It was over.
“Sixteen people,” Rogan’s right-hand man in charge of the warehouse defense crew reported.
His name was Michael Rivera and he had the athletic build of an MMA lightweight fighter—he could pass for a normal man until he flexed and then you realized that he could break your bones with his bare hands. Rivera was in his mid-thirties, Latino, with medium brown skin, dark hair, and an absurdly jovial, kind smile. When he grinned, his whole face lit up. Since he was smiling at eleven corpses neatly laid out in a row on our street, the smile was alarming.
Rogan watched with a dispassionate face. He’d promised me that if anyone disturbed my rest, they would sleep forever. He’d kept it. A long gash snaked its way across his chest, currently covered by a bandage. The wound had looked shallow, but there was no telling what sort of bacteria and poison rode on that creature’s claws. I’d gotten away with a gash on my thigh and some scrapes on my lower back. The medic that had cleaned and treated our wounds hovered protectively near Rogan, ready to spring into action but trying to stay out of his direct line of sight.
My sisters and cousins stood just outside, huddled together. Arabella covered her mouth with her hand. Catalina’s eyes were huge. She looked completely freaked out. Bernard was solemn enough for a funeral. Leon, for some bizarre reason, seemed excited, like he’d just ridden a roller coaster. My mother leaned in the doorway. Grandma Frida had ducked into the motor pool for something and was taking her time coming back.
Cornelius knelt by the corpses of the beasts, lost in thought. Matilda sat on the side, on some pallets, with Bunny. When I objected to her presence in view of the dead bodies, Cornelius patiently told me that they were dead and couldn’t hurt her and that this was her heritage and she needed to know. She didn’t seem disturbed by it, which in itself was enough to unsettle anyone with a conscience.
“Eleven dead here,” Rivera said. “Two burned up in the ATV Mrs. Afram shot with her tank. We’re gathering the body parts. Two we can’t recover until equipment gets here because Major dropped a truck engine on them and we can’t move it. Then we have seven MCMs.”
“Seven what?” I asked.
“Magically Created Monsters,” my mother said. “It covers all nonhuman combatants of unknown origin.”
“These are not Earth animals,” Cornelius said. “This is something pulled from the astral realm by a summoner.”
Great. Just great.
“Of these eleven, three magic users,” Rivera continued. “The summoner, the fulgurkinetic, and the aerokinetic.”
“Elementalist,” Rogan corrected. “An aerokinetic would’ve made the tornado, but couldn’t twist fire into one.”
Elementalists were rare. They controlled more than one element, usually air in conjunction with water or fire. They almost never reached the rank of Prime, but even at Average level, they were dangerous as hell.
It finally sank in. Someone really had tried to kill my family. They had come in with professional soldiers, military equipment, and heavy-hitter mages. Nausea swelled in me. My stomach tried to clench and empty itself. Now was so not the time.
An armored car rounded the corner behind us. Two of Rogan’s people got out and dragged a man into view, half carrying, half walking him.
“And number sixteen,” Rivera said, his voice precise. “Who tried to flee in the last ATV. We got ourselves a coward. We love cowards.”
“Why?” Leon asked.
“They talk,” Rogan said. His voice sent icy shivers down my spine.
They dropped the man in a heap on the ground. Dark-skinned, bleeding, he was somewhere between thirty and fifty. With all the soot covering his face it was hard to tell.
I glanced at Cornelius.
“Matilda,” he said. “Please go inside.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Catalina said. Her voice squeaked. She picked Matilda up and took off inside at a near run.
“Leon, Arabella, inside,” my mother said.
“But . . .” Leon began.
“Now.”
They went into the warehouse.
The man stared at me, his face twisted with fear.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He pressed his lips together.
“I can compel you to respond,” I said. “I really don’t want to. Please just answer my questions.”
Sweat broke out on his forehead and ran down, leaving a clean track in the soot. I pushed with my magic. Strong will. He looked tough, like he had been through more than one interrogation before and it had just made him harder. He wasn’t posturing and he wasn’t making any promises. He just stayed silent. This one would need a careful interrogation. Antonio had needed a punch; this man required a scalpel.
Rivera glanced at Rogan. Rogan shook his head.
“Chalk?” I asked.
Rogan reached into his pocket and pulled some out.
“Why didn’t you draw any circles when the truck was coming?” I asked.
“Because they would’ve veered off course,” Rogan said. “They had a plan. I wanted them to stick to it.”
Because nobody would expect one man to stop a tanker truck. A Prime in a circle was another matter. I crouched and drew an amplification circle on the ground: small ring around my feet, larger one around that, and three sets of runes in between. Rogan watched with a pained expression. Primes practiced circlework since birth. My circles made his brain hurt.
I straightened and held the chalk out to him. “Thank you.”
I pulled the magic to myself and shot it into the circle. It reverberated back into me as if I had bounced on a magic trampoline. I kept bouncing. One, two, three, each jump stronger than the last. Four. Should be enough.
My magic snapped out and clamped the man in its grip. My voice gained inhuman strength. “Tell me your name.”
Rivera’s eyes went wide. All around us Rogan’s people took a few steps back.
