City of Secrets (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 5)

by Sonya Bateman

  “Thanks.”

  Just then, Sadie headed toward us with Eli clinging to her hand, shaking like a leaf. He peered around her, and his black eyes widened when he caught sight of Ian. He let out a strangled squeak. “Badmen,” he said in his broken voice.

  Ian stared at him. “What. Is that?”

  “Uh. We’re not entirely sure,” I said. “He’s an Eli.”

  “Damn, talking statues and talking rats?” Donatti smiled broadly. “This place is a lot more fun than home.”

  Sadie took her time walking. When she stopped next to Taeral, Eli half-hid behind her and stared at Donatti. “I smell badmen,” he said. “But you … look friends. Please, sorry. Are you my friends?”

  I coughed once. “Just agree with him,” I said under my breath.

  “Er, yeah,” Donatti said. “We’re your friends. Not bad men.”

  Eli mostly stopped trembling. “Please, eat,” he said. “I like food, please.”

  I thought that sounded like a great idea. I liked food, too.

  CHAPTER 14

  We ended up ordering pizza from the only place that would deliver to ‘the bushes along the sidewalk where that old hotel on West Thirtieth used to be.’ I would’ve gone out to pick up dinner, but I didn’t want to leave any combination of people currently occupying the Castle alone just yet. Some of them might not survive until I got back.

  The whole time we were eating, Taeral kept glancing at the makeshift liquor cabinet. I felt awful for him. He’d struggled with a serious drinking problem since long before I knew him, and he’d been trying to give it up. Mostly for Sadie. But with all that’d happened in the last few days, and especially tonight, he had to be dying for a drink.

  He never went for it, though. Not even when Sadie offered to get Ian a second helping, and Ian didn’t say no.

  Between the six of us, we’d polished off four large pepperoni pizzas. Eli was curled up on the couch with one of the newer James Bond movies playing at low volume on the big screen. And the rest of us had a shitload of files to go through.

  The laptop was dead. Not surprising, considering how long it must’ve been there. But I’d grabbed the universal charger from my own laptop, which I’d tossed in the closet when we moved into the Castle and pretty much forgotten about, and a little blue light had come on when I plugged the Milus Dei laptop in.

  It was probably password protected. We’d worry about that if the thing actually charged. For now, we had plenty of paper to go through.

  Donatti got up from the table where he and Ian had been sitting. He stretched, took his jacket off, and draped it on the back of the chair. “Hope you don’t mind if I get comfortable,” he said. “From the looks of that box, it’s gonna be a long night.”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  “Thanks.” He nudged Ian. “I think you can relax now. They’re not going to bite.”

  “She may.” Ian actually smiled a little as he looked at Sadie, and then shrugged out of his duster.

  Turned out I was right about him wearing a vest. Simple brown leather with black stitching—and nothing else beneath. And damn, was he well defined. His muscles had muscles. He also had armband tattoos, a dark scorched brown and black pattern against deeply tanned skin, that looked like barbed wire wrapped around his biceps.

  Taeral gave him a flat stare. “I’ve a shirt you can borrow, if you’d care to look presentable. Though it may fit you loosely.”

  “While I appreciate the offer, I do not care for the feel of shirts,” Ian said in a tone of forced politeness.

  I cleared my throat and stood. “All right. I guess everybody takes a pile of this stuff and starts reading,” I said, dragging the file box from under the table where I’d pushed it while we ate. “Donatti, do you want to grab some for you and Ian?”

  “Sure.” He came over as I tugged and wrenched the first few files loose. “Any idea what we’re looking for?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Relevant things.”

  “Got it.”

  Donatti took a big stack to the other table and split it with Ian. I divided the rest of the stuff between the three of us, and sat down with more than a little reluctance to look at any of it. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience.

  Taeral grabbed the top folder from his pile with his metal hand. “I’m not certain we want to know what’s in these,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Next to him, Sadie took his normal hand, leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I bet this is more than we’ve ever gotten on them before, though. Maybe we’ll find something that’ll help us bring them down, eventually.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. But I’d keep the thought to myself, for now.

