“If this goes on for more than an hour,” Riga said, “call their pediatrician.”
“His number’s on my speed dial.”
“Really?” Riga asked.
Pen smiled. “I take my babysitting duties seriously.”
“Thanks.” Donovan gripped Pen’s shoulder. “We’ll be back soon.”
They hurried down the stairs.
Grabbing her satchel and the vase of flowers off the foyer table, Riga followed Donovan into the garage.
The door was up, the SUV in the driveway. The air was thick, cool, oppressive, and Riga shivered in her light jacket.
Ash, dressed in black jeans and a windbreaker paced beside the car. “Gear’s inside.” He jerked his thumb toward the SUV.
She handed him the vase, and he stepped into the back seat.
“Maybe Ash should stay here,” Riga said to Donovan in a low voice. “The children—”
“Are protected by a dozen guards and your wards.” Donovan laid his hands on her upper arms. “We’re dealing with at least two people, maybe more. We need his help.”
Donovan was right, but her stomach churned.
They pulled onto the highway. Riga twisted in the seat, reviewing the layout of the facility with Ash.
“There’s nothing illegal about holding an occult ceremony,” the bodyguard said. “What’s your plan? Take pictures?”
“Disrupt it,” Riga said. “And get pictures. But you should know, things may go haywire when a ceremony like that is interrupted.” Whatever Tanhauser was up to, she wanted him away from the senator’s wife. For that matter, she needed to remove him from the senator’s orbit as well. Maybe the senator was in on whatever Tanhauser’s plan was, maybe the senator wasn’t. But she didn’t like Tanhauser’s demon so close to a seat of political power.
Ash checked his watch. “And this is happening at nine thirty?”
“At the solstice, nine thirty-eight.”
“I thought the solstice was all day,” said Ash.
“Astrologically, it begins at nine thirty-eight this morning. That’s the moment of high power. If our bad guys know what they’re doing, that’s when the ceremony will take place.” And with an archdemon inside him, Tanhauser would know.
“Uh huh,” Ash said. “And how many of these occultists are going to be not quite normal?”
“At least one,” Donovan said. “Maybe more. You okay with this?”
Ash’s jaw set. “I’ve done this before.”
Riga felt a rush of warmth. Ash had stepped well outside his comfort zone time and again because of her. “How’s Sal?” she asked suddenly. Ash and Sal, a shaman she knew, had been long-distance dating for nearly two years now.
“Good. She’s good.”
Donovan glanced in the rear-view mirror.
“She’s thinking of moving up to Tahoe,” Ash said.
“She is? That’s wonderful!” She and Sal had had a rocky relationship, but Sal was a good person — a good woman for Ash, and one of the best shamans she knew. Riga found herself looking forward to having the shaman around, even if Sal did specialize in fairies.
Ash’s skin darkened. “I sort of invited her.”
Donovan grinned. “About time.”
They neared the Sunset Towers. Cars lined the side of the highway. Riga’s brow wrinkled. These were beach crowds, but there was no beach nearby. What were all the cars doing here?
Donovan turned the SUV down the driveway to the Towers. Cars parked along its sides, angling onto the dirt.
He cruised through the crowded lot and reversed into a narrow strip of earth beneath a pine.
The seven-story building shaded the packed lot. A TV news van parked just outside the main doors.
She frowned, checked her watch. Twenty minutes to go. “What’s the media doing here?”
“Here for the Alzheimer’s conference?” Donovan asked.
She shook her head. “Must be a slow news day.” If there was going to be an attempt on Hallie Stile’s life here, now it would be public. Was this another publicity stunt, designed to gin up more sympathy for Stile?
Riga opened the door and slid out, adjusting her satchel cross-wise over her shoulders. The bag weighed heavier today packed with magical gear — black salt, holy water, and a handful of quartz and obsidian crystals. She’d also tossed in an extra clip for her Glock. The holster warmed the small of her back, sweat dampening her waistband.