The man froze, gripped tight by my magic.
“Rendani Mulaudzi.”
“What is your profession, Mr. Mulaudzi?”
“Mercenary.”
His breath was coming in shallow puffs. I’d been practicing on my family. My sisters were only too willing to cooperate. It was a game. They tried to keep from telling me the truth and I learned how to do it carefully. This man’s will was strong, but Arabella’s was stronger. Sometimes she passed out rather than break, and before she did, her heart rate sped up and she started to hyperventilate. I’d have to watch him.
“What is the name of the company that hired you for this raid?”
“Scorpion Protection Services.”
“How long have you worked for Scorpion?”
“Six years.”
“What were you before?”
“Recces.”
“South African Special Forces,” Rogan said.
No wonder he was strong-willed. He wasn’t that young either, which meant he must’ve done at least a few years in the military and then survived six years as a mercenary.
“Where is Scorpion headquartered?”
“In Johannesburg.”
South Africa. He was a long way from home.
“How big is Scorpion?”
“It has four tactical teams, sixteen to twenty members each.”
“How many teams are involved in this mission?”
“One.”
“Were you hired specifically for this mission?”
“Yes.”
“Who hired you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who would know?”
“My team leader.”
“What is his name?”
“Christopher van Sittert.”
“Do you see him among the dead?”
“Yes.”
Of course. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? “Point to him, Mr. Mulaudzi.”
He pointed to one of the corpses.
“What was the objective of this mission?”
“To eliminate the fo
llowing targets: Nevada Baylor, Cornelius Harrison, Penelope Baylor, Frida Afram, and Bernard Baylor within twenty-four hours of arrival.”
I’d never been number one on anyone’s hit list before. “What about the minors present in the house?”
“Their lives were left to our discretion. We weren’t paid to kill them.”
“Were you planning on killing the children?”
“I don’t know.”
The question had been too general. “Did you personally plan to kill the children?”
“Nevada,” Rogan said softly.
I raised my hand, warning him off. This was important to me.
“Not unless they presented a threat.”
“Do you bear any personal animosity to the targets you listed?”
“No.”
I glanced at Rogan. “Before we go any further, he is a mercenary; he was hired to do a job and he failed. He is now unarmed and a prisoner.”
Rogan’s eyes were dark. “You don’t want me to kill him.”
“No. I would like you to send him back to Scorpion wrapped up like a Christmas present. If their whole team disappears, they will have to send someone to investigate. I don’t want them coming back. This way, they don’t have to wonder. He’ll tell them that they came here armed and ready to kill, and we let only one of them live. They’re mercenaries. I want them to understand that it isn’t cost effective to continue this fight.”
“Be careful,” Rogan said. “You’re thinking like a Prime.”
I waited.
“Very well,” he said. “We’ll ship him back to his friends.”
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Ask him when he was hired.”
“When were you hired?”
“December 14th.”
Cornelius hired me on December 14th. That seemed really fast.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Rivera murmured. “Johannesburg to Houston is at least a twenty-hour flight.”
“Where were you when you received the orders for this mission?” I asked.
“Monterrey, Mexico.”
“What were you doing there?” The pauses between his replies were getting longer and longer. I would have to let him go soon.
“We had an alternative mission in Montemorelos. We were rerouted.”
“Montemorelos to Houston is a two-hour trip. They pulled them off a job,” my mother said. “They needed a team from out of town that couldn’t be traced to any existing House. The Scorpion team was likely the closest.”
“Describe your actions since arriving to Houston, Mr. Mulaudzi.”
“We arrived to Houston airport via Aeromexico Flight 2094. We proceeded to the base of operations.”
Rogan raised his hand. “Was the base set up by them or third party?”
I repeated the question.
“The base was prepared by a third party. We were issued weapons and gear and attended the briefing showing recon of the warehouse and the surrounding area. We formed a battle plan. We waited until the optimal time and executed the plan. The attack failed.”
No kidding.
“What is the address of this base?”
He gave the address in Spring, one of the little towns Houston had gobbled up as it grew, about forty minutes north of us. Rivera took off at a run. Three of Rogan’s people peeled off and followed him.
“Anything else?” I asked Rogan.
He shook his head.
I let the mercenary go. He collapsed on the ground and rolled into a ball, covering his face. His body shook and an unsettling low sound came from him. He was sobbing. I had opened his mind with my magic can opener, scooped out the contents, and displayed them for all to see. It was a deep violation of his person.
People were staring at me, their eyes brimming with fear. A couple of them gripped their weapons in alarm. I had horrified the professional soldiers. I looked at my mother. Sadness softened her face, her mouth slack.
It hit me. I was the monster on the street. Without me, they would’ve questioned and even tortured this veteran mercenary. They would’ve done it with the understanding that he would resist and he wouldn’t have faulted them for it, because in their place he would’ve done the same. There was a twisted kind of professional courtesy about it all. But me, I didn’t torture. I broke his will without even breathing hard. Each one of them could see themselves in the mercenary’s place. I could make them tell me all their secrets and that was more frightening than Rogan stopping a massive tanker truck at full speed.
