by Jackie May
And me? I’m…I’m having a hard time thinking straight. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel the complexity of my emotions dissipating, replaced by primal instincts—my fox taking over with its black and white reflexes: fight or flight. And fight is out of the question. My fox will flee.
I’ll shift. I’ll run away.
I don’t want to, but I’ll have to. The reflex is too strong, triggered by the vampire bite burning at my neck. Shifters aren’t turned by a vampire bite. Untreated, it will slowly kill me, like poison.
Claws extend from my fingertips. My desperate pleas to resist, to stay here, to keep fighting, now feel detached, as though another person is shouting at me. A shiver ripples up and down my spine. Here it comes.
There’s a sudden rumble in the ground as the cargo hold beneath me begins to open. Rolling onto hands and knees, I shake off a bout of dizziness to focus my eyes on the domed roof. It has split down the middle, revealing a dark chasm that grows wider and wider.
I shake my head again, trying to cut through the fog in my mind. The cargo hold is opening, I say to myself. They got inside. They found the controls. They’re opening the cargo hold roof. I know why. Don’t I?
I need to shift.
No, I command myself. Don’t. Not yet. The doors are opening. They can get to Arael from above. But it’s three stories down. Too far.
I have to shift.
Too far. Too high. Impossible.
I feel my body ripple again—here it comes.
No! Not impossible. Not for her. All at once, my mind grabs hold of a complete thought. The doors are opening for Beyona. She’ll swoop down from the sky, easy pickings.
Raising my eyes to the night sky, my fear is confirmed. Against the backdrop of gray clouds, a dark shape streaks toward the opening chasm.
My next thought is the last: Jay is down there.
I pop up and run—sideways at first, but quickly correcting my course, dashing straight for interception. The roof continues to roll back, carrying me away with it. I dig deep, pushing my legs harder, faster. I lean forward so far that if my legs weren’t propelling me, I’d fall flat on my face. The harpy drops into a vertical dive, gaining speed. I don’t even have time to recalculate my trajectory. Reaching the edge of the chasm, I hurl myself across it like a missile.
I only have brief flashes of memory after that. The world spinning. My stomach flopping in another long freefall. Black feathers in my face. My claws digging into porcelain white skin. A terrifying shriek.
I don’t remember hitting the floor, but I know we have, because the last thing I see is Jay. He’s shouting at me with no sound. The world has stopped spinning, but it’s now at a weird angle—sideways. I see Jay’s frightened eyes locked on mine before he is eclipsed by enormous black wings.
I hear a deafening sound that might be a gunshot, or it might just be the sound of me blacking out.
I awaken to the sound of a flatline from a heart monitor. It’s a hospital sound, but I’m not in a hospital. And I’m not dead. Slowly, like a computer restarting, my brain spins up, recalling events, scanning my body for serious injuries, assessing my surroundings. I’m still in the cargo hold. Its roof is open. I see clouds lit gray by the moon.
Hillerman crouches in front of me, turning her head sideways to match mine. “Don’t try to move.”
“How long—” I cough, which causes a shooting pain in my ribs. “How long was I out?”
“Not long. Thirty seconds. I just got down here.”
I wince with the effort of trying to comprehend. Thirty seconds. That can’t be right. It’s too quiet. There’s no battle raging. “It’s over?”
“For now.”
I close my eyes. I feel like I could sleep for a week.
“The Agency’s on their way. Nick’s bringing healers, so just sit tight.”
My mind flashes with an image of Russo on the ground, bleeding. Seems like it was weeks ago, but I guess it’s only been a few minutes. “Russo,” I rasp.
Hillerman sighs. “He’ll make it.”
“Was he shot?”
“Twice. Both times…” She struggles against some sort of complicated emotion. “Both shots were meant for me, but he…”
I widen my eyes, which hurts my bruised face. “He took a bullet for you? Two bullets?”
“The big idiot. He pushed me down and sat on me.”
I want to laugh, but that’s not happening. My ribs are on fire. I manage a sort of wheezing chuckle. “Of course he did. Is Brenner up there with him? You know partners worry more than housewives.”
