Age of Aquarius

by Tawdra Kandle

  My heart was pounding, which was ridiculous because I knew where they were. I was being silly. I was acting ridiculous. Reminding myself of that, I took another step into the bedroom, and my foot bumped into something. It was both hard and yet . . . soft. It felt like—

  I fumbled in the pocket of my jeans to find my cell phone. My hand was shaking as I tried to flick on the flashlight app. By mistake, I hit the blinking strobe light instead of the steady beam, and suddenly, the room was lit up, and then dark again. Light . . . and then dark. I wrinkled my forehead and attempted to put on the right setting.

  But before I could do it, the light blinked on, illuminating the wide-opened, blank staring eyes of my best friend as she lay on the floor at my feet.

  I screamed, stumbling backward against the wall. My heart thudded, and adrenaline rolled through me, the strangling desire to flee surging in my blood. I stabbed at the button on my phone again with my thumb and finally, the steady light turned on. With hands that trembled, I raised the phone so that the beam spilled onto the floor.

  Norrie was sprawled on the carpet. Her arms lay at odd angles next to her body, and for some reason, I couldn’t quite make sense of that. Her head was twisted so that her face was clearly visible to me, and the eyes that gazed up were empty. Her mouth sagged open, and below that, a gash across her throat oozed blood.

  “Norrie,” I whispered. “Norrie, my God, Norrie. Oh my God, Norrie. What did you . . . oh my God, my God . . .”

  Swallowing back a wave of sick, I forced myself to trail the light down her body. Her legs were straight, lying almost primly. One of her shoes was missing, and that distressed me more than it should have.

  Her bare foot rested against a patch of hair whose color was nearly identical to her own. I closed my eyes. I’d known it was likely, of course. From the minute I’d realized Norrie was lying here in her bedroom, dead, a part of me had also known that Tom had to be dead, too. He might have been a goofball who hadn’t reached his potential yet, but he was also a loyal, protective brother, and he would’ve given his life to save his sister.

  Or more accurately, he had given his life because here he lay. His throat too was cut, but his chest was also bloodied, and the section of my brain that was still functioning on some level recognized stab wounds. Many, many stab wounds.

  I didn’t know how long I stood there, shrinking against the wall, light still shaking in one hand, but it was the screaming that brought me around. The screaming wouldn’t stop. When I realized that it was coming from me, I stuffed one fist into my mouth to try to stop it.

  Outside the bedroom, I heard a crash, and it jerked me from my stupor. It was coming from the direction of my bedroom, and all at once, common sense came back over me in an encompassing, drowning wave.

  Norrie was dead. Tom was dead. They were lying here in the apartment I shared with Norrie, and there wasn’t anything to indicate that the person who had done this to them wasn’t still here. And just yesterday, a man had come to the door of this apartment, asking for me. It couldn’t be coincidence. Someone was after me. That someone had come tonight, thinking that he would find me here, and when he didn’t, he’d killed my best friend and her brother, the only semblance of family I had in the world.

  And furthermore . . . if I didn’t get the blue blazing heck out of here, I was likely to be dead, too, because judging from the sounds coming closer, I was next on the list of victims.

  I didn’t know what to do. I could hear him creeping ever closer now, and I had no idea how to save myself. I could call 911, but I was fairly certain that by the time help arrived, I’d be here on the floor with my friends. I could run, but if the murderer was waiting just outside the door, he’d easily be able to grab me and stab, slice . . . I gagged and sobbed.

  If I stayed here, my fate was sealed. Lurching away from the wall, I managed to turn off the light and stumble toward the door of the bedroom. If I got up a good burst of speed, maybe I had a shot at—

  “Joy!”

  A blinding light burst into being in the hallway, and Seth, my customer from the diner, stood there. His face was drawn, and his eyes darted from me to whatever might be waiting in the dark near my bedroom. I focused on him, wanting nothing more than to reach him, knowing somehow that safety lay there.

