Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1)

by Cristelle Comby

  Ramirez and I ducked behind a desk of our own.

  “Never figured your new girlfriend for the Sarah Connor type,” she muttered at me.

  “Will you let that go already?” I snapped.

  “Mr. Townsend’s pinned down,” my ex observed, ignoring me. “Not much we can do unless we get an opening.”

  It came two seconds later. Kennedy managed to drop one of the attackers, but then I heard an ominous click from her S&W. The two remaining shooters turned their attention to my new favorite reporter.

  Ramirez and I exchanged glances and made our move. I laid down some covering fire while she ran to the next desk. She then returned the favor as I went the opposite way. It took us a lot more time than I would have liked, but Ramirez eventually made it to Townsend while I found my way safely to Kennedy.

  She was working the slide of her .40 as I ducked down next to her.

  “Gun’s jammed!” she hissed. “Can’t get it—”

  “Forgot your jewelry,” I said, holding up the necklace.

  “Can’t you see that—”

  “By all hells! Just wear the damn thing, already!” I demanded, hearing Ramirez’s firing from Townsend’s office.

  “This is so stupid,” Kennedy muttered. But then she wrapped the charm around her gun hand. Once she’d done that, the next pull of the slide cleared the S&W’s chamber.

  That was when I realized Ramirez was trying to shout something to me over the shots. The acoustics were so screwy that I couldn’t hear a word she said. I got what she meant a second later, when one of the shooters rushed forward towards us.

  “Die, you die!” the man screamed as he took perfect aim at my head. His eyes were burning bright orange, as he pressed the trigger. I held my breath for the shot … which never came.

  The slick floor swept him off his feet, making him crash chin-first on the tiles. Kennedy didn’t hesitate. She steadied her gun on my arm and put one in his head. I winced and raised my hand, feeling the heat from the muzzle flash. But it could have been a lot worse. In the background, I heard what seemed to be three guns firing it out at regular intervals.

  As I watched, something smoky and foul started coming out of the dead’s man mouth.

  “What the hell?” Kennedy breathed.

  The black cloud assumed the shape of a man from the waist up. Tiny lights flickered on and off inside it, like fireflies. Other than that, it was as undefined as a mannequin in a mall.

  It started rushing at Kennedy, who emptied her clip at it. Do I even need to say that all the shots passed right through it? Earlier, I’d caught sight of a letter opener sitting on a nearby desktop, pure silver by the looks of it. Having nothing to lose, I made a grab for it and used it to stab the shadow in the arm.

  The thing gave an unearthly howl as the point hit home. I lost my grip on the letter opener as the living fog whirled around and used its other arm to pin me to the desk leg. I felt its smoky fingers start to crush my larynx. My attempts to get a hold on it were working out about as well as Kennedy’s attempts to shoot it. In the background, meanwhile, Ramirez was keeping up a steady rate of fire, though the guns returning fire seemed to be faltering.

  I reached out my hand in search of the lost letter opener. Once I found it I brought it up, swinging and cutting the fog arm in two. I had just long enough to get a gulp of fresh air before the arm reattached itself, the black particles of fog coming together again seamlessly. I swear I saw the thing smile at me, lights twinkling inside the black cloud.

  I tried again with the letter opener, but I wasn’t fast enough. An ethereal hand immobilized mine, and the vice grip on my throat returned. Somehow, I had my doubts that even my impressive death insurance would be powerful enough to repel this thick concentrate of bad luck. As I felt myself losing consciousness, I croaked, “The charm, the charm!”

  Almost at once the creature’s head was knocked aside and the hand came off my throat. Taking in a deep breath of fresh air, I realized Kennedy was using the charm as a knuckleduster. She was punching the crap out of the vaporous monster while it continued to scream. I grabbed the letter opener and used it to stab the smog cloud in the chest. On the third swing, it caught the center hole of the charm on the way, embedding it with the point. One final scream that felt like it was going to rip out my eardrums and the lights inside the creature started to grow brighter. They wound up burning the thing from the inside out in a flashbulb burst, leaving behind nothing but a bad swamp gas smell.