Gazing at the building’s blank windows, she pulled in the energies from the above and below. She sent the forces into her aura, filling its sphere, pushing her awareness towards the facility.
Inside the building, something stirred, a cold excitement.
She cast a cloaking spell over the three of them.
“Ready?” Donovan asked.
“Always,” Ash said.
Riga inclined her head.
Crossing the parking lot, they strode into the facility. No one noticed them as they walked down the first-floor hallway. No one was there to see them.
At the elevator, Riga glanced down a hallway, devoid of its usual stacks of trays, IVs, wandering patients. A policeman stood outside the closed, conference room doors, and spoke to a nurse grasping an IV stand. It seemed the Sunset Towers had swept its first-floor patients out of the way for the event.
Donovan ducked into the stairwell, and Riga hurried after her husband. Ash followed behind, his boots silent on the concrete stairs.
She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes.
At the bottom of the stairwell, Donovan grasped the door handle.
She shook her head, knowing it would be locked. She’d have to step through the in-between and open the door from the other side. “I’ll—”
Donovan turned the knob and stepped into the long, pale-blue corridor.
Hair rose on the back of her neck. Gently, she placed her hand on his arm.
He nodded, raised a brow.
She pointed left, held up six fingers.
The three crept down the basement hallway. Overhead fluorescents flickered, pinging metallically. The men moved like great cats, silent, stealthy.
Riga’s satchel bounced against her hip. She edged around a trio of green garbage bins, smelling of ammonia and rot.
They stopped in front of the sixth door.
Laying her hand on it, Riga extended her senses. The eyes on her auric bubble snapped open, and she visualized fingers growing alongside them. She pushed the magical sphere through the closed door.
The gorge rose in her throat, dark magic choking her. She shook her head. The magic was there, as it had been before. But its traces were fainter. The room was empty.
“There’s no one inside.” The skin between her brows pinched. If Tanhauser and his accomplice were preparing for a ritual, they should be here by now. Had she made a mistake?
Donovan opened the door. He stepped inside, stopped short, swore.
“What?” She tried to edge around him.
He turned, placed his hands on her shoulders. “Get her out of here,” he said to Ash.
She lunged sideways, slipping past her husband. In the boiler room, atop the three, black barrels, sat a bomb on a Gadsden flag. A red-lit timer counted down. Thirteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. Thirty-four. Thirty-three. Thirty-two.
Donovan whipped out his cell phone, dialed.
Ash swore. “I’ll start the evacuation.” He darted from the room.
But there wasn’t enough time to get the bomb squad, not enough time to evacuate the building. And all those residents, moving slowly, some bed-ridden. The Alzheimer’s event would confuse things. And there was limited elevator space to remove the bedridden. No time, no time, no time.
And she’d thought Tanhauser and his demon — or the demon and his Tanhauser — would use magic? She brought her shaking hand to her forehead. Why use magic to kill when technology was so much more effective? How much had the demon taught the man and the man taught the demon?
She stared, horrified, the
answers clattering into place. The senator’s wife would die, presumably killed by one of his enemies — a domestic terror group. The Alzheimer’s conference, the press, would up the body count. Public outrage and sympathy would raise the senator’s stature and edge him closer to the White House… It was a con, all of it. The swastika at the murder scene. Shooting King. The bombing. And so many would die.
She slipped her bag from her shoulder and dropped it to the floor. “We don’t have time to evacuate everyone. If we move the bomb—”
“We don’t know anything about that thing,” Donovan said. “Moving it may set it off.” He ducked his head, turning from her, speaking into his phone. “Yes, this is Donovan Mosse. I’m at the Sunset Towers, and there’s a bomb in the basement… No, this isn’t a joke.”
Her fists clenched. It wouldn’t work. They might be able to get some of the people out, but not all. Seven stories and hundreds of residents and staff and the conference attendees. She walked to the barrels, stared down at the bomb, the twists of wires, the gray bricks of plastic explosive.
In the hallway, an alarm clanged.
The red counter on the bomb ticked down. Eleven minutes, fifty-five seconds. Fifty-four. Fifty-three.