  Before I could do it, a shadowy figure struck out at him. With shocking speed and precision, Seth executed a series of kicks and punches, pushing back his attacker while not appearing to even try very hard. When he landed back on his feet, his body was between me and whatever had tried to hurt us. The light around his body enveloped both of us, a strange sort of warmth surrounding our bodies. His face was near mine, and his blue eyes burned intensely. His voice was low, nearly a growl.

  “Get out of here. Run now. Don’t take your car. Get on a bus, or a train, and get as far away from here as you can, as fast as you can.” He reached for my hand and pressed a bunch of paper into it, closing my fist. “Take this. Don’t use credit cards or debit cards or anything else anyone could use to trace you. You are in danger, Joy. You are in the worst kind of danger that exists.”

  “But—but Norrie and Tom.” Against my will, I glanced over my shoulder at the bodies. “They—they’re—”

  “I know. I know.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Joy. But you can’t save them now, and they wouldn’t want you to die, too. Please do what I say. The minute I step away from you, we’re both in danger. I can hold him off long enough for you to get away, but there’s no time for anything else. Do you understand me?”

  My head bobbed, and my teeth chattered. “But . . . but where . . . how will I know . . . when or if I’m safe or if I’m going in the wrong direction or who to trust . . .?”

  “Just get away, and I’ll find you. I’m the only one you can trust now, and once I find you again, I’ll tell you everything, I promise, and then I’ll take you to people who can help you. For now, just focus on moving. Keep moving.”

  I wrapped my arms around my waist. “I’ll go to—”

  “No.” Seth pressed one finger to my lips. “Don’t tell me where you’re going. I don’t want to know, because if I don’t know, I can’t be forced to tell anyone.”

  “How will you find me, then?” I managed to squeak out the words.

  “I have my ways. Don’t worry about me. You must go, now.” Without any further discussion, Seth pushed me away, down the hall into the living room. I used the momentum of his shove to dart out the front door and keep moving, down the steps of the porch and into the uncertain darkness of the night.

  Harper Creek, Florida

  March, 2017

  Rafe

  “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.” I stepped into the large second-story meeting room, grinning. “Or maybe it would be more accurate to say, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile.”

  At the end of the long mahogany table, Cathryn Whitmore, who was for all intents and purposes my boss here at Carruthers Initiative Institute, sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Hello, Rafe. Kudos on the dramatic entrance, although I hardly think I qualify as all the gang. Where’s Nell?”

  I dragged out one of the wooden chairs and dropped my ass into it. “She and Zoe are over at the townhouse working on that special project with Joss.”

  I couldn’t lie; it was still weird to say my current girlfriend’s name in the same sentence with my dead ex-lover’s name. When Joss had been struck down by Mallory Jones, one of the powerful witches who was part of the Hive, while we were undercover on a commune in rural Georgia, I’d been destroyed by the loss, brokenhearted by her violent death. I hadn’t even been able to tell her goodbye. Although I didn’t have any doubt now that Nell was my soulmate and the love of my life, Joss would always be part of who I was.

  A few months back, a group of us from Carruthers had attempted to bring back from across the great divide a woman named Delia, a deceased agent who had sec
retly been working for the Hive before her death. We needed vital information from her to help prepare us for the battle ahead. Thanks to some sort of mystical snafu, it was Joss who had crossed over instead . . . and so far, she hadn’t gone back to the other side. Cathryn and Zoe, who was a parapsychologist working for Carruthers, felt that Joss had been sent over to help win the battle we were facing. If that was true, I wasn’t going to complain; having Joss around again was an amazing gift, and after some initial and understandable awkwardness, she and Nell had struck up a friendship of sorts. The only issue we faced was that Joss’s existence in this plane seemed to be confined to the townhouse where she’d lived in life and to which she’d returned after death. Since she couldn’t be much help to us stuck there, Zoe and Nell were working hard to figure out how to cut those bonds.

  Cathryn nodded. “Let’s hope they have some success today.”

  “They will.” The man who came into the room was tall, with dark hair and vivid blue eyes. He went straight to Cathryn’s chair, laying his hands on her shoulders. “It’s a good news day. Did you tell Rafe about Daeglan’s call?”

