miracle, right there.”

  He grinned in response and lifted her hand with the food so that she took a bite. There wasn’t much she didn’t already know, but he recounted his check-up on Jade as she began to eat, and nodded his thanks to Murphy, who brought over two cups of espresso coffee smothered with cream and laced with sugar.

  “What’s new here?” he asked, pulling out a chair for the man in a silent invitation to join them.

  “We have three possible leads,” Murphy said, the silver ring in his left eyebrow twitching as he spoke.

  “That’s good news,” Kyle said, wondering why they didn’t seem excited.

  “Yes and no,” Murphy said with a grimace.

  “We think that they’ve laid down false leads for us,” Trish explained as she crumpled together the wrappers from her meal.

  “All three leads are flights out of the City within two hours of the attack,” Murphy continued. “They are all small private jets, all from different private airports, all with at least six people listed on the manifest and at least one female passenger. They are all flying to different locations around the world. They have all changed their flight plans once in the air. None of them have landed yet,” he checked his watch, “though one is due in the next few minutes.”

  “So one has Flora and the other two are decoys?” he said, more statement than question.

  “Or possibly she isn’t on any of them and they’ve transported her by road instead.” Trish suddenly crushed the careful ball she’d made with the takeaway packaging. “We can’t track anything on the roads until we know what vehicle they were in.”

  “Jade should be over the worst of the silver-sickness later this morning,” Kyle told her, reaching to cover her tight fist with his hand. “The sedative will be out of her system soon. Once she wakes, we’ll have more to go on.” He tried to loosen the tightness in his jaw. “Every fight-trained wolf who isn’t on duty this morning is just waiting for our call.”

  Murphy nodded. “Fresh shift is due here in about an hour,” he told Kyle, “but we’ve already cracked security footage for one of the airports here and two of the destination airports. The grunt room will be fully staffed until we find her.”

  “Thank you,” Kyle told him.

  “Hey, Steve,” Murphy called out.

  One of the group polishing off the sweet pastries looked up. Kyle knew the man by sight, but not personally. He was more than a little overweight, with unkempt hair that didn’t look to have seen a hairbrush for several weeks, torn denim trousers and a faded black T-shirt with a ’67 Chevy Impala and a red sigil emblazoned across the front. Murphy beckoned the man over. He moved with more grace than Kyle would’ve expected, pulling a chair u
p to the table, with a casual nod of greeting to Kyle.

  “Steve is following up info on Deshane,” Trish explained. “If he’s left any kind of paper trail, Steve will find it.”

  The man nodded and leaned forward, scratching absentmindedly at the scraggly stubble on his chin. “Deshane Esson is one of at least a dozen different aliases,” Steve explained. “This one is a little different to the rest, as Esson is a true ethnic Ashanti name; it means seventh-born son. All the other aliases I’ve found are generic and closer to African-American names. I think his birth name is Kwasi Esson Oduro. If this is him, he would be in his early sixties now.” He looked up with a grimace. “Birth records in Ghana can be a little sparse, and many share the same relatively small pool of first names. I’m largely working from what’s left of the information the police had on the man from a case they were building against him in 1978.”

  “What do you mean, what’s left of?” Kyle asked him.

  “The charges had to be dropped early in 1979 after the police station responsible for the case mysteriously burned to the ground. Some of the information, whatever the charging officers could remember, was recorded in a new file, but with all the evidence against him destroyed, the case fell apart, and it was thrown into the cold-case pile. There aren’t a lot of details recorded online. Between the age of the case and the lack of technological resources in the country…” He left the sentence hanging.

  “So you’re following the names? His real one and the other aliases?” Kyle checked.

  Steve nodded, brushing a few stray crumbs out of his beard.

  “And why do you think he resorted to using a real part of his name this time around?”

  “We have a theory on that one.” Murphy looked over to Trish as he spoke. “We think that he knew Flora wouldn’t fall for a fully generic name. It’s possible he used it as a hook to get her interested in him to begin with.”

  “That would make sense,” Kyle agreed. “Flora left Ghana as a young girl, but she’s savvy and smart and has kept ties with her birth country.”

  “Most of his known associates from that time are dead or missing,” Murphy told him. “He doesn’t seem to leave witnesses around to talk.”

  Kyle leaned back, trying not to let the wolf’s frustration affect him. “It seems like he must be quite a powerful Vodun practitioner to keep his appearance looking so youthful,” he mused. “Even by Magi standards he’s aging very slowly.”

  “As well as to raise the number of Zonbi that he did,” Murphy added.

  “You don’t have to have powerful magic for that,” a female voice interrupted them from the entranceway. Athena stood on the far side of the bunker.

  The handful of Shape-shifters and Magi still lingering over coffee noticed her presence, quickly picking up their mugs and scurrying back into the grunt room to restart work. Riley was the last to leave, running an assessing eye over the newcomer before reluctantly joining the others.

  Athena was, as usual, dressed smartly, in a dark business suit, with matching two-inch heels, and her long pale blonde hair was drawn up in a severe bun. She had tried to cover up the dark rings under her eyes with layers of make-up, but, like Trish, nothing could truly hide her fatigue.

  “Athena,” Trish greeted the woman, rising to her feet. “Come in, join us. You’ve just missed breakfast… Was that breakfast?” She seemed confused for a second as she checked her watch.

