by Cat Adams
Now panic tore through me, because all my body wanted was for him to tear off my clothes and throw me to the floor. Bruno had made me feel like that sometimes, but this was different. It was superficial, lust without emotional depth. But that didn’t make it any less real or wanted. I hadn’t had sex in a long time and my body knew what it needed. “I have to go, Creede.”
He didn’t respond except to move his hands up my back, which made my stomach tighten and my fingers dig into his muscular shoulders. “I know.” The words pushed into my ear softly, a mixed message. What did he know? That I had to get to the job or that I wanted to feel his fingers on my skin, his lips close over mine? Then I remembered he was a skilled telepath. Crap. While I hoped he was using discretion, he could easily know what I was thinking before I’d even processed the thoughts.
His lips began to move against my neck and his hands slid down to grip my hips possessively. My heart was thudding in my throat. Interesting that I was less afraid to hunt the demon than to have this man touch me.
“Yes, it is. Very interesting.” My eyes widened at his words and at the feeling of his lips against my cheek. Delicate but powerful, the sensation strong enough to weaken my knees. His lips lingered there for what felt like an eternity while my brain swam, unable to think.
“You have to let me go, Creede.” My voice was a whisper and I could hear the fear in it. Who exactly was I afraid of?
He returned the whisper, and while the words made me think he was amused, his tone was low and serious: “I’m not the one who has somewhere to be. This is yours, Celia. You can pull away if you want to. I won’t stop you.”
I couldn’t see my watch because my fingers were gliding through his so-soft hair, pulling his lips closer so they were once more moving against my neck. Bad. I knew I was being bad. Kevin needed me. He could be dying while I was letting a handsome mage tease me breathless. Creede’s hands were cupping my butt now. It felt so good. Then the hands paused and the whisper grew chiding. “Come on, Celia. Concentrate. I know you can get past this like you can get past your fears. There’s a time and place.”
The tone startled me, brought me out of my fog. My pulse slowed to near normal and I could think again. Now I knew what this was all about. Creede was a business first, pleasure second sort of guy. Just like me.
“And this isn’t the time. Right? I’m too busy avoiding the job to do the job well.” He’d been teasing me on purpose. Getting my mind shifted away from old worries and fears, onto a path toward new things. Including the task at hand. I took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Thanks, Creede.” Another thanks earned me another growl in my ear. I kissed him lightly on the cheek and pulled back. “I think I’ve got it out of my system.” Not the sex part, but the worry and fear. I felt calmer and he let a smile reach his eyes.
“Of course, you realize this isn’t over. As you can see, I was enjoying myself.”
I refused to look below his belt line. I had felt exactly how much he was enjoying himself. “Another time, in the far distant future.”
“Maybe. Or sooner than you think.” Now the old Creede was back, the ladies’ man who was a consummate flirt. Damn, he was good. He turned on his heel and headed toward the door. “Make sure you give that a good tryout. I’ll expect a written report when you get back from your job.”
I rolled my eyes and crossed suddenly solid arms over my vest. “Like I have time in my day to write reports? Pfft. I’ll call you.” I was feeling back to my old self and I was grateful. I hadn’t realized how much my nerves and memories had been getting to me.
He was in the doorway now and his eyes were sparkling merrily. “And I’ll take your call, provided you agree to have dinner with me to give me the details.” Was he asking me on a date? Maybe my face showed my shock, because his smile broadened into a grin. “I’ll consider that a yes.” He left and I could hear the creak of old boards under his shoes as he walked toward the staircase. “Like I said,” he called out when he was halfway down the stairs, “sooner than you think, Graves.”
His low chuckle made things inside me tighten again, but it made me smile, too. I’d been hurt a lot lately and Creede was a breath of fresh air—not too serious and not demanding. And there was respect there, both ways. Maybe that was exactly what I needed right now.
4
The fly worked just as well as it had in my office.
Unfortunately.
