Brazen smacked the back of his head.
“Do you have any more of the Shimmer Empirics?” asked Pecker.
Kix stepped away from Brazen, rubbing the back of his head with a wince. Honestly, I was surprised Kix didn’t have a perpetual lump.
“One more, yes,” he said, taking it from his pocket and handing it over. “Here.”
Pecker snapped it from him while waving his hands for everyone to give him clear access to the door. He then gave a look back and put his finger to his mouth in shushing fashion.
“Hello, out there,” he called out, causing the banging to cease. “We are considering surrender.”
“Wise,” a woman voiced in response. “Open the door and we promise not to hurt you.”
“So our lives will be spared?” Pecker asked.
“By us, yes,” she replied. “I cannot speak for my master. You have killed two of his soldiers, after all. Plus, it seems you have somehow given another one a horrendous hangover.”
“Right,” Pecker said as he ran his fingers all around the empiric. Technically, it looked like he was just moving his digits around in the air, as if doing some sort of pantomime routine. “Step back so we can open the door.”
I found this odd since the door opened inward, but I heard a shuffling of feet and the shadow that had covered the opening at the bottom was now full of light. It seemed Keller didn’t go out of his way to recruit based on intellect.
Pecker gave us one last look and then took a deep breath.
He gently cracked open the door and peeked outside. I couldn’t see anything from where I was, until he opened it a bit farther. There were a good many guards and they all had their weapons trained on our resident goblin.
“Here,” Pecker said, launching the empiric at them.
Nobody could actually see it being launched, but then one of the guards said, “Ouch,” just before Pecker closed the door and locked it again.
“What the hell was that?” yelled the woman. She then added, “And we had an agreement!”
“Don’t worry,” Pecker said, his grin quite sinister indeed. “In about three seconds you won’t be worried about any agreements.”
“What?”
Pop!
I hadn’t recalled hearing that sound before when we’d thrown the other empirics. A wisp of smoke wafted in under the door and coughs could be heard from outside the room.
“Damn,” Pecker hissed. “Figures that would be the one that was a dud.”
“Are you trying to kill us with smoke?” questioned the woman outside. “And it smells of sulfur, too!” A few coughs later, she rallied her soldiers. “Break that damn door down and kill everyone inside!”
The banging resumed.
“Any other bright ideas?” Brazen asked Pecker with a glare.
“Not if they have mages…” He paused and glanced around the room. “Wait a tick.” He started tapping madly on the keyboard that was attached to the terminal in front of the transporter. “Okay, everyone get into the transporter, quick.”
We all piled into the transporter as the door to the room began to bulge. Those guards were doing their best to get in and take us out.
“Hurry up, Pecker,” I demanded. “They’re going to be in here any second.”
“Which is precisely why I need to do what I’m doing,” he argued. “There…”
He dived at the portal, landing in my arms.
That had been no doubt carefully calculated.
I put him down just as the door was kicked open and the guards came rushing into the room, guns held high.
An instant later, the entire world changed.
Chapter 11
The room we’d landed in was familiar only in that it was clearly a paranormal police station.
Where?
I had no idea.
Apparently, though, one of Keller’s guards had fired off a weapon because the bullet had transported with us. Talk about timing. It flew right over my shoulder, whipping my hair out of the way before smacking against the wall behind us with a loud crack.
A handful of officers were on their feet immediately, pointing their guns at us.
“Hands up,” said a man with an English accent.
“London PPD?” I asked Pecker as I put my hands in the air.
“It was the first thing on the list when I was selecting destinations,” he answered.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
I slowly lowered my hand and put it in my coat pocket.
“Careful,” the officer warned.
I pulled out my Retriever badge and showed it to him.
“The four of us are Retrievers from the Netherworld PPD,” I declared. “The goblin is our technician.”
Pecker grunted. “Why do you feel it’s necessary to point out that I’m a goblin? I mean, is that even relevant at all?” He’d turned to me and had his hands on his hips. “You didn’t bother to point out that Kix is a djinn, or that Brazen is a werebear, or even that Reaper is a reaper. But for some reason, it has to be noted that I’m a fucking goblin?”
“Never seen a goblin before,” one of the London cops said.
“Me neither,” said another.
I gave Pecker a smug look.
“Unbelievable,” he hissed, crossing his arms.
He was right that it wasn’t fair I’d had to point it out, of course, but the fact was that I’d only done so to ensure the officers here knew he wasn’t a threat. Then again, thinking about how easily he’d snapped that woman’s neck back in his office reminded me how dangerous he truly was.
“Anyway,” I stated, returning my badge to my pocket as we all stepped free from the portal, “we need to see your chief.”
The officer pointed to an office in the back corner.
We headed over as the excited cops calmed down and retook their seats.
I found it kind of odd how easy it had been to transport in. Anyone with a fake badge and a little bravado could have busted in without much fuss…especially if they had a grumpy goblin with them. To be fair, though, not many people would go out of their way to break into a police station.
Other than Keller, I suppose.
Food for thought.