  “Not yet. He just got here.” She twisted to look up at Seamus O’Casey, one of our newest allies in this battle against the Hive. He was the middle of three brothers who’d come over from Ireland to join us at Cathryn’s behest. And unless I was completely off my game, which I knew I wasn’t, he was also head over heels in love with my boss lady.

  As though to prove my point, Seamus touched Cathryn’s cheek and bent to brush a light kiss over her lips. “Have I told you today that you’re beautiful?”

  I’d known Cathryn Whitmore for a long time now, and I’d never seen her truly flustered by a man. But as she gazed up at Seamus, a pretty pink blush spread down her cheeks and she smiled, almost in spite of herself.

  “You have. Thank you. But we’re at work now. We have to be serious. Focused.”

  “Ah, yes. Sorry about that.” He sounded anything but as he took a seat near Cathryn. “All right, then. I’m ready to be all business.”

  She rolled her eyes and looked at me. “Daeglan called earlier this morning. He’s somehow managed to convince Sionnach Creven to join us. They have to make a brief side trip, and then they’ll both be here.”

  “Damn.” I laced my fingers together behind my head. “He got the fox? Huh. Veronica’s going to be pissed. She told me the kitsune turned her down flat.”

  “As she did.” A cool hand rested on my shoulder, and I tried not to flinch. Veronica Carruthers was Cathryn’s many-times over great-grandmother and a very old vampire. She’d only recently made her presence known to her family, although she’d been watching over them for generations. I knew that she was on our side, but I couldn’t help the fact that being around her gave me a little bit of a wiggins.

  “Hey, Veronica.” I sat forward under the guise of turning to say hello, subtly shaking off her hand as I did. “No offense.”

  “None taken. The fox did indeed turn me down flat.” One side of her perfect mouth quirked up. “However, I am not—what did you say? Pissed. On the contrary, I’m very pleased. I could tell while I was with her that the kitsune is very powerful, and I’m glad that Daeglan was able to use his powers of persuasion to bring her to our side.”

  Seamus grinned as he pulled out a chair and offered it to Veronica. For some reason, he was endlessly fascinated with his girlfriend’s ancestor. Since he’d been here at Harper Creek, I’d often caught the two of them deep in conversation about history and the habits of vampires. It was actually kind of weird, but since it didn’t bother Cathryn, I sure wasn’t going to say anything.

  “Where were your brother and the fox going? I thought time was of the essence and all that shit.” I propped my feet on the chair across the table from me, earning a glare from Cathryn, who was constantly reminding me to treat her family’s furnishings with more respect.

  “Ah . . . Daeglan didn’t say, exactly. Only that Sionnach had been on a personal mission, and he’d promised her that he’d help her complete it. He did tell me that it wasn’t at all dangerous.”

  “Everything is dangerous right now,” Cathryn murmured. When Seamus scowled, she sat up a little straighter and laid a hand on his arm. “But I’m sure your brother and the fox will be fine. Sionnach is a force to be reckoned with.”

  “And now that force is on our side.” Veronica nodded. “Where do we stand, Cathryn? Have we recruited everyone on your short list?”

  The younger woman spread her hands. “Everyone we hoped to convince to join us has or will shortly. Cillian is buried deep in research just now down in the library, trying to make a little headway on the details of the ritual.” Cillian was the youngest O’Casey brother; his gift was medical telekinesis, and he also had a knack for books, apparently. “There are quite a few who will be on their way here shortly, and the rest will meet us . . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes slid toward Veronica. “Soon. At a place that is to be determined.”

  I frowned as I looked from grandmother to granddaughter. “What place?”

  Veronica smiled slightly. “A safe house, you might call it. I had a sense quite a while ago that it might become necessary at some point to maintain a residence that was completely off the grid, as you all say now. Something that couldn’t be connected to Carruthers or to any of us, really, so that we’d be able to make our plans in relative safety.”