No time.
Reaching for her center, for the in-between, she grasped the magical energies. Desire filled her for the coolness of the lake, rolling steel beneath the morning’s thunderheads. The edges of her self slipped away, grains of sand disintegrating against an implacable wave. The lake.
She grasped the bomb.
The boiler room dissolved into wavering, gray shadows.
Donovan turned, a shimmering silhouette. He reached for her, the edges of his arm sparking, swirling.
She let go of his image, and the tide took her.
Riga plummeted. Moving it may set it off.
Heart thundering, she struck water, submerged in blistering cold. The lake was a million icy knives, flaying her skin. She’d forgotten to take a breath before her leap, and her lungs burned, empty. Moving it may set it off.
Riga forced her fingers to unclench, to release the bomb. She kicked toward the light shimmering above her, waiting for the explosion, to be shattered into pieces, hurled from the lake. Riga broke the top of the water and gasped.
A wave broke over her head. She treaded water in the center of the lake. The shore was a faint, gray-blue line, miles away. No boats in sight.
Shivering, she swam for shore, imagining her home on the far shore. If the bomb exploded, it wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t swim fast enough, put enough distance between herself and the bomb. But she had to move or freeze, and there was another escape route: the in-between.
She took slow breaths, reached for the in-between. The energies leapt to her, the above and below filling her. She let longing fill her – for her house, her children. Riga reached for them, for escape and felt the hook—
The magic shattered. Shards of energy struck her, rocking her head back.
Disoriented, her limbs froze. She was dying, too late, the bomb had gone off.
Riga sank.
A wave dashed over her head.
She inhaled ice water, coughing, thrashing. No, she wasn’t hurt. The waves were undisturbed, it wasn’t the bomb, it was...
Cold dread descended on her, gripped her heart, paralyzing.
She screamed.
Her wards had broken.
The demon was at her home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lines of vibrating black and white. Pine trees built of gray, wavering mist. A ghostly gabled house.
She pushed through the in-between and landed, dripping, on her front doorstep. Chills wracked her bones.
The tall, wooden door hung open.
She strode inside, reaching behind her for her Glock. Which had been in the lake. Would it still fire?
Maybe, maybe not, but it was what she had. She gripped the gun between her hands, tried to still their trembling.
Her wet footprints marked the stone-floored foyer. A small, red light flashed in one corner of the ceiling molding. The silent alarm was on, silence being the key word. The quiet screamed at her, battering her eardrums. Guards should be running. There should be shouts, movement.
Gun raised, she scanned the living room. Empty.
Ducked her head into the kitchen. Empty.
She ran up the stairs. The scents of sulfur, rotting garbage slithered down the white-carpeted steps.
Her breath came in small gasps, her heart trying to simultaneously burst from her chest and implode. Jack, Emma, Pen. Calm. She had to stay calm.
Something thunked upstairs, and she launched herself forward, reaching the landing.
The doors along the hallways stood open. Darkness flowed from the nursery, a strange, glowing shadow.
She ran toward it.
A shot. Shattering glass, burning her back.
Riga leapt, rolled. Crouching, she swiveled on one knee, gun raised.
Morgan Verdun, sleek in black, stood inside a guest-room doorway. A pistol glinted in her hands.
Riga unloaded three shots, the gun bucking.
Morgan cried out, falling back.
Riga leapt to her feet, racing toward the nursery and that eerie darkness. Emma, Jack, Pen. The shadows coiled, reached for her from the open nursery door. She said a quick prayer — didn’t know what she’d said, didn’t think — and plunged into the room. “Pen!”
Dark enfolded her in a velvet, smothering embrace.
She choked. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear anything but the drum of her own heart. Emma and Jack and Pen. She had to get to them. The thing was still here, she told herself, because it hadn’t finished. They were safe. They had to be. She had to have gotten here in time.
“Stop with the internal monologue, babe, and figure your way out of this,” Vinnie’s voice cracked in her left ear.