  The guns behind us had stopped firing. Then I started hearing … wailing. It wasn’t the unearthly kind of wailing I’d just heard up close, but human grief and agony. I made out “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God …” and “I didn’t … I didn’t mean …” among the cries. It looked like what we’d just overcome had possessed more than just the guy Kennedy had put down near the office entrance.

  “You all right, Mel?” I called out over the desk as I picked up the letter opener and handed Kennedy her good luck charm.

  “Yeah,” she called back. “So is Mr. Townsend. What about you two?”

  “We’re good,” Kennedy piped up, her face looking like she was anything but good. Then she turned to whisper to me. “All right, what the hell just happened, hoss?”

  “Not now,” I said, glad that the explanation was going to have to wait. “I promise I’ll tell you later … but not now.”

  The steady cadence of the Tac Team’s boots heralded their busting through the stairs door. Ramirez got up and showed them her badge. Kennedy and I did the same, minus the badge part. Our poor attackers weren’t in any kind of shape to do more than cry and moan.

  ***

  “Looks like I owe you again, Bell,” Ian Townsend told me as we exited the building.

  “This was a team effort, Ian,” I reminded him. “Kennedy kept you safe while Ramirez and I made our way up—”

  The sight of Morgan fixing me with one of his usual scowls stopped the words cold. Townsend noticed. “Do you want me to—”

  “Just go make your statement, Ian,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t sure if I would be but it made no sense dragging him into whatever mess Morgan was going to create for me.

  The detective lieutenant shook his head as I approached. “There’s easier ways to commit suicide, Vale.”

  “Can we just get this over with, Morgan?” I asked in irritation. “I promise that my suicide attempt quota has been filled for the day.”

  “What the hell were you even doing here?” he demanded.

  I fed him the same line I had Ramirez about Kennedy calling me.

  “You getting cozy with that reporter?” he asked. “That’s just my luck.”

  “None of your damn business,” I said. “She was in trouble, I helped out. Now, if you’re going to charge me—”

  “Oh, I’d love to,” he rumbled. “Right now, I’d bust you for taking a penny off the sidewalk if I could get away with it.”

  I heard the frustration behind the bluster. “But …?”

  “But, seeing as you assisted Sergeant Ramirez and helped save a prominent citizen of the community, my hands are officially tied.”

  “Guess you’ll need yet another statement from me,” I said, sighing with relief.

  “Talk to one of the junior officers,” Morgan rasped, and started to walk away. Then he came to a dead stop. “Know what, Vale?” he said, not looking back at me. “One of these days, you’re going to push that economy-sized luck of yours too far. That’s when you, or somebody close to you, is going to pay for it. When that happens … you’d better pray that you can look yourself in the eye afterwards.”

  Something about the way he said that … it sounded almost sad. But before I could ask him about it, he walked off.

  ***

  I’d just wrapped up my statement when Mrs. Townsend showed up on the scene. She
wasted no time giving her hubby a tight hug. My heart went out to her. In a little under a week, she’d nearly lost two members of her family.

  I walked over to the happily reunited couple and noticed that Kennedy was coming towards them from the opposite direction. Mrs. Townsend spotted me over her husband’s shoulder and gave me the same big hug she had just given him.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Vale,” she whispered in a voice edged with tears.

  “I was just a side player this time, Mrs. Townsend,” I demurred. “Ms. Kennedy behind you here is the real hero.”

  Kennedy’s eyes widened at my words of praise but before she could say anything, Mrs. Townsend had enveloped her in another of her hugs. I couldn’t make out what she was saying to her reporter-savior but the gist was probably the same as what she’d told me. Kennedy returned the hug and murmured assurances in her ear, then gave me a look over the grateful woman’s shoulder.

