The Bite of Winter (International Monster Slayers Book 2)

by Bethany Helwig

  The door to the penitent cells is in sight when Jefferson says, “I’ve got an idea for how we might get an advantage over Dasc.”

  “Oh?”

  “I want to talk to the shapeshifters and Mr. Webster first. They probably won’t tell us anything but everyone’s got tells. If there’s anything we can use from them to make Dasc talk . . .”

  “I like it,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

  “As long as Director Knox gives us the okay. He could say no.”

  “We’ll persuade him,” I say darkly.

  Jefferson gives me a long sideways look. “You’re scary sometimes, you know.” He bobs his head to the side. “It’s good.”

  I laugh under my breath and we push through the door together. As before, a unicorn, centaur, and two gargoyles guard the way in. After we clear their checkpoint, we pass through the large door protected by the dragon’s barrier and find Director Knox waiting on the opposite side. He’s in a crisp navy blue suit and has his hands clasped behind his back. He stands with impeccable posture and I instantly straighten under his commanding gaze.

  “How’s the hand?” he asks.

  I glance at the bruises fading on my knuckles. “Healing.”

  His gaze passes to Jefferson next and his face shows no change in expression. “Agent Barnes. I thought I told you to stay out of Underground.”

  “I need him,” I say before another word can be spoken to kick Jefferson out. “I can’t do it without him. I won’t.” I meet Jefferson’s beady eyes. “We’re a team.”

  The skin around the director’s eyes tightens a fraction. “He doesn’t go in the room with you. He stays in the observation room with me.”

  “Deal. Oh, and we want to talk to the shapeshifter we captured in Moose Lake and the ones from Werevine Pharmaceutical. And Mr. Webster.”

  “They aren’t speaking either. I’m not sure what you think you’ll gain by trying to talk to them.”

  “People can give away information without ever saying a word,” Jefferson says and stands over my shoulder like a bodyguard, always protecting me it seems. “And if anyone can help us get a rise out of them, it’s Phoenix. She’s beaten them all and her presence will work them up. I’ll walk her through what needs to be said. If there’s a chance we can get something out of them that will give us an advantage, isn’t it worth it?”

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say there’s something of a smile on the director’s face. He almost looks . . . glad.

  “You always were a good agent, Barnes,” he says and motions for us to follow him.

  Jefferson and I walk side by side behind Director Knox through the maze of hallways going deeper and deeper into the penitent cells. He takes us to the same room where I first met Draco and Major Lynch. It’s empty at the moment except for the black table that takes up most of the space like an ominous void ready to devour the room.

  “Wait here,” the director says. “I’ll get the shapeshifters and Mr. Webster lined up for you.”

  He closes the door, leaving us alone. Jefferson walks absently around the table and runs a hand along its surface.

  “What was the procedure the last time you came here?” he asks.

  “Well, they told me I needed to talk to him, get information on the people missing and his plans, and then they basically threw me into the wolf’s den. I had an earpiece but Dasc refused to talk when I had it in.”

  Jefferson shakes his head. “Okay, first things first. Put your hair down.”

  I blink. “What?”

  “You always have it up in a ponytail and that makes it obvious if you’ve got a piece or not,” he grumbles. “So, put your hair down. You look more like a young girl then too.”

  I frown as I tug off the ponytail holder and comb my fingers through my hair. “And that’s a good thing?”

  “It’ll make them underestimate you,” he says.

  “Well, each of them has already faced me before.”

  “That was on a different playing field.” His squinty eyes inspect me as I hold out my arms to show I’m ready to go. “You want to look relaxed but not arrogant. Don’t make any show of emotion for anything they do or do not tell you. Pretend to be mildly interested the whole time you’re in the box. You’ve got to act like you’ve got all the cards. You’re in control.”

  “Am I?” I mutter and he grasps my shoulder.

  “If you act like that in there, you won’t be,” he growls. “It’s a game, Phoenix. It’s chess. You gotta play to win.”

