Desmond swings around to Riker’s side and immediately grabs the captain’s arms. Using his larger size in his favor, he hauls Riker up and coaxes the man to start walking. The captain is thankfully conscious, but his face is scrunched in pain as his lungs run low on oxygen. He needs to get clear of the smoke before his body forces him to breathe, or he’ll be sucking in death; and that’s a tall order, considering his bum leg reduces his speed significantly. Desmond basically has to carry him, even with Riker feeling along the debris-strewn ground with his fancy cane sword.
As soon as Riker fully clears Ella’s body, she sits up by herself, hands over her mouth, choking uncontrollably, tears streaming from her screwed-shut eyes. Unlike Riker, she can move fast, so instead of helping her stand, I simply grab her wrist, yank her up, and start running. She stumbles for the first couple steps but then matches my stride, and together, we hurry back to the ever-widening perimeter of the smoke cloud. My lungs burn, desperate to release the stale breath and take another, but I manage to hold on just long enough to clear the worst of the smoke.
Ella and I speed into the woods, passing Desmond and Riker only in the last couple steps and coming to a stop behind Naomi’s team, who’ve now regrouped to their full number.
“Is that everyone?” Naomi asks, pushing stray locks of dark hair from her face.
“I count ten,” says Amy, who stands off to the side against a tree, brushing the dirt and debris off her clothes. “We should move farther back. That smoke is going to overtake everything within at least half a mile, given the size of the blast.”
I release Ella’s wrist, and she doubles over, hacking a few times, soot-tinged saliva dripping from her mouth. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.” Her voice is hoarse from the smoke inhalation. “We don’t want to be around when the cops show up, or the media.”
Riker frees himself from Desmond’s grasp and hobbles over to Ella. “Are you all right? I heard you inhale in the smoke. Can you breathe?”
Ella rebuffs him. “I need medical attention, sure, but we’re thirty minutes out from the nearest hospital, so it doesn’t really matter what anyone needs. We’ll get there when we get there.”
The Adelman brothers whistle in unison, and everyone else wheels around to peer back at the flaming ruin of the farmhouse. Some of the falling debris caught the barn, and now the second building is a glowing tower of orange and yellow whorls, spewing even more smoke into the air. The horde of chickens, having sensed the looming danger, fled the burning barn and are now running across the yard in every direction, many of them clucking away into the woods, where inevitably, some night predator will snatch them up for a meal.
Li wipes a streak of soot off his face. “I think we’re done here.”
“Another fucking bust.” Newman plucks several wood chips from her tight black curls. “Just great.”
We all mutter in commiseration.
“Come on, guys,” says Naomi. “Time to leave.”
Five minutes later, we’re back in the SUVs we hid in the chained-off driveway to a local dump, just off the two-lane highway that leads back to Aurora. Even in the dark night, moon intermittently blocked by clouds, the smoke plume from the blast is still clearly visible against the backdrop of the star-studded sky. And as my team’s SUV trundles to the end of the driveway, Amy stepping out briefly to unhook the chain so we can pass, distant sirens break the air, and the flashing lights of oncoming emergency vehicles flicker through the trees.
Two fire trucks race past, followed by a contingent of cop cars. None of them spot us, the angle of the driveway hiding our presence, and we wait until they vanish around a sharp curve in the road before we pull onto the asphalt and hightail it the opposite direction. Naomi’s team follows in the second SUV, and a minute later, we’re in the clear. No one will ever know we were there, except perhaps the Methuselah Group, who apparently abandoned their base and left us a nice little booby trap.
I flop back against the seat, staring idly out the window as I ask, finger on the com mic, “What the hell happened in that house?” Guilt curls tight like tangled barbed wire in my chest. “Please don’t tell me I missed a ward.”
“You didn’t miss anything, Kinsey,” Naomi replies. “It was us who miscalculated.”
“Us?” I ask.
