Institutionalized (Demon Squad Book 10)

by Marquitz, Tim

  Kit just shrugged. “Better to be out a few bucks than have a burnt identity.”

  I sighed. None of what Shaw was doing made sense. “And these prisons, I presume they have food stores to keep everyone fed?”

  “The ones we firebombed for Shaw all did. Kitchen, freezers, food warehouses,” Kit answered. “I’m just guessing, but it makes sense that they’d all be the same seeing how they’re designed to stay out of sight indefinitely. Popping in for supplies on the regular would be stupid.”

  “Yeah. The ones we checked out, not that we had much time to explore, looked as if they could sustain themselves for a couple years at a time, at least.” Grace slumped into her chair, clearly starting to realize the same thing I was thinking. The prison idea wasn’t panning out after hearing what Thud had told us.

  “But she took a bunch of food on top of the cash. Shit she wouldn’t need if she was camping out in a fully provisioned hideaway. She also wouldn’t need money to hang out there, though it makes more sense for her to abscond with that.” My brain kept circling around the cash. “So what could she be using it for?”

  “I’ve an idea,” Poe said, coming into the room.

  We all turned his way.

  “I’ve just picked up her mental signature downtown, materializing out of the ether. She appears to be on her own, none of her cohorts with her, and she’s doing nothing to hide her presence.”

  Shit. It was either a trap or she wasn’t as prepared as she hoped. “Get us an address,” I told Poe. “Meet us there, Thud, but leave Styg to keep searching the safe houses.” Regardless Shaw’s motivation for showing up, there was no way I was passing up an opportunity to shut down Maximus’s manhunt and put my foot in her ass at the same time.

  Not spending more than a few seconds to gather what we needed, we were out the door.

  We arrived downtown only to have Poe inform us that Shaw was gone already, once more evading his scans.

  “Damn it.” I glanced about, determining where we’d ended up. We were in the business district of El Paseo. The place couldn’t have been more mundane if there’d been a McDonalds or Starbucks staring us down. We were gonna stand out like Bill Clinton at the Jiffy Lube.

  Old buildings towered all around us, the lower levels filled with shops of every kind. We stood next to a fabric store, fancy sewing machines on display behind plate glass windows, set alongside bolts of cloth in every color imaginable. Next door to that was an old timey pharmacy, more of the signage on the walls in Spanish than English, which was par for the course in this neighborhood.

  An antique shop bookended the pharmacy on the corner, the next street over. A bunch of hoity-toity lamps, and other old shit I didn’t recognize, filled the displays. Folks wandered down the sidewalk, giving us dirty looks as we hunkered in the alleyway, trying our best not to look like deranged criminals on the run. I don’t think we succeeded.

  “She was there,” Poe said through our mental link, an image of him pointing across the street guiding us right where he wanted us to look.

  A small café sat at the end of his ethereal finger. It had a fenced off patio out front, a handful of wrought iron chairs and tables scattered about, colorful umbrellas poking out to deflect the brutal, southwest sun. A number of people lingered about dining, but none of them looked like the kind of folks who would treat with Shaw.

  “What the hell was she doing here?”

  “Maybe she wanted some barbacoa,” Thud offered.

  I turned and glared at him.

  “What? She’s gotta eat, right? Who doesn’t love Mexican food?”

  I had to agree, he had a point. A burrito would have made my day so much better.

  Kit leaned out of the alley and eyeballed the buildings around us. A smile appeared on her face, metal clacking in its wake.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  She gestured toward the antique store with her chin. There, mounted near the three-story roof, was a security camera. It swung back and forth in a slow arc, taking in the entire street below. Before I could ask what Kit had in mind, I felt the subtle waft of her magic. She held a computer tablet in her hand a second after, her fingers flying across the screen like an epileptic on ice skates. I watched, mesmerized by the movement, until she held the tablet up. The screen showed off a mirror-image of the café. Only this time, there was another patron sitting at the far table, nearest the short gate that led out to the street. And while he had a plate of green enchiladas laid out before him, and a Dos Equis sweating beside it—both making me salivate—he was looking everywhere but at his food or beer.

