A small part of his mind whimpered he was too young to get serious. Yeah, that didn’t matter either. It was too late. He was doomed the moment she’d rammed a stainless steel tray into the head of a murderous cat sidhe. To protect him. Foxes were supposed to hate cats. Rika had taken him home with her.
He was so screwed.
Thanks to the gloves, her wrists weren’t as bad as he thought. But when she sat up and he saw the bruise on her forehead and the cut on her chin, he wanted to smash something, specifically the thug who hurt her. Jack wasn’t a violent person, but right now he was furious. They’d hurt her.
He fought to say something that wasn’t an angry scream. Eventually he managed: “Anything I can do?”
Rika looked up from massaging her ankles. “I’m okay. Do you see my backpack—it’s got my tablet and all my notes for tomorrow.” Her mouth quirked in a not-quite smile. “You remember: midterms.”
His heart flip-flopped in his chest. Doomed.
He found her backpack in the small storage area behind the votive stands. Someone had popped the plastic catches on the straps, but bag didn’t appear damaged.
Meanwhile, Rika had recovered enough to assume Medical Mode. She crouched on all fours next to the unconscious priest, sniffing his face. He didn’t look too good. Neither did the security guards. Their breathing had a wheezy quality, and their faces were gray, irrespective of skin tone.
“Shocked and drugged,” she whispered. “Ketamine, I think. Our perps weren’t taking any chances. Also, the masked guy who stunned us? Dressed like them.”
He motioned her behind the arches and handed her the bag. “Now we call the cops.”
Rika nodded absently, frowning at her bag like there was more wrong than disconnected straps. She hefted it twice, then dropped it and slapped her phone pocket. She didn’t hit plastic.
“Do you still have a phone?” she asked.
No, he didn’t. He had his ID and wallet, but no cash and no phone. The bastards had stolen it. Of course they had. They were bastards.
Rika wasn’t having any better luck. Pouch by pouch, she removed the contents of her bag to the floor and checked everything twice. She spat, “Those bastards stole my tablet and my phone.”
Jack smothered a reflexive spurt of panic. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to convince himself. “We’ll find a phone when we get out. It’s a public building. There has to be a way out.”
“Ja-a-ack?”
He turned in the direction of her gaze. Light flashed outside the sanctuary’s far door. His heart dropped below his knees. He looked at Rika. She nodded. They grabbed their belongings and retreated deeper in to the gloom.
The flashlight flicked left, right, up, and down—the search pattern of someone who wasn’t looking for anything in particular and didn’t expect to find it. The heavy glass doors splintered the beacon’s glow into the blue white corona of a dwarf star. The person behind it was nothing more than another shadow in the hall. He moved like one, too. Jack couldn’t hear him, or anything else beyond the sanctuary doors.
Luckily the soundproofing worked both ways. The opossum was going nuts, growling and clawing the glass. The patrol didn’t appear to notice. Flashlight and shadow ambled past the doors without breaking stride.
Jack tensed. Was the guy really gone, or was it a fake-out? If he was gone, they needed to find an exit. If he wasn’t, should they try to take him down? If Jack had been on his own, he’d simply flee. But Rika would insist on saving Gene, which wasn’t going to happen unless the damned opossum calmed his damned self down.
“Srrkrreeaachk!” The screech bounced off tile and stone, reverberating into infinity.
Jack grabbed Rika and dropped in a roll, shielding her with his body from the floor and the godawful noise. Through the echoes, he thought he heard a galloping rush of paws, then a thud, followed by the soft snap of a plastic clasp.
He motioned Rika to stay put. Hugging the walls, he scrambled past the cat-eyed Madonna to where the back pews almost met the wall. He peeked around the corner. Caught between the central pair of doors was a familiar leash. Jack craned his neck. The edges of Gene’s broken harness were visible just beyond the door.
Shit.
The rough fabric of Rika’s hoodie brushed his goosebumps. He dragged her back to the alcove. Her dark eyes seemed enormous against the shocked pallor of her face. “How did he do that?”
