She led them to the right and towards the far end of the hotel. When they entered the elevator, she reached for the LL button but stopped.
Damn, Devvie, they’re everywhere. Don’t go all the way down. Get out on the first floor.
She obeyed and the elevator took them down. She started to lead them right along one corridor only to stop short again.
Turn left. Take that second hallway, past the ice machines.
And so it continued. After going down one hallway then another, back up two more levels, and then down into the basement, they finally reached Kent’s truck. He and Nicky had conveniently retrieved the vehicle from valet parking that morning and moved it to this location in the hotel’s garage.
Kent got them out on the freeway as quickly as possible, his glance darting back and forth from one mirror to the other, looking all around for any sign that they were being followed.
“What is wrong, little one?”
Devan was holding her arms around her stomach and her face was scrunched into a tight frown. “It’s happening again. It started again as we were trying to find our way out. The pain…What is it? It ebbs and flows, but…” She swallowed, nausea forcing acid up into the back of her throat.
Langston was stretched out, his huge body filling the entire back seat. He reached a hand up to pull himself to a sitting position. “They are tracking her. They must be close by if she is suffering so.”
“I don’t see or sense anyone,” Kent insisted, again looking all around. “Do you sense them? Of course you can’t, not in your condition.”
“Who is tracking me? Is that what he meant by ‘ferreting me out’? This pain in my head is a tracking device?”
“You are fighting the track without even knowing you are doing so. Let go. Relax. It will make it more difficult for them to keep a trace on you.”
“H–how can I relax with this? It feels like my brain is being mashed…mashed to bits.”
Kent sped up the truck and headed for an off ramp. It was entirely possible that whoever was following them knew exactly where they were going. He looked in the rearview mirror and wasn’t surprised to see Langston rummaging through his bags for his herbs. Devan had tucked her legs up to her chest and was cradling her head in her hands. Whatever his friend was concocting would ease her suffering and hopefully make it more difficult for their followers to realize what direction they were taking.
“This was a trap,” Kent hissed. “This was all a trap to locate her. How can that be? She was ripe for the taking all along! Why would they go to such extravagant means to get to her now?”
Langston didn’t look up from his work as he spoke. “It would have been simple if they had known who they were looking for. Adriel’s words suggest they knew not who. At least they did not know until now.”
“Adriel,” Kent growled. “Shit! If Adriel has Gerry then they know exactly where our safe locations are. And if they get Nicky–if they get Nicky, they’ll know a helluva lot more than just where we’d go.”
Langston did not respond.
“It’s easing a bit,” Devan said, her words gasping short and pitched from her lips.
A strange scent reached her nose, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Langston’s big hand there, a powdery, multicolored substance in the cup of his palm. She wanted to turn her head away and refuse, but she knew instinctively that Langston would do nothing to harm her. The pain, though lessening, was still there and she wanted it gone. Licking her lips, she closed her eyes and breathed deep the odor of the substance. As the scent, like a mixture of licorice and ginger, wafted through her nostrils, a tingling started at her extremities.
She expected the concoction to make her sleepy, but it only relaxed her. Every muscle in her body seemed to become slack, but most especially her mind loosened. She leaned her head back against the seat and brushed her hair away from her face. She closed her thumb and fingers on some of the strands of curls and pulled them out in front of her, examining them. “It still grows. Just in the span of this day it has grown longer. I’ll become a hairy beast before long.” Then she giggled.
Kent looked back at Langston, his lips pursed into a severe frown. “Yes, Dev, it grew even as you drew within yourself to stop Adriel.”
“Adriel–is he really a vampire? He could have bitten me, couldn’t he? So why are they tracking me? And why didn’t you kill those men? Where did Gerry go anyway? Why wasn’t she fighting with you all? And you weren’t fighting very hard. Surely you could have stopped those men much earlier. All the while I was waiting outside. And Kent, you didn’t tell me Gerry was a woman, and you damn sure didn’t say she was a supermodel.”
Kent rolled his eyes when he saw the touch of a grin on Langston’s lips. The giant’s eyes were closed and he had reclined back against the seat again to rest and recover. Neither man said a word. The only sounds were Devan’s constant chattering and the smooth hum of the engine as the truck continued down Interstate 30 towards Texarkana.
By mid afternoon they had reached Hope, Arkansas, and Kent pulled into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant just off the freeway. He glanced back in the mirror at Langston, who was sound asleep in the backseat. He examined his friend’s aura and was relieved to see the lights getting brighter and more active, a sign that he was healing. Devan, who had rambled incessantly for the first hour or so of the trip, was now quiet as she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.
“What’ll we do about Langston?” she asked, reaching down to remove her seatbelt.
Kent yawned and stretched his arms out in front of him. “He needs rest more than anything. We can get him a take-out order.”
She peered back twisted her body, and knelt onto the seat, leaning towards the big man. She touched his forehead like a mother checking on a sick child. Then she slipped her sweater off and laid it across his chest. It hardly covered him, but she seemed satisfied with it and turned back towards the front.