I’d never felt so alone in my whole life.
Rogan stepped between me and them, his eyes full of something. Whatever it was—pride? Admiration? Love?—I held on to it like it was a lifeline. He understood. At some point in his life he had stood just like that, while people stared at him in horror, and he must’ve felt alone, because now he was here, and he was shielding me from their judgment.
“You’re amazing,” Connor Rogan said and smiled.
For some unfathomable reason Bernard had let Leon operate the remote cameras during the attack. They had an almost 180-degree rotation on their mounts and you could point them with precision, which was exactly what Leon had done during the fight. I was now in the motor pool, watching the recorded feed on Grandma Frida’s computer. Rogan and Cornelius both stood next to me, watching over my shoulder.
Leon had decided that the video needed narration and provided running commentary as it was being recorded. Apparently, he found the whole thing incredibly exciting.
The camera panned to capture two ATVs approaching from the north.
“Oh yeah, we got ourselves a badass killer vehicle,” my cousin’s voice came from the speakers. “We’re so cool, we’re so cool, we’re going to roll up and kill everybody. Wait, what? Oh no, is that a tank? It is a tank. It’s headed straight for us. Run, run, run . . . Too late. Hehehe.”
The front ATV exploded, taking a missile from Romeo straight on. The second vehicle swerved and screeched to a stop on a narrow side street next to the automotive shop, out of Romeo’s sight. People in tactical gear jumped out and ran into the night, looking for cover.
Leon zoomed in on the man in his forties on the right, who’d crouched by the ATV. “I’m a veteran badass. I’ve seen bad shit. I’ve done bad shit. I’ve survived five months in a jungle eating pinecones and killing terrorists with a pair of old chopsticks. I’m one bad motherfucker.”
Behind me Rogan laughed.
“I’ve got two days to retirement. After I kill everyone here, I’ll go to my retirement party. They’ll serve shrimp on crackers and give me a gold watch, and then, I’m going to have my midlife crisis and buy a Porsche and . . . Oh shit, my head just exploded.”
Either my mother or someone on Rivera’s team had found the mercenary’s head. Blood and brains splattered on the ATV.
The camera swung wildly to the right to a woman advancing toward the warehouse. She had gone to ground by the oak, hidden by the low stone wall bordering the tree.
“I’m death. I’m a ghost. I’ll find you. You can run, you can hide, you can beg, but none of it will help you. I’ll come for you in the darkness like a lithe panther with velvet paws and steel claws and . . . wait, brains, wait, where are you going? Why are you all leaking out of my head? Don’t leave me!”
I put my hand over my eyes.
“Oh no, look—my feet are twitching. That’s so undignified.”
I would kill Bern for letting him do this. And then I would have a serious talk with Leon.
“Your cousin has an interesting sense of humor,” Cornelius noted.
“I’m Mr. Ripped,” the computer announced in Leon’s voice. I didn’t even want to look anymore. “I live in the gym. My teeth have biceps and my biceps have teeth. I chew up weights and shit out lead bricks.”
Rogan’s face turned speculative.
“Don’t,” I told him.
“In about three years or so, I could use him. He’s demonstrating a very specific moral fle
xibility . . .”
“I’ll shoot you myself,” I told him.
Grandma Frida tore into the motor pool from the street, followed by an Asian woman in her late twenties. The woman wore Rogan’s team’s tactical gear. My grandma wore her “talk to the hand” face. She also carried a can of spray paint in her hand.
“What is it, Hanh?” Rogan asked.
“She marked all of the ATVs with her initials!” Hanh declared.
“Because they’re mine,” Grandma Frida growled.
“She doesn’t get all the ATVs.”
Rogan’s face took on a very patient look.
“Yes, I do. I tagged them, they’re mine.”
“Just because you tagged them doesn’t mean they’re yours. I can walk into this motor pool and start tagging things left and right. That doesn’t make them mine.”
“Aha.” My grandma picked up a huge wrench and casually leaned it on her shoulder. “How are you going to tag things with broken arms?”
“Don’t threaten me.” Hanh turned to Rogan. “She can’t have all of them.”
“Yes, I can,” Grandma Frida put in before Rogan could open his mouth. “The enemy attacked our position; it’s an emergency, and since I’m the acting platoon sergeant for this family, I’m requisitioning my Class VII supplies. They’re on our land.”
“Those three ATVs are on your land. The one down on the access road is on our land,” Hanh said.
“Nguyen, let her have the ATVs,” Rogan said.
Hanh opened her mouth to argue and clamped it shut.
“Ha!” Grandma Frida pointed her wrench at Hanh.
“Grandma . . .” I started. “If that other vehicle is on their land . . .”
Wait a minute.
I pivoted toward Rogan. “What does she mean that ATV is on your land?”
Hanh froze.
Rogan looked like he wanted to strangle somebody.
“Rogan?”
He was thinking of a clever way to phrase his answer.
“Did you buy property adjacent to this warehouse?”
He closed his eyes for a second, then looked at me, and said, “Yes.”
“How much property did you buy?”
“Some.”
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