by Kelly Meding
The leather on the steering wheel creaked. Felix had a white-knuckle grip, but his profile revealed nothing.
I laughed, pretending to be unbothered by my own comments. “His stupid mistake, right?”
Felix smiled and seemed to relax as he pulled to a full stop at a four-way intersection. “Yeah.”
“So how come you said earlier she was female?”
His reaction time was too slow. I ducked his flying elbow and threw my left arm up to block any further blows, while my right fist landed a kidney shot that took his breath away. His foot came off the brake, hit the gas, and we careened forward. I reached into his coat as we crashed.
My ribs slammed into the dashboard. I slid sideways toward the door, thumbing the safety off his gun. Felix glared at me, still holding his side, a little dazed from our sudden stop against a metal street-lamp.
“No one attacked the hospital, did they?” I asked. He didn’t reply; I chambered a round.
“No.”
“Where were we going, Felix?”
“An apartment across town.”
“Why?”
“Kismet wants to talk to you.”
“Bullshit. Why?”
He fixed me with a poisonous stare. “You don’t quit the Triads, Stone. You don’t get to run off and ignore your duty and make up the goddamn rules as you go along. You report all activities to your superiors.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” My hand trembled, but I kept the gun steady on him. “You lied about the hospital just to get me into a room so Kismet could lecture me about duty?”
“She doesn’t like being left in the dark. None of us do. You’re in the middle of something that affects all of us. You don’t get to keep it to yourself. We need to know what’s going on.”
“She could have asked.”
“Would you have told her the truth?” He snorted when I hesitated. “Didn’t think so.”
I bristled. “If I’d even considered letting her in on the full story of what’s going on right now, you can be damned sure that after this little performance, she’s getting nothing from me.”
“You’re a Hunter, and she’s your superior—”
“I was a Hunter. That woman died.”
“So what now? You’re going to go freelance and turn your back on the people who made you what you are?”
“They turned their backs first.”
“And this is your revenge.” It wasn’t a question, and Felix held my gaze intently, his dark eyes full of accusation and frustration.
I was struck dumb. This wasn’t about my getting revenge on the brass for ordering me neutralized. It was about the Owlkins. It was about finding out if someone up the food chain meant to slaughter the other bi-shifting Clans. It was about someone with power finally taking some fucking responsibility.
It wasn’t about my vengeance.
It’s not about me.
“Nothing personal, Felix,” I said, “but give Kismet a message for me.”
He quirked an eyebrow in silent question. I smashed the gun butt into his temple. His head dropped against the steering wheel, eliciting a brief honk from the horn. I rifled through his jacket until I produced a cell, slipped it into my pocket, and tucked the gun into the waistband of my jeans. With my bag on one shoulder, I climbed out of the car and bolted.
Back into my city. Alone.
It took time to get across town without a car. I’d managed fifteen blocks of ducking in and out of alleys, avoiding known Dreg hot spots, and generally melting into shadows—not terribly easy with a carry-on strapped to my back—before Felix’s cell rang. I ducked into the gloom of a gated storefront and fished the phone out of my pocket.
“You get my message?” I asked.
“What the hell are you trying to prove, Stone?” Kismet snapped.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“Not until I have proof.”
“And you think you’re likely to find proof?”
“Give me until noon today.”
“I can’t do that.”
I stomped a foot on the ground. “Dammit, Kismet, trust me.”
“I did, Stone, but my trust goes only so far when you’re acting like the rogue you tried so hard to prove you weren’t. You need to come in.”
“Not happening.” I wanted to tell her about Phin, about Leonard Call, and our meeting with Black Hat’s crew. Not yet. It was too much to explain over the phone. “I’ll call you at noon.”
“Stone—”
I hung up and turned the phone off. No more interruptions. Kismet didn’t want to listen to reason, which meant Triad backup was off the table. Getting access to Rufus now would be beyond tricky—nearly impossible was a better assessment. My only real option was to go forward with Plan A and meet up with the gremlins. And hope they had my promised information.
With another dozen blocks to go before I made it to their factory, and the time inching ever closer to sunrise, I started jogging. The stab wound in my stomach was mostly healed—only the faintest ache remained. My back continued to itch and smart, punctuated by the occasional flash of real pain. I briefly considered a couple of teleports, anything to get me closer in a hurry, but chose to hoof it instead. I hadn’t tested my teleportation powers in such a manner; I didn’t know how far I could jump and with what consequences.
The sun was peeking rays of pink and gold over the skyline when I finally reached the factory. The weed-spotted parking lot was empty, the surrounding buildings quiet. I crouched by the perimeter fence, partially hidden behind a cluster of unkempt bushes. Thirty yards of open pavement to cross before I reached the safety of the entrance.
Wyatt and Phin were the only people who knew I was coming here. Neither had any reason to report my activities to one of the other Handlers. Still, better safe than sorry.
I closed my eyes and imagined the little room just inside the factory’s back entrance. The same foyer I’d entered twice before, right next to the stairwell. The Break sparked and spit. Loneliness was easy to find, and then I was moving with the familiar sensations of being smashed and twisted into nothingness. A sharp twinge between my eyes marked passage through the solid wall. I felt the floor beneath my feet and the cool dampness around me.
