Force of Fire

by Ali Vali

  “Kill my friend or me first?” Piper asked, way too calm. “Which is it?”

  “If you think I’m kidding, how about I shoot your friend and we can watch him bleed to death while we’re waiting for Kendal to get back.” He pointed his gun at Charlie’s head, but Piper never backed down. “Get on your knees before you get any heroic ideas.”

  Charlie simply looked at him with the same defiant expression that Piper had and didn’t move. “I don’t think so. No one has the right to make me kneel, so come up with something else.”

  “You don’t get it,” he said, his finger tensing on the trigger. “I’m not bullshitting, as you Americans like to say.”

  “Charlie was freed years ago, so he’s right,” Kendal said, tightening her hand around his and the gun. She squeezed harder than he thought any woman could manage, and his skin was starting to pinch around the metal so he lowered his hand. “Pointing a gun at my spouse isn’t a wise career move on your part, Leonardo.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry, but you have to understand that Oscar Petchel isn’t who he says he is. The man is dangerous, so I was trying to spare your family.”

  “I’m getting ready to use that old American saying of bullshit,” Piper said, and Kendal laughed. “Thanks for getting here in time, baby. I really like this rug and didn’t want to get any bloodstains on it.”

  “You aren’t going to kill me,” he said, laughing. “So let me go and we’ll forget all about this.”

  “As the cobra said to the really slow-witted mongoose,” Kendal smiled widely, “welcome to my lair.” His world went dark right after that.

  “Charlie, would you mind going out and helping the guys round up the cavalry Leo here brought with him. Tala and her people are patrolling the border between here and next door, so make sure someone takes a drive and finds the reverse of the canary in the mine.”

  “Reverse of the canary in the mine?” Piper asked.

  “The one guy who stays behind to see if everyone dies before flying off and telling the boss we don’t play well with others,” Kendal said, picking Leonardo up and draping his limp body over her shoulder. “Once you think you’ve gotten them all, meet me on the other side of the lake.”

  “You got it,” Charlie said as he headed out, but not before kissing Piper’s cheek. “Thanks for not taunting him until he shot me. I know a quick spurt of sunbathing would’ve done the trick, but I wasn’t looking forward to the headache.”

  “You’re welcome, so be careful it doesn’t happen in the next half hour either.”

  They followed Kendal outside and to the stables, where she threw Leonardo over the back of a horse and lifted Piper onto Ruda’s back. The ride was quiet, but before they could get to the spot Kendal had designated, Leonardo came to and jumped off and ran, laughing as he went.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Piper said, barely turning her head, not wanting Kendal to stop kissing her neck as they clopped along.

  “Depends on how fast he runs,” Kendal said, holding her tighter. “He might beat us there, but he’s not going anywhere.”

  She had to laugh when Leonardo’s chuckles turned to screams, and she heard the branches snapping as he ran close to where they were. To the right they saw him frantically moving as a very large wolf followed closely with bared teeth and snarls. “They won’t rip anything off until you’ve talked to him, right?”

  “Don’t worry. They’re housebroken, and if I’m right, that’s Lovell. She’ll be happy to give him a vasectomy later, but he’ll be fine until we’re done.” They heard a few gunshots in the distance, and then they stopped after they heard a few howls.

  “Think they’re okay?” Piper asked as they stopped in an opening where Leonardo was pressed to a tree with his eyes closed, as if that would make the scary wolf go away.

  “Unless these guys spent the extra money for silver bullets, everyone should be fine. They’ll be pissed if they got shot, but they’ll be okay after a few weeks.” They slid off, and after Kendal tied Ruda to another tree, Piper raised an eyebrow in question. “I want to make sure everyone knows the pretty horse isn’t lunch.”

  A few more men ran in their direction and fell at their feet when the wolves stopped their pursuit. “How many men did you bring?” Piper asked, stepping closer to Leonardo.

  “The lady asked you a question, asshole. Answer, or my buddy there is going to rip your lips off and whistle through them,” Kendal said, putting a hand on the big wolf’s shoulder.

  “We had ten, but two stayed behind,” he said, seeming to press closer to the tree. “They’re up the road.”

  “There’s only four here, so whoever fired those shots has been culled from your herd.” A smaller but still impressively large animal trotted into the clearing, and from the blood on its chest they knew what happened to the other men. “Who sent you?”

  “The man who hired me never wanted to meet, so I have no idea who he is,” Leonardo said quickly. “He paid the bill and had a lot of work for me, so I didn’t care if we ever met.”

  “That’s too bad,” Piper said.

  “Why?” He turned his head but didn’t move from his position as two more wolves joined them and moved closer to what was left of Leonardo’s forces. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know, so call these things off and let us go.”

  “That’s too bad, because if you have nothing to say, we’re done, and these guys are hungry. If you shot one of them, then your last meal will be memorable when they make it last what’ll seem a lifetime,” Kendal said, taking Piper’s hand and moving back to Ruda.

  “Wait, you can’t kill us,” he said pleadingly.

