Wicked Creatures

by Jessica Meigs

  The delicious smell of coffee permeated the air from somewhere nearby, making her mouth water, and she wished she could get a really big cup of it to help wake herself up. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep, though that was through no fault but her own. She could have put a stop to any of their activities at any point she’d wanted to, but she’d allowed it to continue anyway. Twice.

  She glanced at Scott, who walked beside her, his eyes flickering rapidly over the crowds near them. She felt oddly exposed around him now, and she had no idea how to talk to him about it, so she opted to keep her mouth shut on the topic.

  “See anything?” she asked, hitching Linus the backpack up a bit higher on her shoulder.

  “A bunch of drunks,” he commented. “Some tourists.”

  Riley stayed silent for a minute more, observing the crowd, then added, “I’m not sure this is a good place to meet them. It’s too crowded.”

  “That’s half the appeal,” he said. “It won’t be noticeable if we’re hanging around waiting for a couple of people to show up.”

  “It’s also half the reason this is a bad idea,” she replied. “We can’t tell if there’s anyone in the crowd who wants to kill us. Or worse.”

  “A couple of months ago, I would never have been agreeable to the idea that there’s a fate worse than death,” he said, “but damn if I haven’t seen a couple of different variations of that now.”

  “I’m not sure what we’re looking for,” she admitted. “I mean, what do we keep an eye out for? If werewolves are anything like the myths, then they could look just like people.” She snorted. “It’s not like they’ll have a werewolf tethered on a leash like a dog.”

  “It’d make our job a lot easier if they did,” Scott muttered. “Then I wouldn’t be looking at every drunk tourist wondering if they were going to tear my throat out.” He paused then said, “Well, look at that. If that doesn’t stand out, I don’t know what does.”

  Riley looked in the direction he indicated, scanning the gaggles of people for whoever he’d been talking about. It didn’t take long to spot her: it was a woman who could only be described as statuesque, voluptuous, wearing a blood-red skirt suit, her waist-length black hair tumbling down her back. She walked with a slow, almost seductive, swagger, like she was a supermodel on a runway. Now that Riley had seen her, she couldn’t not see her, especially since the woman was heading toward her and Scott.

  Then Riley noticed the men.

  There were at least ten—no, twelve—of them that she could see, fanned out at somewhat irregular intervals across parts of the square. She didn’t recognize any of them, though they all seemed to be of the Big and Beefy persuasion; one of them in particular was much bigger than the others: bald, hulking, and taking up way too much space. It was a safe bet they were definitely not on her side. And they were all moving toward her and Scott with steady determination.

  “Shit, Scott, I think we’ve got some company,” she warned him.

  “I noticed,” he said. “And we don’t stand a chance against this many at once with our lack of resources. We’ve got to move. Now.”

  He grabbed her elbow and tugged, pulling her to the right and starting to run—across the sidewalk and right into the middle of Decatur Street. Horns blared and tires squealed on pavement, but Riley and Scott kept going. The Washington Artillery Park was directly across the street, and they made a beeline for it; as they charged up the stone steps to the top, Riley didn’t have to turn around to know they were being followed: more squealing of tires and honking of horns was enough to tell her that. Not asking Scott which direction he planned to go, she broke left at the top, heading up the stairs on the left side, while Scott went right. Once they were at the top, Scott skirted around a mounted cannon and met her on her side of the platform. “Which way?” he asked.

  “The only way we can go,” she replied. “Down.”

  They raced down the stairs, taking them two at a time, Riley in the lead. She looked back, only once, to see their pursuers gaining on them. Inexplicably, the woman was keeping pace with them, despite the fact that she wasn’t running. She was simply maintaining that slow, steady pace. Like a fucking Terminator, Riley thought, and she shook loose from her shocked stupor as she and Scott reached the bottom of the stairs.

  They crossed three sets of train tracks, and Riley had just reached what she supposed was considered a river walk when she heard a snarl and a growl, and something slammed into her back. She yelped and fell forward, landing painfully on her hands and knees before the weight of whatever was on her made her skid forward flat onto her stomach.