  “Right.” I suck at chess. It’s probably best not to mention that.

  “I’ll walk you through the earpiece but you’re the one that has to sell it. You can do this. Use that charm of yours.”

  “Well, now I know you’re definitely joking. Charm? Me?”

  “Or sass,” he says gruffly. “Whatever works.”

  “I can do sass.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  A smile spreads on my face. This is what family feels like.

  He rolls his eyes. “Wipe that grin off your face. You look ridiculous. And before we get started, there are a few things you should know.”

  For the next ten minutes Jefferson gives me a crash course on interrogations, physical indicators, and psychological reasoning. It’s clear he knows his stuff from all the fancy terms he throws at me. The door opens and Witty peers in from his wheelchair. He looks a little terrified when he spots me. I guess I scared the crap out of him the last time I was here.

  “Hey, Witty. We ready to rumble?” I say to show I’m not psychotic this time around.

  “Yeah. Yup. Umm, hi.” He dips his head in Jefferson’s direction. “Agent Barnes.”

  Jefferson points at Witty but looks to me. “This is the kid on the phone?”

  “The one and only.”

  Witty’s face turns bright red and he starts to wheel away. We follow him out the door and down two different hallways before we stop in front of a barred door. I take a deep breath—so far my jitters haven’t gotten the best of me like the last time around. It helps having Jefferson here. There’s a confidence in me I didn’t have before.

  “This is the shapeshifter from Werevine,” Witty says as he waves at the door. “We still don’t even have a name.”

  He passes an earpiece to me and beckons Jefferson over to the next door down. Before he moves away, Jefferson whispers his instructions to me and has me acknowledge I understand before he wishes me luck and the dragon’s barrier drops. I push the door open and shut it behind me before turning about to meet my chess opponent.

  He wears a face I hardly recognize. The first time I met him he was in the form of a pudgy little man pretending to be the CEO of Werevine. Now he’s stick thin, spindly, and in dire need of a shave. His eyes are cold and I feel like I’m falling down a dark well looking into them—they narrow the second he recognizes me. Despite his gaunt and raggedy appearance, he has a formidable air about him.

  I take the seat across from him and fold my hands together on the tabletop separating us. He doesn’t move and I allow a small, pitying smile to slide into place on my face.

  “I wanted to say thank you,” I say. His eyes narrow even more. “Capturing you made my career. Who would have thought such a random assignment would have turned into such a goldmine?”

  The shapeshifter doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t give any sort of reaction at all.

  Jefferson’s gruff voice speaks quietly in my ear. “Good. Now, make your next move.”

  “Between you and me,” I say quietly and lean in, “I’m not actually supposed to be in here. I sort of know a friend of a friend and . . . like I said, I wanted to say thank you for making my first mission so easy.”

  He freezes in his chair, an indicator in itself. He’s holding himself rigid on purpose, trying not to make a move to show I’ve hit a nerve.

  “I mean, your berserker friend was terrifying but, then again, she wasn’t very hard to take down either.” I laugh an
d lean back in my chair.

  “Tick him off,” Jefferson whispers through the earpiece. “Twist a strand of your hair. Look like an airhead.”

  I take a chunk of hair between my fingers, twirl it around my fingers, and give the shapeshifter a wrinkle-nosed smile. A smoldering rage passes through those dark eyes of his.

  “This job is boring though,” I say and blow a few stray hairs out of my face. “I mean, a couple of shapeshifters here, a few werewolves there. I don’t even know why you guys were trying to find that idiot. Werewolf, who-cares-wolf. Why even bother? They went down easy enough.”

  The shapeshifter is still trying to keep it together but a muscle twitches in his jaw. I’m getting close. I can taste it. We know the shapeshifters were combing through the werewolf records like they were searching for one in particular. I’ve been careful not to drop a pronoun that’ll hint male or female. We want the shapeshifter to do that for us. Snap his ego and maybe he’ll rise to defend it.