  “Soon,” I mouthed as I walked off.

  As soon as I was a good ten feet away from them all I made a decision. I pulled out my smartphone and dialed up Smoke & Mirrors. “Yeah?” said a voice at the other end.

  “This is Bellamy Vale,” I said. “I have a message for Mr. De Soto.”

  “Si? What is it?”

  “Bran Connor.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bran. Connor.” I said the name as distinctly as I could, separating the first and last name for complete clarity. “He’ll understand.”

  “Whatever, man,” the drone on the other end said and hung up. That was another one that Estella De Soto was going to have to teach some manners. But Bran Connor was going to find out the hard way that crimes don’t go unpunished in this city.

  Chapter twenty-three

  Puzzle pieces

  The mug of green tea in Kennedy’s hand had gotten cold. Not that it mattered—I wasn’t even sure she remembered it was there. This was not surprising, given that Zian and I had just told her what we all had fought the other night, what the Cinema Leone was sitting on top of, and why she’d been having such a bad day.

  It was a little past sundown and we were back at Zian’s offsite. After a heated argument on the phone that had gone on for half an hour, Zian had agreed to back my play on bringing Kennedy up to speed. He did want us to stick to details that she had already observed, which was fine with me. The less she knew about Alterum Mundum, the safer she was.

  “I …” Kennedy said, trying to get her mouth to work but the rest of the words wouldn’t come.

  Zian took the green tea from her hand. While he was putting it in a microwave that sat on a cabinet behind the desk, I took her hand in mine.

  “I’ve been where you are. I know it’s a lot to take in. But I swear on whatever you’d consider holy that it’s the truth.”

  She nodded, but still no words.

  “Look,” I added, “I know that you’re going to need to write something close to the truth about all this when we’re done. But it’s important that all the crazier stuff never—”

  Kennedy withdrew her hands angrily from mine. “I’m overwhelmed and exhausted, not stupid!” she snapped, her Texan accent harshening the words.

  I gave her a few moments to simmer down. She took a deep breath.

  “Besides,” she resumed, “how could I prove even half of what you’re saying in the first place?”

  “You’d be amazed by the numbers who have tried,” I told her. “But, for safety reasons, I’d advise against it.”

  “Why did you do it?” she asked, giving me a stare I couldn’t read. The question had a sinister tone to it.

  She saw that I didn’t understand and tried again. “Why did you save my life from that curse you were telling me about? You could have just left me to die from all that bad luck, to make your life easier.”

  “No … I couldn’t have,” I assured her, hearing my voice turn somber.

  The microwave beeped and Zian placed the reheated mug of green tea back in Kennedy’s hand.

  “A real long time ago,” I continued, “I found out what the value of a human life is. It cost me dear. So, keeping my secret versus your still being among the living—it was no choice at all.”

  Zian looked a little ashamed of himself. He needn’t have been. His argument for secrecy had been a good one. I just didn’t consider it good enough.

  Kennedy’s expression changed again. It seemed that what I had said had gotten past her usual defenses. There was a rare softness in her voice when she replied.

  “Well, I’d have voted for me staying alive too if I’d have been asked.”

  “How did you wind up being at AN in the first place?” Zian asked as he took his own seat behind the desk.

  “Just doing my job,” Kennedy explained. “I was there for a follow-up interview with Mr. Townsend, to talk about the aftermath of his daughter’s kidnapping. I was just getting the recorder set up when all of a sudden, bang! Here comes all these filthy-looking gunmen talking like they’re on an acid trip and looking like they’d spent the night in a dumpster. I barely managed to get Mr. Townsend into an office before they started shooting at me.”

  “Which is when Ramirez and I came in,” I added.

  “Just in time to watch the Smog Cloud of Doom give up the ghost … literally,” Kennedy concluded. “I mean, goddamn, what was that thing?”

