by D. Laine
I quickly dashed up the stairs before anyone else saw me, or pinned me as a trespasser.
I had no idea what room belonged to the vessel. Luckily for me, most of the residents had their names marked on their doors in one way or another. Near the end of the empty hallway, I found an expensive looking plaque labeled President. Beneath it was the name Kyle Davenport.
The door was locked, but the single chamber, pop-out device didn’t stand a chance against me and my handy pick. Casting a glance over my shoulder to confirm the hallway was empty, I popped the lock and pushed the door open. I instantly knew I had found the right room.
This vessel had a bad case of self-worship. He was in every one of the pictures that lined his walls, either surrounded by a group of guys, or holding on to a pretty girl. Over half of the photos contained the same girl.
Thea was easy to recognize with her long, dark hair and bright-green eyes. The photos of her showed a linear progression, from wide-eyed freshman to the confident girl I’d volleyed with in the bar two nights ago. Many of the recent photos showed her in Kyle’s embrace. A few captured them kissing.
I swore she had told me he wasn’t her boyfriend.
I’d confirmed that she hadn’t been tagged. There’d been no mark behind her ear when I snuck a peek. Either she’d been lying, or . . .
No. If they were dating, she would definitely have been tagged by now. Unless they were one of those couples that never had sex. But from the evidence I saw in some of the photos, they’d known each other for years, and were very . . . friendly. It didn’t make sense. But their relationship—or lack thereof—wasn’t what I needed to concentrate on right now.
I plucked a photograph that showed a clear image of Kyle from the wall—one that didn’t have Thea in it—and slipped it into my pocket. Then I moved along the wall, taking stock of everything I saw.
Calculus, chemistry, and geology textbooks covered by a mountain of Playboys; clothes strewn across the floor, desk, and chest of drawers; trophies; boxes filled with CDs and more books; unmade bed. His laptop was powered down, so I skipped over that. It wasn’t likely he kept anything related to his secret identity as a vessel on it.
I stopped in front of a large map of Yellowstone National Park pinned to the wall beside the bed. Tacks were placed in a few locations around the park. I tried to make sense of them, but didn’t see a pattern. At a loss, I pulled my phone out to snap a picture of the map.
I’d leave it up to Jake to decide if the map and the pins were pertinent or not.
I found nothing but clothes and shoes in his closet. The space beneath his bed was clear. I turned toward the chest, prepared to rifle through his underwear drawer if I needed to, when I heard heavy footsteps approaching from the hallway.
“. . . for an assignment. I swear, Kyle, I watched him call you . . .”
“Shit.” I bolted for the window, but stopped when I heard a deep voice directly outside the door.
“No one is allowed in my room, Bobby. Do you understand?”
I dropped to the floor and rolled under the bed. With my head pressed to the wall, I lowered my chin to confirm my feet weren’t visible as the door swung open. Weighted silence pinned me to the floor as the vessel stomped across the room.
“How long ago did you say he was here?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes,” Bobby answered.
“Anyone see him leave?”
“No, but we were in the lounge. If he left while—”
“Hey, Kyle?” Another voice drifted in from the hallway, and I rolled my head to watch as another pair of shoes came to a stop by the door. “I thought you were going to The Nest after class.”
“I got an interesting text from Bobby along the way,” Kyle answered stiffly.
I breathed lightly when the three guys fell silent. Kyle’s shoes moved toward the window, where he stopped. His feet turned, and I heard the groan of wood as he propped against the desk across from me.
“Are you still going?” the newcomer asked.
“Yes. I still have to deal with Thea.”
“Mind if I go with you? I think her friend is working tonight, too. Wouldn’t mind trying my luck with her again.”
“Fine,” Kyle snapped. He pushed to a stand with a sigh. “I need to get to the restaurant. Don’t let it happen again, Bobby, or you’re out of here.”
“It won’t,” Bobby gushed. “I’m sorry.”
Kyle muttered some more threats as all three sets of feet disappeared out the door. I waited long after the sound of their footsteps faded before I wiggled out from under the bed and made my escape out the window. One thing repeated in my head as I crossed the sloped roof to the ground below.
Have to deal with Thea.
I didn’t like the tone he had used when he’d said those words. I suspected Kyle was up to no good. That was expected from vessels, of course, but I didn’t like the idea of this innocent girl getting mixed up in it.
The Nest was a restaurant somewhere in town, and I was on my way to find it.
THE MORE I watched this Thea girl in action, the more she intrigued me. She was a pistol. I liked that about her.
Kyle, on the other hand, was a tool. And persistent. And begging for a restraining order.
Twice, he had gone into the restaurant where Thea worked. His attempts to talk to her were promptly shut down. Though I couldn’t hear the brief conversations exchanged between them from my seat in the coffee shop across the street from The Nest, the visible firmness of Thea’s delivery brought a grin to my face.
My satisfaction didn’t last long. Irritation took over when Kyle and his frat buddy entered the coffee shop, ordered a pair of frappuccinos, and headed toward a table in the corner with their drinks. I ducked my head as they passed in an effort to avoid another public standoff. From only a few seats away, their conversation drifted toward me.
