Shadow Twin

by Rachel Neumeier

  Because Ezekiel definitely remembered him, judging from the chilly look in his eye. Black dogs ran hot, generally. Not Ezekiel. Not right now. Right at this moment, he was practically radiating cold dislike.

  Miguel really hoped that wasn’t going to be a problem. Killing Senator Supervillain was one thing. If Colonel Herrod couldn’t spin that little episode right around and stand it on its head in front of any congressional committee ever convened, Miguel would eat a Special Forces badge. But if Santibañez was actually a senator’s nephew, well, Miguel would have had to be pretty dim not to have a good idea why Herrod thought that might be a plus. And stupider than that not to understand that Ezekiel had better not tear him up. The question was whether Ezekiel realized that. Or cared. Or whether Grayson did.

  Grayson looked the Special Forces man up and down after Herrod was gone, a slow, thoughtful look that even Miguel found hard to read. Did the Master have this kind of fraught hostage thing figured or not? Miguel wouldn’t bet against Grayson Lanning figuring every angle up, down, and sideways, but he was still a black dog. You had to keep in mind that for him it’d be dominance issues first and rationality second. Yeah, hard to tell for sure.

  Lieutenant Santibañez met the Master’s gaze—Madre de Dios, lately it seemed like Miguel was always having to explain about that to one macho guy or another. Maybe he should write a book. But at least Santibañez didn’t say a word. He stood with his back straight and his arms folded over his chest, which could be taken as defiance, but then on the other hand he’d come into this house practically naked, nothing but that knife in his boot. That wasn’t a bad start, dealing with the Master of Dimilioc.

  Grayson said abruptly, to Ezekiel, not Santibañez, “Come with me,” nodded to Miguel as well, beckoned to Natividad, and walked out. That left the Special Forces lieutenant in there alone with Étienne, which ought to be all right. Étienne might be a bastard, but, yeah, it should be all right.

  So, though he cast a worried glance back, Miguel obeyed Grayson’s signal and followed the Master out. Grayson ignored him at first. Instead he said to Carter, “Please find James—I believe you will locate him in the room directly above the front door—and assist in keeping an eye on our visitors.” Then he turned to Natividad. “It seems likely we will shortly be attempting once more to track and destroy our enemies. I do not want to take undue risks in this exercise. Given her unique experience, Stéphanie might well be able to assist in designing some sort of tool which might serve us well. If you would look in on her, I have some hope your presence alone may aid in her recovery. If not, I suggest you might consider rituals related to the Beschwichtigan. I suspect something of that kind might help Stéphanie. Please consult with Théo Callot and see what you can do. Haste may possibly be important, but I strictly warn you not to endanger yourself.”

  Natividad nodded, looking determined. Miguel cleared his throat, but before he could speak, Grayson added to Alejandro, “If you would accompany your sister and ensure she does not attempt anything remotely dangerous.”

  “Yes,” agreed Alejandro, dropping a possessive hand on Natividad’s wrist when she started to protest. “Of course I will do that.” He gave her a stern look. So did Grayson. So did Ezekiel. Natividad muttered under her breath, nothing Miguel could quite overhear—probably everyone else did—and stalked away down the hall, her back very straight, ignoring Alejandro’s escort.

  Miguel grinned.

  Then the Master unexpectedly stepped close and gripped his shoulder with one broad hand. Miguel looked up, startled, but they were already moving, Grayson and Ezekiel with Miguel hauled inexorably along into the adjoining room—a much more generic type of office. Grayson nodded to Ezekiel to shut the door, tightened his grip on Miguel’s arm, and demanded, moderately grim, “Did you anticipate that? Raichlen’s arrival? Did you by any remote chance set that up?”

  Miguel just stared for a heartbeat. Then the Master’s demand snapped into place and he said forcefully, “No!” Then he amended that hastily. “No, sir. Definitely not. Nothing like that even occurred to me. I figured he had to have some kind of tracking device, but I thought Natividad’s maraña magica would take care of it. I totally didn’t expect the cavalry to come charging over the hill—and neither did he. I mean, I don’t think he expected that. Did he?”