Amy, sitting next to me, growls roughly. “Yeah, us, the people responsible for the general raid strategy. Me, Naomi, the boss, and Ella. We dropped the ball. Didn’t consider all the alternative strategies those MG bastards might employ in the face of our supernatural expertise.”
“We approached them like they were merely wayward practitioners, the same way we always have when it comes to crimes committed by human magic users,” Riker clarifies, peering around the front passenger seat. “They anticipated us doing exactly that, and instead they played the game like they were regular terrorists.”
“Regular terrorists?” I glance at Amy. “You mean the farmhouse was blown up by a…?”
Amy crosses her arms and spits out something nasty in Japanese before replying, “It was a goddamn IED, high yield, time delayed, planted in the center of the basement, where it could take out the entire house at once. Straight out of the War on Terror playbook. Build your own bomb, drop it where you know your enemy will eventually pass, and boom, mutilated soldiers everywhere.”
A desire to comfort Amy regarding her brutal tours in the Middle East briefly crosses my mind, but I clamp it down. She’ll only brush me off and give me that bitter side-eye that implies I will never truly understand the harrowing experience of a soldier in the middle of a war until I’ve actually lived it. And while some of the shit that’s happened in Aurora over the past year certainly comes close to the line that separates a livable world from a war-ravaged nation, this situation with the Methuselah Group hasn’t quite devolved that far. Yet.
But if we keep losing ground like this—I watch the dense smoke curl higher and higher into the sky behind us—then we might find ourselves in the middle of that battlefield. And then I’ll learn exactly what war really means, and I’m a hundred percent sure I’ll regret it.
Christ, as if the Wellington disaster wasn’t enough already—
We drive past an abandoned convenience store tucked into the woods on the side of the road, and for a split second, the headlights illuminate a man casually propped against the empty doorframe of the front entrance. I spin around in my seat, but there are no lights on in the store, and the darkness envelops the figure so fully I can’t even distinguish his outline from the black rectangle of the doorway. Even so, I have no doubt of the man’s identity. His face is burned into my mind, one of those images you can’t forget no matter how hard you try.
Lucian Ardelean.
He probably watched our failed raid, probably knew the place had been abandoned, knew we’d missed the MG rogues by mere minutes. But he can’t be bothered to help us unless it directly benefits the Vampire Parliament, his bosses, in some way, and because he has his own agenda, because he prefers hunting, capturing, and “interrogating” Methuselah agents using his own special brand of inhuman brutality, he keeps silent in times like this, when he knows we’ve lost before we even make a move. Keeps silent even though it costs us lives.
My attention drifts to Ella, seated by the opposite window. Her forehead is pressed against the back of the driver’s seat, and her breathing is rapid and labored. She’s looking at an overnight stay in the hospital, at the very least, and she’ll be feeling the damage from the smoke inhalation for days, no matter what magic tricks Navarro uses to hasten her healing.
That rat bastard, I think, wishing I could physically throw my thoughts at Lucian. He’s barely one step down from the MG rogues himself on the scale of criminal thugs. If he wasn’t an official agent of the vampire government, he’d be on our wanted list too. But as it is, we can’t touch him. The diplomatic risks of arresting an intelligence agent employed by a noble house are far too high.
One day though, I’m going to beat
the crap out of him. For what he did to Mac. For what he did tonight. For what he’s bound to do in the future.
You watch. I’m going to kick his blood-drinking ass.
But for now…
Desmond takes us to the nearest hospital, Mercy Regional, as fast as he can without getting us stopped by a cop. At the entrance to the ER, Amy and I help Ella out and guide her inside. It’s a weekday night, so the place isn’t too crowded, and once we flash our credentials and tell them we were involved in an arson incident, the nurses quickly triage Ella and admit her for the night. Everyone else has minor cuts and bruises and burns, which warrant a few bandages and antiseptic creams, but otherwise, we’re good to go.
We huddle around Ella’s bed while the doctor is scribbling some notes on her chart and wish her goodnight. Riker gently clasps her hand and says, “We’ll come pick you up first thing in the morning, and you can take the rest of the day off.”