  “Punch his pride again,” Jefferson instructs.

  I rise from the chair and turn around so I can see my reflection in the one-way mirror in order to fix my hair. Play-acting is difficult and I rack my brain for another jab.

  “We appreciate the tip,” I say in a high, chirpy tone. “Looks like we did your job for you.”

  The shapeshifter speaks at last. “You didn’t.”

  “Sorry, what?” I face him with a wide smile.

  “I don’t believe you.” Oh, come on. Let a hint slip, just this once.

  Jefferson whispers, “Help’s coming. Play the caught troublemaker.”

  There are several loud knocks on the glass from the other side and a muffled voice shouts, “What are you doing in there?” It’s Director Knox. He must be my help.

  My eyes go wide and I frantically move towards the door.

  “Oops! Crap.” I bite my lip and readjust my hair.

  “You can’t be in there! Get out!”

  The shapeshifter starts laughing as the door flies open and Director Knox marches in to grab me by the arm. I blink several times and try to force my eyes to water like I’m about to cry. As we’re leaving I stutter an excuse to the director, and the shapeshifter yells at me from his seat.

  “I knew you couldn’t have taken him down, you pathetic little wench!”

  The door slams shut and I give the director a wicked grin. He let’s go of me, stunned. Jefferson walks out of the observation room with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen him wear and we give each other a high five.

  “And now we know a gender and that he’s a single person.”

  Chapter 16

  Knowing the shapeshifters were looking for a male individual doesn’t seem like much but it’s enough to use on the berserker next. Jefferson whispers to me again before I enter the woman’s interrogation room. We won’t go for a pride-and-ego down again. This time Jefferson wants me to make the berserker mad. It’s a good thing Director Knox doesn’t know that or he probably wouldn’t let me walk in. Pixies, I don’t know if I want to go in with this sort of plan but I trust Jefferson. He must know what he’s doing.

  When I shut the door behind me the female berserker lifts her face to see who’s come in. She instantly goes red in the face. For a second I think she’s going to puff up and rage out but she remains composed in her chair with two guards flanking her, their bio-mech guns trained on her back. Surprisingly, she doesn’t look much different than the woman she had impersonated at Werevine. Still severe, still dark haired, but her nose is much less pointed and her eyes are mere pinpricks in her face.

  I take the chair across from her, lean forward on the table, and smile like I did for the other shapeshifter. “Pixies, you’re even uglier than before.”

  Not a twitch or grimace from my remark. In fact, she’s ignoring me as she gazes at a corner of the ceiling like she’s disgusted by some hidden stain or spider web I can’t see.

  “I guess there’s no point exchanging pleasantries then?” I say and settle in my chair with my arms crossed. “I don’t know why they even bothered putting me in here. They thought I could elicit a reaction from you since I’m the one that took you down.” I laugh once and pretend I’m bored myself, gazing around the room with no real interest, even though my heart is hammering in my chest. I still remember what it was like being stalked by her on the executive floor of the Werevine building. She was terrifying.

  “Get mean,” Jefferson says in my ear. “Make a fool of her. Bring up her buddy.”

  “What’s the point?” I grumble and inspect something under my nails. “We already broke the other guy days ago.”

  Her head snaps in my direction. I give her a mocking expression of surprise.

  “Oh, so you do care? Big scary monster has a heart after all it seems.”

  “He means nothing,” she spits at me.

  “You know, denying it only really confirms the opposite. And yet you let him get taken down like a sack of potatoes!” I slam my hands on the tabletop and lean in with a sneer. “You two are pathetic.”

  The berserker gives me a smile that could curdle milk and I involuntarily swallow. “You’ll have to try better than that.”

  Static pops in my ear. “Take control again,” Jefferson says. “Bring up our mystery man. Pretend we have him.”

  “Your friend should have tried better, too,” I shoot back. “We know you were looking for him.”

  That gets her attention and her cruel smile loses some of its edge.

