My hand shook as I reached for another sip of bourbon. Teag managed a worried smile and removed the cap and wallet from his pockets. “What about these?”
I eyed the items, but didn’t reach for them, afraid of what I might see. “Derek asked if I’d try to read something that belonged to Jesse. It wouldn’t be anything Jesse had with him when he disappeared, of course, but he hoped maybe we’d get a clue from… something.”
“You don’t have to do this tonight, Cassidy.” Teag’s worried tone gave me an idea of just how much the truck’s vibes had affected me.
“Derek’s in trouble. Jesse’s probably dead. And whoever’s out there is still taking shifters.” I shook my head. “Let me get a grip, and then I’ll touch them.”
“Why don’t we go to your house, like you suggested, and do it there?” Teag coaxed. “You’ll feel better with Baxter nearby. I’ll fix us a snack, and you can read Jesse’s items somewhere comfortable. Then we can watch a movie while the recognition software runs, and kick back a little.”
I nodded, thinking that sounded like a great idea. “You can drive,” I added since I intended to finish the bourbon. “And then I’ll call Sorren later on, see what he’s come up with.”
We left my RAV4 at the shop and drove to my place in Teag’s old Volvo. Baxter yapped up a storm when he heard us coming, and I immediately felt better when I scooped him into my arms and snuggled him close as he stepped into the house.
“Let me get the laptop set up, and then I’ll pillage your kitchen for snacks,” Teag said with a grin. “Go pick a movie.”
“Let me read Jesse’s things before that,” I said, sitting at the kitchen table with Baxter in my lap. “Just in case I pick up on something important.”
I felt steadier now than at the shop, whether that was due to catching my breath or the bourbon, I couldn’t say. Teag grabbed a pitcher of sweet tea from the fridge and poured us both tall glasses, coming over to sit next to me. He slid the wallet and cap in easy reach.
“Hat first.” My fingers settled on the worn fabric of the cap’s bill. I saw a sudden image of a man who strongly resembled Derek only a few years older, with a scruff of dark stubble and coal black hair. More pictures flowed from my connection to the hat. Jesse and Derek in the truck, talking. An apartment I guessed to be home for both brothers. The same bar I’d seen in the other visions. A large, shaggy Newfoundland dog with long, sable hair save for a blaze of white on its forehead. And then another image, one I’d feared—Gevers, relaxing at the bar, chatting it up with Jesse.
I came back to myself as I sucked in a deep breath and swayed in my chair. Teag put out a hand to steady me, and Baxter slipped a small, cold nose against my hand. “He knew Gevers—met him in that bar.”
Before Teag could stop me, I reached for Jesse’s wallet and closed my hand around the worn leather. A rush of emotions surged over me, feelings rather than sounds or images. I don’t control what my gift pulls from an object, just like I can’t turn down the volume or change the channel if what I read from a piece is too intense. Anger swept over me, strong enough it took my breath away. Fierce protectiveness, coupled with worry bordering on mania and beneath it, dark ripples of gut-deep fear.
I surfaced like a drowning woman coming up for air. “Jesse was afraid,” I said, my voice trembling. “He wasn’t used to being afraid of anything, but he was terrified.” I tried to make sense of the strong impressions. “Not for himself; for Derek. Jesse worried himself sick about Derek, and not being in control made him really angry.”
“Maybe Jesse knew something about the disappearances, and he was afraid something would happen to Derek,” Teag speculated. “Jesse might have started putting the pieces together, but maybe Gevers nabbed him before he could warn Derek.”
I nodded. “That’s what I think, too.” I met Teag’s gaze. “We’ve got to help Derek. Even if it’s too late for Jesse, we’ve got to stop the killing.”
Just then, my phone vibrated in my pocket. “It’s Sorren,” I mouthed to Teag, and when I spoke, I hoped my voice held steady.
“Derek’s missing,” I said before Sorren could get out a full sentence. “And we’ve got new information.” I listened for a minute, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll be waiting for you.” I looked to Teag. “Sorren’s coming over—and he’s bringing Archibald Donnelly with him.”
“What about Derek?”
“Sorren said he’d call Marshall. Even if Derek wasn’t his favorite, I hope he’d care that another of their pack went missing.”