  “Riley!” Scott yelled behind her, and she twisted quickly to her back, scrambling for the pistol under her shirt. She heard a pop as a bag of potato chips inside Linus exploded—what a weird thing to notice right now—and before she could get her pistol up to open fire, a beast was on her, its werewolf stink filling her nose, pinning her to the ground.

  It growled, its muzzle so close to her face that all it had to do was open its jaws and it could bite her face off. She growled back at it, grimacing as she kicked and squirmed and punched. Nearby, she could hear Scott struggling, too, like he was putting up a massive, determined fight.

  Then several gunshots rang out, and the werewolf on top of her was thrown off balance. Screams from bystanders erupted at the sound of the shots, and Riley took the opportunity to kick free, scrambling backwards on the ground, finding her feet, and backpedaling several steps. “Scott!” she called, turning to search for him.

  She froze. He was several feet away, lying on his stomach, an arm outstretched in her direction with a pistol in hand; a large wolf had its teeth clamped around his right ankle, and his face was a grimace of pain. The wolf was a much, much larger one than the one that had just attacked her or the one that had accosted them in their hotel room, and she doubted she stood a chance against it, not without silver bullets. The woman in red stood beyond Scott, her arms folded over her chest and a smug look on her face as her companions grabbed Scott’s arms and yanked his pistol from his hand. They hauled him to his feet as he struggled to break loose, kicking at the beast that had its teeth in his ankle.

  “Riley!” he yelled. “Riley, run!”

  She hesitated for a second, which proved to be almost too long as the werewolf Scott had fired several bullets into recovered and started in her direction. She looked frantically left and right, but there were too many people in either direction, and she didn’t want to force the werewolf to chase her into the crowds and potential injure any innocent bystanders. She only had one way to go, she realized, so she took it: across the river walk, down a wooden pier, and straight into a dive into the Mississippi River.

  The water was shockingly cold, and it hit her like a sledgehammer, nearly making her lose her breath. She held it in, though, and let herself sink down below the murky surface. Almost immediately, the current grabbed her and dragged her down river, sucking her away from Scott’s location, and when she broke the surface, gasping for air and fighting against the current, she couldn’t see him anymore.

  The current kept carrying her along, and she continued to struggle against it, trying to get back to shore before she was sucked too far from her origination point. But it was to no avail: she just wasn’t strong enough to drag herself against the unrelenting currents in the river. It was so strong it tugged against her backpack, and with a sudden wrench, Linus slipped free from her back, swirling away into the water. She grabbed for it but missed, and then she surfaced. She managed to suck in another breath before the current dragged her down again.

  Moments later, she slammed into something hard and unyielding. It was a support post for a pier, she realized, and she wrapped her arms around it, pulling herself up so her head was above water—just barely. She looked around frantically, searching for a way to escape the frigid water, and spotted a ladder that went up to the top of the pier, bolted to the support post directly on the opposite side of the pier from her position. Taking
a deep breath, she let go of the post, angled for the ladder, and almost missed it as the current dragged her along. She got her fingers onto it and pulled herself to the ladder, pressing against it, panting as she grasped it with both hands. She rested her forehead against one of the rungs and tried to find the energy to climb.

  “Holy shit, there’s a lady in the water over here!” a voice above her shouted.

  Riley rolled her eyes and stretched an arm up, grasping a rung and hauling herself up. Why can’t people just leave me alone? she thought, pulling her sodden body out of the water. When she got to within reaching distance of the top, hands grasped her arms, and then she found herself on her stomach on the pier, struggling to breathe properly, coughing up nasty, filthy water that she hadn’t even realized she’d swallowed.

  “Someone call 911!” a man above her yelled.

  Another man offered up, “I think I see a cop! Jason, go flag him down!”

  “No,” Riley groaned out, but nobody was paying attention to her. She tried to get her arms under her to lever up off the pier, but they felt wobbly like jelly. She gave up and lay there, breathing, suddenly realizing she was lucky she hadn’t been swept further down the river and drowned.

