by Tina Folsom
Tessa frowned. “Decades? She can’t be older than me.” She bit into her Danish and chewed.
She noticed Hamish hesitate, running a hand through his thick hair. “I guess I forgot to mention that yesterday.”
“Mention what?”
“Stealth Guardians are immortals. We live forever, unless a demon kills us first.”
Tessa nearly choked on her pastry, and quickly tried to swallow it down, taking a sip from her coffee to clear her throat.
“Immortal?” She looked him up and down, searching for any sign that he was different. But apparently immortality didn’t have any outward signs. “How old is she?”
“Almost two hundred.” He met her eyes then. “Same age as I.”
Her eyes widened. Thought after thought suddenly charged through her mind. Hamish had lived for two centuries already. He was experienced. He’d seen history happen. And he’d had God-knew how many women. No wonder the kisses they’d shared hadn’t meant anything to him. Besides, he knew that a relationship with a human would never work out. She would age and die, and he would live on forever. A human woman would only be a temporary toy for him, gone in the blink of an eye. Now she understood.
“Immortal,” she repeated to try to burn it into her mind. So there could never be anything between them, no matter how hot his kisses had been. No matter how much she was attracted to him.
“Yes, but not invulnerable.”
She lifted her eyebrows in question.
“The daggers the demons were wielding… they were forged back in the Dark Days, the era when both the Stealth Guardian species and the Demon species were born. Only weapons from back then have the power to kill us.”
“What about guns?”
He shook his head. “There were no guns back then. Modern guns can only injure us. It still hurts like a bitch, but a bullet won’t kill us.”
“You killed the demons with a knife. Was it—”
“Yes.”
He set down his coffee cup, bent over, and shoved up the seam of his pant leg to pull something from his boot. He presented it to her on flat palms. A dagger.
“It’s beautiful.” The blade was shiny and sharp. The handle appeared to be of some sort of obsidian stone and was covered with intricate golden inlays.
“And deadly,” he murmured. “It’s one of the ironies of our species that what can kill a demon, can also kill a guardian. It shows how our fates are linked.”
She looked up. “How many of yours have the demons killed?”
“The number doesn’t matter, because each and every one we lost was one too many.”
“You said last night that you lost your father. Did the demons…”
Hamish sheathed his dagger, while he answered, “He died fighting. It was because of him that the human he was protecting survived and was able to fulfill his destiny. I’m very proud of him.” He rose and picked up his cup. “More coffee?”
“I still have plenty,” she said, while Hamish walked back to the kitchen. “I’m sorry about your father. I don’t know what I would do if I lost mine. He’s all I’ve got.”
“And your mother?”
“We’re not close, as you may have guessed.”
“That’s pretty obvious. Sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”
Tessa took another gulp from her coffee. “Maybe there’s a good reason why nature denies some women motherhood.”
“I gather she wasn’t the kind of mother you wanted,” Hamish said softly as he walked back toward the sofa.
“No, she wasn’t.” She reached for another pastry. “But I got the father I needed.” She was about to take a bite of the donut, when she heard a knock at the door.
“Enya?” Hamish called out, rising.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Coming,” he said and marched toward the door, but before he reached it, Enya had already walked through it and entered the apartment.
“Don’t bother,” Enya said.
Tessa’s pulse began to beat frantically, still not used to the preternatural skills of her bodyguards.
Enya nodded at Hamish, then looked past him. “Morning, Tessa. You look better today.”
“Morning, Enya,” she said.
Enya’s gaze fell on the donut in Tessa’s hand. “Are those from Mario’s?”
“You’re early,” Hamish replied, ignoring her question.
Enya shrugged and walked to the coffee table, helping herself to a pastry. “Manus wants to show you something. So I figured I’d relieve you early.”
Instantly, Hamish’s relaxed mood vanished and he was all business. “Where is he?”
“He said to meet him at the center.”
Hamish set down his coffee cup and turned to Tessa. “Are you gonna be alright?”
“I’ll have to go see my parents later.”
“Enya will go with you.”
“But how am I gonna explain who she is?”
“You won’t have to explain anything. Enya will be invisible.”
Tessa sighed. Would she ever get used to this? Would it one day become second nature? “Go. Though I really don’t see that it matters now how that duct fell. It must have been the demons. And because they didn’t succeed, they came back last night and tried again.”
Hamish shook his head. “It still matters. The demons don’t always work alone. If we find out who helped them, we’ll have a better chance of finding them.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, though she was starting to understand where he was going with his reasoning.
“Tessa, the demons use humans to do some of their dirty work.”
The revelation made her heart beat into her throat, choking off her air. Irrational fear gripped her.
“Why would anybody help these vile creatures?”
“The demons have their methods: they tempt humans, offer to fulfill their greatest desires. They manipulate them, they blackmail them; anything that works. Most humans are too weak to resist.”
Tessa swallowed hard. No matter how strong or how good Enya was, she still felt safest with Hamish. “Can I come with you?”
Hamish and Enya exchanged a look.
“Please,” Tessa begged. “Why don’t we all go? And if you’re not done by the time I have to see my parents, Enya and I can go, and you can stay with Manus.” She locked eyes with him. “Please.”