  “Shit, that’s Efren Chavez,” Grace said, peering over our shoulder.

  “You know him?”

  The guy looked like every other local, dressed in worn cowboy boots, faded jeans, and a plain, button up shirt. He wore a blue baseball cap without a logo, the bill casting shadows across his face, but it did nothing to hide his nervousness.

  “I wish I didn’t. He’s part of an organization we’ve been investigating these past few months.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Grace when she didn’t say anything else. “Which means, since the DSI is checking into him, he’s not your average, everyday drug smuggler, serial killer, or puppy kicker, huh?”

  She nodded. “He’s a low-level operative for Fantasma.”

  “Ghost?” I asked, translating the name as the camera panned away. “What are they, a metal band? Shaw looking to book a gig?”

  “More like a group of supernatural terrorists,” Grace answered, “and yeah, maybe exactly that. These guys are pretty small time but they’ve recently upped their game, or at least their goals. We got word that they’ve come into an arsenal and have every intention of using it.”

  “These guys are Nephilim?”

  “A few, and weres and vamps and whatever other supernaturals they could round up,” Kit said. “They aren’t all that particular seeing how their mindset aligns with the Islamic State’s suicide policy. Fantasma recruits fanatics to sacrifice themselves in the name of the cause.”

  “How come I haven’t heard of these guys before?”

  “You’re welcome.” Kit grinned. “We’ve been successful in keeping them out of the news. They pulled off several hits during your little revolution,” she stink-eyed me for a second before going on, “but we’ve kept them locked down since then, until we could make it more permanent. Shaw met with the organization and warned them off doing anything stupid so they’ve sat on their shiny new toys these last few months like good little terrorists. We were supposed to move on them soon and end the threat permanently but, you know…”

  “Speaking of butts,” Grace said, tapping the computer screen.

  Sure enough, the camera swung back around as Shaw strolled up to the restaurant as if she owned it, toting a blue gym bag at odds with her sleek black outfit. The vato looked ready to jump out of his skin when he saw her. He stiffened as she dropped into the chair across from him and dumped the bag near his feet, making no effort to be subtle. She didn’t give a damn if anyone saw her. This wasn’t some TV spy show.

  “This thing have sound?” I asked, and Kit shook her head, and I went back to watching, doing a piss poor job of lip reading. Still, it didn’t take a genius to realize Shaw was making some sort of deal and, seeing who she was meeting, it wasn’t like she was looking for a Tony Montana ski adventure. Something, or someone, was gonna go boom in the near future. But why? “This explains some of the money, at least.”

  Shaw finished up her conversation, which was pretty much one-sided from what I could tell, the guy nodding more than anything, and then she hopped up and left without a glance back. She turned the corner and vanished as soon as she found the opportunity, likely using one of the DSI’s teleport rings. About fifteen seconds after she was gone, the camera having swung out and back again, Efren grabbed the bag and took off, leaving behind his uneaten enchiladas and full beer. I didn’t know what I was offended by more, his willingness to work
with Shaw or the blasphemy of abandoning perfectly good Mexican food. Both were pretty high on the list of social faux pas. People have been burned at the stake for less.

  I glanced across the street at the real time scene and noticed a couple who’d been in the video, sitting a couple tables away from Efren and Shaw. They had finished up their meal and sat there bullshitting and nursing their drinks, in no hurry to leave.

  “Maybe those two heard something,” I said, tired of lurking. So far we had bupkis with regard to Shaw’s motivation for hiring Fantasma so it wouldn’t hurt to ask if the couple had overhead anything interesting. I started toward them.

  Halfway across the street, I regretted my decision.

  Two men rose from behind the ledge of the restaurant rooftop, both wearing blue bandanas over the lower half of their faces. Out in the open, I was looking down the barrels of two AK-47s, flames spitting as the men fired. I took three in the chest, the impacts stumbling me before my brain kicked in and I threw up a shield. The crowd in the dining area screamed and bolted for the doors, pushing and shoving their way inside to be out of the line of fire.

