“And yet their captors left the padlock undone?” Kat said.
“What?”
Kat grabbed the padlock and turned the body. The shackle slid right past it, so Kat just tugged the lock free from the metal loop on the door. “When you stomped your foot, the lock jostled, and I noticed it wasn’t secured.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “You think they left it open by accident, or…?”
As if on cue, the sound of soft footsteps echoed down the hall from around the nearest corner, and a door, a stairwell door, thumped shut. Startled, Kat stuck the lock back on the loop, then she and Gabby scrambled across the hall and slipped into another room that turned out to be a disused game room.
Leaving the room’s door cracked an inch, Kat and Gabby observed the hall. The footsteps grew louder and louder, until at last, a single person rounded the corner.
It was a middle-aged woman. She wore a simple black cocktail dress in a modest cut, a string of pearls around her neck, and matching pearl earrings. Her graying hair had been professionally styled into a tasteful coif, her makeup airbrushed to perfection. Under one arm, the woman held a brown paper bag stamped with the logo for a butcher shop.
Besides the package of meat, she looked like she should have been heading to the party upstairs. But she clicked along on her low heels right up to the prison door, removed the padlock, and shouldered the heavy door open. The room beyond was pitch black, but the sliver of light that cut in through the open door glinted against something inside the room. A large metallic object with bars.
A cage.
Within that cage, something whimpered.
Like a hurricane, Gabby stormed out of the game room and crossed the hall. She caught the edge of the prison door with her shoe, swept it all the way open, and situated herself in the middle of the threshold, as far from the silver-laced frame as she could get.
The light from the hall cast her shadow into the room, and the middle-aged woman started when she realized she wasn’t alone. She whirled around, clutching the meat package against her chest like a shield.
“Good morning, Mrs. Radigan,” Gabby said.
“Who…Who are you?” The woman—Senator Radigan’s wife—looked Gabby up and down, clocking the catering outfit. “You aren’t supposed to be down here. The staff is restricted to the kitchen, the courtyard, and the wine cellar. If you don’t leave right now, I will call security on you and—”
“Firstly,” Gabby broke in, “I am not your hired help. And secondly, I am not going any-goddamn-where until you explain to me why the hell you have a wolf shifter imprisoned in your basement.”
“Excuse me? This is my house. Who do you think you are?”
“Gabriella Cortez.”
Mrs. Radigan froze.
Gabby leaned forward menacingly. “You recognize my name, don’t you?”
“You’re a shifter. One of those ‘community leaders,’” Mrs. Radigan said. “How did you get in here?”
“How do you think?” Gabby gestured to her clothes. “You really should hire better security.”
Mrs. Radigan tightened her grip on the package of meat, crumpling the paper. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now get out of my house, or I will call the police.”
“Go ahead.” Gabby stepped into the room, undaunted. “I’ll gladly take a rap for breaking and entering in exchange for seeing you and your husband in court, charged with multiple counts of murder in the first degree”—she glanced at the cage, where the wolf was now pacing back and forth, agitated—“along with kidnapping and false imprisonment.”
“I didn’t kidnap anyone!” Mrs. Radigan said, a shrill whine building in her throat.
Kat, who’d been slowly creeping across the hall toward Gabby, noticed that Mrs. Radigan didn’t deny she was involved in the murders, despite homicide being the worst of the accusations laid against her by a considerable margin. She’s definitely complicit in the shifter killings.
Gabby threw her hand up, indicating the wolf. “Then who is that?”
Mrs. Radigan’s lip trembled, like pressure was building up inside her. After a moment of hesitation, she blurted out, “That’s my daughter!”
Gabby reeled back. “What?”
Kat halted just behind Gabby, peering over her shoulder at the brown wolf moving aimlessly about the cage. “That’s Daphne?”
“Yes, that’s Daphne,” Mrs. Radigan spit, a sob caught in her throat. “My only child. And she’s like this because of you…people.”
Her tone left no room for interpretation. She didn’t consider shifters to be people at all.
Except her daughter, of course, Kat thought. The prejudiced always have exceptions to their rules, and it’s always someone close to them.
Gabby’s brows drew together. “I don’t understand. Was your daughter recently taken and forcibly turned into a shifter using the full moon conversion ritual?”
“I don’t know what that is.” Mrs. Radigan hastily wiped the gathering tears from her eyes before they smudged her makeup. “My daughter turned into this because of what that creature did to her the day that it killed poor Malcolm.”
“I thought you and Daphne only sustained minor injuries that day,” Kat said. “How could a simple cut have been enough to turn Daphne into a wolf shifter? Unless her age had some effect.”
“It didn’t.” Gabby crossed her arms. “Even an infant can’t be turned without a significant blood transfusion from a shifter with a compatible blood type. And that transfusion must take place on the night of the full moon for the shifter genes to take effect, or the transformation will fail and the human will die from a botched transformation process. There’s only one exception to this rule.”
“And that is…?” Kat asked.
“A person of mixed blood, where less than half is of shifter ancestry, will often have a latent shifting ability that never naturally manifests,” Gabby explained. “In such cases, the only way to trigger the ability is to expose that person to the blood of a shifter with a compatible blood type. But sometimes, the ability isn’t fully triggered immediately after that exposure. It gets stuck somewhere in between active and latent until the person experiences some sort of trauma that finally pushes it over the edge.”
