by SM Reine
I found the tattoo on the first man’s back. It was a large bleeding apple, done in a similar style as Cain’s, although the ink was older and blurring around the edges. I didn’t need to find the tattoo on the other guy, but I did just to confirm my suspicions. It was between his shoulder blades.
Relief escaped me in a sigh. This wasn’t a message from Lucrezia. It was just a couple of Union kopides that also happened to serve Cain’s cult. Or else a couple members of Cain’s cult that had stolen Union gear and somehow infiltrated our investigation unnoticed.
No big deal.
When I was done handling them, I washed my hands in the lake’s water and turned my Bluetooth earpiece on. I kept Ann in the corner of my eye as I said, “Suzy?”
“I’m here, Cèsar,” my partner said after a moment. “What’s up?”
“I just got attacked by two members of the Apple.”
Her voice sharpened. “Are you okay? And the necromancer?”
“We’re fine.” More or less. Ann was still smiling an unsettling smile as she gazed up at Yvette, as if enraptured by her face. I wasn’t sure I’d call that “fine,” but we were both alive for the moment. “I think this means I was getting close to something. I’m going to look for Fritz.”
“Wait for backup,” she said. “I’m coming back.”
I disconnected without telling her that I couldn’t wait. It was getting late. The moon was high in the sky. If Fritz didn’t contact Lucrezia soon, I’d be in big trouble.
We were out of time.
“Shit,” I said. “Shit, shit, shit.” At least one of these dead bodies had to know where Cain’s lake hideout was, assuming he had one. But they were both dead now. That information was lost to me. Searching on foot was going to take forever.
Ann cocked her head to the side. “Problem?”
“I was just wishing that Isobel were here so I could ask these guys where Cain’s hideout is.”
“Oh,” she said. “I can help you with that.” Her giggle was high-pitched and just as strange as her smile. “So much death here tonight. I can work wonders with that.”
More death magic? I wasn’t sure I wanted Ann to do anything of the sort. But my feet felt glued to the sand, and I watched in numb shock as she worked her magic.
Cords of power lifted from the depths of the earth, locked around the stone scepter in Ann’s hand. My eyes watered and my lungs constricted as both men began to stir, rolling over, lifting their cracked skulls from the sand so that clumps of brain dribbled over their foreheads.
They both stood, steady and tall. Aside from the giant holes in their skulls, they looked passably alive.
I was feeling sick all over again.
Ann pressed the scepter against the first man. The magic between them brightened. She fed off of both of their deaths and shoved it into him. “Why did you just try to kill Agent Hawke, Ricky?” she asked. His name came to her easily, as if she had known his name all along. She must have learned it from the magic.
“He escorted Yvette and possesses the fragment of ethereal ruin. Cain wanted both. He didn’t order us to kill Agent Hawke, but it seemed like a convenient way to take possession of them.” Ricky said it so calmly. Killing me was “convenient.” Nice.
“Where is Cain hiding?” Ann asked.
“He hides in many places. He moves all the time so that nobody can find him.” That was almost exactly what Yvette had said. When Ricky spoke, a vein in the remnants of his forehead bulged and squirted blood into his skull cavity. I clapped a hand over my mouth.
Once I had control over my urge to vomit again, I rephrased the question. “Where does Cain hide when he’s at Lake Tahoe?”
The zombie didn’t respond to me. Ann had to repeat the question before Ricky would answer. “There’s a cave a mile up that way, with the entrance in the water. You have to swim to reach it.” He lifted an arm and pointed north with a limp hand.
“Is that where the hostage is?” Ann asked.
“Yes. That’s where the hostage waits for the moon.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “‘Waits for the moon?’”
The zombie stared at nothing. He was reanimated well enough to speak, but not to do much else, it seemed. The color was still draining out of him as his blood slowed to a stop.
Man, that gave me the willies.
I stepped out into the water ankle-deep and looked for an outcropping of rocks. I couldn’t see it in the dark. I was going to have to head up there blind. Glancing over my shoulder at Ann and her zombies—now numbering three—I wondered if I’d be safer with them coming with me as protection, or going into a cult’s hideout alone.
