by R. J. Blain
It took me all of twenty seconds to come to the conclusion that the person in charge of the computer was an idiot. They used an older operating system, one with so many security holes I was amazed it hadn’t been hacked already. If it didn’t have a connection to the internet, I’d have to resort to grabbing the important parts and making a run for it.
I let my breath out in a relieved sigh. It was connected. Logging myself into a disposable email account, I compressed every file I could find in batches small enough to transfer. In order to obscure my tracks, I sent them to an auto-forwarding account. After ten forwards, it’d reach one of Zachary’s accounts.
Hopefully, he would be able to make sense of the data.
I made a point of gathering all of the program information I could as well, sending it off. Maybe Zachary could figure out what to do with it.
While waiting for the emails to finish sending, I stared at my watch. It had taken me two hours to send off the data. Until I was finished with the computer, I couldn’t leave. Whatever was on the machine might lead me to those behind Jacqueline’s death.
It might include how Basin was creating the blood diamonds. While I recognized some of the equipment, I had no idea how they could be used to strip the supernatural of their powers.
The only certainty was the fact that Basin was somehow behind the deaths of those trapped within the blood diamond. I couldn’t let the machines remain.
If I did, they’d be used.
First, I needed to deal with the computer. Drumming my fingers on the desk, I waited on the system, my anxiety growing with each passing minute. When the final file was sent, I drew a deep breath, held it, and went to work wiping the system.
Once I erased every file I could find, I shut the computer down. To make certain no one could recover any of the data, I needed to damage the hardware. Standing, I prowled around the room, checking each of the three doors. I found a janitorial closet, complete with a toolbox. Armed with a hammer and screwdriver, I unplugged the computer, cracked open the case, and took savage delight in smashing every single piece of electronics I could get my hands on.
With grim satisfaction, I went to work on the medical equipment. The ghosts lingered as I crushed and shattered the setup, going so far as to unplug everything I could and mangle the cords beyond repair. I overturned what I could until nothing remained intact.
It took me a little over an hour to wreck the place. Sweat dripped down my face. Tossing the hammer on the floor, I clenched my teeth. Would the loss of their data and equipment be enough to put a temporary stop to Basin’s operation?
I did one more pass around the place, kicking at the debris in my frustration.
It wasn’t enough. Delaying them didn’t ease my anguish over my daughter’s death or satisfy my lust for revenge. I didn’t want to break their equipment and steal their research.
Nothing short of destroying them and leaving their plans in utter ruins would do.
~~*~~
I meant to leave, but the ghosts had other ideas.
Time lurched; one moment I was on my way to the back door to make my escape and the next I was back in the janitorial closet.
~Down,~ the ghosts ordered.
The pouch containing the diamond, which rested over my heart, warmed. I shook my head, at a loss of why I was in the closet and how the spirits expected me to obey them. A shudder ran through me.
The dead weren’t supposed to control the living, yet I had no recollection of them taking over long enough to walk me into the closet. If I fought them and attempted to leave, would they try to take over again?
We both wanted the same thing. Drawing a deep breath, I went to work shoving the supplies out of the closet. If they wanted to go down, I needed to find the floor under the mess I had made.
Ten minutes later, I found a trapdoor tucked into the corner of the closet, hidden beneath a plastic shelving unit. Pulling it open revealed a staircase leading down. Like the lab, it reeked of disinfectant, and was painted a sterile white. Flickering fluorescent tubes illuminated the way down, and the accompanying hum put me on edge.
I closed the trapdoor behind me.
The stairs went down at least four stories below the warehouse, and my ankle protested each and every step. By the time I reached the bottom, I was bathed in sweat and limping. A hallway stretched out for as far as I could see, and the ghosts urged me to hurry.
They wanted me to jog. My ankle limited me to a walk, one that required me to stop every few minutes to rest my foot. The spirits shrieked their impatience and frustration.
While I could filter out their ceaseless cries, I couldn’t ignore the biting chill spreading through me, centered on the blood diamond hanging around my neck. My teeth chattered. They numbed my ankle enough for me to adopt a brisk walk.
I was grateful that I had worn sneakers instead of dress shoes.
Thirty-five minutes after descending the staircase into the tunnel, I found another flight of steps leading down. Halting to catch my breath, I listened. All remained silent.
A steel door waited at the bottom, and when I opened it, I froze, sucking in my breath.
The harsh and burning stench of disinfectant wasn’t enough to mask the rot lingering in the air. The barred doors of a prison lined the narrow corridor. Each cell was barely large enough for someone to stand or sit. The still quiet of the grave smothered me. Step by trembling step, I headed down the hall.
The prison was devoid of life, but not of death. Hundreds of imprints stained the white walls and floors. There were so many of them that instead of names, they were more like the chill of an autumn wind tearing leaves from the trees.
Setting the thirty-minute timer on my watch, I jogged through the prison.
While the Inquisition wasn’t innocent, at least they treated the supernatural with some respect and dignity. The Inquisition had prisons; everyone who joined stayed in one of the cells for at least a week, both as a warning and as a demonstration.