“She’ll have no choice but to listen to me tonight,” Kyle declared.
“Why are you still bothering with her?” the other guy questioned. “She broke it off weeks ago. You should—”
“You need to mind your own business, O’Hare,” Kyle snapped.
“Fine. I just—”
“I have unfinished business with Thea. I plan to see it through.”
Business? What kind of business could he have with her? Maybe he had intended to tag her, but she dumped him before he had the chance. Sounded plausible, but again, if they had dated, how had she not been tagged already?
“She’s closing tonight, right?” O’Hare asked.
“Yeah. I’m going to head back to the house for a bit,” Kyle explained. “I’ll be back by ten.”
I glanced at the large clock on the wall. It was nearly six o’clock now. Four hours until the restaurant closed.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out to find a text from Jake.
Got something big. Meet me at the room in 5.
I shot him a quick message back, then slid out of my seat to make a swift exit before Kyle had a chance to spot me. As I pushed through the door, I glanced across the street toward The Nest. Catching sight of Thea through the large windows as she stood at a table taking an order, I knew I would be back tonight.
The vessel was way too obsessed with her. He was up to something, and I suspected she was in danger. It was my duty as an assassin to see to it that she wasn’t hurt in the process.
6
“What did you find?” I breezed through the door to find Jake pinning a photograph to his Crazy Wall. I stepped up beside him to take a look at his newest addition. “Who’s the old guy?”
Jake took a black marker to write a name under the photograph. As he wrote, he started to explain. “Apparently, the target we took down in Yellowstone last week was a geology major at the university. I was wondering why we found him in the park so late, so I did some digging today . . .”
He dropped the black marker, and I peered at the name he’d scribbled. Professor Thompson. Meant nothing to me. Th
en he picked up a red marker and started to write another name under that one, and this name sent a chill up my spine.
Agailiarept.
“Professor Thompson is the head of the Geology Department here at Montana State. He also happens to be the vessel reserved for Lucifer’s right-hand man,” Jake finished with a boastful grin.
The General of Lucifer’s army, to be precise. Perhaps the fifth highest ranked demon known to the agency. And he was here? Jake had found him?
“No fucking way!”
“I’ve already notified the agency,” he told me. “They’ll be sending another team within the week. In the meantime, it’s up to us to figure out what he’s up to.”
“Why . . . what . . .” I stammered. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t find any words to say.
We had been looking for this guy for a long time. Well, him and a few others—predominantly Lucifer’s vessel. Each of them had managed to avoid the agency’s prying eyes for years. Easy to see how now. We’d been looking at prominent political figures, people who held significant power across the world. Never thought to look for vessels masquerading as professors in small college towns.
“Why here?” Jake asked the question for me. “That’s what the agency wants to know.”
“What’s the plan?”
Jake turned to me with a grimace. “They want you to enroll in some classes here. Specifically, they want you in the geology department. Get in with the professor, see if you can uncover anything.”
“Why me? You’re the studious one.”
“I’m good at uncovering hidden files, research, and behind-the-scenes surveillance.” Jake patted me on the back. “You are the self-proclaimed hands-on guy. You’re better at digging shit up out there.” He waved his arm toward the door to signal the world outside the comfort of this room.
He was right. Jake was better at the computer shit. I preferred to get my hands dirty. But there was one problem . . .
“And how do they expect me to enroll two weeks after classes have started? It’s not like high school. I can’t just—”
Jake shoved a laminated card into my chest, interrupting me. I turned it around, examining my agency profile picture Photoshopped onto a University of Montana student identification card. Name: Jon Walters—my go-to fake name.
“Just like that, huh?”
“Here is your class schedule.” Jake placed a piece of paper in my hand. “I got as many freshman classes as I could find, but one of them is junior-level. That’s the easiest I could get you with the professor. The rest are all centered around your major—in geology.”
I barked out a laugh. “I’m a fucking geek? Oh, hell no.”
“It’s the best we’ve got right now, Dylan. We need intel. This will get you close enough to dig it up without raising red flags.”
“The fact that I don’t know shit about geology ought to raise enough red flags.”
“You just need to get through a few classes,” Jake countered. “Just long enough to figure out what his purpose here is—if anything. He just might be keeping a low profile. Who knows?”
“I doubt it,” I grumbled as I reached into my pocket. “It didn’t make any sense to me earlier, but now it does.”
I handed him the photograph I’d swiped from Kyle’s room. “This is that vessel I told you about, the one from the bar. And this”—I pulled up the picture I had taken on my phone—“is a map of Yellowstone hung on his wall. He also had a geology book in his room.”
Jake’s eyebrows lifted. “Three vessels with geology connections at this college?”
“Including one major player.” I pointed to the photograph of the professor—Agailiarept’s vessel.
“That’s definitely not a coincidence,” Jake concluded. He took my phone to his work station, where he printed out a copy of the picture I’d taken. “I’ll need to figure out what these tacks around the park indicate.”
“Could they be planning to . . .” What? Blow up the park? Not likely. These vessels had been capitalizing on destruction of the “natural” sense—with help from their demon parasites. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods.
What could they possibly want with Yellowstone?