“I don’t care. As soon as they see him, the bad guys will come running. I’ll distract them. You take my stuff and find a way out. I’ll meet you at the Student Center.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
He grabbed her shoulders. They felt so fragile beneath his fingers. How could he make her understand? This wasn’t judo or aikido or ninja pretend. These were real bad guys, people who electrocuted and drugged their victims, people who would hurt her. One good blow delivered with intent, and her bones would snap. The thought made him ill.
“You have to. You can’t shift. I can.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I can take care of myself.”
“Then prove it. Go.”
She tried to outstare him, but nobody can outstare a cat. Finally she looked away. “I’ll get the door.”
* * *
The glass panel eased shut behind Jack’s feline form with no more sound than a puff of air—air he wished he didn’t have to breathe through a cat’s nose. From the smell and the relative quiet, Gene had fainted again. If Jack could’ve trusted his roommate to play dead like a normal opossum, he would’ve shifted back to human, snatched him and run. Gene’s spells never lasted that long, but every minute he was out was another minute for recon.
Camouflaged by his cat’s brown and white Snowshoe coloring, Jack darted across the shadowed hall and clambered up the second of the three marble statues facing the glass doors of the sanctuary. He peered around the statue’s head. A low-walled wheelchair ramp separated his perch from the elevated bridge. Massive piers framed his view of the center section, where a bevy of high-intensity pole lamps sizzled around a large, peaked display case mounted on a pink, stone-veneered plinth. The glare of their hot, white light made it hard to see inside, but based on the cut-out in the foam-lined equipment chest stationed to the left of the case, Jack guessed it contained the pope’s tiara.
A stocky guy in a priest suit knelt in front of a drawer protruding from the right side of the plinth. The drawer must have held the guts of the case’s security system. Wires streamed from the drawer to a cluttered media cart next to the last right-hand light. An ersatz security guard sporting a latex Richard Nixon mask and blue surgical gloves monitored a laptop on the cart’s highest shelf.
The “priest” lifted his head. He was wearing Kennedy.
“Now?” the ersatz priest asked in a mechanically altered voice.
Nixon responded with a similarly distorted string of letters and numbers. His voice sounded lower than “Father Kennedy’s,” but that could’ve been a function of their voice changers. Neither of them sounded like the guy with the gun—or moved like the guy with the flashlight.
How big was this operation? A chill raced under Jack’s fur as he realized he didn’t know how many people were in the church or their location. The lights on the bridge appeared to be the only ones working outside the sanctuary, but he couldn’t be sure. The basilica was too big. The only thing he knew for certain was he couldn’t let any of them find Rika, not in her present state. She’d tried to hide how weak she was, but he’d seen her arms tremble when she pushed the sanctuary door open.
For her sake he stifled his cat’s primal urge to flee and launched himself at the wall of the ramp. He landed noiselessly, leapt across the incline, wriggled under a spindly guard rail and slunk around the chrome-legged bench set between the center piers.
The uptick in acoustics almost made up for the smell of the dead presidents’ socks. Beyond the thieves’ cryptic exchanges and the hum of their equipment, Jack sensed a faint, regular concussion—the tread of
a single pair of soft-soled shoes approaching from the dark beyond the bridge. One pair. Could be worse. Jack flattened himself into the bench’s shadow.
A thin, bluish glow swept the eastern end of the bridge an instant before a guy in a Reagan mask appeared. He was taller and skinner than Nixon or Kennedy. Cigarette Crook? Jack wondered. Reagan didn’t click off his flashlight until he stepped past a dark line of cables that snaked between the two statues framing the end of the bridge. He jiggled the cylinder against his thigh. No, too nervous for Cigarette Crook. He probably startles easily. Good to know.
“You said you were almost done.” Reagan’s altered drone sounded distinctly accusatory.
“I am,” Kennedy snapped. “Almost, as in not finished. In. Com. Plete.”
“But it’s almost two,” Reagan said.
“You got a date?” Kennedy sneered.
Nixon relaxed against the media cart. The pose wasn’t as casual as it appeared. His eyes tracked Reagan’s every twitch. So Nixon was Kennedy’s man. If the situation weren’t so dire it’d be funny.