The camera revealed sights that sickened me. Sedated humans crammed into cages lining the dungeonlike basement of the “treatment center.” Cages. They seemed to be about the size for a Great Dane, made from steel bars as thick around as my wrist. There was no furniture, no toilet facilities. Just row upon row of cages filled with naked, comatose people curled into fetal positions. Even a Super Max prison had more amenities than this. “This is disgusting. We have to get them out of there.”
Edgar lowered the night-vision goggles he was using. “You can’t be serious.” His whisper sounded equally amazed and horrified.
“Keep your mind on the mission, Graves.” Jones’s voice was an annoyed hiss in my ear. “I wouldn’t have brought you if I’d thought this sort of thing would bother you.”
“Well, it does,” I snapped back quietly. “I wouldn’t put a dog in a cage where it couldn’t even sit up straight. What kind of life is that?”
He responded by pulling the fly’s case out of my hand. “Give me that joystick.” He started to move the fly and pushed my hand away when I tried to get it back.
“Damn it, Jones.”
Jones stared at me, his eyes blazing with internal fire. “Look at the screen, Graves.”
He was hovering the fly inside one of the cages. I didn’t want to look. It made my stomach hurt to think of that person’s life, or lack thereof. Jones made a disgusted sound, then repeated, tensely, “Look at the screen. Really look. No sores, no fleas, no dirt on this guy’s skin. He’s had a shower or bath sometime today. His underwear and shirt are snow-white. They look better than the ones in my dresser.”
Okay. Now I was forcing myself to look and Jones was right. There was no urine or feces, and if the guy had been caged for very long, there would be. “Oh. But…”
“Now look at the electrodes on his forehead,” Jones continued. “They’re inducing dreams. See the smile? Part of the treatment here is to provide normalcy, to keep the person remembering interactions that aren’t tainted with violence. Yes, he’s in a cage. Get over it. These are superhuman creatures who are very likely insane. If they had enough room to move, they could bend the bars or they’d dislocate something trying.”
Oh. Now I felt like a fool. I was probably blushing, given how hot my face felt, but at least in the dark nobody could see. Except for the vampire, of course. Oh, and the mage with the fire in his eyes. Damn.
“I’ve been inside, Graves. Many times. Don’t get me wrong; there are parts of the facility you don’t ever want to see. There are places that would make you lose your lunch. But this batch has a good set of keepers.”
“Why can’t the whole facility be like this?” Yes, now I was championing what I’d just complained about. Some people are never happy.
Jones shook his head. “You are a piece of work, Graves.”
I was getting itchy from sand seeping into my clothes. “We need to find Kevin. This is taking too long. When are we going in?”
It was Edgar who responded. “When we’re ready. When we’re sure where we’re going. There is no hiding once we’re inside, Celia. The barrier will start to scream the minute we penetrate it, and then it’s only a matter of time before they find us. This isn’t a sneak in and sneak out mission. Only brute force will get us in and out again safely. People are probably going to die, and we’ll be the ones killing them.”
Whoa. That wasn’t what I’d signed up for. “I’m already on a short leash, guys. One more trip to court and I’m this place’s newest inmate. You guys might be able to crawl back under your respective rocks once he’s out, but
I need to work in this town again. Why can’t we sneak in and out?”
That set them both back on their heels. “Look,” I continued. “We have our fly. We can use it to figure out a way in. Can’t Edgar bespell a guard so we can take his uniform?”
Jones now looked amused. “So with twenty-first-century technology and supernatural abilities, you want to stage a World War Two movie breakout?”
I shrugged as best I could; my shoulders were cramping inside the pipe. “If it works, why not?”
“Are you willing to use your siren abilities as well? Kevin told me you were horrified by what you did to Eirene’s followers.”
