Fake it till you make it.
I made my way down the aisle. The delay back at the gate seemed to be over now, as other passengers were coming in behind me. I kept moving toward the rear. The row in the very back looked empty, and I crossed my fingers that it would stay that way. There were more than a few empty seats sprinkled throughout the plane, but I didn’t want to chance grabbing one only to have someone come behind me and kick me out.
The flight attendant in the back was a man about my height, with a slim build and frosted tips on his close-cropped hair. As I approached, he frowned, then said, “What’s your seat number?”
The nice thing about the push was that it wasn’t necessarily the volume of my voice but the power behind the words. Under my breath, I said, “I’m supposed to be here, relax.”
His shoulders came down and he smiled and backed up a bit.
“Is anyone sitting there?” I pointed to the back row.
The flight attendant checked his clipboard. “You’re in luck, this row is empty.” Looking back up, he cocked his head to one side. “Everything all right? Usually, people hate sitting in the back. If there’s a problem with your seat, I’ll be happy to help.”
“I just want to stretch out,” I said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. “It’s been a long day.”
“As long as the fasten seat belt sign is off,” he said, winking.
My grin was genuine. I’d tortured myself with visions of robotic, mind-controlled flight attendants, of having to push everyone on board to forget me, but things were going far smoother than I’d expected. “I would never,” I replied.
“Blanket and a pillow?”
“Please,” I said. Sliding over to the window seat, I flipped the armrests up and tried to get comfortable. A bulky, balding man in a business suit occupied the seat in front of me, and he already had it cranked so far back that the magazine pouch brushed my knees. He turned and stared when my legs hit his seat.
“Somebody gets sick in the bathroom, you’ll regret sitting here. The only reason I am is that my company’s too damn cheap to let me fly any other airline.”
“I’m not too worried,” I said. “My nose is a little stopped up and I’ll probably sleep most of the way.”
Disinterested in further conversation, he grunted and turned back to his laptop.
After the delivery of the promised pillow and blanket, the thunderous beating of my heart slowed to something more normal. I was still a little on edge, but the little milestones in the journey ratcheted me down a notch as each passed. The flight attendants sealed the cabin doors, the ground crew towed us from the gate, and the captain’s smooth voice filled the air, punctuated with beeps and tones.
By the time the takeoff acceleration pushed me back into my seat, I relaxed enough to jam the pillow between my ear and the bulkhead. Closing my eyes, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Valentine—Monday evening
Joint Base Andrews, Maryland
A lone agent waited as Val, George, and Morgan descended the cargo plane’s ramp. The streaks of dust on his rumpled suit combined with the fact that he didn’t recognize the other man doubled down on the bad feeling he’d had in the pit of his stomach since they left Phoenix.
“Agent Dylan Prather, sirs. And ma’am.” Val’s sense of age wasn’t always the best, but the other man looked to be in his early thirties, with a tall, wiry build.
He stuck his hand out, and Val shook it automatically. “What department are you in, Junior?”
Prather bristled at the nickname, but Val didn’t particularly give a shit. Everyone he worked with was a damn kid save for maybe Morgan. “Assistant director of the southeast region. Came aboard from Jacksonville PD six years ago.”
“That explains it,” Val said with a shrug. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t find it in himself to force a smile. “I try to stay out of the heat and humidity as much as possible.”
“How bad is it, Agent Prather?” George interjected.
“Pretty bad.” His shoulders sagged. “Do we want to talk about this here?”
“Talk as we walk,” Val ordered. “Take us to the car.”
“Right.” Turning to lead the way, Dylan continued, “Director Newquist is in the ICU.” Lights flashed on a black Chevy Suburban as he unlocked the doors using the fob. Glancing nervously back at George, he pulled open the rear passenger door. “Can I help you get in—”
“I’m fine,” the bald agent growled. He wheeled up to the SUV, stretched for the grab handle, and pulled himself inside. “Put the chair in the back, rookie.”
“I’m not a—”
“Just go with it,” Morgan interjected, stepping around to take the front passenger seat. “It’s all relative.”
Val pulled open the cargo hatch and waited while Agent Prather struggled with the collapsing latches on George’s wheelchair. Once he figured them out and got the chair down to a more stowable configuration, he murmured, “How bad off is the Director?”
“It’s touch and go. A good chunk of the building collapsed. It looks like his detail got him under a conference table in time, but enough debris hit it to buckle it down on top of him.” Agent Prather looked down at his hands, and Val realized they were as dirty as his suit. Comparative newcomer or not, he’d apparently been digging his fellow agents out on the scene. The kid rubbed at one spot but did little more than smear it around to make an even bigger mess. “I’ve seen worse in my time—but not by much.”
Val winced. “Jimmy and Kyle?” He had a strange relationship with the former Army Rangers assigned to protect the Director. He respected their abilities; they regarded him as a threat with the potential to go off at any given moment.
Well, they weren’t wrong.
“Didn’t make it.”
“Damn it.” Val followed the other agent around to the driver’s side and took the seat next to George. “What happened?”
“We’re still trying to figure out how she did it, but someone set off a pretty serious bomb in the vault.” The Suburban’s tired chirped on the tarmac as Prather gave it some gas, heading for the exit.