I remembered the delight in Ann’s eyes as she attacked the kopis, and I decided I didn’t want her anywhere near me.
“Can I borrow Yvette to protect me?” I asked.
“Sure,” Ann said. She turned to the female zombie. “Follow Agent Cèsar Hawke. Do anything he asks.”
Yvette lumbered into the water after me. I gave Ann a look that might have been a smile or a grimace. Even I wasn’t certain. “Thanks.”
Together, the zombie and I went to save Fritz.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
YOU DON’T KNOW COLD until you’ve been waist-deep in Lake Tahoe when it’s filled with snowmelt.
Not that I had time to check, but I was pretty sure that my testicles clawed their way into my stomach within twenty seconds of submerging myself. And that was only the beginning of the horrifying chill. My teeth chattered as I sloshed through the water, fighting to reach the next bank of rocks before I lost all ability to move below the waist.
Yvette, meanwhile, looked entirely unbothered by the temperature. She was much shorter than me and the water got all the way up to her chin in some places.
Guess dead people didn’t care much about the cold.
I warmed myself with the thought that Fritz was just around the next little peninsula of rough, slippery stones, or the next one. Always the next one. I couldn’t find the damn beach that Ricky had mentioned.
Finally, long after I could no longer see the beach where I’d left Ann and her two new kopis-zombies, I found the mouth of the cave. Trees grew on top of it in twisted spirals, reaching toward the sky with brown pine needles encrusted in ice.
The entrance was tall enough that I didn’t have to duck when I dredged myself out of the water, but just barely. The stacked-rock walls did a great job sheltering me from the frigid breeze.
It was too dark for me to see far beyond the entrance. I stood on the brink and wrung my shirt out as much as I could. The splattering water echoed inside. “Is there a light switch?” I asked Yvette, knowing she couldn’t answer.
If I gave myself a few minutes to work on the spell, I might have been able to conjure up some kind of candlelight spell. It was considered one of the most basic spells that almost any witch could cast. But every second I stood in the wind was another second exposing the poor huevos to the chill, so I headed in blind.
The ground had been smoothed flat inside the mouth of the cave. I didn’t trip on anything as I shuffled along with one hand on the rock wall. Yvette lumbered behind me, slow and purposeful as she had been in the lake.
“Fritz?” I whispered.
No response.
I stretched out both hands and shuffled a little farther.
Something hard stopped me after two steps. I couldn’t see what, but it was broad and flat, so I assumed it was a wall. Weirdly, it felt like wood, not stone. I felt along until I found a doorknob.
It was unlocked. I pushed the door open.
There was a single light inside—a battery-powered camping lantern. It illuminated the room well enough for me to see that it was a pretty basic structure. Three walls were wooden planks. The fourth, in the back, was stone. There were a couple of cots on either wall and a bucket in the corner that was probably used as a toilet, judging by the smell.
And a man was slumped against the back wall.
Fri
tz.
I dropped to my knees next to him. Shook him gently.
“Hey,” I said. “You better not be dead, asshole.”
Fritz’s head lolled on his shoulders, but his eyes didn’t open. He was looking pretty bad, even in the limited light; he’d gotten a heck of a beating. The shoulder of his shirt was tacky with drying blood.
But there was a pulse at his throat.
Fritz was alive.
I bowed my head and took a minute to revel in the relief. The instant Fritz was awake and we had reception, I was going to have him call Lucrezia. He would clear everything up. We were going to be fine.
Fritz’s eyes finally cracked. Then he focused on me, and his eyes shot wide open, suddenly alert. “Cèsar, no!” he groaned, gripping my shirt in both hands. “You have to go!”
“Not without you,” I said, moving to pull his arm over my shoulder.
Someone else spoke. “Ah, Yvette. Thank our blessed Adam.”
I knew that voice.
So much for being fine.