“I don’t want a day off,” she croaks, running a hand through her cropped hair.
“Doesn’t matter what you want,” Riker replies. “Captain’s orders. Now get some rest. I want you back on Thursday bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to punch some bad guys in the face.”
Ella smiles. “Will do, Nick.”
“All right.” Riker makes a shooing gesture at us. “Enough with the zoo antics. Stop staring. This is nothing any of us haven’t lived through before.”
“Especially Cal,” Amy adds.
“Excuse me?” I glare at her over my shoulder. “I do not get injured more than other agents.”
She snickers. “Would you like me to make you a list?”
“That’s enough,” Riker says, rolling his eyes. “Out, with the lot of you.”
Sore and sorely disappointed, nine DSI agents file out of the ER exit, Riker bringing up the rear, speaking to Naomi in low tones. I’m a few steps in front of them, and I catch enough of their words to know they’re discussing what we could have done to prevent the MG rogues from escaping.
We had eyes on the place right up until we parked our SUVs near the dump, at which point the auxiliary agents on stakeout left the area so they wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire between two elite detective teams and numerous magic practitioners. Which means that either the MG rogues slipped out sometime when our people were on watch, or they literally packed up and skedaddled in under twenty minutes, the time it took us to set up shop around the perimeter.
Either way, we screwed up somewhere along the line.
This whole night will end up getting marked another do better next time moment.
We’ve had too many of those lately.
Piling back into the SUVs, one seat left conspicuously open, we leave the hospital and head back to the office. The drive is uneventful, a bunch of tired, disappointed agents staring out the windows and mumbling to themselves as they stew in self-pity for the limited amount of time we’re allowed to do so. In the morning, we have to get back up and pretend our morale hasn’t been sledgehammered again by the slippery magical terrorists that have been looming over Aurora like a plague for the past year. We have to keep the fake smiles plastered on, the shoulders straight, the heads held high, even when at an agent’s funeral.
Yeah, this sucks. This sucks big time. And it’s going to keep on sucking until we stamp out the Methuselah Group once and for all.
After we park in the office garage, we climb out of the SUVs, playact a very short debrief in a huddled circle like we’re a gaggle of football players, and agree to pick up the what went wrong discussion in the morning, when we’re not all tired and aching and covered in incriminating residue from the scene of a bombed-out farmhouse whose blackened remains will be shown from every angle during the headline recaps on the morning news. Then we say our goodbyes and split up, reclaim our personal vehicles, and head home.
My new truck—well, new used truck—chugs along the dimly lit streets leading back to my apartment, something plastic in the cabin giving off a squeak every time I hit a pothole. My beloved old pickup ended up in the junkyard after the MG blew up Arnette’s a few months back; it wasn’t totaled, but replacing everything that got broken by the intense shockwave would’ve cost me an arm and a leg, and it would’ve taken weeks to repair, given the vehicle’s age. I needed a working vehicle immediately, and one that didn’t break the bank. So I tearfully parted ways with old faithful, sold it for parts, and scraped up enough dough to put a down payment on a reasonably priced Ford with intact windows and nice new tires.
Four months later, I’m almost used to it.
Just give it time.
I park, lock up, and haul my exhausted butt into my apartment building, which is nearly deserted this time of night. The only person in the lobby is Carlos, the overnight front-desk guy, who looks up from his phone for three seconds to wave at me before returning his attention to what I surmise is a particularly hilarious YouTube video. I wave back halfheartedly, hit the elevator button, wait far too long for the rickety piece of crap to arrive, and shuffle inside. As it’s lifting me up to my floor, I check my own phone for the first time tonight. No messages. No missed calls. Not even any social media notifications.
Gee, if I didn’t spend my days fighting superhuman creatures to protect the world from utter annihilation, I would be a complete loser, wouldn’t I?