Their cells, however, were more like small hotel rooms. For Fenerec without control, they were a place of safety. Those lost to the influence of the moon couldn’t escape from the silver-laden walls. For witches, they were places of retreat. Charms, herbs, and magic kept rogue powers at bay.
I had plenty of reasons to hate and fear the Inquisition, but my brother would never have condoned Basin’s activities, of that I was certain. The cages weren’t fit for dogs, let alone people.
It took me twenty minutes to reach the end of the cells. My need to destroy everything that Basin was and represented surged, and the dead fed on my lust for violence and revenge.
Basin would fall, and one way or another, I would see it happen.
~~*~~
The prison led to another tunnel. Instead of stairs, the passage sloped down, descending deeper into the earth. Tire tracks scuffed the floors, and I followed them.
I found a second prison.
The living dead occupied the cells, and they stared at me with unseeing eyes. They sat in their cells, clad in white hospital gowns. Men and women, most barely old enough to classify as adults, waited in eerie quiet.
Not all of them haunted me through the blood diamond. I reached out for the nearest cell and gave it a tug. It opened.
There wasn’t even a way to lock it. I clenched my teeth and crouched in front of the woman. When I touched her, she flinched away like an abused animal. Her name was Kayla, and she had died a year ago.
The ghosts raged within me, howling their discontent that I wasted time instead of setting them free. Loosening my tie and collar, I pulled out the pouch from under my shirt. A bloody glow seeped through the seams. I pulled out the gem, grimacing at its heat.
“All or none,” I snarled at the rock and the dead contained within it.
No one deserved to be treated like a caged dog.
The anguished wails of the dead rang in my ears before they quieted.
Returning the stone to its pouch, I once again slipped it be
neath my shirt. I rested my elbows on my knees. How could I help her?
Could I?
Without her soul, she was nothing more than a senseless animal. What could I do to help her and Basin’s other victims? All I knew was her name.
I furrowed my brows. Names had power. It was an idiom I’d heard often in the Inquisition. If you wanted to give someone influence over your life, you gave them your True name. It was more than just what was written on a birth certificate.
According to some witches, it was the way the True name was spoken and the intent of the giver that gave it such power. I agreed, to a certain degree. No two souls were identical, not even those of twins. My brother and I were proof enough of that. Maybe I was taller than him thanks to my witchcraft, but otherwise, we were one and the same.
Could invoking the True names of the dead somehow help? All I could do was try.
The dead waited in expectant silence.
“Kayla Elizabeth Montgomery,” I whispered, reaching out to touch her forehead.
Nothing happened.
~Blood!~ the ghosts screamed.
I grimaced. I had plenty of cuts and scrapes from the tumble off the bridge onto the embankment below. Tearing off one of the scabs wouldn’t do me much damage.
If it meant restoring the dead to life, I had blood enough to spare. Scratching at my palm, I reopened one of the wounds. When droplets of my blood beaded, I once again touched her brow.
“Kayla Elizabeth Montgomery,” I repeated in a firm tone. The way I spoke sickened me, reminding me of how I would call in a loose dog rather than address another human being.
A scream erupted out of her, and I recoiled from her. My heart skipped several beats before racing back to life. The pupils of her eyes dilated until all that remained of her blue irises was a thin sliver. The noise she made belonged to a wounded and dying animal.
“Kayla?” I whispered, keeping still so I wouldn’t alarm her.
When I looked at her, I no longer knew her name. I shook as much as she did.
The impossibility of what I had done with my blood and her name smothered me.
The dead lived.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I found Suzanne in the heart of the prison.
Like all of the others, there was no life in her jade eyes. Her auburn hair was a tangled mess, far longer than I remembered. When we had been married, before she had abandoned me and stolen our daughter, she had kept it shorter, the ends of her unruly curls brushing her shoulders.
After everything else she had done, it wouldn’t surprise me if she had kept it short to spite me. I liked long hair. I liked spending the time brushing it. I liked the way it tangled in my fingers.
I drew a deep breath, my cheek twitching as I decided what to do. Those I had resurrected loitered in the hallway in a quiet daze. If I left her, I doubted the other survivors would notice or care. If I brought her back, would she try to come between Evelyn and me?
Clenching my teeth, I cracked my knuckles one by one. Part of me wanted to wrap my hands around her throat and wring the remaining life out of her. The rest of me grieved.
Some ghosts I simply couldn’t escape.
“All or none,” I whispered to myself.
My hand shook as I pressed my bloodied palm to Suzanne’s cheek. “Suzanne Annemarie Greene,” I called.
The hardness returned to my ex-wife’s jade eyes, and her gaze focused on me. Her cheeks flushed. She took a long look around her, her expression shifting from baffled to annoyed. She turned to me and hissed, “Anderson.”
I narrowed my eyes, wondering why the first word out of her mouth was my brother’s name. In the years we had been together, she had always called me Jackson. On rare occasion, or when she was particularly angry, she’d call me Emmett.