The door was closed, but just as I was about to knock, a thought occurred to me.
“They’re not going to follow us, right?” I asked Pecker.
He was still miffed, but he looked up at me and said, “Who?”
“The guards we just left in the Netherworld.”
“Oh, them,” he said, softening a little. “No, they won’t be following us. I ran a setting to melt the portal after we transmitted.” He smiled slightly. “Chances are most of them got melted with it.”
“Melted?” Reaper asked.
“Yeah, it’s a security setting in all the portals,” explained Pecker. “Think of it like a self-destruct kind of thing. You don’t want it to blow up because that could attract attention in the field…” He looked at each of us. “You know, for the portals that are topside.” We collectively blinked at him. “Right, well, it’s a standard setting on all of them. I timed it for about five seconds after we were out. Anyone on or near it would have melted like a marshmallow in a pit of lava.”
“Lovely,” I said with a bit of distaste.
A bellowing voice was in the midst of reaming out someone in the office before us. This was obviously the chief of the London PPD, but I had no clue who he was talking to in there.
“And for the love of all that’s holy, unholy, or in the middle,” yelled the gruff voice, “you are not Sherlock Holmes, and you are damn sure not James Bond!”
I glanced at the others, who merely shrugged in response.
Then, I knocked on the door.
“What?” came the aggravated response.
Chapter 12
On the other side of that door stood three men. Two of them looked rather downtrodden and the other appeared heated.
The nameplate on the desk read Officer Bellows. Based
on the sound of his booming voice, I found the name fitting. His face looked as grumpy as his voice sounded. He had white hair that was parted on the left, hazel eyes, and his cheeks were ruddy. Bellows looked like a cop who hadn’t moved along with the times. His white shirt, black tie, and rolled-up sleeves marked him as being from the old guard. Cops these days tended to be either more casual in their choice of garb or they wore posh suits…Ian Dex came to mind for that last bit.
As a case in point, one of the cops who was being verbally skewered by Chief Bellows was slender with nicely styled brown hair, a slight tan, and smirky blue eyes. He had on a black tuxedo that sported a bowtie.
Now, the other guy was a bit different. He was tall, hairy, and he was wearing a long trench coat. He also had on a top hat and carried an unlit pipe in his mouth. But what really struck me as odd was the monocle over his left eye and the cane hanging over his right arm.
The last time I’d seen him, he was working with the aforementioned Ian Dex in Las Vegas.
“Is it just me or does that guy look familiar?” I asked through a direct connection to Reaper.
“His name is Harvey,” answered Reaper. “I healed him back in that garage in Vegas.”
“Who the hell are you?” asked Bellows with a sneer.
My first reaction was to warn him to cool his jets before I opened a can of whoop-ass on him, but I took a deep breath instead. The fact was that he’d obviously been pretty fired up at these two cops for some reason I wasn’t privy to. Maybe it was justified or maybe he was one of those captains who was just naturally abrasive. Either way, there was no point in my adding fuel to the fire.
Yet.
“My name is Officer Piper Shaw,” I said in a business-like tone of voice. “I’m a Retriever from the Netherworld.”
“And what the hell are you doing in my precinct, Officer Piper Shaw, a Retriever from the Netherworld?”
His voice was laced with venom.
I took a deep breath and leveled my gaze at him.
“Keep it together, Piper.”
“Shut the fuck up, Reap.”
“The Netherworld PPD’s main headquarters is under attack, Chief Bellows.”
“Is it now?” he replied, softening slightly. “Where’s Chief Carter?”
“He’s back defending the base, sir,” Kix answered.
“I see.”
Chief Bellows put his wrinkled hands on the desk and leaned forward. His face was growing redder by the second.
“So your base gets attacked and you immediately jump ship, eh?” he snarled. “I should rip you all to shreds with my bare hands, I should.”
“That’s it,” I said, stepping forward, shaking away Reaper’s attempt to hold me back. “Listen to me, you geriatric fuck. We did not run away—”
“Technically…” started Kix, but he shut his mouth the instant I glared at him.
“Okay, technically, we did run away,” I admitted, wanting to backhand Kix in the nuts, “but only because we were trapped and were inches from death. We were sent on a mission by Chief Carter and things went south. We got out and are now looking for reinforcements to help get the station back in hands.”
Bellows stood up and crossed his arms, eyeing me carefully.
“How many inches would you say are in a centimeter?” asked the James Bond guy. The chief moved his eyes over. “What? I’m merely trying to understand how close they truly were to dying, is all.”
“Not nearly as close as you are right now,” Bellows warned. He then looked back at me. “I like your style, Officer Shaw, but I can’t help you.”
So he was the type of guy who responded well to toughness. He’d go to walk all over you, but if you stood your ground you’d earn his respect. Personally, I hated people like him, but now wasn’t the time to inform him of that.
“Why not?” I challenged.
“Because we are all topside officers,” he answered. “You know we have jurisdictional issues.”
“But this is an emergency situation,” Reaper countered. “The very heart of the Netherworld is under attack, sir.”