  In the first folder I opened, the top sheet was a typed report summary on ‘Subject D-501 — Vampire (Female)’. I guessed there really were vampires. And like everything else, Milus Dei had captured and tortured them. Skimming the notes made me queasy. There were mentions of containment instructions, injuries caused by various substances, pain threshold experiments, and a death note. Terminated via exsanguination.

  They’d killed her by draining every drop of fluid from her. The same way they’d tried to kill Daoin.

  Beneath the top sheet was a collection of photos. It didn’t take me long to decide not to look very closely at them.

  As I reached for the next folder, Sadie said, “Jesus. This one is like an encyclopedia of how to kill us.” She lifted a piece of paper and read from it in an unsteady voice. “Werewolves, type three shapeshifter. Weaknesses include silver, mercury, monkshood, belladonna, blue vervain … beheading. Fuck.”

  “That means they actually did that to someone,” I said. “Sick bastards.”

  Sadie nodded, put the paper down and flipped through the rest in the folder. “They’ve got cheat sheets on everything in here,” she said. “Fae, vampires, wraiths, shapeshifters, enhanced humans? Sirens. Golems. Incubus, succubus. Low demons, high demons, what the hell?”

  “All those things are real?” Donatti blurted.

  Taeral frowned. “Apparently. Or they were,” he said. “Milus Dei’s mission is to exterminate every one of us. Perhaps with some species, they’ve succeeded.”

  Donatti gave a low whistle. “And I thought evil djinn were bad.” He closed the folder in front of him and grabbed the next one. “They say anything about the djinn on those cheat sheets? Because this shit is—”

  He cut himself off with a strangled sound and froze, staring down at the file he’d just opened. “Oh, hell,” he said softly. “I think … Taeral, I think this is you.”

  Taeral stiffened. “Aye, they’d captured me,” he said. “Held me nearly a year, before … a time I’d not care to discuss.”

  Ian, who’d stayed out of the conversation so far, looked at the folder in front of Donatti. His jaw twitched once. “These photos,” he said slowly. “Did they take your arm?”

  “I cut it off myself.” Taeral stared a challenge at him. “It was the only way to escape.”

  Ian blanched and looked away.

  A strained, vaguely horrified silence fell over the room as we continued the perverse treasure hunt. I came across two files detailing the torture and eventual deaths of werewolves — neither of them Sadie, but hers was probably here somewhere too. They’d held her for two months the first time they captured her.

  While she was there, they’d forced her to kill her own mother. Just to see if one werewolf could destroy another one.

  I was skimming a report summary about a wraith, and the various voltages they’d gone through electrocuting him until he finally exploded, when Taeral slammed his chair back from the table and dropped the folder he’d been reading on the floor. Papers and photos spilled out in an uneven fan.

  The photos were Daoin.

  With an involuntary shudder, I got up and slid the contents back inside. Didn’t bother looking any closer — that brief glimpse had been more than enough. Blood, burns, bruises, horribly broken bones. One photo had sho
wed him with both legs bent the wrong way, and splinters of bone erupting from his shattered knees and split calves.

  I knew it was just a fraction of what he’d survived there.

  With twenty-six years of captivity, there was probably more than one file on Daoin. Taeral shouldn’t have to suffer through that. He was a lot closer to our father than I was. “Hey, I can switch piles with you,” I said to him as I replaced the dropped folder on top.

  “No.” The startled reaction had left him, but his eyes still glittered with fury. “Thank you, brother. But I’ll know what’s been done to our father — and I will remember, the next time I encounter someone responsible for it.”

  I nodded and sat back down. I was pretty sure everyone who’d been involved with Daoin’s ordeal was already dead, since we’d killed most of them. But I knew better than to try standing between Taeral and revenge.

  “Crud. These assholes really screwed you guys over, didn’t they?” Donatti said.