“I don’t know what they’re planning,” Jake sighed, “but that’s what we’ve got to figure out.”
We spent the next several hours staring at the Crazy Wall, pulling up as much information on Professor Thompson as we could, and mulling over possible connections between him and the park. We didn’t find much.
Fifteen minutes shy of ten o’clock, I told Jake I needed to go for a walk.
“Who is she?” he asked as I headed for the door. When I stopped, he glanced up from his computer. “Not a tag this time, I hope.”
A reluctant grin spread across my lips. “In my defense, I was drunk as shit. I blame you for letting me attempt to pick anyone up that night.”
“In my defense, you wouldn’t have listened to me,” Jake shot back. “You better make sure it’s not a tag this time. You tend to get tunnel vision when . . .” His hand flicked toward my crotch. “You start thinking with that.”
“Hey, Big Jon has made some great decisions for both of us,” I defended. “Remember that chick in Little Rock? You were up all night with—”
“That was after we’d eliminated a target, Dylan.” He sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “Unlike you, I know the difference between work and playtime.”
“I am working,” I fired at him. “That frat-boy vessel is trying to tag this girl. I’m doing my duty as an assassin to—”
“They’re tagging dozens of humans a day, Dylan. One more won’t make a difference once they’re all activated.” He paused to give me a calculating look. “Would you bother if she wasn’t hot?”
“What makes you think she’s hot?” I returned Jake’s questioning gaze with a smug smirk. I could lie, and tell Jake Thea was a dog. But I couldn’t force the words out of my mouth. Didn’t seem right to lie about something like that.
Jake waved me off with an exhausted sigh. “Just go. Save the day. Whatever. But please, come back in one piece this time.”
I tugged the sleeves of my shirt down over the faint scars that still marked my forearm before I left. Another few days, and no one would be able to tell I’d been a zombie’s chew toy. If I did my job tonight, no one would know that Thea was intended to become one of them.
I walked to the restaurant and got there exactly at ten o’clock. As I drew closer, the knot in my stomach tightened and twisted.
The lights were out. It was completely dark, inside and out. I had assumed there would be a little delay—extra time to kick lingering patrons out, wipe the tables, sweep the floors . . . shit like that. No vehicles lined the street in front of the restaurant, and no one appeared to be inside.
It seemed they had closed up early. That wasn’t good, because I had no idea where Thea was now. I saw no sign of Kyle, either, which didn’t surprise me. I knew I’d find him when I found Thea.
I hurried to the door and gave the handle a tug just in case, but it was locked. To my right was a narrow alley—just wide enough to fit a car. I jogged down the alley to find a hidden parking lot behind the building. Two cars were parked there, side by side, under a flickering street light.
I curled my fingers around the butt of my Glock as I approached the vehicles cautiously. I walked around the rear of the silver Range Rover, sneaking a quick peek into the back seat to confirm it was empty, before I moved in on the blue Metro.
I had my gun out and raised as I sprung around the rear bumper, but it, too, was empty. The door was locked, hood cold. A quick sweep of the parking lot confirmed that it was otherwise deserted.
I turned to survey the rear of the restaurant for anything I may have missed. On the far side of the brick wall, nearly hidden by shadows, a bright-red door led into the building. My eyes narrowed on the metallic cylinder propped between the door and the doorjamb.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter
ed as I darted toward the entrance.
Once inside, I shut the door behind me. Confident that no tags or vessels could creep up on my six, I focused my attention toward the front of the restaurant.
I headed toward a dim flashing light in the distance, and emerged into the large kitchen, where half a dozen appliances cast a soft blend of light in blues and greens. Just enough to see where I was putting my feet. I was halfway through the kitchen when a muffled scream from beyond the double-swinging doors in front of me forced me to up my pace.
I pushed through the doors, then ducked to the floor behind the raised counter that separated me from the dining area. As I crawled around the counter, the sounds of a struggle pulled my gaze in the right direction. Aided by the street lights outside, I spotted Thea and the vessel.
Even with his back to me, I knew it was Kyle that had Thea pinned against a table. Her back twisted at a sharp angle as he pushed his weight down on top of her. Her pleas fell on deaf ears as the vessel covered her mouth with his own—effectively silencing her while . . .
Shit. He was going to tag her.
I pushed to a stand and stalked across the dining room, pausing only long enough to snatch a wooden chair along the way. The sound of the legs scraping across the floor pulled the vessel to a sudden stand. I darted a look toward Thea as she scrambled out of the way. Then I smashed the chair across his head.
The impact would have immediately knocked an unmarked human out cold. The vessel stumbled slightly as he turned to face me. He smirked when he saw who his attacker was, but it didn’t look all that menacing with his eyes rolling into the back of his head. One of his legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees.
I held back on striking him again . . . only because I wanted to see if one hit would do it. His head shook back and forth as he grappled with consciousness.
I jabbed a finger at Thea, where she cowered in the booth behind the vessel. “You okay?”
Her eyes were wide and terrified when she nodded. I rolled my head, motioning for her to climb out of the booth. She quickly scooted to the edge of the seat, then stopped when Kyle slowly pushed to his feet between us.