Teag glanced at the progress of the tracking program on his laptop. “Still got a few more hours to run, but it’s racking up matches. If this works, we might be able to narrow down the search.”
Any relaxing effects from the bourbon faded as I paced, waiting for Sorren and Donnelly. Baxter started to bark as soon as the two men came to the door, and then he went silent, looking goofy and bemused when Sorren entered.
“You need to teach me how you do that,” I said.
“I can’t teach you to glamor him,” Sorren replied with a chuckle. “You wouldn’t like the package deal.” I knew what he meant. Glamoring was a vampire talent, but there were times it would really come in handy.
“Hello, Archibald.”
Donnelly gave me a wink in reply and waved at Teag. “Good to see you both.” Archibald Donnelly looked to be in his late sixties, though I suspected he was much older, perhaps by hundreds of years. Shaggy white eyebrows and a fondness for safari jackets always made me think of the man as a Victorian colonel, and perhaps he had been, but his power as a necromancer made him a powerful friend and a formidable enemy.
“Tell me about Derek.” Sorren and Donnelly settled on the couch and as usual, Baxter curled up at Sorren’s feet.
I caught them up on the information we gathered from tracking down Caleb and Jim and what I gleaned from the objects I read, then let Teag fill in what we learned from his computer hacking. Finally, I shared Alicia’s call about the ghosts’ warning messages.
“I’m impressed,” Sorren said, leaning back. “And what you’ve discovered dovetails with what Archibald and I turned up.”
“This all happened once before, a long time ago,” Donnelly said, folding his hands across his belly. “Not long after your Civil War. Nasty business when a big game hunter found himself a new taxidermist—who happened to be a necromancer.”
Teag and I exchanged glances, and I knew we both remembered Alistair’s comment about the stolen museum exhibits.
“I suspect it was no accident that they got together,” Donnelly went on. “The hunter—Henry Sheldon—rivaled Teddy Roosevelt for his love of the chase, and he excelled at his sport. The perfect dupe for a necromancer like Ezekiel Green.”
“Dupe?” I leaned forward, equally intrigued and unsettled.
“Green’s use of magic fell outside accepted ethics,” Donnely said, distaste curling his lip. “He managed to keep his dealings just ambiguous enough to evade the Alliance’s interest, but those of us with magic kept an eye on him, looking for an excuse. You’d probably call Green a sociopath now. We just called him a sick son of a bitch.”
Donnelly shook his head. “When we finally got to the bottom of it, we caught Sheldon hunting shifters, which Green was only too happy to… preserve.”
My gut twisted. “I thought shifters reverted to human form after death.”
Sorren met my gaze. “They do—unless something interferes.”
“So Green used magic to keep the shifters in animal form and then… preserved them?” Teag sounded like me might throw up.
“Please tell me he let them die,” I murmured.
Donnelly’s eyes were haunted. “I wish I could. He used the energy from their trapped souls to replenish his magic, like infernal batteries.”
I swallowed hard to keep from losing my dinner. “Damn. And you think someone’s copying what happened back then—”
Donnelly shook his head. “Not copying. Repeating. We caught Sheldon an
d punished him, but Green got away. A necromancer of his power could easily be alive a century later.”
“Then where has he been all that time?” Teag asked.
Sorren shrugged. “Not in Charleston or nearby any of my other stores, that much I know for certain. I imagine he went elsewhere and laid low for a while. Why he decided to come back here, resurface now, I can’t imagine—but we’re going to put a stop to it, once and for all.”
A ping from Teag’s computer interrupted the discussion. Teag jumped up and ran to the laptop as a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile flashed across his features. “Got you, you bastard,” he murmured.
Sorren, Donnelly and I came to look over his shoulder. “For the last eight months, Gevers has been getting gas at a station on the outskirts of Walterboro,” he said, naming a small town in a rural area not far from Charleston. “He makes other routine purchases in the area—groceries, convenience store, and a hardware store.”
“So you think Gevers’s boss is in the area?” Sorren asked.