  “Well, you’re too late!” I rise slowly from my chair with my hands planted on the table in an attempt to tower over her. It would work better if she wasn’t so tall. “Thanks to the mess you made at Werevine, you managed to get yourself caught and lead us right to him.”

  “He’s been captured? You have him?”

  “What do you think I just said?” I roll my eyes for emphasis and hope she doesn’t snap and try to break my neck. “Now the director just wants to know who you’re working for and then we can all go home. Unless . . . unless you think he can give us a name instead?” I stand and gesture to the two guards in the room. “Let’s pack this up. Once he knows we’ve got her here, I’m sure we can get a—”

  She expands faster than I think a berserker has a right to. Both her arms fling back, breaking the chains from her wrists—the cuffs themselves still manage to hold with the dragon’s barriers intact—and she hits both guards in the chest before they have a chance to fire. In the blink of an eye her fist flies at my face. But I’m in control. Energy shoots through my arm and I grab her fist with my bare hand, holding back that powerful blow. Her fist and my hand lock in position above the table. If it’s even possible, her face turns a more brilliant shade of red as she tries to push me back. When she can’t, she punches with her other fist but I grab that too. Sweat breaks out on my forehead as I hold her in place. My bruised knuckles protest at the strain.

  “Not so fast,” I pant.

  “Your prison can’t hold the first,” she hisses. “He will flee and she will come for us for our failure.”

  “What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re all going to die!” she shouts, spittle landing everywhere including my face.

  My hands shake from holding her powerful fists. Pixies, she’s strong. She must be trying too hard though, because the red starts to recede from her hands and up her arms. It’s only been a couple of seconds but it’s forever until the door finally opens with backup. Shots fire and I feel the breeze as the bio-mech pulses rush past me and hit the berserker. She screams before a barrage of pulses knocks her down and she falls unconscious to the floor. Guards flood inside the room and I’m shuffled to the wall. Jefferson pushes past them to grasp my shoulders and hunches to my eye level.

  “Are you okay?”

  I exhale sharply and wiggle my fingers. “Everything’s intact anyway.” I sway a little and Jefferson’s grip tightens. “You wouldn’t happen to have a candy bar or something on you, would you?”
<
br />   He throws an arm around my shoulders and walks me out. “Yeah, you’re fine.”

  “No, seriously. A little food would go a long way right now.”

  “I’m sure we can scrounge something up for you.” He gives me a little shake. “You did great, kid.”

  “I did? Sorry, I’m a little distracted by the fact I almost got my face punched in or my hands ripped off. Are those guards okay?”

  He glances over his shoulder as we continue to walk away. “They’ll be fine.”

  We eventually stop and Director Knox walks at a fast clip to meet us at an intersection with another hallway.

  “You heard her?” the director asks once he reaches us. “The first.”

  Jefferson nods but I flex my aching fingers as I process this information. The shapeshifters were looking through werewolf records trying to find “the first.” There’s only one werewolf I know that fits that bill.

  “I guess we weren’t actually lying when we said we had him,” Jefferson muses.

  “They were looking for Dasc the whole time?” I say and the cogs in my mind start to speed up. “We always assumed they were working with him. We’ve been looking at it all backwards. Dasc said there was a war coming.”

  “I think we just found the opposing side,” the director says, his expression serious as always.

  “Monsters fighting monsters,” Jefferson grumbles. “Is there even a point to that? You’d think they’d team up against the IMS, not each other. We’re the ones picking them off.”

  “They’ve been known to squabble over territory before,” Director Knox points out.

  A frown pulls at my face. “I don’t know.”

  “Something you want to add, Phoenix?” Jefferson removes his arm from around my shoulders and looks down his nose at me.

  “It’s just something Dasc said before. There are bigger monsters than me. I don’t think he meant literally—because, obviously. I think he meant worse. And he’s the first of his kind, someone who’s murdered and turned and butchered people for hundreds of years. What kind of monster like that thinks there is another one that’s worse?”