The room tilted briefly. Fatigue and hunger were catching up to me faster than I liked. When this was over, I was so taking a vacation. I needed to get out of this damned city for a while. My entire life I’d never been farther than twenty miles away. I’d never seen the ocean; I wanted to see the ocean. That settled it—once this was over, road trip to the coast.
I almost believed it would happen.
After another moment’s rest, I left my bag on the ground floor and began my long ascent.
On the fourth-floor landing, I paused and listened. Not because I heard anything amiss but because I heard nothing at all. During my other two visits, I’d heard the distant hum and scuffle of gremlin activity moments after entering the factory. Thousands of the small creatures lived here; silence was next to impossible. But the factory felt hollow, empty.
I retrieved my borrowed gun and checked the ammo clip. Regular rounds—Felix had probably expected trouble from me. Gun by my side, I pressed my ear to the landing door. Tried the handle. It moved without hesitation, squealing sharply as old metal moved for the first time in years. From the layers of grime on its surface, I couldn’t imagine the gremlins used it.
It opened into a narrow corridor. The dim shaft of light from the stairwell did nothing to illuminate its interior. It carried the faint, familiar alcohol odor of gremlin urine, with no signs of gremlin activity. I let the door squeak shut, then went up to the top floor.
Faced with a familiar door, I paused, every sense on alert. No one was waiting for me. I heard no movement from behind the door. Something was very wrong. Had someone come after the gremlins without my knowledge? Had they vacated on their own whims, without any thought to the deal I’d made with them?
The latter was less likely, given their literal tendencies.
Did I shout the proper greeting? Try the door first? Everything about it felt wrong, but if I turned and left, I might never get the information I wanted.
I was doing everything a Hunter was told not to do: entering an unknown situation alone, without proper weapons, and without backup en route. Not much I could do about the circumstances, with all my allies either hospitalized or against me. Circumstances that hadn’t much changed since my resurrection four days ago.
I retrieved the cell phone and turned it on. It was just something Kismet had said, something she seemed to imply during our last conversation. I hit Redial.
Something musical rang out on the other side of the steel door.
I turned and bolted back down the stairs. Sixth floor, fifth floor. On the fourth-floor landing, the door swung open. I sidestepped but wasn’t fast enough to miss the plank of wood that swung at my head. Vivid lights exploded behind my eyes, and then darkness.
Chapter Fourteen
6:08 A.M.
“Shit, she’s already waking up.”
“Dose her, then.”
“And here I thought I hit her too hard.”
The voices swirled through a haze of pain. I pushed against the brain fog, trying to swim out of the darkness shrouding my mind. I was lying on something hard and cold and uncomfortable. Something sharp pricked my shoulder. My hands instinctively reached out for anything familiar and solid … only they didn’t move right.
Metal dug into my wrists. More around my ankles. Old fear as sharp as flint and chilling as frost settled into my stomach. Squeezed my heart and set it pounding impossibly loud.
Trapped. Bound. In the dark.
No! I thrashed, terrified of hearing the clank of chains and squeak of an opening door. Positive the torture would come within minutes and cast me back into that dark place I hadn’t survived the first time.
The bindings on my wrists and ankles held. I couldn’t get up, couldn’t see, didn’t know where I was.
“What the hell’s wrong with her?”
I knew the voice, but I didn’t care. I was on a hardwood floor, not a sweat-soaked mattress, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t naked, and I wasn’t in the closet at the old train station, but I didn’t fucking care. Nothing mattered except getting loose.
“Let me go!” I hit a wall with my right shoulder, aware of shuffling feet and whispering clothing. I felt them nearby, closing in. My stomach turned inside out. Bile scorched the back of my throat. I tried to use the wall as leverage to sit up but had lost all sense of balance.
“Stone, calm down!”
Tears dampened the fabric across my eyes. Unspent sobs hitched my breath in my lungs and closed my throat. I gasped and choked, repeating my plea for release. The blindfold was removed, and I blinked against the sudden light. Snapped my teeth at the hand still close to my face.
“Christ,” the hand’s owner said. “Is she nuts?”
“Get these damned things off me,” I snarled, yanking my wrists and ankles apart. Metal sliced flesh. Blood slicked my skin. The brain fog remained, settling in a little deeper. I couldn’t seem to think, just react.
“Ty, unlock the cuffs.”
“Kis—”
“Do it. Stone, we’re going to uncuff you, but you need to calm down.”
Something in Kismet’s voice cut through my haze of terror. I stopped thrashing and closed my eyes, coiled like a spring, certain of attack. I felt hands on my ankles, and then the cuffs were gone. The warmth of a body moved closer to mine; it took every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep still. The instant the cuffs were off my wrists, I lurched forward. Scurried along the wall until I felt nothing but empty air around me.
“Settle down,” Kismet ordered.
I pressed against the wall, eyes still shut, just trying to calm my racing heart and stop the unwanted tears. Adrenaline shook my hands and pumped blood through my throbbing wrists and ankles. My head still felt swimmy, like I’d just downed four beers. No one came near me. No one spoke.