  “I think I can tell you that, Candice,” said Zian.

  Oh, so now he was buttering her up by using her first name, was he? Why that should have mattered to me, I didn’t bother to ask myself.

  “I’d say you two were up against a will o’ the wisp,” he explained. “They tend to hang around swamps and use their pretty lights to lure humans into them. They’re living honey traps for Arcadia so—”

  “Wait now, what’s Arcadia?” Kennedy asked, holding up a hand.

  “Fairyland,” I said.

  “They use humans as footsoldiers,” Zian told her. “The human brain doesn’t cope well with possession, however—hence all the mumbo jumbo they kept spouting off. Anyone who survives the experience is cracked afterwards. At best, they’ve got years of shrinks, medications, and nuthouses ahead of them. At worst, they commit suicide.”

  “Any links between the people who pulled off the attack?” I asked him.

  “I ran the files twelve times through twenty-six different filters,” he said, shaking his head. “Always got the same result: no connection prior to the attack. And before you ask, no terrorist background on any of them either.”

  “But if I was already under a curse that was doing its job, then why would they go there to kill me?” Kennedy asked.

  “I’d say they didn’t,” Zian speculated as he turned on his laptop. “Wrong place plus right time equals bad luck … courtesy of the curse itself.”

  “The target was Ian Townsend,” I said. “He’s got some kind of connection to the Orion project but I don’t—”

  “And I do,” Zian interrupted me, turning the laptop around. “Check this out.”

  Onscreen was a final draft of terms for the sale of a building in the same neighborhood as the Cinema Leone, dated the day before. The seller was Ian Townsend, while the purchaser was none other than Arete.

  “I thought all Ian’s properties were on the docks,” I said.

  “He told me something as I was getting set up,” Kennedy broke in. “That building was his bankroll back when he was first starting out. He used the collected rent money to finance his first factory after about five years or so.”

  “But the building’s getting harder and harder to maintain,” Zian said, turning the laptop back towards him. “The last health and safety inspection report was the final straw for him. He started looking around for buyers the very next day.”

  “That was one of the two buildings that hadn’t been bought up last time we checked, right?” I a
sked.

  Zian nodded. “The other one just became the newest acquisition of Fairwinds Inc. about thirty-six hours ago. All the territory beside the cinema’s been seized by one side or the other now.”

  “I still wonder if it’s De Soto who’s behind these killings,” said Kennedy. “If he’s as in charge as my sources have been saying, his income’s gonna take a hit.”

  “We’ve been over that already,” I countered, impatient that we were covering the same ground again. “I know it’s not De Soto. If I had my suspicions on who could have done those people, I’d point the finger at Vitorini. It’s more his style.”

  “Be nice if we could get some kind of confirmation on that,” Kennedy said.

  For just a second I wondered if I should tell her. Then I realized that I’d just revealed the existence of a Berserker, the power of ley lines, and the involvement of the Fae in city politics and decided that this was small potatoes by comparison.

  “Actually … tomorrow night, I’m going to meet someone to get that confirmed for sure,” I told her.

  “Who?” Kennedy asked.

  “Confidential source,” I said, speaking her language.

  She gave me a smile. Well, it was better than telling her I was going to meet both De Soto and Vito.

  “There’s more bad news, I’m afraid,” Zian said. “I’ve been looking over the plans for Orion. Something’s been bothering me about them since I first got a copy. I finally figured out what that is.”

  That got both mine and Kennedy’s attention.

  “There’s a text by Pythagoras, dealing with sacred architecture,” he explained. “It’s about harnessing energy in certain … special spots in the world to get the most use out of it, like ley line intersections.”

  “You mean like Feng Shui?” Kennedy asked.

  “Similar, but it’s like comparing a house to a power plant,” Zian went on. “I should mention that this text isn’t something you can order off Amazon. In fact, as far as the outside world knows, it went up in flames with the Library of Alexandria over a millennium ago.”