  “You have no idea.”

  We did have to stop them. But murdering every last one of them wasn’t the answer. That would be stooping to their level. And that was why we had to find this killer.

  I opened a fresh file — and read the top sheet with a growing sense of dread.

  Subject Z-000119 (Threat Level 14) is a Type VII shapeshifter, previously unrecorded. Some sort of regional form of lycanthrope; standard countermeasures ineffective. Regeneration and pain tolerances higher than any previously recorded fully biological subject. No known regional countermeasures yet found.

  Subject possesses extreme hemokinetic abilities. Class D precautions must be in place at all times. Subject is to be kept at or below 700cc of blood in tissues at all times. If at any time the extraction equipment should fail, immediately inject with 15mL of undiluted Lachesis muta venom remotely via injection collar and activate cryogenic protocols.

  In case of failure of extraction equipment, all staff in the containment area are to be considered lost, and no attempt to rescue is to be made. Subject must be remotely monitored whenever research or vivisection staff are present in containment facility.

  --C. Frost. 1Nov.

  Additional notes: Subject is not to be engaged in communication except by a trained interrogator fluent in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl. Ignore delusions and threats.

  I barely understood most of the notes, but a few words and phrases jumped out and punched me in the gut. Lycanthrope meant werewolf, but this ‘subject’ obviously wasn’t. He was a shapeshifter who possibly turned into a wolf. Like Ian. Hemokinetic had something to do with blood — which they apparently kept draining from him constantly. Vivisection was mutilating surgery performed on live animals.

  And if he escaped, their protocol was to leave their staff for dead.

  Even though it was about the last thing I wanted to do, I shifted papers until I found some photographs. The first one showed a man strapped to a steel autopsy table, with needles and tubes in every limb and two in his throat, all of them draining blood into a grate below the table. A Hannibal Lecter style mask was fastened over his nose and mouth. And the eyes above the mask were not even close to human. They were huge, black and gold, with rings of gold spots around his eye sockets.

  “Uh, guys?” I managed hoarsely. “I think I found him.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I couldn’t read the report out loud. Even if I could pronounce all that stuff, I’d choke on most of it. Especially the parts I understood. So I passed the file around until everyone had a general idea of why this guy might want to brutally slaughter every Milus Dei member he could find.

  There was no arguing with his motivations.

  Ian took one of the photos out slowly and laid it on the table. “He is djinn,” he said. “But I cannot place his clan from this.”

  “Clan?” Sadie said. “Is that like a pack?”

  He shook his head. “Not precisely. It is similar to your human races.” His gaze fell to the photo again. “I am Dehbei, the wolf clan,” he said. “My wife is Bahari. The hawk.”

  “So you don’t all turn into wolves,” I said.

  “No. And this djinn … I simply cannot be certain, from the eyes alone.”

  Taeral snorted. “His eyes are black and gold, like yours,” he said. “And this report of theirs mentions lycanthropy. Werewolves. Does that not mean he’s your clan?”

  “He cannot be Dehbei.”

  I heard the chilling threat in his tone and saw Donatti pale with anger. But Taeral either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. “Why not?” he said. “Could one of your clan not be a ruthless killer? Or perhaps your clan is superior, and would never allow themselves to be captured by—”

  “My clan is dead!”

  Ian’s ringing shout left a roar of silence behind.

  Donatti flinched and tried to reach for him, but Ian pulled away sharply. “I am the last of the Dehbei,” he said, every word tearing from his throat. “And my wife is not of my clan, so there will never be another.” He shoved back and stood with a strangled growl. “If I did not respect Donatti’s wish for my restraint, I would destroy you where you sit, you blithering cretin.”

  “Okay.” Donatti stood fast and sent me a desperate glance. “Gideon, is there somewhere Ian can be alone for a while? I think he could use a break.”

  Ian glared at him, but didn’t say a word.