Kat’s gaze darted back and forth between Mrs. Radigan and the wolf in the cage, slack-jawed. “But that would mean…”
Gabby gave Mrs. Radigan a look that could set water ablaze. “Either you or your husband has shifter blood in your recent ancestry. Not enough to result in an active shifting ability, but enough to pass the latent potential onto your children.
“My guess is that the culprit is you, because this whole scheme reeks of guilt. You feel responsible for your daughter becoming a shifter, but you don’t want to admit you’re at fault, so you’re trying to pass the blame on to the relatives of the man who activated your daughter’s latent shifter genes. All this death, just to make yourself feel better.”
“No!” Mrs. Radigan cried, the sound echoing down the hall. “That’s not it at all. I’m trying to fix her.”
“Fix her?” Gabby snarled. “There’s nothing wrong with her. At least there wasn’t until her own mother locked her in a cage in the basement.”
Mrs. Radigan dug her manicured nails into the meat package, tearing the paper. “How can you say there’s nothing wrong with her? She’s stuck like…like that!”
“That’s not a problem.” Gabby raked her fingers through her hair, frustrated. “That’s perfectly normal. The first time a shifter child changes into their animal form, they usually get stuck that way for a few days to a few weeks, until they acclimate to the new shape. Eventually, they change back into their human form on their own. And then, through practice, they gradually reduce the time it takes them to shift between forms, until, in adulthood, they can do it in a matter of minutes.”
Mrs. Radigan stared like a deer in the headlights. “But Daphne’s been
like this for a month now.”
“Because her latent genes didn’t activate until adulthood. Those who shift late have more difficulty gaining control, but they can and do, given enough time.” Gabby sighed. “If you had just informed any community leader of Daphne’s predicament, we could’ve helped her through the transition, and she’d probably be back in human form by now. But, in your infinite wisdom, instead of actually doing something to help your daughter, you locked her away and instigated a vengeful murder plot.”
“I didn’t do it for revenge,” Mrs. Radigan insisted. “I did it to make her human again.”
Gabby frowned. “What are you talking about? You can’t change a shifter back into a human. The conversion is one way. Once the shifting ability activates, that’s it. The person has it for life.”
The meat package slipped out of Mrs. Radigan’s hands and landed with a crinkle of paper on the floor. The hungry wolf in the cage tried to get at the meat, but her paws were too large to fit through the gaps in the bars. Her claws scrabbled uselessly, barely scraping the floor, and she let out a shrill whine, desperate to reach the food.
Kat didn’t know how much food an adult wolf needed, but it was almost certainly more than that little package of meat could contain. She’s been slowly starving down here for weeks. That poor young woman. Tortured by her own mother.
White as a sheet, Mrs. Radigan babbled, “No, that can’t be…I was told…All they had to…If the bloodline died…The magic would…”
Gabby growled loudly, startling the woman. “What the hell are you on about? Who told you what? Explain.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything—”
“You will tell me everything.” Gabby’s visage flashed between human and jaguar. “Or I will drag you before the families of the shifters you had murdered and leave your fate up to their mercy.”
Mrs. Radigan tried to back away, but with the cage on one side and Gabby on the other, there was nowhere for her to go. “Okay, okay. Just please, don’t hurt me or Daphne.”
“Unlike you, I’m planning to help Daphne.” Gabby’s voice dripped with acid. “Whether or not I hurt you will depend on what you say. Now tell me the whole story. The rogue magician. The demon. The murders. Everything.”
Mrs. Radigan slid down the wall and buried her face in her hands. “Oh god. I didn’t think it would be like this. I was promised…” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Daphne had an accident last month. She received an acceptance letter to her preferred graduate school. In her excitement to tell us about it, she ran down the stairs and…she slipped, fell, and broke her neck.
“That was when it happened. She started seizing, and over the course of the worst half hour of our lives, she slowly and painfully turned into a wolf.” A stray tear slid down her cheek. “Once the transformation finished, Daphne panicked. She destroyed one of the sitting rooms. Broke all the furniture. Tore up the carpet. We had to tranquilize her to stop her rampage. And then we had to get her out of sight before any of the staff saw that she was…”
Mrs. Radigan closed her eyes. “This whole cage in the basement thing, it was supposed to be a short-term measure to make sure Daphne didn’t hurt anyone, or herself, physically or…politically. We couldn’t let it get out publicly that our daughter was a shifter, or it would have ruined Samuel’s career.
“When it became apparent to us that Daphne wasn’t going to be able to return to human form on her own—or so we thought—we searched for a solution to the problem through private channels. And we found someone. One of Samuel’s donors. The man claimed he knew of an organization that had done a great deal of research into many kinds of supernaturals, including shifters, and he said that organization could help us resolve Daphne’s issue.”
She hung her head. “The only problem is that their help demanded an astronomical price. Samuel and I didn’t have enough in our own savings to pay that much, not without selling the house and our vacation property. And if we did that, the press would inevitably take notice and start asking questions. The only other solution was to use Samuel’s campaign funds, but Samuel refused because he was worried his campaign manager would cry foul and expose the misuse of funds.