“She?” Morgan echoed.
“Kristin Hughes, she is—or was, rather—in operations for the annex. We’ve got her walking into the vault and—” Prather gulped. “I don’t understand what I saw, to be honest.”
“Use your words,” George growled. “You don’t need to understand it to describe it.”
Prather flushed and gave the other agent a dirty look in the mirror. “Kristin was maybe five-six. A little extra weight, but a looker.” He cringed. “Sorry, Agent Laffer.”
Morgan’s tone was as dry as the desert they’d just left. “I’m familiar with the male propensity to think with the lower head, Agent. Do continue.”
“She walks into the lab, and Dr. Schantz and Agent Menard look like someone hit them with a baseball bat. You’d have thought Kate Upton walked in. They talk for a bit, then she reached out and broke the doc’s neck with her bare hands. After that, Agent Menard helped her open the vault. She took something and left him there. A little bit after that, whatever she brought in exploded and took out the cameras.”
“On the bright side, the dangerous stuff is in off-site storage,” Val sighed, thinking back to the truck stop. “Morgan? What do you think?”
“I’ve got a few ideas, and none of them are good.”
“Doppelganger?” George wondered.
“I was thinking succubus. Pheromones would explain the behavior Agent Prather describes, and doppelgangers have human-normal strength. Did we send anyone to Agent Hughes’ house? A succubus would eat any evidence of foul play, but there’d still be blood and signs of a struggle.”
“We’ve got most of our manpower digging through the rubble looking for survivors and keeping the FBI from shouldering their way onto the site.”
“They don’t have jurisdiction, it’s our facility,” Val exclaimed. “What’s their excuse?”
“Join
t Terrorism Task Force,” Prather explained. “And we don’t have any senior-level agents around to play bureaucratic games with them, so we’ve been stalling.”
“Good Lord. Were the casualties that bad?” Morgan whispered.”
“The initial task force meeting was this morning,” Val said, with dawning horror. “Russ said something about having all hands on deck.” He closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself. “Who’s next in line?”
Prather shook his head. “The timing couldn’t have been worse. The only regional SAC to make it out was Carter, from Seattle, and he’s in the ICU, too. With him out of the way, well—Agent Laffer, if we're going by seniority.” He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “No offense, Agent.”
Morgan smirked. “I’m too old to be bothered by mentions of it, kid. But I’m just a team leader. This is war, now. We need someone with a little more gusto.”
As one, everyone save Prather turned to George. “General?” Val said.
The other man scowled. “You want something blown up, I’m your man. I’ll lead the boys in the field all day long. But quit dodging it, Valentine. You’re up to bat.” He shook his head with a crooked smile. “You’d have been running this show years ago if you didn’t prefer fieldwork.”
There was more to it than that, of course. The one thing that men like Newquist and all those who had come before him had in common was diplomacy. It wasn’t so much that Val couldn’t turn on the charm and schmooze his way through any situation. He was a Southerner; that sort of thing came with the territory. It was the fact that after doing this for so long, the various iterations were so damn predictable. I’m one hundred and sixty-seven years old, and if I’ve seen a dozen bureaucrats stymie our core mission for their own personal fiefdoms, I’ve seen fifty. This wasn’t a situation for diplomacy or negotiation. Right now, Val didn’t give two shits about jurisdiction. When they found out who was responsible for this incident, every resource Division M could bring to bear was in play to rectify the issue. To hell with the consequences.
“I’ll take care of the FBI,” he said, bowing to the inevitable. Then, with dawning horror, he said, “What about the holding facility? Did we do a head count?”
Prather nodded. “It didn’t go well. We lost most of the subjects. A few survived, and we had two escapes. We’ve got a team looking for the escapees now, but they’re short-handed.”
Val closed his eyes and tried not to curse. “Who escaped?”
“The pukwudgie and Paxton Locke. We’ve kind of given up finding the puck, the damn things are impossible to see even in the daylight, but surely we’ll be able to—” Prather caught the look on Val’s face and fell silent.
“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “You won’t be able to find him, not now.”
“What’s our priority, boss?” Morgan asked.
He considered it for a moment, then shrugged. “Pull the search team back. Paxton Locke’s on the back-burner for now. We need to track down our bomber and figure out what we’re going to do about Randolph. Unless I miss my guess, the kid will turn up right on time to be a pain in my ass.”
Chapter Fifteen
Paxton—Monday evening
Sky Harbor International Airport
After the nerve-wracking experience of getting into an airport, getting off the plane and heading for the exit of the airport in Phoenix was relaxing in comparison. Not having to concern myself with lost or missing luggage was a big part of that, of course, but I’d also been nervously anticipating what awaited me at the top of the jetway.
Visions of hard-faced government agents in dark suits waiting to take me into custody kept chasing me out of my sleep. The third time I jerked awake, I gave up and flipped through a SkyMall catalog. I didn’t pay much attention to the assortment of gadgets, but it gave my hands something to do while I ordered my thoughts.
My worries turned out to be for naught—as I walked through the airport, I didn’t see much of anything except other passengers rushing toward the exits or awaiting their turn in the air.