  I shook off my surprise but the team had already begun to react behind me. There was a loud pop and one of the gunmen’s heads exploded, dropping him out of sight on the rooftop. I was about to take out the second when the chain of Grace’s kusarigama whipped over my head, the weighted end wrapping around the neck of the gunman. He gasped and dropped his gun to wrestle with the mystical noose, but Grace wasn’t gonna let him off the hook. She tugged and the guy was suddenly out over open air, kicking and flailing like Wile E. Coyote. Her chain vanished and I could almost see the whoosh of dust as he toppled three stories and slammed into a wrought iron table with a wet crunch. Plates and food went flying, glass and bottles shattering and spreading glittery shards across the entire patio. A moment later, the street was silent.

  Except for my complaining.

  “Son of a bitch!” I shouted while stomping over to the dead guy. Shaw had set us up. She knew damn well we’d be there.

  Grace and the others sidled up alongside me as I stood over the gunman, glaring at him. “Shaw set a trap,” she said as if she’d read my mind.

  “But it’s not like she expected to kill anyone,” Kit stated. “What are two guys with AKs going to do to us?”

  She was right, though I avoid mentioning the three bullet holes smoking in my chest. “She’s trying to delay us.” I glanced at Poe. “Can you pinpoint Chavez?” Poe closed his eyes and I reach down and grabbed a butter knife off the ground.

  “What are you going to do with—?” Thud started, then cringed when I answered his question with action.

  I stuck the end of the butter knife into the first of the bullet holes, blood oozing from the wound, and dug the round out. It plinked on the ground as I went after the second, then the third before tossing the knife aside. While my body would heal the wounds quickly enough, there’s nothing comfortable about metal slugs worming their way out of your flesh. Better to just get it over with.

  “I can’t find him,” Poe said, shaking his head. “That was the reason for the ambush.”

  “Just enough to let Chavez get under cover.” I growled. “This whole trip was a bust.”

  “We could get Styg here to animate the bodies so we can question them,” Thud said.

  I shook my head. “These guys are grunts and won’t know shit. Shaw’s smarter than that.” I glanced around, not seeing anything there that would help us determine what Shaw had planned. “Let’s go back to headquarters and regroup. She won this round.”

  I scooped up a half-eaten burrito, which had been abandoned when the gunfire started, and took a bite.

  “Seriously?” Grace asked, eyeballing me and my burrito.

  “Waste not, want not,” I answered, teleporting away. She was crazy if she thought I was gonna share.

  Six

  We convened in the conference room and I put the team to work on tracking Shaw, Kit slithering through the servers hunting for any clue as to the whereabouts of the other prisons.

  It was good being the boss. I had minions.

  “Say banana,” I told Thud. He stared at me for a moment, then wandered off, flipping me the bird. I contemplated painting him yellow but felt that would be an inappropriate use of taxpayer money. Besides, we had more important things to do.

  The more I thought about the prisons, the less likely I imagined Shaw using them as her hideaway. Maximus would protect the ones we didn’t know about with an army, and I had no doubt he’d let us know in a heartbeat if they had been compromised since he wanted Shaw so badly. So thinking, I could forget about those unless Kit dug some juicy up.

  And since Lance hadn’t checked back in to let me know he’d pinged Morgan either in Limbo or on Earth, I was beginning to think they weren’t using Limbo as a hideout anymore. Though given I’d seen technology used to block Michael Li’s mental scans not too long back, there was no way to definitively rule out either option. However, it was unlikely that Shaw had that kind of tech seeing how she was on the run and all, and Kit had confirmed—as far as she knew—that DSI didn’t have anything like that hanging around, so all that seemed to steer me in a single direction. One I really, really didn’t want to think about.

  The Interstice.