  “But Harper Creek is safe, isn’t it?” I faced Cathryn again. “It’s warded up the wazoo, plus you have regular security here, too.”

  “We do.” She glanced at Veronica again. “But it may not be . . . enough.”

  “What do you mean? What’s going on?” I was used to secrets floating around at Carruthers, but usually, I was in on them. I didn’t like the feeling of being cut out of the loop.

  Cathryn folded her hands on the table. “Once we have everyone in place here, once we’re all en route to the safe house, this operation is going dark. There will be no communication with the outside world—”

  “Yeah, I know that. It’s why Nell and I spent a week in King with my grandparents last month.”

  She nodded. “But we’re going totally dark. We won’t have any contact with Carruthers, either. We hadn’t planned on this, but we now know that it’s necessary.”

  “Why?” Foreboding crept over me, and I remembered those who had betrayed us in the past. Emma had been a mind manipulator who’d tried to sabotage an important operation years ago, when we’d just begun to learn about the Hive. Then there was Delia, who had been Joss’s mentor and close friend, more of a surrogate mother than a co-worker; we hadn’t known that she was a double agent until after she’d died from cancer. In this line of work, trust was required, but it was never easily given. It had to be earned, and even then, we were all careful about what we said to whom.

  “There have been a few developments. First, the Hive operative who came at Seamus and me in Ireland . . . that was a wake-up call that we’re not flying under the radar to the extent we’d assumed. And then Daeglan and Sionnach apparently ran across a group working for the Hive while they were . . . ah, working an aspect of the mission. Combined with a few other unsettling situations I’ve been hearing from around the world, I’m fairly certain we have some kind of leak here.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “So, we leave headquarters and go dark, as you said. What’s to say the leak doesn’t come with us? Who says it’s not someone already intimately acquainted with us and our plans?”

  Cathryn regarded me steadily. “We’ve vetted this team. We know that none of us are the leak.” Her mouth tightened.

  “Well, sure you did, but you thought Emma and Delia were trustworthy, too, once upon a time.”

  Veronica spoke up. “We took things a step further this time. We . . . performed more complete scans and examinations on the minds of everyone who will be part of the mission.”

  I frowned. “When did you do that?” I was sure I’d remember a new set of mind invasions.


  Cathryn looked pained. “We’ve been running them over the last few weeks.”

  “Without our knowledge?” I felt vaguely ill and violated.

  “Yes, eejit, without your knowledge.” Seamus threw up his hands. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? If you were prepared, you’d be able to cover things up. Hide what you’re thinking. It would defeat the purpose. It was done while we slept. In case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t know about it ahead of time, either. But weren’t you just the one demanding Cathryn take more precautions?” He laid one protective hand over hers where it rested on the table. “Well, she has. Now be grateful or shut up about it.”

  I sat for a minute, digesting all of it. “You, uh—vetted all of our minds? Thoroughly? While we slept?”

  Cathryn’s gaze flickered to Veronica and then back to me. “Everyone who’s going to be involved with this operation, whether they’re already here on site or will be here shortly. Everyone, that is, except Nell.”

  That was jolting. “Why not Nell? She’s the most powerful person on the team, hands down.”

  “I trust her.” Cathryn’s lips turned up at the edges. “Nell has had chances to betray us, and she never has. Then there’s the additional benefit that she loves you and would never do anything to cause you harm.” She paused. “It seemed unnecessary, after everything she’s been through, to make her suffer that indignity. Plus, I know Nell. If she intended to help the other side, she’d never be sneaky about it. She’s more likely to blow me up in the middle of a crowd than to kill me in some underhanded way. She’s no Mallory Jones.”

  The boss lady had a point. I loved Nell with every fiber of my being, and I knew she was the woman for me, not just now but forever. But there was no denying that she sometimes scared the shit out of me. Still, it occurred to me that Cathryn was astute. Nell wouldn’t hide her betrayal. And the fact that Cathryn trusted her enough not to invade her mind would mean more to her than to the rest of us. It had been a good call.