Now that I had both feet on the ground, I stewed over the fact that I had no knowledge of the situation on the ground. I glanced at television screens as I walked by them, half-expecting to see a picture of myself.
The death of Donald Thibodeau at my hands and the flight of the shadow demon Tlaloc had broken the hold they’d held over their cultists and the leadership of the Phoenix police department. I had no way of knowing how much the survivors remembered if anything. Either way, I doubted that the precarious position Kent had put himself into by bringing me out to help in his investigation persisted after the fact. The cultists hadn’t appreciated my intrusion into their territory and had threatened my friend’s career in an attempt to get me to back off.
The question was, how would Division M treat someone who was, ostensibly, a fellow law enforcement officer? After everything I’d seen in DC, I doubted they’d go for cooperation. Based on my treatment, Kent’s relationship with me would tar him with the same brush.
In the end, it only mattered to the extent of finding my friends. I hadn’t been an official consultant, and given that the incident in Sikora’s neighborhood was only tangentially connected to the kidnapped boys I’d helped bring to safety, my help there wouldn’t get me far.
On the flight, I’d come to the conclusion that my first step needed to be Kent and Jean’s house. I knew Mother had taken Cassie, but the status of the Sikoras, Father Rosado, and the De La Rosa brothers remained a mystery.
Getting there, of course, was the fun part. Phoenix might not have had the traffic congestion of DC, but it sneered at the nation’s capital when it came to urban sprawl. Kent’s house on the far north side was over forty miles from the airport. I considered the cash remaining in my pockets and knew a cab was out of the question. Even if I could afford one, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Would the agency pursuing me stake out possible places of interest? In their shoes, I would. I was also pretty sure that taxi companies kept records of fares, even when they paid cash. In this day and age, that might invite even more scrutiny than I’d like.
It’s a good thing your hair’s already white or paranoia would take care of that. I smiled at my reflection in the big windows near the baggage claim and tried not to shake my head.
With my limited budget, public transit was the way to go—even if the bus route stopped well-short of my eventual destination. If it came down to it, I’d walk. Given the proximity to the interstate, I thought that I might be able to hitch a ride, especially if it was only a few exits north. No push, I told myself. I’d escaped from prison and crossed three-quarters of the country. It was time to take myself out of desperation mode.
Outside the terminal, I fed some of my dwindling supply of bills into a machine and bought a transit card. Bit by bit, I was replacing the lost vestiges of my modern, first-world lifestyle, though this was a smaller step than most, to be sure.
All things considered, I’d much rather have a set of car keys. Or a credit card.
The buses came frequently enough, every twenty minutes or so, that I didn’t have to wait long after I figured out the route I needed to take. I’d ride west for the first leg, then take the 19th Avenue bus north to Happy Valley Road, parallel to I-17 the whole way. I hoped my final stop would be a good omen.
The crowd on the bus was light, and most of the faces wore expressions of fatigue or focus. I was, I noted, one of the only people on the bus not wearing headphones or looking at sort of device. The bad part of that was that I had little to occupy myself other than my own thoughts, and after the fitful bits of rest I’d caught on the flight, it became a struggle to stay awake.
The rustle of paper caught my attention. Turning, I saw that the man on the bench behind me had occupied himself with a newspaper rather than earphones. I raised a hand to get his attention, then asked, “Mind if I take a look at the front page?”
He shrugged, passed it over and returned to the sports section.
MISSING TWINS FOUND, the headline read in bold lettering an inch tall. Below, it continued: SWAT TEAM RAIDS REHAB FACILITY. POLICE SPOKESMAN DENIES CLAIMS OF RITUAL MURDER.
“Deny all you want, fellas,” I whispered under my breath. “Doesn’t change the truth.”
The photographer had framed the shot well—Evan and Ethan, stepping out of the back of an ambulance. They were grimy and hollow-cheeked, but Evan wore a huge grin and was flashing a thumbs-up to someone outside of the frame. His twin had his head down, staring at the ground with his brother’s arm wrapped around his shoulders. The second boy hadn’t made so much as a peep during his rescue and return from the ancient catacombs below the cult’s rehab facility. Knowing that he remained haunted by unknown terrors tempered my sense of accomplishment. Yeah, they were alive, but had I gotten to them as fast as I could have?
I stared at the picture, trying to sear it into my memory. I approached life with a chip on my shoulder and more than a bit of sarcasm, but that was just a defense mechanism to keep me up and moving past the things I’d experienced. If I was going to keep at this business of being a wizard, I had to remember that not everyone could brush insanity and impossibility off. For many, it left a very a real mark. Me? I could always turn invisible and phase out of harm’s way.
My stop was next, so I handed the paper over and hit the button to signal the driver. When I swung off the bus, the cooling air hit me in the face and pushed away any thoughts of sleep. Moving helped as well, and I trotted along the sidewalk to the next bus stop. Shortly thereafter, my connection came along, and I repeated the process of swiping my card and finding a seat. Much like the westbound bus, most of the passengers were in their own worlds, and that worked for me. I was going to the end of the line, so I tucked my head up against the window and closed my eyes.
Come, Seeling Night Page 10