On my floor, I exit the elevator, shaking my head as I march down the hall to my front door. I don’t have many friends because I don’t have much time outside of work, I pretend to convince myself. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact I’m a traumatized tragic failure of a hero with a crippling fear of losing…
The TV in my apartment is on. I can hear it through the door.
Tugging my keys from my pocket, I quietly unlock the door, open it, and slip inside. Most of my apartment is dark, the overhead lights switched off like they were when I left. But as I inch up to the threshold to my living room, I find the TV lit up, along with a side lamp on a little table next to my couch. Sitting on that couch is Cooper Lee, his head already pointing my direction, one blond eyebrow quirked at a sharp angle.
“You’re not as stealthy as you think you are.”
“Cooper, what are you doing here?” I don’t move farther into the living room, because I don’t want him to see what a mess I am. He suffers from enough anxiety on a daily basis, just watching me and Ella and the rest of us—Oh, shit. Ella. He’s going to freak if I tell him Ella’s in the hospital, no matter how many times I frame it as a simple precaution to make sure her airway stays clear in the wake of smoke inhalation…
Actually, that does sound scary. Fuck.
Either Cooper hears something off in my tone, or my refusal to enter the reach of the lamplight tips him off, because instead of replying to my question, he hops off the couch, pads softly into the hallway, and flicks on the main light. I squint at the harsh glare and miss his initial expression, but his gasp tells me all I need to know.
Thinking fast, I load up every understated explanation possible, but before I can get a word in, Cooper closes the distance between us and smacks his palm over my lips. “Don’t you make a single damn excuse until I get a good look at you.”
Cowed, I say nothing, even when his palm peels away.
Cooper’s worried baby blues examine me thoroughly: the soot-streaked face, the leaves and twigs stuck to my hair, the rumpled uniform smudged with dirt, the undoubtedly downtrodden posture and matching morose expression. Finally, he murmurs, “Oh, Cal. What happened this time?”
I can’t outright lie to Cooper—he can read me too well now—so I tell him the truth. He does panic when I tell him about Ella’s close call, but he manages to restrain his fear better than I thought he would, and at the end of the recap, he spends only thirty seconds mentally sorting through the details before he wipes the anxious pout off his face and grips my wrists. His nimble fingers slip the gloves from my shaking hands, and he casually tosses them aside before reaching for my coat.
“Uh,
Cooper,” I say, a slight warmth in my cheeks, “what are you doing?”
He smiles, not so much playful as it is humoring. “You’re dirty, and you’re probably bruised all over—again. You need a nice, hot shower, and then you need to go to sleep. I’m helping you get those things done, because if I don’t, you’ll do them out of order, and then you’ll have hideously stained sheets again and another bout of that terrible acne you get when you have clogged pores.”
Cooper tugs my coat off my shoulders, and I frown at him as the heavy fabric comes free from my arms and slumps stiffly to the floor. “I can take care of myself, you know,” I insist in a completely unconvincing manner.
“I know you can,” he replies, still smiling, “but you don’t.”
Well, I can’t argue with that.
So I let him undress me, one soiled article of clothing at a time, until I’m down to my underwear and the blanket of darkening bruises that are even worse than I anticipated. Cooper leads me by the hand to my bathroom, switches on the harsh lights above the mirror, and inspects each and every injury on my body to make sure none require medical attention. Once he’s satisfied, he turns on the shower to my usual setting—how the heck does he remember that? I can’t even remember it half the time—and grabs a towel and washcloth from my linen closet, setting them on the sink counter.
“I’m pretty sure you can handle this next part by yourself.” He plucks a piece of leaf out of my hair. “But let me know if you find yourself struggling.”
I snatch up the washcloth and snort. “What, will you give me a sponge bath instead?”
He snorts back. “In your dreams.”
“It definitely is.”
He pokes me in the chest, between two nasty, painful bruises. “You must really think you’re hot stuff to be making jokes at a time like this.”
“What”—I lean against the sink and mimic a “fashion pose” I saw in a magazine once—“you don’t find me attractive?”
Doom Sayer Page 2