That stopped me cold, because Kevin was right. In the struggle to keep myself and Emma alive and keep the greater demon from being loosed, I’d mentally fought a siren queen for mental control of her men. Eventually, there was nothing left of their minds to follow either of us. It had eliminated them from the battle, but I’d sworn I’d never again manipulate a person. I swallowed hard and tried to think what others would do in my place. Bile rose into my throat and I forced it back down. “Can you manage it without me?”
“Sneak in, without using violence, and remove someone without alerting trained magical guards?” He let out a snort that might have been loud enough to hear if there was anyone close. “Not bloody likely.”
So I could have a violent, bloody confrontation where I would probably have to kill someone or a quiet, sneaky rescue where I’d probably have to manipulate people into doing what I wanted and risk them becoming brain-dead. Great. Just great.
Maybe there was a third option. The fly was working fine, but it was slow. We were losing too much time while it searched. I concentrated, then whispered into the darkness, “Vicki? Ivy? Are you guys out there?”
The air cooled noticeably enough for even Jones to look around. “What the hell?”
I pulled a penlight from inside my vest and held it where nobody outside our little group would see it if it lit up. “Vicki, is that you?”
The bulb flicked on once. One blink meant yes. Two meant no. It was a crude method of communicating, but it worked. Ghosts stay on this plane of existence when they have unfinished business, finding their murderer or revealing information to a loved one. I wasn’t sure exactly why Vicki had stayed behind, but so far she had been acting as a sort of resource when I needed eyes on the ground. Vicki wasn’t the only ghost in my life; there was also Ivy, my little sister who’d died violently when we were children.
“Can you find Kevin inside here?”
One blink. Vicki had known Kevin as long as I had. Plus, she’d told me once, she’d seen him in animal form. That would be helpful if he wasn’t human at the moment.
Jones sounded both confused and annoyed when he whispered, “What the hell are you doing, Graves? Who are you talking to?”
“Vicki Cooper. Remember her? My clairvoyant friend from Birchwoods?”
“Yeah. She’s dead.”
“Mostly, yes. Say hi, Vicki.”
Edgar made an odd sound and handed me the night-vision contraption. There was an amused expression on his face. Strange to see a vampire with a smile. “Here, take a look.”
As the goggles spun my way, I had to smile. I turned them around so Jones could see the lens, where, in tiny little print, a reversed Hi! :) appeared in frost.
I raised my brows and probably had a triumphant expression on my face. “Now it’s time to play the game my way. Vick, can you find the fly attached to this joystick and take it to wherever Kevin is? Maybe flick a light in the room or something if it’s on an outside wall?”
One blink of the flashlight.
“Is Ivy here, too?”
Two rapid blinks. I don’t know why that worried me, but it caused me to ask a stupid question about a ghost. “Is she okay?”
A series of rapid flashes didn’t make any sense to me. Maybe I needed to learn Morse code. It might be that Vicki didn’t understand the question or it was too complicated to answer. “Never mind. Not important right now. We’ll talk tomorrow. For now, find Kevin. ’Kay?”
One blink. And then the temperature returned to normal.
Jones was shaking his head silently, disbelief plain on his face. It made me shrug and comment, “Hey, you’re a mage, he’s a vampire, and I’m vampire-siren-human. Why not ask a ghost to help free a werewolf?”
“Freaking unbelievable.”
Jones, Edgar, and I huddled around the tiny screen. At first there was no change. The fly hovered in the air, waiting for instructions. Then a wind caught it and began to propel it down the hallway. The night erupted with howls from inmates who could either see or sense Vicki’s presence. Guards, alerted, could find no cause. No sensors were tripped, no lights glared red, and a fly floating on a breeze was ignored.
Sights moved past too quickly to identify, though I glimpsed a couple of stairways and various doors that might or might not lead to the outside. But I knew the fly was storing the images for later viewing. I wasn’t sure how big the hard drive was, but I was betting there was at least a gig or two of memory.