Hamish sighed, while Enya shrugged.
“Doesn’t bother me,” Enya said.
It took a few seconds before Hamish finally replied, “Fine. We’ll all go.”
23
“More bad news, oh Great One,” Vintoq, one of Zoltan’s personal demon guards, said as he glanced down the long corridor, checking, as he always did, that they weren’t overheard.
“I’m on my way up top. What is it now?” Zoltan growled and continued walking toward one of the spots in the vast underground labyrinth where he could cast a vortex to enter the human world.
“Two of your subjects disappeared last night. We fear they were killed.”
“So?” That was hardly news. Let alone bad news. If they were indeed so stupid as to have gotten themselves killed, then they didn’t deserve to live anyway. Good riddance!
“I have reason to believe that they were up top to mess with your plans.”
They’d reached a spot where the corridor widened into a large circle. Yannick, one of his most trusted servants, stood sentry and bowed his head. Zoltan acknowledged him with a nod, then tossed his personal guard a sideways glance. He’d chosen Vintoq because he was smarter than the others. Zoltan contemplated his words for a moment, then let his power rise inside him and opened a vortex of wind and fog in the circle. “Come up top with me.”
Once inside the vortex, he added, “What have you heard?”
“Somebody wants to see you fail, so he can take over your position.”
“Let him try!” Zoltan laughed. None of those idiots was capable of devising a plan that could derail him. “And when he does, bring
me his head.”
He stepped out of the vortex, Vintoq on his heels, and looked around the deserted alley they’d been transported to.
Vintoq glanced around. “What are we doing here?”
“You’ll see.” Zoltan motioned him to follow as he walked to a metal door and entered a run down apartment building through the back entrance.
He marched up stairs that hadn’t been cleaned in months. Vintoq’s boots made a metallic sound every time he took a step, while Zoltan’s own footsteps were virtually silent. Luckily, today, stealth wasn’t necessary. The inhabitants of this property were too wasted to hear anybody coming. Such easy prey.
Arriving on the third floor, Zoltan opened the door and walked down the corridor, past several apartments, until he found the number he was looking for. Lucky number seven. Well, lucky for him, not for the occupant.
Without much ado, he kicked the flimsy door in.
Inside, it was dim despite the bright morning sun outside. In front of the windows hung old bed sheets to keep the light out. The studio was a mess, bottles of booze strewn about, drug paraphernalia displayed on a coffee table.
On the bed, a woman slept. Or rather, she’d passed out in a drug-induced stupor on top of the duvet. So pretty. So vulnerable.
Vintoq sidled up to him and pulled in a breath. “Is that—”
“Of course not.” Zoltan grinned, satisfied with himself. “But she’ll do.” In fact, she was perfect. Nobody would notice the difference. Because there would be none.
“Now let’s get to work.”
~ ~ ~
Hamish suppressed a vile curse and the urge to punch a certain someone. He shouldn’t have given in when Tessa had begged him to come to his meeting with Manus. But one pleading look from her lavender-colored eyes, and he hadn’t been able to refuse her anything. Now he had to watch as Manus shook Tessa’s hand for longer than was necessary and flirted with her like it was an Olympic discipline. And Enya was no help either. She was watching with a smirk.
Manus had entered the building via the usual way—walking through the door—and then unlocked it from the inside upon their arrival. There was nobody in the center today. According to a sign on the door, the opening had been delayed, pending a review of the renovation work. But nobody from the City Building Department would be here on the weekend. The police had made a cursory review on the night of the incident, but not done anything further. They’d left everything in place and cordoned the relevant areas off.
“So what have you got for me?” Hamish interrupted gruffly.
Finally, Manus let go of Tessa’s hand and turned to him. “Bad mood?”
Hamish didn’t reply, but stared his fellow guardian down.
“Well then, let me give you the short version,” Manus said and pulled a laser pointer from his pocket. He pointed it up and the red dot danced around the ceiling. “Voila!”
“What am I looking at?” Hamish asked.
“The only way to access the duct is from down below. Nobody other than a small child would have been able to crawl inside. So whoever touched that duct, had to have done it from the outside.” He made a corresponding movement with his pointer. “See the straight edges, where a portion of the duct is missing? That’s the part that fell down during Tessa’s speech. And those straight edges tell me that the duct didn’t get blown from the ceiling by explosives, or the edges would be all jagged and uneven.”
Hamish rubbed his chin. “So what are you saying? It was just a malfunction?”
“That’s what I wondered myself. So I did a residue test on the duct. It came back negative for explosives. But then I saw the glue.”
“What glue?” Hamish asked.
Manus pointed to the duct that still lay on the stage and waved for them to follow him. When he reached the stage, he pointed to one end of the duct.
“Heavy duty tape. But that’s not how ducts are normally connected. They usually use a slip joint to hold two pieces together.”
Hamish bent closer and examined one end of the duct. Pieces of mangled silver tape seemed burned into the metal. He looked up and met Manus’s eyes. “So let’s say somebody rigged it so the only thing holding the duct together was this tape. How could that person make sure it fell at the correct moment, so it would hit the right person?”
