I’d been down this way with Kix earlier, so I knew that one of the doors on the left contained all sorts of destructive goodies. I wanted to head back in there and pick up a mess of explosives. There was no time for that, though. The crowd facing down Chief Carter was on my mind.
“Chief?” I attempted through the connector.
The connection was dead.
Damn it.
“Second door on the left?” I asked, trying to get it out of my mind that the chief and so many other cops might be out there hurting at that moment.
“Right,” Pecker and Reaper replied in unison.
I opened the second door on the left.
Chapter 25
A group of guards looked up at us from their seats in a small break-room. Crackers, cookies, sodas, water bottles, and so on littered the table in front of them.
Thinking fast, I said, “Sorry, thought this was the ladies’ room.”
“Oh,” said a helpful woman near the back, “head to your left. There’s a sign. You can’t miss it.”
“Great, thanks.”
I shut the door and looked at the others.
“You said it was two doors down on the left, idiots,” I hissed.
“No,” Pecker argued, “I said two doors down on the right.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him.
“I just asked you, not thirty seconds ago, if it was two doors down on the left,” I pressed. “You both answered, ‘Right’.” That’s when I realized that they hadn’t meant ‘correct’ when they’d answered me.
I facepalmed.
“Goddammit,” I whispered aloud.
“Hey,” a voice in the break-room called out, “wasn’t that a PPD cop?”
“Oh yeah…shit!”
The scrambling sound of chairs being pushed away gave me, Pecker, and Reaper the sudden desire to get into the second room down on the right. We filed in an instant before the hallway was flooded with the sound of clomping feet.
“Where the hell is she?” yelled out one dude.
“Maybe she really did have to go to the bathroom,” suggested the lady who I assumed had answered my original question. “I’ll check there. You guys scope out these other rooms.”
“Damn it,” I said, scooting back until I was behind a large set of boxes. “Hide, guys, and turn off your fucking high-beams, Reap!”
The moment my partner’s eyes extinguished, the room went pitch black.
“I just heard the sound of footsteps,” announced Agnes.
Double damn it.
In our mad rush to get away from the oncoming bad guys, I’d forgotten that we rushed into the room where Agnes was being held by someone. Seeing that said person was sitting in the dark with us made me assume that it was either a fellow cop or someone else seeking not to be found. Based on what the guy had said when he’d found Agnes, I couldn’t believe that he was working for Keller.
The door opened.
I slunk back and held my breath.
“Any PPD cops in here?” asked a shaky voice. “If so, you have to tell me. It’s the law.”
No, it wasn’t.
“Good,” the guy announced, sounding relieved, and then shut the door.
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“Probably didn’t want to get shot,” Pecker pointed out. “Think about it. He opens the door and becomes the perfect target. We’re scattered all over the place, but he’s only got one way in.”
“Not in the bathroom,” yelled out a woman’s voice. “All the rooms here have been checked?”
A chorus of affirmative responses came back to her.
“Then let’s check the other side.”
After their footsteps vanished into the distance, I reached out and flicked on the closet light. It took a second to acclimate to the sudden brightness, but I soon figured out that we were in the uniforms room. Retrievers didn’t wear the standard PPD outfits, but I saw cops all the time as they strolled through the buildings in their dark blues.
That’s when I heard the faint sound of snoring.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“It sounds like someone is sleeping,” Reaper replied.
“Yeah, it’s the guy who has me,” said Agnes. “He’s been zonked out for the last hour.”
Pecker pointed to the far corner on his side of the room. He went left, Reaper went right, and I headed up the middle.
“Careful,” I warned. “He may not actually be sleeping. It could be a ruse.”
“No, Piper,” Agnes said, “this dude is seriously asleep. Passed out the moment we settled down, in fact.”
A few seconds later, my gun leveled, Reaper’s hands glowing, and Pecker ready to rip out a throat, we stared down at a greasy-looking guy with a unibrow. His face was covered in pockmarks and his hair was matted. He wore a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt that showed a razor being gripped by a hand. It was a Judas Priest album cover.
“Methkins?” I said, blinking in disbelief as I kicked his leg.
“Hmmm, what?” He suddenly jolted. “Oh, crap,” he blurted. “Don’t shoot. I don’t want any…” His face contorted a moment later. “Piper? Reaper? Pecker?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, feeling a bit suspicious. “Why didn’t you head out with the rest of us?”
“Oh…uh…” He glanced around, appearing quite uncomfortable. “I was sleeping off a long night down in room nineteen.”
Pecker chuckled slightly.
I gave him a sidelong glance.
“What?” our goblin said with a shrug. “It’s the room where we keep captured drugs and such.”
I should have known.
“How were you not spotted, Meth?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, man,” he replied. “Lucky, I guess. Anyway, there was a loud crashing sound and I woke up. Had a major headache. Still do.”
We all just stared at him.
“Right. Well, I went searching for Pecker…”
“Phrasing,” I mumbled.
“…and he wasn’t in his office.” Methkins reached into his pocket and pulled out Agnes. “That’s when I spotted Reaper’s turtle and snapped her up. Then, I heard shouting voices, so I snuck back out and came in here, thinking it was the safest place.” He sighed heavily. “Wanted to hit the break-room to snag some chips, but I heard guards talking in there.”