Finally the fly came to rest in a room and we got our first look at Kevin. He was stripped naked and chained to a table. He wasn’t dead—his chest was moving—but his limp position and slack face told me he was unconscious. “Did he have those bruises and cuts when you went in?”
Jones shook his head grimly. “Those are all postcapture. Normally, they’d have healed by now.” Normally, werewolves heal quickly, almost as fast as vampires. Something was keeping Kevin from healing himself.
The light began to flick on and off in the room and we all raised our eyes to the wall in front of us to see a corresponding flicker on the third floor, at the far end of the building. “Edgar, can you carry a person in flight?”
He gave me a small smirk. “I think there was a children’s movie once that said it best. With the extra weight, I can’t fly. But I can fall with style.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. I’d seen the same movie. “Jones, can we do any magic once we’re inside the barrier? Will my boomers or charms work in there?”
He thought for a long moment, tapping his index finger on the side of the fly remote. “The barrier’s goal is to prevent any magical tampering with the security of the facility—any magic that’s categorized as an attempt to effect an escape, for example. But there may be a chance to enhance the security system to our benefit.”
Ahhh. “So if we made the barrier stronger in certain places—”
He completed the sentence with a smile. “Like in front of a breach to the wall for example … then yes, it might divert power from the rest of the barrier.”
Suddenly the fly’s control screen flashed red. Apparently the fly had a feature Creede hadn’t mentioned. The word “Demon” was blinking in red at the bottom of the screen. A demonic presence had walked into the room. She had taken the form of a doctor’s aide or nurse if the uniform was any indication and was carrying a skill saw. If I could pick the least likely place for a construction saw to exist, it would be an infirmary. She stared at the unconscious werewolf with undisguised glee and then plugged the saw into an outlet.
Fuck a duck. Our deadline had just moved up.
Jones apparently agreed. “We’re going in. Now.”
Edgar was already moving toward the hole under the wall and I followed with as much mobility as my trapped-for-too-long legs would muster. Thankfully, Vicki isn’t just any random ghost. The lights went out in Kevin’s room as we raced the length of the building, which was a good block long. Edgar had just started to float up the three floors to the darkened window when a metal chair crashed against the bars, shattering the glass and showering it down on me and Jones.
Of course that set off the alarms, but it was too late to stop the party. I was still carrying the fly remote and glanced down to see Vicki create a wind that whipped the cord out of the wall and repeatedly slammed the plug against the nurse’s face. When I moved the fly so I could see Kev
in, the nurse noticed it.
She plucked it out of the air and stared into the two fly eyes, which put her whole face on one side of the screen. While there was no sound pickup on the device—which I’d suggest to Creede as an improvement—there was no mistaking what she said: “Hello, Celia.”
I dropped the remote as I felt a stabbing sensation in my chest. Not long ago, I’d had an exorcism done to sever my ties to a particular demon. It had left scars on my chest that looked like claw rips. At first I’d thought the scars were burning, but the feeling went deeper … like something had grabbed my heart and squeezed. Not good.
I’d known there was the possibility that the same greater demon might be behind this, but running into him so soon after my death and resurrection by doctors and priests was terrifying.
Part of me wanted to freeze and scream, but training and common sense overrode the impulse. Guards were running in our direction. By sheer instinct I pulled a boomer from a vest pocket and tossed it while I scooped up the remote. The boomer went off with an effect that was closer to a party popper than the deafening, blinding incapacitation that I’d become accustomed to. Damn. But it wasn’t the only thing in my arsenal. I tossed a mudder. Full of concentrated water, it created a three-foot-square patch of thick mud. The guards stumbled and fell to their knees, the ground literally stolen out from under them.
As Edgar began to pry the bars away from the concrete window frame, Jones pulled the pin on a military grenade and threw it at the wall, simultaneously casting a spell that silenced the explosion.
The barrier reacted to the explosion by sealing the breach, taking power from everwhere else in the system. I could feel the pressure against my body lighten and I could move almost normally.