I turned slowly, knowing whom I would see behind me. Cain stood in the doorway in all his naked werewolf glory, rimmed by faint moonlight. He was smiling at Yvette, who stood in the corner with her head flopped to the side and her arms limp. Guess it was dark enough that even he couldn’t tell that Yvette wasn’t at her best.
He brushed past her to look at me. Cain’s silvery eyes glowed in the darkness. It was only then that I realized he was carrying another piece of white stone under his arm like a football—not the decoy that Allyson and Bellamy had fabricated, but a genuine piece of ethereal ruin from the mines.
“Wow,” I said. “You must run really fast.”
Cain actually smiled. One corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other, making his whole face look slanted. “Werewolves have incredible powers of speed and strength.”
Apparently. He must have run hundreds of miles in an hour. Impossible for any land mammal. Wondered if he was just fucking with me and had stolen an SUV or something.
I wanted to make a snarky quip at him, but I couldn’t think of any.
So instead I said, “Get him, Yvette.”
He wasn’t expecting to be attacked from the rear. He didn’t turn to defend himself in time.
The zombie jumped onto his back and wrapped her arms around his throat, slamming him into the wall with her momentum. He dropped the piece of ethereal gateway.
I didn’t wait to see how long it would take a werewolf to dismember a zombie—I doubted it would be long at all. I grabbed Fritz, dragged him to his feet, and hauled his semi-conscious body toward the mouth of the cave as quickly as possible.
But not fast enough.
Cain roared behind me. One of Yvette’s legs flew over my head, without any sign of the rest of her body.
Then he was on top of me.
My head slammed into the floor and bounced.
I blacked out.
I woke up with one hell of a migraine and a werewolf standing over me.
Not the best wake up call, let me tell you.
“Auntie Em? Uncle Henry?” I asked, squinting through the pain of my possible concussion to figure out where the hell I was.
Judging by the wooden walls and camping lantern, I was thinking I was still in the cave.
Fritz groaned. He was lying on his side next to me, bleeding on the ground in quantities that didn’t look safe or healthy. His hands were tied in front of him with bungee cords.
Yep. Still in the cave.
And, judging by the fact that my immobile wrists ached behind my back, I was also tied up. Now Cain had two hostages instead of one. Better and better.
“I thought you were supposed to be at the Silverton Mine,” I said.
Cain paced in front of me. Couldn’t he put some clothes on? His junk was swaying just a few inches away from my face and that was a lot more werewolf than I wanted to get acquainted with. I don’t have a problem with old guys blow-drying their balls at the gym, but shoving hairy wolf nuts in my face when I’m nursing a migraine? No thanks.
A guy’s got to have his limits.
“I finished my errands there,” he said. “I took what I wanted and left my men to slaughter the remaining personnel.”
“Didn’t take long for you to dig out the rest of the gate.”
“I didn’t bother digging out the rest. This is all I took.” Cain tossed that piece of glistening white rock the size of his hand in the air then caught it on the way down.
“It doesn’t matter if you stole the rest of the ruins anyway,” I said. “We have the first piece on lockdown somewhere. You will never get it from us. You will never build the gate.”
“You’re an idiot,” Cain said, throwing and catching the stone again. “I don’t want to build the gate. I only need to destroy a single piece to ensure that nobody manages to open it.”
I frowned. My eyes darted to the dark lumps in the back of the room, which I thought used to be Yvette, now slightly dismembered. “But the Apple—”
“They’re idiots, too. Pawns in a bigger war. I have to keep them motivated and focused. As long as they want something, and they think I can give it to them, they are pliant. If they get what they want and liberate Adam, then they won’t be useful to me anymore.”
He wasn’t just a megalomaniacal cult leader. He was a lying megalomaniacal cult leader. What a charmer.
But seriously, he was a charmer. His smile radiated charisma. Easy to see why a cult would follow him. I wanted to trust him and this guy had clubbed me.
“You probably shouldn’t be telling me this,” I said. “I’m going to arrest you, and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” I didn’t actually have to give perps the Miranda warning, but it seemed like a good time to remind him that I worked for the government and all.