Hillerman surveys the wound at my neck and says, “Just try not to move. I mean it.”
My grin fades. Her answer—or lack of one—is alarming to me. “Charlotte,” I say. It takes me a moment to find the voice to ask again, “Is Jay up there?”
She places a firm hand on my shoulder. “Shayne, you know he’d never leave you here, not for anybody, even his partner.”
I try to get up. She holds me down, but after the look I flash her, she lets go. Stumbling to my feet, I look around. Aside from Hillerman and me, the only other person in the cargo hold is Arael Moaz, and he’s dead, lifeless in his hospital bed with a gunshot to the chest. The flatline sound comes from his heart monitor.
A long silence stretches out while I piece the story together in my sluggish mind. The last sound I heard—the gunshot—was Jay shooting Arael. He killed Arael Moaz, which means…
“They took him,” Hillerman confirms. “He didn’t have any other choice. We were beat, and he was face-to-face with Beyona. He had one or two seconds to live, max. So he shot Arael. Brilliant, actually. They can’t kill him now. Arael’s spirit will haunt him. They’re connected. Beyona will need Jay in order to keep Arael close until they find a new vessel.”
She waits in silence while I take an uncharacteristically long time to comprehend what she’s saying. A piercing pain is skewering my heart, while merciless voices in my head hammer at my insecurities, now totally exposed to their worst fears. You knew this would happen. Don’t you dare act surprised, because you knew it, and everybody else knew it, and you didn’t listen. Why are you so stupid? How many people have to tell you the same thing before you’ll listen? Now he’s gone, and nobody will care or feel bad for you, because you did this to yourself.
My words come out thick and slow. “She…took him?”
“Yes. He didn’t fight it. I think he knew that if she took him, the battle would be over. He was right. She grabbed him in her talons and flew straight up and out. If I had a chopper on hand, we could’ve followed, but…” She clears her throat. “Soon as she left, it was over. The rest of them retreated.”
“And you sent people after them?”
“What people? Half my team was wiped out. The other half needs a hospital.” She rubs her eyes, forcing calm into her voice. “But we will, Shayne. I promise you. We’ve got your tracker, remember? Thanks to you, that revenant will lead us right to them. We’ll send a whole army.”
Thanks to me. My tracker. The tracker which is now stuck in the neck of a revenant at the bottom of the Detroit River. “My tracker…” I say, and only those two words come out before something breaks in me. I don’t speak again, not for hours.
It’s hard to think back on that time, much less put it into words. Even now, my fingers tremble over the keys of my laptop as the feeling comes back. A thick, heavy feeling. Something sitting on your chest. It’s hard work just breathing. The thing is, there’s no physical equivalent to this kind of heartache. You can’t just say, Oh, imagine being stabbed in the spine, or your Achilles tendons slashed, or needles inserted beneath your fingernails. It’s not like that. And it’s not just a kind of sadness, either. It’s a bitterness, a poison. It’s…I don’t want to think about it. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. The fact is, if any of you have felt this, then you understand, and the rest of you simply can’t.
Jay is gone.
The shock is literally stunning. I ca
n’t feel anything. Not my gushing neck or my broken bones. Something’s wrong with my lungs, because there’s a wheezing sound when I breathe. I hear it, but I don’t feel it. I sit there in a kind of surreal daze as people bustle around me. Their voices sound garbled to me. Even when they lower their face to make eye contact with me and over-enunciate their words, I don’t understand. Hillerman tries; an FBI medic tries; when I’m shepherded up to the ship’s deck, Nick Gorgeous is there and he tries. Finally, Enzo, the Agency’s best healer, shoos everybody away and goes to work on my neck. In the past, I’ve heckled Enzo mercilessly for being such a quiet, introspective person—almost a mute—but right now I can’t think of a better person to be with.
Well, actually…I can think of one obvious person. That’s when the tears come. Not loud, messy sobbing. Just a gentle but continuous overflow down both cheeks, dripping from my trembling chin. Enzo makes a gesture to breathe. I exhale slowly through chattering teeth.