  The Magus crossed the room, her expression closed, the professional mask in place. Kyle had only rarely seen her drop the mask; once had been when she broke Gabi free of a cruel spell that held her paralysed, again when she’d saved Gabi’s life after she’d been poisoned with magically enhanced belladonna, and most recently, the day she first met Breanna.

  “I’m fine, I’ve eaten.” Athena waved aside Trish’s words. “I just thought it would be best if I came to check in with you in person.”

  “We appreciate that,” Kyle told her. “The help from the Magi these past few days has been invaluable.”

  “It was not enough.” Athena grimaced, showing a glimpse of her own frustration. “We should have realised what was happening. Vodun Magic right under our noses…” She bit off the last words, breathing out her annoyance. “Our strongest Tracker has been trying to locate Flora, but she’s being shielded. Even the Oracles have turned up nothing.”

  “What did you mean about not needing strong Vodun magic?” Kyle asked as Murphy vacated his seat for the Magus and went to check on a printout that had spewed from a nearby printer.

  “I don’t claim to know everything about Vodun,” Athena said, “but I have done some fairly extensive research since Flora arrived in the City. Their magic is quite different to ours, even to that of a Dark Magus. With the exception of a Vodun priest or priestess who has ascended to full powers, most other Vodun abilities are less confined by innate power and governed more by training, experience, ingredients and rituals.”

  “Meaning?” Kyle asked, trying to suppress his uncharacteristic impatience.

  “Meaning,” Athena’s gaze flicked to his, “that a Vodun practitioner with even a relatively minor amount of actual talent can achieve powerful-seeming spells with the right training, attitude and sacrifices. Knowledge and practice are key to most Vodun Magic rather than raw ability.”

  “So if this man could achieve all that he has,” Trish’s voice was quiet and on the verge of cracking, “why do they need Flora? What can she give them that they don’t already have?”

  “Flora will be able to do everything he can do and more, and she will be able to do it without any preparation, rituals, blood sacrifice or esoteric artefacts,” Athena explained after a moment. “I have no idea exactly what they want her to do for them, but it can’t be good. Not for any of us.” She glanced down at her hands where they lay in her lap. “I know we haven’t been welcoming of Flora, but we will do whatever we can to help you get her back from those who would use her to evil ends. Anything you need, we will do our best to assist you.” She looked up, directly at Trish and then at Kyle. “I will do anything to assist you. We must bring her back.”

  There was the tiniest twitch of muscles tightening the corners of her eyes, a sign of pain; whether it was mental pain or physical pain, Kyle wasn’t sure. But he thought she might just be remembering the torture Gabi had been subjected to when she’d been taken by Julius’s brother Dantè in an effort to bring Julius to heel. Athena had had to share Gabi’s mind, including her physical pain, in order to break the spell binding her into paralysis. Kyle knew it to be a turning point for the young Magus, changing the way she viewed the other supernatural races and giving her an empathy with them that few other Magi possessed.

  They could all only pray that Flora wasn’t being subjected to something similar.

  “Thank you,” Trish said quietly into the sudden silence. “We need all the help we can get right now.”

  “There’s more you should know,” Athena continued. She took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself. “It has to do with the prophesy. And Breanna.”

  Kyle heard Trish’s heart do a little double beat of anxiety.

  Athena glanced meaningfully at the open door to the grunt room.

  “I’ll go and check on the staffing roster for tonight,” Murphy said from his position a few feet away, excusing himself politely to give them their privacy. Kyle appreciated the way he didn’t force them into asking him to leave. The man shut the door to the grunt room on his way to the small admin office.

  Once the main space was quiet, Athena leaned forward to place her neatly laced hands on the table in front of herself. “I’ve had a young scholar working on the prophesy for the past year,” she said. “Much of what he’s found is difficult, if not impossible, to understand in a modern context. Much of it can be read in several different ways, depending on how you try to read it and what emphasis you want to put on it.” She looked up and shrugged a little as though struggling to find the right words. “It’s like reading the
human Bible, if that makes sense.”

  Kyle had never actually read the Bible, but Trish nodded as though she understood. Kyle knew she had been raised a Christian, even if it wasn’t something she ascribed to anymore.

  Athena nodded back and then continued. “From what we understand of the prophesy, at the turn of each millennium two people are born; those two people will have gifts and abilities beyond what others have ever seen. At some point in their lives they will meet and will ultimately face off against each other. Whoever triumphs at that face-off decides the fate of the world for the next millennium.”

  Kyle nodded. They had heard this before, when Breanna first came to them.

  “And we’ve known that the Source belonged, in essence, to the Light Child, though all of us Castius Magi can draw power from its well.” She looked up to check that they were with her; they both nodded. “What we didn’t know before is that there is another source of magic, another well of power. It is referred to as the Patrium Nocte in the scrolls we have translated. It means—”

  “Birthplace of night,” Trish interrupted, looking agitated. “They’re talking about a source for Dark Magic?” She sounded appalled.

  Athena gave a delicate shrug. “That is how we read it, though in the texts it isn’t linked with Dark Magic as such; it’s said to feed discord and disorder, but not referred to as intrinsically evil.”

  “Those who are evil rarely think of themselves in that way,” Kyle noted darkly.

  “This font of power,” Athena continued, “would be the Dark Child’s version of the Source, and in turn it would feed those who support the Dark Child’s cause. What we do know is that when one Child overcomes the other, their source of power essentially consumes the opposition’s wellspring, taking the strength of its rival to bolster its own. Over the course of hundreds of years, the depleted Source will recover until the next turn of the millennium. At that point the fonts will be close to even in strength.”