“And if we all leave our posts here, what do you think will happen to our city, kid?”
The fact that he called Reaper ‘kid’ was pretty funny, seeing that Reaper was thousands of years old. Bellows didn’t know that, though.
Regardless, the old guy was right—Bellows, not Reaper.
We couldn’t just send every officer from topside down to fix this. It’d leave cities vulnerable. Worse than that, he was also correct about topside officers. People like Chief Carter wouldn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other, especially under the circumstances, but the elders in each faction would take a huge shit if a bunch of topside cops flooded the Netherworld.
Translation: paperwork.
“And before you even suggest it,” Bellows said, pointing at me, “it’d take a minimum of seventy-two hours to get the paperwork pushed through on this. Even then, I might be able to spare five seasoned officers at most.”
“Which would be fine if we got another twenty precincts to do the same,” suggested Reaper.
“We don’t have seventy-two hours, Reap,” I noted. “Hell, twelve hours would be too long.”
“Uh, Chief?” Harvey ventured, raising his hand.
“Yeah?”
“What about officers who are due for reintegration?”
His partner looked at him as if he’d grown a dragon out of his neck. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to help.”
“Don’t.”
But it was too late.
The trap was set and it was abundantly clear that Chief Bellows was a major fan of the idea.
“Actually,” the older man said as a small grin appeared, “that is a fine thought, Officer Smith. Let me check my records here…” He typed for a second before his eyes lit up. “Yes, yes, indeed. It looks like we have exactly two officers we can lend to help you out of this predicament of yours, Officer Shaw.”
“I’m guessing these two?” I said, nodding worriedly at ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Bond.’
Seeing Chief Bellows with a full smile was not a pleasant thing.
Chapter 13
“All I’m saying, Piper,” Kix annoyed me as we waited for Bond, whose actual name was James Leland (00737), “is that we could easily check all the other precincts to see if there are any other officers who are due for reintegration.”
“Fine,” I replied, throwing my hands up. “Go ahead, Kix. Let me know what you find.”
“I’ll help you,” Pecker chimed in. “Piper’s obviously got a pole up her ass.” Then he leaned in toward Kix and added, “Sadly, it’s not mine.”
The two of them giggled.
I thwacked Pecker on the head.
Yes, I recognize how that sounds.
My biggest concern right now was getting back down to the Netherworld to do what I could to help the chief and the rest of the cops. I’d hoped that we’d be bringing the cavalry, but no such luck.
Fucking bureaucrats.
To make matters worse, we had just gotten saddled with two cops who were happily dumped by their chief. It didn’t take a 9th-level wizard to know what that meant.
“Chief,” I called down through my connector, hoping he’d be able to pick me up from here since we were in a topside PPD building, “can you hear me?”
“You’re alive,” he answered, sounding relieved. “We thought the worst when your connection went out. Where are you?”
“London PPD,” I answered. “We had to get out quickly, and this was the first place on the list that Pecker found.”
“But how?”
“Same way Keller and his band of pricks got in, Chief. They used a portal that was in storage down in the basement.”
“Inside man,” the chief hissed. “Should have known.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, we’ve got two cops from here who are due for reintegration. They’ll be joining us in the fight. Kix is also hunting for more across
topside who may be due, but Chief Bellows couldn’t give us anyone else.”
“Even if he’d have been willing, Piper,” Chief Carter said, “it’d take too long to get them down here. The elders would raise a stink.”
“So he said,” I acknowledged. “Anyway, hopefully we’ll get a bunch more cops to join us, but they’ll have to go through reintegration first.”
I heard a groan on the other side of the line.
Nobody liked going through reintegration.
It was tedious, took too long, and it screwed with your head for a while. The paranoia that followed only lasted a few minutes, but it was enough to make you want to hide under a rock.
Of course, that was just what I’d heard.
I’d never been through reintegration, seeing that I wasn’t technically a supernatural. At least not in the sense of being a vampire, werewolf, fae, and so on.
“Well, do what you can,” said the chief. “I have a feeling we’ll be losing this building soon.”
“Casualties?”
“Already lost a good ten cops.” His voice was tight. “Most of them just kids.”
“Fucking Keller,” I stormed. “Sorry, Chief.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth, Piper. Anyway, get back as soon as you can, but I’d expect we’ll be outside by the time you return.”
The connection silenced.
It wasn’t often that I’d heard the chief sound like that. He was a good guy. Hell, he’d saved me from landing in a Netherworld jail when I was younger. So when I heard his voice sounding so grim, it kind of pissed me off.
We needed to do something to help him and the rest of the PPD.
I turned to Kix. “What did you find?”
“There are only two other cops due for reintegration in all of topside,” he replied.
“That sounds pretty unlikely.”
“Not really,” Pecker replied. “Most of them try to get it done at the end of the year, during leave. Makes it easier on them since they’ll usually be blitzed anyway.” He held up his own datapad. “You can see a graph right here.”
“Neat,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Where are these two officers, Kix?”
Major Feeding: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Thriller (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department Book 4) Page 4