  I was seriously tired of that place. I’d spent too much time there lately didn’t look forward to going back. Still, until I confirmed that’s where they weren’t, I had to keep an open mind and consider it a good possibility. It made sense on a number of levels.

  “Hey, Grace. Hold down the fort. I need to check in with someone,” I told her. She shrugged, which was about as much deferral as I could expect from her. “And reach out to Styg and see if he’s come across anything. I’ll be back in a bit.” Without waiting to see if she had another shrug or eye roll to offer me, I went to Hell.

  No pun intended.

  After checking in with a dread fiend milling about near my chambers, I found who I was looking for: Rahim and Rachelle.

  To no one’s surprise, they were surrounded by the DRAC operatives who’d been camping in Hell ever since the Army had attacked them. They had formed a rudimentary war room in one of the empty rooms and the place was buzzing as they organized and oversaw the search for Mike. Even limited as they were by the location and assets, they would keep going until they either found the telepath or confirmed he was dead, though no one wanted to think the latter was a possibility.

  The pair stood in the center of the room, passing out orders and recording whatever intel the operatives offered up, which wasn’t much. Like a call center set up for a missing person or manhunt, most of the information they handled was useless, rumors and bullshit being sorted through in hopes of finding a kernel of truth that might lead them in the right direction. It was frustrating work, heartbreaking, but that wouldn’t stop them from digging through each and every piece of information that crossed their makeshift desk.

  I wormed my way through the men and women swarming them and got Rahim’s attention.

  “What took you so long?”

  “I…uh…well, got a little sidetracked.”

  “Sidetracked how?” he asked, clearly getting the wrong impression by the scowl on his face.

  “Turns out I landed a job while I was there.”

  Rahim raised an eyebrow. “A job? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m now the head honcho at the DSI, if you can believe that.” I shrugged.

  “How the hell did—? No, never mind, I don’t want to know. We can discuss that later. Did you find anything out about Michael?”

  I hesitated just a second and he knew damn well what my answer was gonna be. He sighed at the shake of my head, attracting Rachelle’s attention. It only took her a second to realize it wasn’t good news.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, not having meant to upset them even more than they already were.

  Rahim shooed the crowd off so we could speak in private. “Nothing?�
�

  I shook my head again. “No, but I’m narrowing the field of search down. I’m thinking Shaw has him in the Interstice.”

  “That damn place.” Rahim exhaled and a hint of the werebear in him rumbled out, making it sound like a growl. Couldn’t blame him.

  “I need to open a portal so I can check the dimension out. Rala around?” Much as I didn’t want to use the kid again—and she sure as shit didn’t want me using her after what I’d done to Veronica, her unfortunate choice of BFF—I didn’t feel there was much choice in the matter. She knew the spell by rote to open the gate between Earth and God’s prison realm. I needed her.

  Rachelle sighed. “She’s not here, Frank.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She went back to Earth,” Rahim told me. “She felt…trapped here, stifled, and decided it was best if she returned.”

  Damn teenagers. They’re the same on every planet. “So where did she end up?”

  “That’s the problem,” Rachelle said, “we don’t know. She hasn’t been in contact since she left and we’ve been unable to reach her.”

  I groaned. That didn’t bode well. “How long as she been gone?”

  “More or less right about the time we returned here.”

  “And you’re just now telling me?”

  “She didn’t want you to know, Frank,” Rahim said, looking at me as if I should understand. I did, kinda, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. I hadn’t sought her out after we’d come back to Hell, mainly because I knew she needed time to cool off. She’d been hurt and the last person she wanted to see was me. But still, she was gone and no one had heard from her and Shaw knew damn well the kid was capable of opening the Interstice. In fact, she was the only one who could among us.

  A cold chill skittered down my spine. Rala could be in danger.

  Damn it! While I knew I should tell both of them my thoughts regarding the little alien, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. They had enough to worry about already.

  “Well, keep reaching out and let me know if you hear from her,” I said. “I’ve got to get back to the DSI. I’ll see what I can do about getting you some better equipment and intel.”