Reaper reached out and took Agnes from Methkins. My partner’s eyes pulsed rhythmically as he nuzzled the glorified lizard on her head.
“I never thought I’d get to hug my turtle again,” he cooed. “I’ll hug you every day from now until eternity.”
“Phrasing,” I repeated, again keeping my voice low as I walked back toward the door to check on things.
“Ouch, shit!” Pecker yelped out of nowhere.
I spun back to find that Agnes had his finger firmly in her beak.
“What the hell did you leave me down here for, you dick?” she raged at him.
“His name is ‘Pecker,’ Agnes,” Reaper replied aloud, “not ‘Dick’.”
“No, Reap,” Agnes replied, keeping her beak firmly planted on Pecker’s finger, “I’m calling him a dick.”
“Ah, right.”
“I didn’t mean it, okay?” Pecker said, gently extracting his finger and then sticking it into his own mouth. “Jeez.”
“Those things carry salmonella, remember?” I stated, pointing at Agnes.
“Your mom has salmonella,” she snapped back. “Got it from blowing dudes for five bucks a pop in a back alley, I’ll bet. Probably would have been ten bucks a pop, but she couldn’t afford to pay that much.”
Methkins and Pecker giggled at that, though Pecker did so while sucking on his bitten finger. Reaper was more adult about her comment. He simply frowned disapprovingly at her.
“My mom is dead, Agnes,” I noted with much disdain.
“Oh, damn,” she replied after a moment “I’m really sorry to hear that. That’s just awful.” If I wasn’t
mistaken, I’d have to say the damn turtle sounded genuinely apologetic….until she continued with, “But I guess that’s what happens when you go around blowing dudes in a back alley for five bucks a pop.”
Just as I was about to retaliate, Brazen broke through on the connector.
“Piper,” he said, “the elevator has been compromised. All sorts of magical mayhem blasting the thing from above.”
“Great.”
“We have to get out of here,” he added.
“Jump out and head to the right,” I commanded. “We’ll cover you.”
Chapter 26
Brazen and Kix came barreling down the hallway as we stepped out of the room. There were shouts coming from behind them, which told me it was time to launch some Death Nails.
Best part of my day, so far.
I raised my gun and noticed Reaper had a wary look about him.
“Don’t give me any shit, Reap,” I said via a direct connection. “None of these people are going to give us a bounty, so it’s not like you’re losing money on the deal.”
“That’s hardly the point, Piper,” he remarked. Then he blinked at me for a second and asked, “You’re certain we can’t collect bounties on any of them?”
I scoffed at that and fired off the first round, dropping a werewolf in the process.
“Come on, guys,” I called out, not bothering with the connector, “shoot at these bastards!”
Brazen and Kix had reached us and were firing along with me as we slowly backed down the corridor.
I wanted to yell for Pecker to go and get some of those fancy empirics, but Keller’s goons were already closing in on that closet. He’d never make it. Besides, if he tried getting in there and failed, that’d only tip off the bad guys that there was something worth risking your ass for in that room.
“Keep an eye behind us, Meth and Pecker,” I commanded. “We don’t want anyone sneaking—”
“Like maybe a wizard or five?” Pecker interrupted.
Brazen spun and ripped off a couple rounds toward our rear as Kix and I kept firing at the larger group of oncoming goons.
Reaper was casting energy pulses down the corridor in both directions, carefully avoiding hitting the rest of us in the process. At least, I was assuming that was his plan, seeing that nobody on my team yelped in agony just yet.
A bullet ripped through my shooting arm, causing me to drop my gun and groan.
No matter what anyone tells you, being immortal doesn’t mean you get to skip out on feeling pain. Getting shot sucks, and it’s even worse when you start to heal up. It’s like having someone sew you back up without anesthetic, and doing so at a snail’s pace…with a burning hot needle.
“Are you all right?” Reaper asked, slowing his electrical light show.
“Keep firing, Reap,” I snarled while picking up my gun using my left hand. “I’ll heal.”
And that’s when another bullet tore through my left bicep.
“Son of a fuck,” I choked, dropping the gun again. “All right, Reap, heal me quick. I’m no good to any of you if I can’t fight.”
“So, wait,” Pecker interjected as Reaper began his healing process, “are you saying you couldn’t fight me off right now?”
“I still have feet, genius,” I answered with a glower.
“Oh, I know,” Pecker teased. “Sexy ones, too.”
“Ew…owww!” I yanked my arm away from Reaper. “What the hell?”
“Time is of the essence, Piper,” Reaper said, resuming his energy pulsing. He was beginning to look somewhat tired. “No time for the comfortable healing process, I’m afraid.”
That was a fast healing, too. I looked down at both arms and then flexed my hands.
All better.
Sore, but better.
With a quick sweep, I snapped up my gun and rolled off to the right side of the hallway, rattling off round after round until I’d dropped the bitch who’d shot me. Caught her in the leg, hand, and finally in the neck. The last shot made for her final undoing as the Death Nail splintered into thousands of fragments as lightning exploded throughout her body.