At some point I end up in the back of a car, then led into the Agency. Lots of faces there, all gawking at me, but somebody has given them the memo not to try and speak to me. I’m sure I look just how I feel. There’s a giant bandage attached to one side of my neck; my arm’s in a sling; my face is bruised and cut and burned.
Dark thoughts—black thoughts—boil up from gashes splitting open in my heart. I entertain the bitter, unfair, and self-centered thought that everybody’s probably cheering the fact that Shayne Davies finally got what she deserved, which is exactly what everybody told me would happen. The whole world is against me. I don’t know what I ever did to them.
Scratch that. I know exactly what I did. I dared to have the life they all wanted. Young and happy, with a great job, a great love life, a soul mate. All these miserable bastards want that, and they couldn’t stand that I had it. Nick Gorgeous is probably patting himself on the back. Donna, I’m sure, is grinning smugly behind her computer monitor.
But when I dart a glance across the office, Nick offers me a water with a sympathetic look, and Donna becomes flustered when I catch her watching me with concern.
Determined to stay wounded, I decide it’s even worse to think that they’re all feeling sorry for me. I just want to get the hell out of here. Why on earth am I just sitting here like a zoo animal on display? I should get up and march right out that door. Forget Director West. The last place on the planet I want to be right now is in her office for a debriefing.
Another lie. There is one place that would be worse right now. Which is why I don’t move a muscle, and when Madison West opens her door and signals, I pull my blanket tightly around my shoulders and shuffle obediently into her office. I lower into a chair across from her desk and stare down at my shoes.
It’s quiet. I hear the soft finger taps of Director West silencing her phone. Gently, she pulls out a desk drawer, sets the phone inside, then closes it. For a long moment, she simply sits watching me. Then I hear the squeak of chair wheels as she pushes away from her desk. Padding across the carpet, she opens a mini fridge, pulls out two beers, twists the cap off of one, and sets it in front of me.
A nice gesture, if not a little patronizing, but the walls I’ve put up are high and thorny. Nobody gets through. And especially not somebody who’s probably just dying to rub it in my face that I’ve, yet again, met her expectations by totally making a mess of everything. I’m determined to sit stoically, frowning at the floor, but my eyes betray me again with tears when a fresh wave of despair washes over me. I think of Jay out there somewhere terrible and dark, at the mercy of demons. Who knows what they’re doing to him. Not offering him a blanket and a beer, that’s for sure.
“I don’t need you to talk, Shayne,” she says quietly. “I don’t need a thing from you. We don’t have to do this now. But, I just thought…” She chooses her words carefully. “I remember being in your shoes—losing somebody very dear to me—and the last place on earth I wanted to go was back to our home. Alone.”
That’s such a bull’s-eye to the truth that I can’t hold back any longer. I pull the blanket over my face and break into a million pieces, right there in front of my boss. It’s not loud, but it’s messy and long-winded. Each time I feel like I’m getting a grip, catching my breath, more aftershocks ripple in. I keep the blanket shut tightly over my face.
Director West waits patiently. After a long time, she says, “I also remember that the last thing I wanted at the time was a debriefing. But surprisingly, it actually helped to talk through it.”
I hear the sound of something being pushed across her desk toward me. Reaching out blindly, I feel the box of tissues, take three in rapid succession, and shove them into my nostrils. As I work to clean myself up beneath the cover of the blanket, my mind reaches back to a lifetime ago, when Nick Gorgeous lectured me about Director West and the choice she made, killing her lover when he got into some dark shit. What had he done that was so wrong? Nick hadn’t told me that part. It doesn’t matter. Her choice is unthinkable, no matter what he did. I wouldn’t have done it, and I can’t help but think she must be a cold-ass bitch for doing it. She couldn’t have loved him. Not like I do.