“So Samuel turned down the offer and went looking for an alternate solution.” Mrs. Radigan eyed the pitiful wolf her daughter had become. “But I couldn’t leave Daphne like this. I contacted the representative of the organization whose number we’d been provided, and I accepted the offer on my own. They sent me a magician who examined Daphne and said that he could turn her back into a human, permanently, but that to do so, all the other living shifters of Gregory Nordstrom’s bloodline had to be…eliminated.”
“That’s absolute bullshit,” Gabby said.
“Maybe not,” Kat murmured.
Gabby wheeled around. “What?”
Kat rolled her shoulders back, suppressing the chill that was trying to skitter up her spine. “This organization that you contacted. Do they have a name?”
Mrs. Radigan licked her lips, smearing her lipstick. “Yes, they do. It’s, um, Advent something or other. A number.”
“Advent 9.” Kat struggled to regulate her breathing, a spike of fear digging into her chest.
“That’s it.” Mrs. Radigan tilted her head to the side. “You know of them?”
“Unfortunately.” Kat’s hands began to tremble. “I know they regularly engage in illegal human experimentation that often results in their subjects’ painful deaths. And judging by their magician’s promise, they probably dabble in experimentation on supernaturals as well.”
Mrs. Radigan’s mouth dropped open. “Oh dear god.”
“What?” Gabby spit at the cowering woman. “You were okay with them murdering innocent shifters to ‘help’ your daughter, but experimenting on humans like lab rats is a step too far?” She growled so loud that the bars of the cage rattled. “Don’t you dare pretend to have any morals. Not after what you’ve done. Not after—”
A violent quake rocked the basement, throwing Kat and Gabby to the floor. The ceiling joists let out a disconcerting groan, and plaster rained down like fine snow.
Somewhere up above, a smoke detector went off, the alarm resounding through the halls.
“What the hell was that?” Gabby shouted, climbing back to her feet.
Kat’s stomach dropped into a pit as the echo of a magic signature wafted over her. A signature that she did not recognize. “That was the rogue magician. He must’ve caught Liam and Yun.”
She fumbled her phone out of her pants pocket. “We have to warn them. A9’s magicians are absurdly powerful. If they underestimate this one, they’re going to end up dead.”
“Going to be hard to warn them when you’re dead yourself,” said a voice like nails on a chalkboard.
Kat whipped around toward the hall—and almost dropped her phone in shock.
Glasya-Labolas, dressed in Linda Cunningham’s skin, stood in the hallway, black eyes creased in amusement, teeth bared in unbridled bloodlust. “I’ve been itching to see you again, pretty girl,” it said, licking its cracked lips. “We didn’t get to finish our fight.”
18
Liam
“Out of the way!” Liam shouted to the terrified caterers as he barreled out of the courtyard and into the hall, dragging Samuel Radigan behind him.
The man had agreed to move fast, but his feet weren’t keeping up with his brain. If Liam didn’t tug his wrist every couple seconds, he’d slow down to gawk at the fiery destruction the rogue magician had inflicted on his home.
Liam found this recurring daze extremely annoying because he had to split his concentration between keeping the senator moving and keeping himself moving, and the latter was no easy task. Liam’s body had been so battered in the fall that it was amazing he was even able to stand upright.
It was his pinky ring with the pain-reducing charm he had to thank for that.
Proble
m was, his injuries were so extensive that the ring was draining energy at an alarming rate.
It had already used up its internal store and moved on to his soul’s. When that well ran dry, the pain would return with a vengeance and knock him right back on his ass. Somehow, he had to take the rogue magician out of commission before that happened.
Hence why he was running for the kitchen at top speed.
“Hunt!” he called out. “We could use some help over here.”
To his dismay, Hunt didn’t emerge from the kitchen.
Static zinged across Liam’s skin, and he glanced over his shoulder. Yun, who’d hung a few steps back to cover their retreat, threw a lightning bolt toward the doorway of the courtyard.
The bolt struck an amorphous black mist—an obfuscation spell the magician was using to hide his appearance—but dispersed around its outer boundary and grounded itself in the floor. The magician had learned from Yun’s previous attacks and adapted his shield spell to compensate for strong electrical charges.
“Shit,” Yun said, hustling to catch up to Liam and Radigan. “This guy’s too good. I’m not going to be much use in this fight.”
“You take my deadweight then.” Liam offered up Radigan’s wrist. “I’ll cover our six.”
He didn’t know how he was going to do that, but he was sure he’d think of something.
Yun grabbed the man’s wrist and took the lead, picking up speed as they neared the entryway to the kitchen. “Don’t get yourself killed now. Kat will have my head.”
“Nah,” Liam said with a humorless chuckle, “she’ll have the magician’s.”
Spinning around, Liam skidded to a halt and faced down the oncoming magician, who was moving soundlessly down the hall like a phantom. A faint red glow emanated from within the encapsulating black mist, an indication that he was about to cast another spell intended to render Liam a bloody corpse on the floor.
Ask and Answer Page 20