“This way is clear now,” Pecker called out. He started to run back toward his shop. “I’ll set the self-destruct. You guys get to the stairs and climb the hell out of here.”
“Wait,” I yelled after him, but he was tearing ass toward his office with Kix and Methkins in tow. “Don’t we have to go up to the second floor if we use the stairs, idiot?”
“Better than sitting down here and getting shot at, my little love morsel.”
Ugh.
Still, he had a point.
Wait, no, he didn’t.
The second floor was far worse than being down here. That was my assumption anyway. Down here we had guards and a lot of places to hide and fight from. Up there were desks and a standard portal. That’s it. And I was damn sure that Keller was going to protect that portal with everything he had.
Besides, it wasn’t like we were going to leave Pecker while we escaped.
That just wasn’t how we rolled.
“Get the damn self-destruct set, Pecker,” I said finally. “We’ll do our best to cover you and then we’ll all get the hell out of here together.”
“Aw, Piper,” he replied with a snicker. “You do love me.”
Chapter 27
We rushed into Pecker’s office, leaving a wake of bodies in our trail. It wasn’t a competition or anything, but I’d dropped five, Brazen capped four, and Kix got two. Reaper had zapped more than I could count, but he had a tendency of just giving people the tingles and not actually killing them. Death Nails were a bit more final when they hit, assuming they struck a torso or a head.
“How long is this going to take?” I asked between breaths.
“Two minutes,” Pecker answered while crawling up under a large metallic structure. “Just have to set the bypasses and then enter in the codes.”
“Doesn’t there have to be more than one authorization entered for it to be accepted?” asked Kix. “Seems like too much power for just one person to be able to do this, Pecker.”
Pecker crawled back out and wiped his hands.
“That’s why I had to set the bypass switches,” he answered seriously. “Not supposed to do that, technically, but who’s going to tell on me?”
None of us would. Neither would the chief, and he had to know that would be a requirement.
Methkins appeared to be in need of some weed at the moment. The anxious look on his face was very telling.
Firefights were not typically the domain of wizards. They had to prepare for weeks to do battle, and even then they weren’t exactly great at it…stereotypically speaking. There were stories about great wizards who had fought in the old war. They had perfected the art of setting runes with haste, and they had used apprentices like a factory in order to build explosives and magical trinkets. But Methkins wasn’t of their ilk. He was one of the slow, methodical wizards who spent the majority of their lives soaking up bong resin.
“Stay off to the side,” I told him. “If we get taken down, just surrender and hope for the best.”
I admit I wasn’t terrific at being consoling, but I also wasn’t a very good babysitter.
Brazen and Reaper had barred the door, which was good and bad. It was good because letting the bad guys in without some form of blockade would be foolhardy; it was bad because the elevator that sat directly across the way from these doors was now inaccessible.
Not that it really mattered since taking the main elevator would merely pit us directly against Keller and his goons the moment we stepped out, but I liked to have options available. This was the same reason we’d opted to take the portal the last time we were trying to break out of this damn place.
The stairs were the better option.
Not a fantastic option, but definitely a better one.
It would give us a point of retreat that an elevator wouldn’t.
“Open up in there,” called out a voi
ce, after a few presses on the door.
“Can you say ‘deja vu’?” asked Brazen with a growl.
“Except this time there’s no portal to save us,” Kix breathed.
Pecker snapped his fingers at us and pointed at a box on the shelf next to him. He hadn’t said a word, but that’s because he was clearly too busy entering in codes to launch the self-destruct sequence.
I opened the box and found a bunch of empirics.
My face lit up and I nearly said “I could kiss you” to our technical guru, but…no.
“Use the vents,” Pecker said over his shoulder as he ran to the back of the room and started tapping away on a different machine.
I began looking around for what vent he was talking about, when Reaper snapped an empiric from my hands and rushed over to the door. With a leap that I honestly didn’t expect he was capable of making, he slam-dunked the explosive through an open grill and we heard it clanking on the ground outside the room.
Yells were silenced a couple seconds later.
“Nice one, Reap,” Brazen said, but I knew my partner was not happy with the need to do what he’d done.
“You did the right thing,” I said via a direct connection.
“I know,” he replied somberly.
“You bought us time, Reap. That’s a good thing.”
“There will be more right behind those, Piper.”
Just as he’d finished his sentence, the doors to Pecker’s office exploded in on us.
Chapter 28
I pulled myself up from the debris to find there were two haughty mages standing in the doorway. They were flanked by a couple of female guards on either side, and a number more in the hall behind them. I found it odd that the guards were all women, but my brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment.
The one thing I did know was that my gun was lying on the ground between me and them.
“Which of you is the leader of this wretched team?” asked the more elderly mage.
None of my crew said a word, mostly because they were all busily wobbling around. Getting flashed with a mage’s spell like that was tough on the mind, but it was even worse for people like Brazen, Kix, and Methkins. They weren’t the super-fast healing types like me and Reaper. Fortunately, Pecker had been too far back in the room to be affected like the rest of us.
Major Feeding: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Thriller (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department Book 4) Page 9