Finally, I lower the blanket, deciding to talk. Or, at least, try. I’m not sure my throat will loosen up enough for words to get through. I swallow like a million times and clear my throat. My first attempt comes out only a whisper, so I try again, louder. “I don’t care what we talk about. I’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. I’m sure everything we did was either against Agency policy, or against the law, or just plain idiotic. Probably all three. But it’s not like I care if you punish me. Go ahead.”
She nods thoughtfully, then uncaps her beer and takes a sip. “Well…I assume you might be referring to Detective Russo.”
“Ah. Great place to start. Yes, we purposefully exposed another human to the underworld, then pushed him straight into the deep end.” I give a short laugh of derision. “Genius.”
“Reckless and unethical,” she says gravely. “And yet, Detective Russo seems no worse for wear.”
“Demons shot him! Twice!”
“And nobody on the face of this planet—human or underworld—has ever been more pleased to be so afflicted, let me tell you. He’s all smiles at the hospital.”
“That’s because he saved Hillerman’s life, which scores him major points, and for some unholy reason, the only thing bigger than his big blockhead is the boner he has for her.”
“I think you’re right. Special Agent Hillerman is the only visitor he’ll allow.”
I turn on the sarcasm. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did he turn you down?”
“I have many questions for him, naturally. But that can wait. I only feel sorry for his nurses. They’re already smitten with him.”
“Too late. Hillerman’s got him under her power. I’m not entirely sure she’s not a vampire master.”
West makes a polite smile that comes across more like a grimace. “She does seem to be more than meets the eye. Don’t you think?”
I shift my eyes away from hers. If she’s fishing for the dirt on Hillerman, she won’t get it from me. I haven’t forgotten Hillerman’s warning to trust no one, not even Madison West. I lead us away from the topic. “None of this was her idea. For obvious reasons, she was against bringing Russo in.”
“Obvious reasons, meaning her belief that knowledge of the underworld can only ruin a human’s life?”
“It ruined hers. It ruined—” I gulp down a hard lump in my throat. “It ruined Jay’s.”
“I don’t think you believe that,” she says, “but let’s drop it.” She leans back in her chair, crossing one leg over her knee. “You know I have to ask. Where were you tonight, Shayne? Hillerman wore a ball gown, Russo a tuxedo.”
I shake my head. “I can’t tell you. Not unless you can first tell me where you were tonight.” When her eyebrows raise, I continue quickly. “Because where I was, everybody wore masks. How do I know you weren’t one of them?”
She gives a convincing performa
nce of surprise. “A masquerade?”
“Good guess.”
Her shoulders slump. “I see. And I take it this masquerade was for sorcerers, which is why you wonder if I was among them?”
In my heart, I know West wasn’t there, but I’m in no mood to be generous. I level a hard stare at her. Let her grovel a bit.
She doesn’t, of course. In her thick-skinned matter-of-fact way, she says, “Perfectly understandable. You wouldn’t be one of our best agents if you didn’t consider all options, even at great risk to your job.”
“If you had been there tonight, the least of my worries would be getting fired for calling you out. This group’s not playing around.”
“It sounds like you’ve already decided I wasn’t involved.”
“Maybe I’m just playing dumb so you won’t have me killed.”
“Always bluffing. Honestly, it works. Every time I think I’ve got you pegged, you surprise me. I’ve been looking into this group ever since the thing with King Paul at the Christmas party, and I’ve gotten nowhere. But you, who I expressly ordered to stay away from the sorcerer community, blow the case wide open.”
“Is that an official reprimand?”
“On the contrary, it’s a commendation.”
“Great. Were you there tonight, or not?”
“I was not. I’ve been here all night with Parker and Oliver. They can witness.”
“No good. Sorcerers and vampires aren’t exactly on my nice list right now.”
“I can’t say I feel any different at the moment. Obviously, I was wrong to trust Theo Coltrane. Very wrong. And now Windsor will also retaliate. War is coming, and Detroit will be the battlefield.”
“Well, you can count me out of that fight. The band is officially broken up. Jay is…” My voice threatens to break again. I shift in my seat, summoning anger for strength. “He’s gone. Russo’s down. And Hillerman—”