Teag’s grin broadened. “I’ve got a theory on that, too. I checked Gevers’s car registration. He’s got a truck with one of those fancy emergency signal systems—and those systems use GPS. Let’s hack in and get a look at Gevers’s driving habits.”
Teag cracked the system in less time than it took me to go out to the kitchen and set out a tray of cheese, meat, and crackers. “Interesting. He drives to and from a farm just outside Walterboro. Give me a second, and we’ll find out who owns the place.”
“That’s impressive magic you’ve got, young man,” Donnelly said.
“Only part of it’s magic,” Teag confessed as he typed. “I jacked the rest from the NSA. Your tax dollars at work,” he added with a smirk.
Before long, Teag looked up, triumphant. “The farm belongs to Jackson Emory. He’s a local doctor, and—get this—he’s been featured in the hometown newspaper for his worldwide hunting trips. Says he’s hunted on all seven continents and according to the article, he’s got a huge collection of mounted trophies, some of which he lends out to museums.”
“Hells bells,” Donnelly murmured. “I think we’ve got our hunter.”
“What about Ezekiel Green?” Sorren asked.
Donnelly frowned. “I imagine he wants to stay close to the trophies if he’s using them to store power. He’ll be nearby.”
I kept staring at the screen as they talked. “What about Derek and the others?”
“We’ll find them,” Sorren assured.
Teag looked up at me. “What are you thinking, Cassidy?”
“Can you get a satellite image of Emory’s farm? He’s not likely to keep his kidnapping victims in the house. Is there a barn or an outbuilding on the property big enough to stash a few people—maybe even house Green’s taxidermy workshop?”
“Let’s see.” In a few minutes, Teag called up photos that gave us a good idea of the lay of the land on Emory’s property.
“He’s got a lot of land out in the middle of nowhere,” Sorren mused. “No nearby neighbors.”
“And I was right—there’s a building that’s a good distance from the house big enough to hide a multitude of sins,” I said, and moved closer for a better look. “Can you zoom in?”
Teag obliged, and I pointed to the screen. “What’s that?”
Teag played with the image until we got a ground level close up. He let out a low whistle as the picture came into focus. “It’s a fence.”
“Not any fence,” Donnelly observed. “That’s heavy-duty chain link with razor wire.”
“Like a game preserve—or a prison,” I said, going cold with horror.
Teag looked stricken. “You think Emory is hunting them.”
“Hunting them for sport, and when he gets the kill, Green preserves the trophy.” Sorren’s voice held a deadly chill.
“Then we hit the barn, not the house,” Donnelly said. His eyes had a hard glint to them that reminded me how dangerous he could be. “Teag and Cassidy extract the survivors. Sorren and I will take out Green.”
Hearing Donnelly frame up the strike in military terms made my gut clench, but I forced the fear aside. Derek and the other shifters lost family members and friends to Emory’s sick hobby and Green’s cruel magic. We were their only hope, and that meant getting them out alive or putting down the sons of bitches who killed them.
“What about Marshall and the packs?” Teag asked.
Sorren and Donnelly exchanged a glance. “We bring in an army, Emory will skip out and Green will know we’re coming. He’ll kill the prisoners, and we’ll lose any advantage of surprise.”
“What’s the point of the summit if we don’t use the resources?” I asked. I knew Sorren had valid concerns, but Marshall and the others lost people they cared about. The fight belonged to them too, maybe even more than it did to us. Then again, I’d grown to like Derek as a friend. This was personal now.
Sorren thought for a moment. “I think I know how to do this.” He pulled out his phone.
“Nico. It’s Sorren. We’ve got a bead on who’s taking your people.” He waited out a loud torrent of profanity. “I need backup. We need to lock down a perimeter around a hundred-and-fifty-acre farm.” I heard more swearing, and sharp questions.
“No, you’re not going in hot,” Sorren said, and his voice dropped into a tone that demanded obedience. “There’s a necromancer involved in this, and that means you leave the magic to us. We’ll take out the ones responsible and get your people out. But we do it my way, or I cut you out of the action.”
Nico’s tone would send a sane man running. Not much frightens a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire. Sorren waited him out. “Yes or no, Nico. We don’t have time to waste. Are you in or out?”