  Grayson eased back a touch, thankfully. “I believe the colonel was honestly surprised. And not entirely pleased, I think, until he’d had a chance to consider. Ezekiel?”

  “That’s how I read him, Master. First alarmed. Then cautious. Then pleased.”

  Grayson nodded. His lips were pressed tight, he was still glowering, but he seemed to have pulled back from the edge of fury. He asked Miguel, “So, then, is this young men a hostage offered to me in good faith, or bait in a trap? Or does he constitute a trap himself? Your opinion?”

  Miguel had a brief, vivid image of himself pounding his head against a wall to wake up his brain. He ought to have been the one suggesting those possibilities to the Master. The bait in a trap thing hadn’t even occurred to him, although now it was an obvious possibility. He said, “Maybe kind of all three? He’s definitely a real hostage, right? I mean, he’s right here and you could totally rip him into pieces any time you wanted. Bait in a trap, maybe not exactly. I bet he really is a test, though. ’Cause if anything happens to him, I don’t think Dimilioc’s going to be working hand-in-glove with the Special Forces again any time soon. Yeah, I bet if that happened we’d find out we had another dedicated enemy, which we definitely don’t need—” he realized he was probably sounding too authoritative about that and hastily dialed it back a notch. “I mean, sir, unless you think we can’t work with them anyway and want to send a really unmistakable message, but—”

  Grayson twitched an impatient hand. “Go on, Miguel.”

  “Um. Yes. Right. Okay, a trap in himself, well, he is a senator’s nephew. I even remember that now. I mean, I remember there is a Senator Santibañez. From Florida. A pretty smart guy, I guess. Yeah, he’s got fingers in a lot of military pies, I can see he’d probably be pretty okay seeing a nephew of his in the Special Forces. Especially on Herrod’s team. Huh. Yeah, I can see that. I figure Lieutenant Santibañez is kind of a trap that could close either way. I mean, we kill him, we get his uncle down on us along with Herrod, so there’s that. But obviously nobody’s going to do a burn order on us either, not with him right here.”

  The room had been quiet before, but now the quality of the quiet changed. Miguel looked at the Master, swallowing. He had kind of thought Grayson had figured that out. The Master had sounded like he’d figured it out. He said cautiously, “I mean, they know sometimes you can’t take out the creepy awful demonic stuff without dropping a bunker-buster or a little micro nuke in just the right spot. I mean, right at the end of the war, that master vampire in Havana...I mean, nobody could have gotten to it any other way. Obviously that was way before I got into your—our—Dimilioc’s records, but I always assumed you’d deliberately passed that vampire’s location off to the Special Forces...”

  “I did,” Grayson said, his tone grim. “It was the only way to be sure of sending it and all its lesser vampires and blood kin into the fell dark.”

  Miguel nodded. “Right. I mean...yeah. It’s the only good way of getting a whole nest of vampires all at once, if you want to be sure. And if you know just exactly where the nest is. Which, I guess, by now somebody’s got to have this place right here neatly circled on a map somewhere, right? There’s no way they haven’t.”

  That obvious truth sat there for a moment, heavy in the quiet.

  “No one would drop even a micro nuke this close to Denver,” Ezekiel said, but he didn’t say it with a lot of confidence.

  “Well, probably not an actual nuke,” Miguel agreed, carefully deferential. “But something big that goes boom, who knows? Only I don’t think anybody will do anything like that with Senator Santibañez’s nephew right smack in the middle of that circle. Do you figure? No ma
tter how upset they are about Copper Mountain and all that, or whether somebody’s got us conflated with Kristoff and his lot and that demon of his. Which I expect someone has. You know how people are when they’re not too familiar with supernatural stuff: it all looks the same, right? Or,” he added, “I think that’s what Colonel Herrod had in mind. One thing he had in mind. I’m just guessing, though.”

  The Master looked at Ezekiel. “Find out,” he ordered flatly, opened the door, and walked out.

  Ezekiel raised one pale eyebrow at Miguel.

  “Um, if you don’t mind...”

  “Not at all,” Ezekiel said politely, and nodded for Miguel to proceed him out the door.