  “That’s what you said after you lost your gun,” Piper said. “Before that, though, you were ready to pull the trigger. You were going to kill me and Charlie, but you’ve lost the advantage you never had, so now you’ll see we do it a little differently here.”

  “She’s right,” Kendal said and lifted Piper up. “We aren’t going to kill you…they are.”

  “Alejandro Garza sent me. He wants Petchel for some research he’s doing,” Leonardo screamed when Lovell moved toward him and snapped her jaws close to his head.

  “It seems that lying now isn’t the way to go,” Piper said, shaking her head and not liking this guy at all. “So tell us, what kind of research?”

  “He didn’t share that with me. I swear I don’t know.”

  Kendal cocked her head to the side as if pondering the answer and nodded. “I’m not saying I believe you about that, but I would like to know how you found me and Piper.”

  “You came to Hill months ago asking questions, so I want to know the answer to that too.” Piper moved to get off Ruda, but Kendal patted the side of her leg to keep her put. “You came here to harm us, so start talking, or I swear I’ll give the command for them to attack myself.”

  “Mr. Garza got some information from a woman who contacted him after some of his research led him to France. He gave me the basics of what she’d said and charged me with finding you and something called the Genesis Clan. From what she told him, there were many members, but your name and then Piper’s name were all I had to go by.” He started crying and bouncing a little in place, as if his fear was making him twitch.

  “What woman, and don’t even think of telling me you don’t know,” Kendal said.

  “All he told me about her was she was leaving Paris and coming to New Orleans to strengthen her numbers. I guess he meant her business.”

  “How would Ora have met this guy?” she asked Kendal.

  “Depends on what he’s looking for, and if it’s what we think,” Kendal said, shrugging, “it still doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s time to ask Oscar. He might have a little more to contribute than this dead end,” she said, and glanced at Leonardo, then Kendal. “Whatever they wanted, it was important enough to kill me, Charlie, and you when you got back.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Can you make it back okay?”


  “He’s been pretty nice to me so far, but if he gets nervous without you, I’m telling on him,” she said, patting the side of Ruda’s neck. “Don’t be long.”

  Kendal rubbed Piper’s leg and kissed her hand. “Depends on what happened before we got here,” she said, pointing to Lovell and Tala. She slapped Ruda on the butt, and he walked off slow enough for Piper’s comfort.

  Lovell waited until Piper was out of sight before she shifted back. “One of his men shot two of our people,” Lovell said, pointing at a now-pale Leonardo.

  “What are you?” Leonardo asked, sliding down the tree until he thumped on his ass.

  “Are they okay?” She glanced at Lovell and smiled when Tala moved to stand in front of her.

  “In a couple of days they’ll be fine, but Tala wants to deal with it. It’s your land, but if you’ll allow it, we’ll take justice here,” Lovell said, and the others with her moved closer.

  “I had you bring them here because of the lake. If you can have your people not leave a trace, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Wait,” Leonardo yelled, getting back to his feet. “You can’t leave me here with these things.”

  She took his gun from her belt and threw it a few feet from him. “Reach deep and find that big man who pointed that at my wife earlier. If you can’t find that guy, then pray they go for the throat first. The alternative will make you pray to reach that gun, but only to use it on yourself.”

  “You can’t leave us here to die,” Leonardo repeated, and the men close to him nodded as one of the wolves dropped one of their weapons out of his jaws at her feet.

  “No one ever comes to visit with this kind of firepower with friendly intent. You should understand the penalty of playing a game you don’t always win,” she said. She gazed at Lovell, and her friend gave a full body shiver before undergoing the transformation again. Whatever justice the were royalty wanted to mete out, she’d leave them to it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You’re going to have to head back to the dig site on your own and find the missing piece in all this,” Alejandro said as he tapped his phone on his knee.

  Pauline watched him. It wouldn’t be much longer before his mood grew dark enough that she’d be willing to go anywhere he wanted as long as it was away from him. The only smile that had appeared on his face was when Leonardo had called and said he’d found Oscar. That he’d managed to get out of the country without tripping any alarms surprised her, since he was more a bookworm than any kind of clandestine spymaster.

  His patience for waiting was at an end, and he dialed and placed the phone to his ear. She could hear his breathing from across the room and wondered if he’d ever succumb to the violence that seemed to constantly simmer right below the surface. The day he raised a hand to her was the day she’d leave and never see him again, even if she had to abandon the hunt. Her mother had hinted at her father’s dark side, and she vaguely remembered her mother’s battered face but had thought it was some confused childhood mix-up in her head.

  “Leonardo?” Alejandro said, his face getting splotchy red when no one seemed to answer. “Are you there?” Again he seemed to get no answer because he took a moment to focus, she guessed, by closing his eyes and pursing his lips together tightly. When he opened them she motioned for him to put the phone on speaker, and surprisingly he did.

  “Who is this?” a deep but female voice asked.

  “Who is this?” Alejandro asked and only got laughter from the other side before the woman hung up. “Who is this bitch?”

  “Do you think something happened to Leonardo?”