From the cold smile that touched Sorren’s lips, I gathered Nico agreed to terms. “Tomorrow night. I’ll call an hour before the strike with coordinates, so your people can get into position.” I couldn’t hear Nico’s protest, but Sorran gave an amused snort. “No, I’m not tipping my hand a day early. I trust you. I just don’t trust anyone that much. Assemble your people by nine tomorrow night outside Cottageville and wait for my call.”
He paused. “And Nico? Double-cross me or screw this up, and the Alliance will make sure no packs come within a hundred miles of Charleston for a century.” Calls to Patty and Sarah followed the same pattern, with varying degrees of profanity as the pack leaders grappled with not being in complete control of the operation.
“What about Marshall?” I asked as Sorren eyed his phone for the last call.
“He wants in; he’s in.” Sorren dialed Derek’s pack master and waited for an answer, setting the phone on speaker. “Derek’s missing. We know where he is and who took him. Your people up for blood?”
Marshall’s swift, vehement answer left no room for doubt.
“Here’s how I’m playing it,” Sorren explained. “The other packs will cordon off the area, hold the perimeter, so no one gets in or out. We’ll be going up against an assassin and a necromancer, and at least one or more lobos the shooter uses to acquire his targets.”
“I’m listening.” Marshall’s clipped, tight voice held lethal promise.
“I need four hand-picked members of your pack, people you’d trust with your life because I’m trusting them with Teag and Cassidy.” Sorren sounded like a general. “Two will go with them, and two come with me. The rest of your pack will hold the inner perimeter. That is if you want to be on the front line.”
“Hell, yes.”
“I’m trusting you,” Sorren warned. “Letting your pack in closer than the others. Don’t share what I tell you, and don’t get creative.” He repeated his instructions about time, place, and sending coordinates.
“Bring them back, Sorren. And stop the bastards who took them.” Anger and grief roughened Marshall’s voice.
“That’s the plan.” Sorren ended the call, and lowered his phone, then turned back to us. “Cassidy. You and Teag go into the barn and free the
prisoners. Assuming they’re still alive. Marshall’s people will back you up, in case Gevers isn’t the only traitor to his kind.”
The thought of shifter guards had crossed my mind. Even with our magic, Teag and I would have a real challenge trying to get wounded prisoners out and fight off opponents that were faster and stronger. “What about Emory and Green?”
“Don’t worry about Green.” Donnelly’s tone sent a chill down my spine. “I’ll bring Rowan with me. She’ll handle the regular magic, and I’ll shut down Green’s necromancy.” His lips curved in a dangerous smile. “This fight is long overdue.” Donnelly looked like he relished the opportunity and I knew that Rowan, a powerful witch who sometimes helped us on cases, would enjoy the fight.
“That leaves Emory for me—and Marshall’s people,” Sorren said. “I’ve got no doubt Marshall will come himself. I’m counting on it. Emory is about to find out what it is to be hunted.”
Nine o’clock the next night found us on the other side of the chain link fence that marked Emory’s private hunting grounds. Teag I had spent the day pouring over as many satellite images as we could acquire. I’d realized that if you only knew where a crime would occur, mighty few places were exempt from surveillance. The trick, of course, came in knowing when and where to look.
Our recon equipped us with a good idea of the terrain. Most of the area was wooded, with some rocky outcroppings and a few rough trails. Thick forest and underbrush made for a challenging hunt. Does Emory hunt them as people, or force them to shift? I wondered, both options equally terrifying.
We came armed for a fight to the death. I had a long knife on a belt scabbard and a small silver dagger, as well as my athame, Bo’s collar, and Alard’s walking stick. A necklace of protective agate circled my throat. Teag carried a knife as well as his martial arts stave and an array of silver-tipped throwing knives. An Agimat charm hung next to a Hamsa on a chain around his neck, both protective symbols. Carefully knotted lengths of cord hung from Teag’s belt, and I knew he used his Weaver magic to store power and spells in the knots for future use. Beneath our jackets, we both wore Kevlar vests, one of Sorren’s non-negotiable requirements. I knew what shifter teeth and claws could do, so I didn’t argue, even though the vest felt stiff when I moved and held enough of my body heat to make me sweat on a cool autumn night.
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