Immediately after he said it, his gaze shot to Tessa. She shivered. Shit, he hadn’t meant it that way. The right person wasn’t what he’d wanted to say.
Manus pointed to the burnt tape. “The glue melted under extreme heat and the tape started to peel away. It was only a matter of time. Once enough of the tape was off, gravity did the rest.”
Hamish shook his head. “But neither the air conditioning system nor the heating was switched on the night of the party. The duct couldn’t have gotten hot from the air blowing through it.”
“You’re right, besides, that would have taken too long to heat up.” He switched on his laser pointer again and pointed to one spot, drawing Hamish’s gaze to it. “But there are other things that create heat.”
Hamish pointed to the red dot. “A laser pointer? That’s the most harebrained idea you’ve had yet.”
“Not an ordinary laser pointer.” Manus shook his head. “But if you use a small industrial laser, no bigger than an ordinary pen, and point the beam where the ducts are joined by the tape, you’ll create sufficient heat to destroy the tape. You just need to be close enough.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Hamish said.
“It’s not hard to do. Just search YouTube and you’ll find plenty of videos that’ll show you how. But you have to be close enough. Considering where the duct is located in relation to the stage and the audience, I’d say only somebody on the stage could have been close enough to point a laser beam at that duct with sufficient accuracy.”
Manus motioned to the lights in the room, then the tacky disco ball that hung over the area that had been a dance floor on Thursday night. “I’m assuming that thing was on the night of the party?”
Tessa nodded. “I noticed it when we were dancing. And when I spoke, it was blinding me on and off.”
Hamish let out a breath. Damn it, Manus could be right. “It would have made it easy for anybody on stage to use a laser. With all the other lights dancing around the room, nobody would have noticed. I didn’t. I was too focused on the crowd taking pictures and videos. There were flashes.”
“Exactly,” Manus said.
“Which means we have several suspects: VanSant, Mantle, Poppy, and of course Gunn.” And Hamish knew exactly where he’d put his money: on the person who had the most to gain from Tessa’s death.
“Couldn’t it have been a demon?” Tessa asked, looking around nervously.
“That’s always a possibility,” Hamish admitted, “but since this building uses LED and halogen lighting throughout, we’ll never know if a demon was in here. I don’t see any neon or fluorescent lights anywhere.” He motioned to Manus. “Did you, Manus?”
His colleague shook his head. “Not a one. I think our best bet is to check out the people who were on stage.”
“I’ll take Gunn,” Hamish said immediately.
Enya grunted. “Leave us something to do, will you?”
“You’ve got enough on your plate,” he replied and pointed to Tessa. “You’re going to make sure nobody touches a hair on Tessa’s head, or—”
Enya lifted her head. “No threats needed. I know my duties.” Then she twisted one side of her mouth up and looked at Tessa. “Men think they’re the only ones with the brains to execute a plan.”
Hamish ignored the hit and looked at Manus. “Manus, why don’t you call the compound and have them assign somebody to check out the other people on stage?”
Tessa looked at her watch. “I think it’s time to help my dad bring my mother home.”
“Let’s go then.” Enya was already turning around and heading for the door.
Tessa made a motion to follow her, then looked over her shoulder
straight at Hamish. “Gunn insisted that night that I speak first. And that’s not like him. I have a bad feeling about him. Be careful.”
Hamish felt his mouth twist into a smile. Tessa was worried about him? It was an entirely unexpected thing, and he had to admit that he liked it. He liked knowing that there was a woman who cared enough about him to worry about him. Strangely enough he’d never had that same sensation with Olivia. She’d never worried about him. Maybe because she’d never really cared about him.
24
Hamish was in luck. Just after he arrived at Gunn’s house in the suburbs, the garage opened and a dark SUV backed out. Hamish remained idling at the curb half a block away, waiting for the car to pass him. Gunn was behind the wheel. Perfect. Hamish turned his car around and followed at a distance.
Gunn drove several miles before he stopped at a floral stall outside a small supermarket. He double-parked and jumped out of the car. Within seconds he picked a pre-made bunch of mixed flowers and motioned to the cashier, who took his money and wrapped the flowers in transparent plastic. Flowers in hand, Gunn returned to his car, tossed them on the passenger seat and drove off again.
“What are you up to?” Hamish murmured to himself.
According to his information, Gunn was married, and it didn’t appear that he was returning home with the flowers. He was definitely heading in the other direction. Was he visiting someone in a hospital? Or did Gunn have a mistress? Were the flowers for her?
Curious, Hamish continued his pursuit. Busy traffic made sure Gunn didn’t notice that he was being followed, but as they got into a more residential area, Hamish had to fall back farther.
The soft music coming from the car’s radio was suddenly interrupted. “Breaking news,” an announcer said. “Following the shooting in Carroll Park last night, cell phone videos have surfaced that seem to suggest that the shooting of several intoxicated black teenagers was unprovoked. The two surviving officers involved in the shooting have been suspended. One officer died at the scene last night, and one of the teenagers died during surgery last night. Acting Mayor Gunn has issued a statement asserting that his police force is well trained and that officers are within their right to defend themselves. He went on to question the validity of the video footage—”