Had she heard or imagined his voice? Didn’t matter. She dizzied, lungs screaming. The voice was right. Center, she had to find the center. But at her core was her family, and her fear for them blazed, overwhelming her senses.
The darkness lightened.
She sucked in a gasp of air.
The blackness flooded backward, a receding tide.
An invisible weight drove her to the floor, and she dropped to her knees. Black tentacles rippled along the nursery carpet, slithered down the walls in retreat. The shadow vanished into Tanhauser’s chest. A nauseating thickness hung in the air.
Her niece stood in front of the twins, her arms loose at her sides. In the crib, Jack and Emma lay braced on their elbows and wore identical, baffled looks.
The Tanhauser thing’s eyes snapped, focused on Pen. He crossed his arms, his navy business suit creased to razor-sharpness. His brow furrowed.
Chunks of stone littered the carpet. A wing. A talon. An ear.
Brigitte.
Brigitte, gone.
Riga swayed, dizzy with fear and rage, one hand on the doorframe. “Demon,” she said. “I name you—”
Tanhauser waved his hand.
An invisible paw punched her in the chest. Riga flew backward, hitting the hallway wall, opposite. The blow knocked both wind and sense from her. Hot pain spiraled through her center.
Emma wailed, and reality returned.
Her gun, her gun, where was her gun?
And then Verdun was on her, scratching, clawing.
Riga swung her elbow, striking the woman in the front of the neck. Grabbing Verdun’s hair and ear, she swung her sideways and off.
Verdun gagged, eyes bulging, clutching her throat.
Her babies, Pen. Riga bolted from the floor and into the nursery, slowing when she hit that sticky change in air pressure.
Jaw clenched, her niece faced the demon.
Tarlike coils of energy swirled from his hands, reaching for Pen. One got too close and sizzled, its stench filling the room. The coil retracted, a muscle pulsing in the Tanhauser demon’s neck.
Rig
a gasped. Pen’s beating it. She relaxed her gaze. Pen’s aura blazed, blinding, a globe that encompassed her niece and her children.
Riga laughed. It came from nowhere, irrational, hysterical, impossible to stop. “You can’t touch her. You can’t touch her, because she’s not like me.” Brigitte had been right. Pen was better.
A rivulet of sweat trickled down Pen’s smooth temple.
The demon glanced at Riga and raised his hand. Tentacles of that black pitch streamed from his fingers, reached for her.
Riga connected with the energies — above, below, in-between. Euphoria flooded her, and her barriers snapped into place. The tarlike fingers sizzled, snaking back. She didn’t need a circle to trap it in, didn’t need salt or crystals. Riga was the circle, and a joyous fire radiated from beneath her breastbone. She spoke the demon’s name. “I name you, I bind you, I command you to hell.”
The room shook, overhead lamp swaying. Stuffed animals and children’s books tumbled from the shelves, thunked to the carpeted floor.
“I won’t say it twice,” Riga said. “GET OUT.”
The demon fell to his knees, slumped forward. Darkness spiraled, sickening, from the nape of his neck. It formed a shape, scales and teeth and claws. They tore at Tanhauser, and then the thing disappeared.
The air lightened, pressure lifting. The stench of demon and rot vanished.
“Oh, God.” Pen drew a shuddering breath. “I couldn’t get them to the safe room. It happened so fast. And Brigitte—”
“Take them there. Now.” Riga eyed Tanhauser.
“The woman—”
“Isn’t getting up.” Riga had crushed her windpipe. “The safe room. Go!”
Pen scooped the children from their crib and ran from the room.
Riga found her gun on the rug beside a white, wicker end table. She picked it up, trained it on Tanhauser.
Bracing himself with one hand, Tanhauser rose, staggered sideways, sprawled to his side. “Wow.” He shook his head. “That was quite a ride.”
Her nostrils flared, rage and heat flushing through her body. A ride?
“Why?” Her voice cracked. “Why were you here?”
The Hermetic Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Book 7) Page 20