“No, but I worked security,” Reagan said. “Anytime now, they’re gonna see their camera feed is crap. We won’t even hear them coming.”
“That’s why we have look-outs and Bluetooth. Now shut up and let me do my job. This is an Eighties-vintage standalone system with custom upgrades. In short, it’s a bitch, and the more you distract me, the longer it’ll take to hack,” Kennedy said.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Reagan replied sullenly. He crossed his arms and stared at the west end of the bridge. He didn’t tap his foot, but Jack had an excellent view of the toes flicking against the vamp of his shoe.
Kennedy waited a beat before telling Nixon, “Scope.”
Nixon handed him something that looked like a single-sided stethoscope. He plugged the earpiece into his mask and eased the disk into the drawer. If Jack had been all cat the rat’s nest of wires would’ve been irresistible. It was pretty fascinating from a sapient standpoint. How much force would it take to pull a plug or dislodge a probe? If he jerked some wires free, would it be enough to trigger an alarm?
If he succeeded, would Shrine security believe the alarm or the monitors showing crap? Mental fingers crossed that Rika had listened to him for once, Jack waited for his chance to act.
A single, melodious chime rang from the plinth. Kennedy struggled to his feet, his breath rasping through his distorter. Slowly the case rose from its plinth, supported on metal struts which creaked beneath the weight of the glass.
Jack expected to see silver, but the first flash was gold: the fringed ends of a gold net scarf embroidered with scintillant hammered gold. He squinted against its fierce brightness. It was a relief when the case finally cleared the stand supporting Pope Paul’s tiara.
A spiky gold crown studded with diamonds as big as shirt buttons surrounded the base of a spun silver dome almost twelve inches tall—too tall and too heavy for a human head to bear. In person it looked less like a beehive and more like a giant artillery shell—an image the three jeweled wires circling the dome and the small gold cross at its tip did nothing to dispel. The world’s biggest silver bullet, Jack thought giddily. No wonder Gene went nuts.
But big and unquestionably valuable as the tiara was, the finish was dingy, as if the silver had been mixed with lead and the gold dimmed to match. Jack’s gaze drifted to the scarf that hurt his eyes. It was vivid, vibrant, alive. For all its jewels, the tiara was a husk in comparison.
Superstitious fear ruffled the fur along his back. Half-human Jack didn’t sense magic well, but an ordinary net, even gold net, wouldn’t have snared his attention so completely. He didn’t know where the scarf’s power came from or what it could do. He only knew Rika was right. It couldn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of an evil sorcerer—or any kind of magician. And the scarf wasn’t even on Gene’s radar. He hoped it wasn’t on the crooks’.
Kennedy grunted as he hefted the tiara from its stand. He lowered it into the padded case, carefully arranging the pearl-edged ribbons dangling from the back so they wouldn’t get scratched. Then he returned to the case and reached for the laces tying the gold scarf to the stand.
Shit. Jack couldn’t see any way to stop him. But if he could trip an alarm, Rika would be safe. Sure, they’d go after him, but there was nothing to connect a stray cat with the captives in the church. He wished Kennedy and Nixon weren’t standing so close to the drawer. If he was going to risk his hide, he wanted it to count.
At first he thought the ragged rhythm in his ears was the result of nerves. Then he heard the distinctive thump of naked opossum feet charging up the wheelchair ramp. ‘Possum Gene crested the ramp on the west side of the bridge, shrieking the war cry of his people, ridiculous and magnificent at once.
While everyone else stared, stupefied, Nixon drew a shock baton from under his jacket and strode toward the tiny threat. Gene surged toward his calf, teeth bared and drooling were-spit. With a terrible grace, Nixon evaded the charge. He whipped the baton into the opossum’s flank. Gene screamed and collapsed, convulsing. But Nixon didn’t let go. He kept the stick pressed against Gene’s side until the opossum went limp. The awful smell of charred hair mingled with the stench of voided bowels and worse.
Bile spurted up Jack’s throat. Heart hammering in panic, he struggled to choke it down. He had to keep it in. He couldn’t let them know he was there. If they fried something as stupid and harmless as a ‘possum, what would they do to a cat?