  But now Miguel held back. “Lieutenant Santibañez...” he wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence and asked finally, “If you don’t mind me asking, does the lieutenant have any extra karma to work off? I mean, I wondered if you have any reason for, uh, a personal grudge?”

  Ezekiel regarded him with a kind of heavy patience that Miguel was pretty sure he’d deliberately borrowed from Grayson’s repertoire. “Not excessively.”

  Yeah. Miguel wasn’t sure whether that was a Yes, but he suspected it wasn’t entirely a No. He doubted the situation was going to get any less fraught for waiting, though. Ezekiel was looking a whole lot better, at least. A couple good meals, a good night’s rest—well, a night and half a day—most of all being back among his own people, with Natividad, and with Grayson keeping an eye on things so he could let himself relax. Ezekiel kind of gave the impression he never relaxed and never needed to, but Miguel was pretty sure a lot of that was an act. So, yeah, it was definitely good to see him looking a lot better. Surely he was no longer quite so likely to snap and kill everybody in sight. Though it’d still probably be better to stick around and keep an eye on things.

  And, damn, he was just going to have to find a chance to teach Santibañez something about edgy, tense, pissed-off black dogs, enough to make sure he didn’t accidentally set off an explosion. That was getting pretty tiresome. He should definitely write a book.

  But all he said, in his meekest tone, was, “All right.”

  Lieutenant Santibañez didn’t seem to have moved a muscle since everybody else had trooped out and left him alone with Étienne. Who wasn’t looking very friendly. But he wasn’t going out of his way to be unfriendly, either, which was about the best you could expect from Étienne Lumondière when he was dealing with a human man. Especially a human who thought he was tough, like say the Special Forces guys.

  Étienne had taken a bound set of maps over to the desk. He was paging slowly through them, probably asking himself where he’d build a secret hideout in Denver if he were a witch, or maybe where he’d go next to kill a lot of people and steal their souls if he were a freed demon. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Santibañez.

  Lieutenant Santibañez was still on his feet, his hands clasped lightly together, studying those maps, upside-down though they must be from his point of view. Or maybe studying Étienne. Covertly, though, if so. That was good. He glanced over when the door opened, nodded to Miguel, and met Ezekiel’s stare. That wasn’t good. Ezekiel was beginning to get that lazy, amused look in his eyes that meant his temper was waking up. It probably hadn’t been very thoroughly asleep.

  Miguel said without pausing, “Lieutenant! How was your trip? You made pretty good time, I guess, considering that you probably had a lot to deal with back in Albuquerque.”

  Lieutenant Santibañez let his attention be drawn away from Ezekiel and the maps. “Hey, Miguel. Yeah, no, that part’s not on me, which is a damn good thing since I have no doubt those camera feeds are going to leak. Sooner rather than later, I’m sure. Lotta hasty damage control in all directions, you bet, which is not exactly my specialty. Good thing the colonel’s all right, since it’ll be way better to have him right there pointing out the highlights to the kiddies during show and tell. He does it right, he probably won’t have too much trouble persuading everybody Connolly got just what he had coming. Nearly everybody. Enough of everybody.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Probably, yeah. I think so.”

  “Good. That sounds pretty good.”

  Santibañez nodded. “I’ve got something for you.” Moving slowly enough not to trigger even a black dog into violence, he took Miguel’s cell phone out of his back pocket and held it out to Miguel.

  Miguel looked at it, and then at the lieutenant. He hadn’t really expected to get it back. He wasn’t at all sure he ought to take it now. “I figure it probably took you guys ten minutes to break my lock, right?”

  “Nobody touched it but me. I didn’t happen to mention I had it. Your lock’s intact. I didn’t try to get in. No tricks, I swear. No tracking devices, no spyware, nothing.”

  Miguel raised his eyebrows. “No me chingues?”

  “I mean it. Lo prometo. I figured I owed you that.” Santibañez made a little take it gesture with the phone. “You can always get rid of it. But you don’t need to. I swear.”

  Well. This was a surprise. But Miguel almost thought he believed him. He looked at Ezekiel, not exactly for permission. Well, yeah, for permission. But also to check his own feeling against the Dimilioc executioner’s much keener senses and honed cynicism.