  “Dude, I think she’s got a gun,” one of the voices commented, and Riley remembered the pistol in her waistband. At least not everything was lost.

  “Clear the way!” an authoritative voice shouted, followed a second later by, “I said move!” Someone took a knee beside her and slid an arm under her. “Ma’am, can you sit up?” he asked. “Do you need help?”

  Riley sat up with a little of the police officer’s assistance; most of her hair had been ripped free of its twist by the ferocity of the current, and she raked the sodden, filthy strands out of her face. She prepared to play the wilting flower, maybe come up with an excuse along the lines of her slipping and falling in, but when she looked up, her eyes met those of Officer Greg Tate of the New Orleans Police Department.

  “Agent Walker?” he asked, obviously astounded by her appearance.

  Her teeth were starting to chatter. She did her best to ignore it. “Officer Tate, so nice of you to drop by,” she said. She wondered how blue her lips were turning. “I was wondering if you could be so nice as to let me borrow your phone?”

  Tate gaped at the woman sitting, soaking wet, on the pier, her long dark hair tangled around her face, the shivering wracking her frame so painfully obvious that he almost cringed. He needed to get her somewhere warm, maybe in his police cruiser with the heat cranked up, a blanket around her so she wouldn’t get hypothermia—assuming she hadn’t already started to come down with that—and then he needed to grill her about what the hell she was doing taking an evening dip in the Mississippi.

  “Come on, get up,” he ordered. He grasped her by the upper arm and helped her to her feet. “We need to get you some place warm, and then you’re going to tell me what the hell you’re doing out here.”

  “If all you’re going to do is question me, I’m not going anywhere with you,” Riley said, shaking her head and trying to pull out of his grip. There was a little quiver in her arm, though, like she was worn out, and she didn’t manage to dislodge herself from his grasp. He steered her toward the police car he’d left parked near the end of the pier when someone had come running into the street in front of him, arms waving and yelling about gunshots down the river walk and a woman they’d fished out of the water. He didn’t speak until he’d gotten her stuffed into the cramped front passenger seat and had gotten into the driver’s seat; he cranked the heat up as high as he could then put the car in gear and pulled away from the scene. Other officers were already there, further down the river walk, investigating the source of the reported gunfire. He suspected the source was sitting in his passenger seat.

  “Now talk,” he ordered. “Who are you?”

  “I told you, I’m with the FBI—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” he interrupted. “I’m not in the mood for it. Who are you? Because the evidence I saw at the hotel room that you and your partner apparently were inhabiting suggests that either you were honest when you said you were FBI, or you lied to me, and I can assure you, I do not like liars.”

  Tate could see the exact moment the woman gave up any thought of trying to create a story. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked like she deflated, hunching forward to rest her elbows against her thighs and her forehead against the dash. “Oh God, Damon’s going to kill me,” she muttered, her voice muffled by the angle of her head.

  “Who is Damon?” Tate asked. “Is that your partner? And where is your partner?”

  Riley swore again. “Damon isn’t my partner; he’s my father,” she said, flopping back in her seat. She rubbed her hands over her forearms, and Tate wished he could turn the heat up higher. “And my boss. Technically. My partner…well, that’s a long story.”

  “Tell it,” he ordered. “I have plenty of time.”

  Riley looked at him, her expression serious, and when she spoke, she sounded exhausted. “My name is Riley Walker. I do work for the government but not for the FBI. If I told you what I really did for the government, you’d never believe me. My partner and I were attacked at our hotel. We ran because we didn’t have anything else we could do. We’re supposed to stay off the radar. We were planning to meet my brother and our supervisor in Jackson Square, but we were attacked again, and my partner was taken. Kidnapped. Whatever. And I have to get him back. I have to. I can’t do what I’m supposed to do without him.”

  “And what are you supposed to do?” Tate asked.

  “I can’t talk about that,” she said. “I need to focus on getting Scott back. That’s all I’m worried about right now.”