Nixon booted the opossum away from the media cart. Gene’s inert form skidded down the aisle, smearing the floor with his waste.
“Where’d the ‘possum come from?” Nixon’s altered voice sounded bored, callous, utterly indifferent to the pain he’d inflicted on a helpless animal, much less the human within.
All the rage building inside Jack since he’d seen Rika’s bruised face, all the fear and the shame of his helplessness crashed together and exploded. Blood roared in his ears—blood demanding blood. His ears flattened and his fur rose. A strange, unnatural howl spewed from his throat.
He shot off the floor. He scaled “Father Kennedy” in two bounds. He grabbed the back of Kennedy’s mask in his teeth and wrenched it to the side. Before Kennedy or Nixon could react, he leapt into the open drawer and scrambled out the back, tearing wires as he went.
He dashed around the back of the plinth and charged Reagan. Reagan tried to belt him with his flashlight. The blow went wide as Jack dove between his legs. He wheeled and clawed his way up Reagan’s trousers and back. The man yelled in counterpoint to an insistent crystalline pinging Jack barely noticed through his wrath.
His claws raked the back of Reagan’s neck. He bit deep into rubber and flesh.
“Get him off! Get him off!” Reagan screamed.
Jack raced around Reagan’s shoulders and over his head while the man flailed helplessly. As they reeled, Jack glimpsed Kennedy and Nixon shoving plastic slabs under the glass case, which sank much faster than it rose.
Reagan tripped over the cables leading off the east side of the bridge. An ululating klaxon joined the tinny hammering of the display case alarm. He stumbled against the nun statue at the southeast corner of the bridge. The impact knocked the air out of Jack’s lungs. Caught between Reagan and the statue, he fought for breath. Suddenly Nixon stood in front of them. His shock baton shot toward Jack’s head.
“No!” Reagan yelled. He pushed away from the statue, but his balance was off. Instead of dodging, he fell straight at the baton.
Jack twisted as he dropped, slamming shoulder and hip against marble limbs. He was so wired, he felt no pain. He raced up the nun’s marble robes to the top of her habit, and swerved, back arched, teeth bared to confront his foe.
Reagan’s unconscious body slid to the floor. Nixon shoved the baton’s handle into his mask’s mouth, mashing the rubber features into something monstrous. He grabbed the base of the statue and started to climb.
“Stop!” The shout pealed from the hal
l in front of the sanctuary.
Jack swayed on his perch. Nixon dropped to the floor, angling his body so he could keep both Jack and the new threat in view. Even Kennedy stopped struggling with the laces and turned toward the church.
A black-cowled figure stood in front of the glass doors. The wavering light of a single votive candle kissed the figure’s smooth cheeks, but left the rest of the face in shadow. Damn it, Rika, you’re going to get yourself killed.
“Throw down your weapons,” she ordered.
Two masked thugs burst into the hall from opposite directions. Jack tensed, mapping the quickest route to Rika. But everything happened too fast. The thug who ran in from the east side of the basilica—the same route taken earlier by Jack, Rika, and Gene—slipped and landed on his ass. Rika hurled the still burning votive candle at his mask. He threw himself to the side.
She turned on the attacker bearing down from the west. She hit him with a high kick to the side of his jaw, then spun around behind him and slammed into his back, knocking him to the floor. Rika landed on top of him and dug her thumbs into the sides of his neck. He folded. She yanked the shock baton from under his jacket and jabbed it into his shoulder for good measure.
By now the other thug had staggered to his feet. He eyed her warily from behind a line of burning wax. She lifted the baton and stepped forward. He looked at the bridge, looked back at her, then ran away.
Nixon pulled the shock baton from his mouth. He twisted the base of the stick. Lightning bright sparks crackled between the electrodes. He loped toward the hall.
Jack jumped, shifting in midair. He crashed into his quarry at full human weight. Nixon dropped the baton. It skittered across the floor. Jack got in a couple of punches, but Nixon recovered fast. He bucked, using his greater size and mass to lever them both off the ground. Jack locked his legs around the larger man’s waist and his arm around his throat. Nixon went for his eyes. Jack ducked.
Were- Page 18