Dante Anderson was, as always, the family shame. She knew my full name; Jacqueline’s birth certificate was proof of that. I rose to my feet. There was so much I wanted to say and ask, but I couldn’t force out a single word.
“Anderson, what are you doing here? What’s the Inquisition doing here? This is Canada! You’re not supposed to be here.” Judging from the way she was acting, I doubted she had any idea that she had died—or spent the past two years in a cage deep underground.
While I had helped the others to their feet, I stepped back and left Suzanne to stand on her own. When I didn’t answer her, she frowned.
My hope of her rotting in her cell died when she stood. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “What have you done?”
The way she spoke, the certainty in her tone, and the disapproval glinting in her eyes confirmed what I had feared. She wasn’t a victim.
Suzanne participated willingly.
The ghosts in the blood diamond howled. Among them, I could hear the echo of Suzanne’s voice, part of her still lingering within the jewel.
My daughter’s presence chilled, and her rage overwhelmed the others. She didn’t speak—she never spoke, and never would again, not unless I could find her body. My hope gave me the strength to ignore the freezing cold in my chest. “Your murdered your own daughter.”
Suzanne laughed long and hard. “That thing wasn’t my daughter.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I lashed out, cracking the back of my hand against Suzanne’s cheek. She staggered, falling against the wall.
With wide eyes, she lifted her hand to her face. Blood dripped from her split lip. “Anderson,” she gasped.
“You murdered your own daughter,” I repeated, balling my hands into fists.
“You don’t understand. I had to. She was his—she would become yet another monster. I didn’t kill her. I made her human. Don’t you understand? Because of me, she’s human.”
“She’s dead!” I snarled.
“Better to be dead and human than alive and a monster.” She spit on me, pushing away from the wall to stand tall and proud. “If you hit me again, you’re going to be the one dead.”
“Where is she?” I whispered, my gaze settling on her throat. I doubted it would take much effort to snap her pretty, pale neck.
Suzanne snorted. “Why would I know or care? They probably got rid of her body once they finished purifying her. She’s not exactly useful, not like us. It’s too much work to raise a child.”
Fury stole my breath. I swept my arm out to point at those milling around nearby. “Useful as what?”
“What else? You’re not stupid, Anderson. Why don’t you take a guess? We’re no different than the Inquisition.” Bracing her hands on her hips, she glowered at me. “You should know. I know what you are, Anderson. If they haven’t gotten your brother yet, I hope you get to watch as they strip him of his precious magic and inter him into the ranks. But you don’t put him in harm’s way, do you? You’re just like him, a useless coward.”
I had met more than my fair share of the insane, but Suzanne’s fervent tone and the wild look in her eyes shocked me. The Fenerec in Thunder Bay had convinced me of her malevolence, but to see her snarl and snap at me stole my breath. My stomach cramped at the implications of her words.
The partnership of witches and wolves made up the heart of the Inquisition. Under my brother’s guidance, it was a necessary evil meant to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves against the supernatural.
Basin wasn’t purifying the supernatural for the good of mankind. It was creating an army.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” I whispered. I had one already.
Justice would come to my ex-wife at the hands of my mate. I savored the thought of watching my beautiful, headstrong Fenerec live up to her promise while I watched.
Suzanne would be my wedding gift to Evelyn, paving a new future for us. For that reason alone, I would leave my ex-wife alive.
“You won’t kill me because you know what it would do to your brother when he finds out. And he will, Anderson, you know that. He’ll find out I was still alive, and it’ll destroy him. When he learns you killed me, he’ll
be ruined.” Suzanne smiled at me. “Go ahead. Do it. All you’ll do is prove we’re right.”
“Basin wants the help of the Inquisition,” I pointed out, shrugging.
“Only so we can purify the entirety of humanity,” she countered. “I told them it was better to just kill them.”
“Unfortunately, you’re mistaken,” I said, turning on a heel.
Before I could deal with Suzanne, I had to free the rest of the prisoners. My ex-wife staggered in my wake, watching me as I touched the faces of the dead and whispered them back to life.
“What are you doing? Stop that! You can’t just let them—“
“If you say another word, I will cut out your tongue,” I whispered. She didn’t need her tongue to live long enough for me to take her to Evelyn.
She snapped her mouth shut.
The prison held seventy-five people, including Suzanne. When I finished calling the spirits of the dead back to their bodies, I trembled from exhaustion. They stared at me.
“Go,” I said, pointing down the hall. “You can get out of here that way. You can call the police from above ground.”
In their stunned daze, they didn’t speak, obeying me with the mindlessness I expected of the dead. All I could do was hope they made it—and that they had the presence of mind to call the cops once they made their escape.
When Suzanne went to chase after them, I grabbed her elbow, squeezing as she fought my grip on her.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
“You’re coming with me.”
She balled her free hand into a fist and struck out at me. Catching her hand, I twisted until she cried out in pain. “Anderson!”
“You have the wrong brother, sweetheart. Shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you. You know this place. You’re going to show me around, if you know what’s good for you.”