  “I’ll bring him to Vincent’s old room,” Sadie said. “Everything mostly works in there.” She stood and rubbed Taeral’s shoulder, a sympathetic gesture that said she didn’t blame him, and headed for the other table. “Come on, Ian.”

  As she passed him, he grabbed his duster and stalked out in her wake.

  Taeral stared after them with a stricken expression. “I’d no idea,” he whispered.

  “Of course you didn’t,” The anger and concern faded from Donatti’s face, and he let out a heavy breath. “He’s a little sensitive about that, obviously. He’ll calm down.”

  I could almost sense the part he didn’t say out loud: I hope.

  “Well, at least we have a possible lead now,” I said. “Maybe we should all try to get some rest. It’s been a long day.”

  Taeral bowed his head slightly. “I’d best wait for Sadie. She’ll likely want to bring Eli to our room.” He looked at me with defeat in his eyes. “She’s made him a … nest.”

  “Sorry, man.” He must’ve been feeling seriously put out with Sadie’s reaction to our screwed-up family’s new addition. I knew he felt as bad for Eli as anyone, but for him it was probably like becoming a father with exactly zero days’ notice. He had no idea what to do.

  Hell, I wouldn’t either, in his situation.

  Donatti looked around the parlor a minute, and then said, “Mind if I keep going through this stuff? I know I’m not getting to sleep any time soon. If I need to, I can just crash over there somewhere.” He waved vaguely at the furniture around the TV.

  “Fine by me,” I said. “Maybe you’ll find something useful that isn’t a horror show.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Gideon … thanks for trusting us. You too, Taeral,” he said. “I know it’s not easy. But I promise you, no matter how angry Ian gets, he’s one of the good guys.”

  “Aye. And I’m sorry I failed to see that,” Taeral said.

  Donatti hitched a grim smile. “Well, he doesn’t exactly make it easy to see. Trust me, I’ve been on the wrong end of him plenty of times. And I definitely don’t blame you for wanting to protect your family.”

  Something told me Donatti had personal experience in the family protection area, too.

  CHAPTER 16

  For the first time since I’d beaten the Valentines at their own game, I couldn’t sleep in a room with a bed.

  I’d been doing all right, until now. But tonight the walls were getting to me. I’d be the first to admit it was a massively screwed-up pattern — when I was truly upset, I reverted to the habits I’d developed during the worst years of my life. W
hen ‘home’ was a caravan of abuse and neglect, moving around the continent to hunt illegal big game and evade the law. And tonight, I was beyond upset.

  How could I stop a killer who was completely justified in his actions? I wasn’t even sure I should try. Maybe Taeral was right. The enemy of my enemy should be left the hell alone.

  But I remembered Agent Gilmore telling me that some of them had families, too. I assumed he meant himself, since I doubted anyone could love Special Agent Calla Frost.

  I’d put the little C. Frost notation at the bottom of that horrifying report on Subject Bleed-And-Vivisect out of my head. For the moment, I had to put it out again. But I’d damned well bring it up the next time I saw that heartless witch with a badge.

  I got up, stuffed my boots on and shrugged into my coat, and headed for my van … my official home away from home. Grygg gave me the side-eye as I passed the desk, but he didn’t say anything. I knew he worried about us in his own way. Very, very slowly.

  Outside, light snow drifted from a dark-clouded sky and dusted the ground. It was cold, but not bitter. The space heater I kept in my van would take the edge off.

  I’d gotten halfway across the yard when I caught a small, bright orange flare at the line of saplings, bushes, and tangled growth that hid the Castle from the rest of New York. Someone smoking a cigarette.

  But none of us smoked.

  I stopped, ready to throw a spell if I had to. “Who’s there?” I called.

  “Sorry. Didn’t want to do this inside.” A shadow detached itself from the bushes and headed toward me, and I made out Donatti in the soupy gloom of the front house light. “Yeah, I know,” he said, giving the cigarette a rueful glance. “But in my defense, I’m not real worried about dying of lung cancer.”

  I shrugged. “Hey, I don’t judge, man. So you’re immortal too?”