“I can tell you whatever I want. I haven’t had anyone to be honest with in months. It’s helpful to have a sounding board for my plans. What do you think?”
“I think…” I blinked. “Wait, I’m a sounding board? Does that mean we’re friends now?”
“No.”
“Damn,” I said. “I’m feeling like we could be friends. And, you know, friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Friends also don’t murder each other. We should be friends.”
I was babbling. This was bad. I needed to shut my fucking mouth before I made it worse.
How is that possible? What’s worse than getting killed by a werewolf, Cèsar?
Aside from Barry Manilow, that is.
Lord, even my thoughts are babbling.
Cain crouched beside us. “We don’t have to be friends for you to be useful to me. And I think you’ll be extremely useful.” He ruffled Fritz’s hair, not gently. “Protein alleviates a new wolf’s transitional discomforts.”
Fritz met my gaze as best he could through his swollen, bloody eye sockets. I suddenly understood why he was bleeding so much.
One of the Union zombies had said something about Fritz waiting for the full moon…hadn’t he?
My boss had been bitten by a werewolf.
Oh shit.
Cain straightened and backed toward the door. “I need to figure out how to destroy this,” he said, tossing the fragment of ethereal stone in the air again. “I’ll be back for Fritz in the morning, once he’s human again.” He glanced out the door to the mouth of the cave and the sky beyond. “We change very late at night the first time. I’d say you have almost an hour to kiss your butt goodbye.”
And with that, he slammed the door, leaving me alone with Fritz.
The guy whose ability to call the Union was the only thing saving me from Lucrezia de Angelis’s vengeance.
The guy who might be about to shapeshift into a man-eating wolf.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I SQUIRMED IN MY bindings, inching away from Fritz.
“Friends also don’t eat friends,” I said. “Just, uh, pointing that out.”
I only kind of meant that as
a joke. Fortunately, my boss laughed. The sound was dry and rasping and awful. He must have been even more injured than he looked.
“I’ll keep that in mind while I’m howling at the moon.” He flinched and groaned, spine bowing. I strained away from him but didn’t make it very far, tied up as I was. Fortunately, he didn’t turn into a werewolf right at that moment. “Your rescue plan seems to have gone awry.”
“It doesn’t help that there are members of the Apple in the Union. They tried to kill me as soon as my back was turned,” I said. “By the way, on a related note—there are members of a fucking cult in the Union. Did you know about that?”
“I might have.”
Of course he did. “That’s why you formed this team, isn’t it?”
“A primary motivator, yes,” Fritz said. “Who was it?”
“One of them was some guy named Ricky. I don’t know who the other one was.”
“Ricky.” He rolled the name around on his tongue. “I don’t recognize that name. This is worse than I thought. I never anticipated encountering the Apple before you and Agent Takeuchi were trained to handle them. Coming to Reno was a mistake.”
“We’ll be all right. Suzy’s on her way.” I tried to sound upbeat about it, and not like “oh God Cain is going to eat my partner as soon as she gets here.”
“Hopefully she arrives within the hour,” Fritz said dryly.
I twisted around to look at my pocket. It still bulged where I expected to find his cell phone. Too bad I couldn’t get it out. “We could call her,” I said, “if we can reach your BlackBerry.”
His eyes sharpened, even through the blood and pain. “You have my BlackBerry? You moron.”
“Yeah, thanks. I get that now,” I said. “Would have been helpful to know in advance that calling for pizza on your phone would be a death sentence. So can you reach it?”
Fritz rolled onto his back. The movement made his face crumple. “Just a moment.”
How high was the moon outside? “Not to hurry you or anything, but…”
“Yes, I said just a moment!” Fritz snapped.
“Newborn werewolves are so grumpy,” a silken voice said from the shadows. A voice that didn’t belong to anyone that should have been the cave. The darkness swirled and coalesced into a tall, slender human figure with sharp shoulders and greasy yellow hair.