“She gonna be okay?”
“I think so, Milo,” Kismet said. “Stone?”
I looked up, letting my vision bring the room into focus. Empty office, glass-plate window that overlooked one of the production lines. Three people with me, familiar faces matched to familiar voices—Kismet, Tybalt, and Milo, the third and youngest member of her Triad. I glared at all of them.
“Don’t ever cuff me like that,” I said.
Kismet crouched in front of me, still two lengths away. “I’m sorry.” Genuine concern sparkled in her green eyes, barely overtaking annoyance. At least, I thought so. My swimmy head could be misinterpreting.
“What did you dose me with?” I asked, surprised by the slight slur to my words.
“Sodium pentothal. Although if your concussion recovery is any indication, it’ll be out of your system pretty fast.”
Good. I despised the loose-lipped feeling of being drugged. “How’s Felix?”
“Angry.”
“And sporting a wicked black eye,” Milo added with a funny hitch in his voice. And cold fury boiling behind his eyes.
I looked past him at Tybalt, who gazed at me like a predator sizing up a meal. Waiting for me to attempt an escape. Well, he’d have to wait a bit for that. Brain fuzzies were bad for concentration. Not to mention balance.
“We need to have a chat, Stone,” Kismet said.
“No, we don’t.”
She blinked. Had I really said that out loud? People called sodium pentothal a truth serum, and that was sure as hell what she was getting from me. I needed to do a lot of things, but sitting down for a Hunter/Handler chat wasn’t on the list.
“Where’re the gremlins?” I asked.
“We made them an offer,” she said. “A new, larger factory down by the Black River docks, as well as a tractor-trailer full of baked goods, in exchange for immediate vacancy of this location.”
Terrific. “Where?”
“Doesn’t matter now, although one of them said that this belongs to you.” She stood up and pulled a flash drive from her pocket. “Made me promise that you’d see it before he agreed to the move. So, you see it?” She held it up between forefinger and thumb, then dropped it. Before I could reach out, she smashed her boot heel down and crushed it.
“Dammit, Kismet!” My heart sank. “Do you know what was on that?”
“Yes.”
“Really?” Hadn’t expected that one. “How?”
Tybalt tossed something on the floor near Kismet’s feet. It hit with a gentle clank, no larger than a quarter with a slim wire the length of my pinkie. My addled mind took a moment to identify it.
“Holy shit,” I said, understanding sinking in. “You bugged Wyatt’s room.”
“And your apartment,” Kismet said. I wanted to rage at her; instead, I felt exceedingly stupid. “I don’t like being kept in the dark, Stone, and neither do the other Handlers. Since yesterday morning, you’ve been acting like an out-of-control rogue. Not reporting in, not keeping us in the loop, and then I find out you’re going after our bosses.”
“They gave the order—”
“It doesn’t matter! We get the hard orders, Stone; that’s our job. And it’s their job to make the hard decisions and hand those orders down to us, so we can pass them along to you. Rufus is my friend, and I don’t want to see him die any more than you do, but he knew the risks.”
I shook my head. The fog was starting to lift. “It’s not just about the Owlkin slaughter anymore, Kismet. The shit I keep digging up points to something a hell of a lot scarier than annihilating one Clan. Something fucking huge is about to go down.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, scornful and sad. “You’re seeing conspiracies where they don’t exist. I know you want payback for what the brass did to you, I understand that—”
“Jesus, will someone please send out a memo! It’s not about me.” I sat up a little straighter while mai
ntaining a relaxed position. No sense in alerting them to the fact that their drug was wearing off. “Maybe at first, yes, I wanted to find out who the brass was so I could shove my foot up their collective asses.” I shocked myself with the disclosure—something I hadn’t wanted to admit out loud. That I had started this new mission with a very selfish goal in mind, disguised as good intentions toward not only Rufus but also the last three surviving Coni.
Now I wanted to sandblast that smug look off Kismet’s face. “Not anymore, though,” I said. “After everything I’ve seen and heard today, I’m convinced the Owlkins were targeted for execution. I was just a convenient excuse to go in and do it.”
“Where’s your proof?” When I didn’t answer, she snorted. “Didn’t think so.”
“I need to get out of here. I have to find Aurora and Joseph. I promised Phin I’d protect them.”
“Yeah. Speaking of Phineas,” Tybalt said, taking a step closer. “If he suspects the Clans are being targeted, shouldn’t he be out there doing something about it?”
“He is.” Of that, I had no doubt. All of my doubts related to not knowing what he was up to or where he was. Part of me wanted to think he’d allowed Belle’s friends to take Aurora and Joseph, but Belle’s words told me otherwise. She had taken them by force because she didn’t think they were safe with me. She was doing everything in her power to protect her fellow Clans-people.
“Where is he?” Tybalt asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
I shrugged and made a show of gazing around the room, eyes a little too wide. One door to the work area outside, one door to the hallway. One glass window. Not ideal exits. No weapons or furniture of any kind lying around. They were good.
“We got separated,” I said.
“How?”