  Ezekiel raised one eyebrow, way more sardonic and cool than anything Miguel could manage. “He’s telling the truth. So far. Go ahead and take it.”

  Miguel nodded. He took the phone gingerly, touched it on. Looked at the icons. Blanked the screen again and looked at Santibañez. “Thanks, man.”

  The lieutenant shrugged. “Like I said, I figured I owed you. I didn’t break any orders. These days the only person I’d have to report something like that to is the Colonel. And he wasn’t there.” He sighed, theatrically gloomy. “I’ll have to report it to him now, of course. When I get a chance. He’ll scientifically rip me up one side and down the other, I expect. But I don’t think he’ll say I was wrong.”

  “Yeah?” Miguel stuck his phone in his pocket. “Well, thanks. Debt’s totally paid.”

  “That one, maybe.” Santibañez turned deliberately back to Ezekiel. “I owe you too. I’m sorry as hell you got to be one of the highlights of Connelly’s show. It’s not what I would have chosen. Good job tearing off that bastard’s head. Once that tape gets edited, it’ll make a great instructional video.”

  There was a slight pause as Ezekiel considered this.

  Étienne Lumondière had leaned back in his chair, watching with focused attention. Miguel realized he probably should have said something to Étienne before opening up a little chat with the Special Forces lieutenant, but he hadn’t thought of it and now it was too late. Maybe Étienne hadn’t even noticed that, though, or hadn’t taken it as a snub; at least he didn’t seem inclined to make any sarcastic comments about Miguel’s disrespect. Yet, anyway.

  Ezekiel, unsurprisingly, didn’t seem to care two bits for Étienne Lumondière’s opinion. His attention was all for Santibañez. Not in an entirely reassuring way.

  He said finally, “I imagine a good many young soldiers will find a real-time view of black dog speed and strength instructive.”

  Yeah, that was way too polite. Miguel tried to figure out how to get this conversation heading somewhere better before it got worse, but before he could, Santibañez shook his head.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, yeah, definitely, that too. But what I meant was, as long as they don’t panic like a whole flock of headless chickens, everybody in DC will probably benefit from a reminder about the dangers of messing with supernatural monsters who’ll rip off your head without the slightest hesitation, no matter how important you think you are. I did warn him,” the lieutenant added. “But the senator was sure he knew what he was doing. He figured he had the legal right, or could make it look like he did, close enough anyway, so to hell with decency. Lots of people like that in Washington. Fewer after seeing that clip, though, probably.”

  “Warned him
, did you?”

  Santibañez nodded firmly, not looking away. “Right after the first time his goons did the thing with the fingers. You might have missed that part. You were a little distracted right then. But, yeah, I warned him. I thought it was just possible he’d listen to me.”

  “Because you are a senator’s nephew yourself.”

  Santibañez didn’t pretend not to know what Ezekiel meant. He opened a hand, allowing the point. “He had that kind of attitude, yeah. Soldiers are just stupid meat-puppets, pull their strings and they jump, but a guy with the right family isn’t just a soldier, right? So I figured he might at least take half a minute to think about what he was doing, and that’d give the colonel a chance to get back and take care of things. You know how that turned out. I wanted to shoot him right then. Would’ve saved you the trouble of tearing off his head. Maybe I should have.”

  “You were under orders, of course. I gather the senator actually did have authority over you and your people.”

  Another short, crisp nod. “Yeah, technically. After this maybe we’ll see another shakeup in how the Special Forces are handled. God knows Connelly was like a walking, talking demo for why you don’t want to turn military units into some damned senator’s private palace guard. But if I’d moved, I think I could have carried everybody else along with me. Only then we’d have had a little miniature war on our hands right there on base, and legally not a leg to stand on whether we won or lost. But still. I probably should’ve just done it and then dealt with the political fallout later. I didn’t, and that’s on me. I figure that’s why the colonel picked me for this gig.” He stopped then, and waited, meeting Ezekiel’s level gaze.

  Ezekiel stared back with more than a tinge of that lazy, amused killer’s attitude.