Kent smiled. Then he reached for the door and stepped out of the truck. When he looked back, he saw that Devan was still sitting there, her lower lip in her mouth again. “What is it?” he asked. “Surely you’re as hungry as I am?”
“Will he be safe? What if they’ve been able to follow us?”
He cocked his head to the side. “I think you’d feel it if they had been able to continue tracking you. They obviously knew a lot about our plans, including which direction we would be heading next. They were keeping your track by taking the general direction of our supposed destination: Santa Fe. We’re nowhere near Santa Fe, and I’d bet they lost you before we were thirty miles outside of Dallas.”
She hesitated still, and Kent marveled at her bullheaded protectiveness for a man she’d only just come to know.
“I’ll set the protections. Does that put your mind at ease?”
Devan nodded, though her face was still scrunched into a frown.
Inside the restaurant they both placed their orders. Then Devan excused herself to go to the ladies room. Before heading back to the table, she checked her appearance in the mirror, shaking out the strands of her hair, in awe at their new length. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind which side to part the curls on, how to comb them back behind her ear, or whether to let them fall somewhat into her face. With a frustrated sigh, she finally took a rubber band from her purse and twisted the locks into a ponytail at the base of her neck.
Kent was munching voraciously on chips and salsa when she got back to the table. She nibbled on one chip while she stared at him squarely. He met her stare and continued eating. She refused to give in, her gold-brown eyes narrowing just a bit. Finally he sighed and leaned back against the booth in resignation. “Go ahead, Dev. Ask away.”
“Let’s start with what your original plan was for this morning.”
He nodded, taking a sip of his water. “Gerry’s a witch too, Devan. She’s known as a shapeshifter, though she really doesn’t ‘change’ shape. She just creates an illus
ion, a glamour, so that she appears to be something she’s not. Many witches can create glamours but for Gerry it’s a complete and perfect transformation. She becomes another person so long as she can hold the magic.”
Devan frowned. “So she doesn’t always look like that?”
Kent’s right eyebrow shot up and he smirked just a bit. “Look like what, Dev?”
She shook her head and muttered, “Never mind.” When he continued to stare at her, she brushed a hand in the air towards him, motioning him to continue the story.
“Today she was posing as a known customer of the Org. Sylvia Newberg has a young adopted ‘daughter’ by the name of Clairie. The Org believes she came here today with the intent to purchase a ‘brother’ for Clairie. There were three buyers represented at today’s meeting.”
And so he continued his explanation. Until Devan had entered the room, the plan had appeared to be on target. When the children arrived for inspection, Gerry, the two other women, and one man were allowed to take the children aside to study them. While Gerry gradually sequestered the children and the other examiners, Langston and Nicky had came in and began sparring with the attendees, as did Kent. It was Gerry’s job to get the children away while Kent and Langston distracted the Org members. That was why the fighting appeared contrived. It wasn’t intended to do real harm at that point, only to give Gerry the time she needed. Nicky’s job was to locate and kill the vampire. According to Kent, there was always at least one vampire at such meetings.
“So the man I saw Nicky fighting, he was a vampire too?” she asked
“Mmmhmm. Nicky killed him, but we didn’t see Adriel, didn’t even know he was there until he had you.”
Devan shook her head, looking confused. “But I didn’t see the body–I looked for the body when I saw the blood on Nicky’s knife.”
“Vampires don’t leave bodies behind when they’re killed. You wouldn’t have seen anything except perhaps ashes.”
Exasperation was clearly written on her face as she tried to digest this. “Okay, but you said there’s normally one vampire. Aren’t the buyers vampires?”
“Yes, but most of the vampire buyers have paired themselves with a witch or a warlock, someone who can detect the magic–which vampires normally can’t do. And that way the vampires can maintain their separation from the actual transaction. The real Sylvia Newberg isn’t a vampire, but the man who poses as her husband is. She makes the purchases. So things were going according to plan until you came in. Nicky would have killed his vampire, and then Langston would have charmed the rest of the ordinary members so that we could get away. It doesn’t always work, but generally we don’t kill people unless we have to.”
“But you killed the Dearmon family and their guards–and burned their bodies.”
Kent turned his eyes down. “I would’ve liked to have avoided that, but they ambushed us. The truth is none of us fired a single shot at them. The Dearmons surrounded us, and when they fired on us, I used my powers to divert the bullets back onto them.”
“That was why the scene seemed so…eerily perfect, as if they’d been killed instantly where they stood. Why weapons if you have magic?”
“Vampires aren’t easily killed, and if there had been vampires there, the bullets were pure silver.”
She rolled her eyes, thinking how absolutely ludicrous all of this seemed, “Okay, so your power. Nicky asked if you could ‘bend’ Langston to the room?”
“My power? Yes, we call it bending. I can curve things and space. I can also alter time, though that is more difficult and not as reliable.”
“Can you make time go backwards or forwards? Can you see the future or the past?”