  “So what can you talk about?” Tate asked. He felt frustrated; the woman beside him wasn’t giving him shit, and he had no idea what to tell Detective Butler once all was said and done. Was he supposed to take her into custody? Technically, he knew he should have been driving her straight to the police station, taking her in for questioning about the dead body in the hotel room, but something inside him said, “No, not yet. That isn’t the right course.”

  “I can talk about the fact I need to use your phone,” she said. “Badly.”

  “What for?”

  “I have to call my brother and supervisor, like I said,” she answered. “They have to know what happened. They’ll know how to handle this. And we need to go somewhere safe.”

  The first place that crossed Tate’s mind was the nearest police precinct.

  “And not a police station,” Riley added. “I have somewhere better in mind.” She held her hand out, an expectant look on her face. “Phone?”

  Tate let out a frustrated growl and slipped it out of its holster on his belt, passing it to her. “Make it quick. I still have to figure out what to do with you.”

  Henry Cage sat down in his desk chair so heavily that his spine felt like it jammed up in his back, and he rubbed his face with both hands as shock flooded his system. Dead? Damon was dead? There was no way Damon was dead. The very thought of Damon Hartley being dead was incompatible with everything Henry had ever known about the man. Damon wasn’t careless, didn’t go into situations that he wasn’t absolutely sure he would come out of, because he knew that if he drew attention to himself, if he were caught working in the field when he wasn’t supposed to be, he’d be in potentially life-ending trouble with the Committee. And there was no way Damon would risk that.

  But belying all those thoughts was the images he was watching on the television screen mounted on his office wall. A news helicopter circled a beautiful suburban neighborhood, shining a massive spotlight down on the rubble of what used to be Damon’s two-story home, reduced to a pile of refuse that was currently burning at one end—probably where the kitchen had once been. Near where the garage had stood, Henry could just make out the partially buried remains of Damon’s motorcycle. There was no sign of the director’s SUV, which gave Henry hope, until he remembered that
Damon had given it to Zachariah and Ashton so they could flee the city.

  The soft thump of a pair of heeled footsteps on carpet met his ears, and he tore his eyes away from the activity on the screen to see his secretary, Vanessa Ioannides, hurrying into the room, a stricken expression on her face. “What’s the news?” she demanded. “What have you heard?”

  “Only what I’ve seen on television,” he told her, motioning toward the screen. “They’re saying that there’s been no sign of the homeowner. Rescue crews are searching the rubble.”

  “What about Zachariah’s apartment?” she asked, sinking into one of the visitor chairs across from his desk.

  “Three dead,” he reported, “and two missing. Rescuers are looking for them, too.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, eyes riveted to the television, waiting impatiently for any news of Damon’s survival or lack thereof. Then Vanessa asked cautiously, “If Damon is still alive, he’ll call us, right?”

  “I would hope so,” Henry replied. “But this is Damon we’re talking about. For all we know, he might decide to keep his survival quiet. Even if he survived, there’s a good chance we’ll never know he did. We can only assume at this point that he’s dead.”

  The phone in the outer office started ringing, and Vanessa rose reluctantly from her chair to answer it. While she was gone, Henry took out his cell phone and stared at it like he was willing it to go off, like he was waiting for Damon to call and let him know that he was all right. He and Damon had been partners for years, back when the Agency had done that sort of thing. He knew almost all of Damon’s secrets—he was probably one of the only people on the planet who the man had been willing to confide in. He’d known about Damon’s affair with Mary Walker, had been fully aware of it when he’d gotten her pregnant, and had even found creative ways to cover for her so she and Damon wouldn’t get in trouble for their indiscretions. And he’d helped smuggle Zachariah to the Lawrences in Texas and had kept an eye on Riley from afar when Damon couldn’t. He’d covered for Damon in more ways than he could count, including keeping secrets that, if it’d been known he harbored them, would have gotten him killed. And now Damon was probably dead, and he was left without the man he considered the closest thing he had to a friend.