  “Unless he’s lost his mind, I doubt he handed his phone over to some random woman,” Alejandro said through what seemed to be a haze of hate as he dialed again. “Who is this?”

  “Not to get into a circular conversation with you, but I asked you first. Give me a name, and I’ll think about answering you,” the woman said, then laughed.

  “Where’s Leonardo?”

  “He’s having lunch with some friends,” the woman said and then hung up again.

  He dialed two more times, but the phone went right to voice mail. Whoever had answered it had obviously powered it off. “Get going, and don’t come back until you have some answers.”

  “I need help. I can’t go back there by myself,” she said, and flinched back hard enough that it moved her chair when he punched the top of his desk.

  “I’m beginning to think your mother lied about you being mine. Get back there, and don’t worry about having someone hold your hand. There’ll be plenty enough people from the order to help you, but I have a feeling time is running out. If it does, I’m going to kill every single person who let this slip through my fingers.”

  “Maybe you should come with me,” she said, finally realizing that he’d never once set foot in any site they’d explored. “If whoever that was got to Leonardo, you might be vulnerable.”

  “Worry about what I tell you to worry about, and leave the rest to me,” he said, turning his attention to something else as if they were done and whatever else she had to say was of no importance. “Go.”

  She left, and any illusions that he cared anything about her fell from her heart. “If I find anything at all, it’s going to be mine,” she said softly as she walked to the waiting helicopter. Whatever power was to be found would be hers in memory of her mother, who’d given Alejandro everything and died with only her at her side. “And if I can, I’m going to crush you with it.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here with your grandparents? I’m just going for a few days, and I’m not exactly going alone,” Kendal said as she took stuff out of the drawers on her side of the bed.

  “I’m not having this conversation with you again, as in never again,” Piper said as she lay on the bed with the baby beside her sleeping. “You haven’t been married that long, considering how long you’ve been alive, but there are certain lessons you should go ahead and wrap your head around now so we don’t have to keep wasting time on them.”

  “Okay, but try to talk your grandparents into going so we don’t have to worry about the baby.” She got another bag out of the closet and placed it next to hers. “If Oscar got that far and shared the information with Pauline, we have to get going.”

  “I can’t believe he agreed to go back there.” She put pillows around Hali as a precaution and started packing. “Those guys today were planning a massacre, followed by dragging him home to finish what he started. From Rawney’s expression, he’s not wrong about the translations.”

  “He’s not wrong, but he needs to focus if he’s going to be of any use to us. Right now all he can think about is killing everyone involved with the order.”

  She walked around the room and put her arms around Kendal from behind. “You can’t blame him, honey. It’s been eons, but you must’ve felt the same way.”

  “I know, but I didn’t have you and Hali to worry about back then. We don’t need a hothead putting people in danger for the sake of revenge.” Kendal sat on the bed, and she sat on her lap.

  “I’m sure that between you, Morgaine, Charlie, and my grandmother, Oscar isn’t going to be a problem. We can leave him here with Rolla and the others, but even Rawney was amazed at how much he’d figured out without any help from anyone.” She combed Kendal’s hair back and kissed her neck.

  “What does your grandmother have to do with anything?” Kendal asked, leaning back a little so she could see her face.

  “You guys can skewer whoever gets in your way, but Gran can put the fear of death into you with that mom glare. Believe me, you’ll stop whatever the hell you’re doing if you’re on the receiving end of one of those.” She pinched Kendal’s cheek and smiled. “It’s going to be okay, baby. We haven’t come to this place in time and built what we have to allow anyone to take it away from us.”

  “So I’m being a little crazy?”

  “I happen to like you a little crazy, but only when i
t comes to me, so let’s go. The sooner we wrap this up, the faster we’ll get back here or on a honeymoon. I’m not sure, but that ring exchange with Aphrodite means we’re as married as anyone out there. And if I’m married, I want the party and the honeymoon that goes with it.”

  “You got it, and a Mayan ruin in a rain forest isn’t going to be it.”

  “It’s good to know that Piper got so lucky,” Molly said, coming in without knocking. “I agree with her about the honeymoon, but right now finish packing, and I’m going to take my great-granddaughter downstairs and introduce her to the classics.”

  “She should be reading by ten months,” Kendal said, standing up with her in her arms. “So let’s get going before Hali is smarter than all of us and doesn’t need help solving anything.”

  They finished packing and headed to the smaller Lakefront Airport, where Rolla had chartered a plane to take them to another small airport closer to where they were headed. Oscar seemed to be studying the group boarding, and Piper figured he was trying to put together the good-looking but different people who all had the same eye color.

  Once they were in the air and Hali was comfortable, she went and sat with Oscar. The man was in pain, but he also seemed so passionate about what he did. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t for some personal gain. “Hi,” she said, sitting, and waited for him to stop typing. “Do you mind if we talk about what your father told you?”

  “I still can’t believe he was serious, but why would he have spent the last moments of his life spinning such a fanciful story? He must have been trying to protect me from whatever Alejandro wanted.” He drummed his fingers on the laptop and glanced out the window. “He said Alejandro killed my mother.”