He shook his head. “No, and I can see very little when I’m using my bending power. I envision what I want to happen in my mind and then rely on an outsider or outsiders to make use of it. I could have done very little to save you without Nicky and Langston. And although I can sometimes rewind or fast-forward time, it’s dangerous because I don’t have the ability to control it. That’s why I don’t do it. Langston believes one day my abilities will strengthen but I’ve been at this for…for a long time, Dev.”
Devan got quiet then. Kent could see that she was thinking. Her brow was wrinkled deep at the spot above her nose and between her eyebrows. It was a very endearing little indentation, and he thought he’d like to lean forward and kiss her there. He quickly stamped down that thought and turned his eyes from her, taking another chip and munching loudly.
He swallowed before asking, “How did you know they took Gerry?”
Tension immediately clamped down on her body and she crossed her arms across her chest defensively. Kent waited. Her eyes darted back and forth a few times, like she was reading a book, then a little twitch occurred at her left eye. Finally she said, “I hear a voice. His name is Rooney. He told me they were coming for us and that they’d taken Gerry.”
“And he led us out of the building,” Kent deduced.
Devan nodded, a worried look on her face, as if she’d just betrayed a friend.
“He doesn’t want you to tell others about him?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s never said that. It’s just that…the last time I told someone about him, I was advised that I was crazy. I wasn’t sure.”
He smiled tenderly and leaned forward across the table. Then he reached a hand towards her face. She flinched a bit and he realized how totally on her guard she was at that moment. He didn’t stop, but he slowed his movements as he gradually ran two fingers from her temple down along the line of her jaw. “I don’t think you’re crazy, Dev. I don’t know who or what the voice is, but I believe you hear it. And it certainly saved our asses today.”
Damn right, I did!
Go away, Roon.
Spill the beans on me and then tell me to go away? Fine, Devvie, be that way.
Devan shook her head and smiled. “He’s talking to me now, you know. I don’t think he minds that I’ve told you, judging by his attitude.”
“Won’t he tell you who or what he is?”
It was a simple question and made perfect sense, which was why Devan laughed when he asked it. “I’ve never once even thought about asking him that question. Not in all these years. He’s just there, Kent. For as long as my memory goes back, he was there.”
Roon? Rooney, can you hear me?
“He’s gone for now,” she advised Kent when she realized he was waiting for some sort of explanation. “He does that. Goes on a whim, but he almost always comes if I really need him. Today, though…he didn’t come today when I called.”
He nodded. “The Org had protections around that room. They were designed to keep a sterile field. The people in the hallway couldn’t see or hear what was going on in there, even after you broke the door. Probably your friend couldn’t get through.”
Their food arrived and Devan immediately began cutting into her cheese enchiladas. Kent watched her, a fork in one hand and a knife in the other. “Sort of begs the question of how you got through the protections,” he said.
* * *
Langston kindly accepted the beef nachos Devan brought him before tucking them under his seat and falling back to sleep. When Kent finally got back into the truck, he was quiet and pensive. It was clear he was no longer interested in chitchat, so Devan too leaned back and began to doze.
She awoke a few hours later when she felt the truck come to a halt. Opening her eyes, she looked around and saw that they had stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Langston was awake now and he was sitting upright, both hands on his knees, as was his practice.
Kent turned off the vehicle and sat there a moment, both hands on the steering wheel. The other two waited quietly, anxiously. Finally he took a deep breath and turned to face Langston. “They’ve cut us off.”
Langston nodded, clearly understanding who they were even if Devan didn’t. “Have they made contact?”
The younger man shook his head. “No. The credit
cards are all canceled. They’re letting me stew for now. Probably hoping I’ll call them. That means wherever Nicky is, he’s on his own too. We need to find him. I’ve been calling, but he doesn’t answer.”
“What’s happening? I don’t understand,” Devan demanded, her voice almost shrill with concern.
Kent closed his eyes a moment. “The Company gave me a directive. I’ve…taken it upon myself to vary it.”
“You’re going after the Org. That’s what you said you were supposed to be doing. How did you vary it? And you say the ‘company’ as if it’s a–a thing.”
“Little one, the Company is the group to which we belong. Their directive was patent. Get to the Org. Disband or destroy their upper echelon. Let us just say that we are taking the long way around to get to that goal. It appears the Company is not amenable to delays.”
“Delays?”
Kent didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the truck door and began walking off into a wooded area. Devan turned to Langston, who seemed to have grown taller as his back stiffened even further.
“When we were given this mission, Kent requested permission to rescue the children. He has personal reasons. The Company’s response was implicit. We were not to make this a rescue mission. Also, the Company does not appreciate outsiders being brought into the group. They must know by now that Kent has taken you with us.”
She turned her head back to the area where Kent had disappeared into the forest. She swallowed hard and swallowed again to force away the lump in her throat. “What are his personal reasons?”
“That is not my place to say.”
“What happens now?” she asked, still staring off at the trees.
“Now, I will eat my dinner. I find that I am famished.”
Devan blinked twice then looked back towards the giant. His smile was warm and calming as he reached down for the Styrofoam box she had given him earlier. She slid across the seat and then out of the truck.
The Bend-Bite-Shift Box Set Page 7
