Cipher

by Moira Rogers

She snarled her frustration before baring her teeth at him. “Oh, I do. I really, really do.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Not with the punches she’d been landing, and not when he knew she could hit harder. “I can take it, you know.”

  “Doesn’t make me like it.” Sighing, she rolled to her feet and shook her hands. “It was easier to hit Alec. He inspired rage.”

  “No argument here.” Andrew arched an eyebrow at her. “While I’m really, really glad you like me, liking me too much to hit me might make this sparring thing difficult.”

  Behind him, the top stair creaked. Kat’s gaze jumped past him as Zola spoke. “That is why we will teach you to fight as a team.”

  It made sense—but, then again, Zola usually did. Andrew rose and faced her. “Like you and Walker?”

  “Yes and no. Together, you will fight with body and mind.” Zola pointed to Kat. “She is holding back. Not fighting as I taught her. Katherine?”

  In the mirrors, Andrew saw Kat’s cheeks turn pink. “I didn’t want to hurt him,” she muttered.

  If he didn’t know how real her concern was, it would have been mortifying. “Hurt me how?”

  Zola leaned back toward the stairs and shouted something in French. Then she gave Kat a stern look.

  Kat winced. “Callum taught me a few things… I don’t know, kind of like punching someone with my brain. An empathic jolt that throws them off. But I work with Zola because I have to stay calm enough to do it, and get fast enough to do it before a shapeshifter breaks me in half. Which I’m still working on.”

  “So, you don’t want to punch me with your brain.” He blinked. “A surprisingly weird thing to say out loud, actually.”

  Her lips pursed, like she was trying to hold back a laugh. “Hey, your brain doesn’t want to hit me either. If you pull those punches any harder, they’ll be going backwards.”

  Not admitting it would mean lying to himself as well as her. “I guess we’re even, then.” He’d killed a man with his bare fists, and she’d done the same with her psychic ability, so no wonder they were loath to use those weapons against one another.

  “Enough.” Zola gestured to Andrew. “Your instincts will not let you strike at her with strength she cannot meet. So you will watch her with Walker. See what she can do. And then…” The lion smiled, wide and predatory. “You spar against us.”

  Walker appeared behind Zola. “What’s up?”

  She nodded to Kat. “Andrew must see of what she is capable, so that he may fight at her back.”

  “You’re supposed to come kick me around,” Kat said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I can’t punch Andrew. He’s too pretty.”

  The lion laughed. “I should be offended, especially since you look happy enough to smash my ugly face in.”

  Kat caught Andrew’s gaze and smiled at him like they were the only ones in the room, wide and open and lopsided. “I’m happy.”

  “Uh-huh.” Walker shook his head with a laugh. “Bring it, Gabriel.”

  She did fight harder, that much was obvious immediately as she ducked a blow and whirled away. Walker was moving more slowly than usual, but the fact remained that Kat was human. She would never be as fast as a shifter, no matter how much she trained.

  It was easy to see Zola’s influence in her movements, and that she’d been trained in a very different style. Defensive, her focus on evasion, until Walker lunged toward her.

  Her left hand fisted as her eyes narrowed, and Walker stiffened. His foot came down too soon, at an awkward angle, and Kat struck fast, slamming into the back of his knee hard enough to send him to the floor before she hopped away.

  Next to Andrew, Zola lowered her voice. “She is good, finding the right moment where a small push can devastate. But she does not press her advantage. Her instinct is always retreat.”

  And it always would be. If necessary, she’d protect herself and others, but her first choice would be to extricate herself from the situation. “She’s still human, Zola. Without someone at her back, retreat is her best option.”

  “Now, at her back, she has you.” Zola was tall enough that she didn’t have to tilt her head back very far to meet his eyes. “She knows how to push. You know how to finish what her push has started.”

  “Teamwork.” The more he thought about it, the better it sounded. “How’s it working out for you and Walker?”

  “Soon enough, you will see.” Her gaze shifted back to the fight, and her mouth softened. “For him, I have even learned more English. What will you learn for Katherine?”

  A simple answer, despite how long it had taken him to come up with it. “Everything.”

  “Good.” Her fingers brushed his arm. “I am proud of you. Of the work you have done, to learn. I have taught many, many students…but you are the best.”

  “The most determined,” he corrected, though her words elicited a smile. “You just happen to be the best teacher.”

  “Mmm, flattery will help you little.” She lifted her voice. “Enough. Walker?”

  He turned, a question in his eyes. “What do you think? A demonstration, or should we jump right in?”

  Before Zola could answer, a distinctive musical tune drifted up from Andrew’s bag. “Figure it out while I grab this call,” he said, already crossing the floor.

  It was Patrick’s number. Andrew flicked the screen to answer, his heart pounding. “Did you find something?”

  “Yeah.” Patrick’s voice sounded numb. “Bodies. A whole lot of them. It’s not quite Jonestown, but it is one ugly, ugly mess.”

  “What?” Keeping his tone modulated was an impossibility, and Kat and the others turned to frown at him. “Say that again.”

  “It looks like a mass-fucking-suicide up here. At least one of the bodies is the astral projector Anna saw in the woods.”

  So they’d found the cult—maybe. Andrew reached for his keys. “Where are you?”

  “Outside an abandoned church a few miles off of I-10. Just north of Pass Christian.” Patrick cleared his throat. “They found out Anna and I were coming, I’m guessing. This scene is fresh, and way too big for any of my contacts to cover up.”

  “I’ll call Jackson.” If anyone knew how to route that sort of investigation, it would be him. “Sit tight, but you and Anna keep your eyes peeled for trouble. We’re on our way.”

  Kat was breathing too fast when he hung up. Zola and Walker stared at him—but then, they would have heard Patrick’s side of the conversation. Kat watched him too, her eyes unblinking. “Something happened?”

  “They found the cult.” He dropped beside his bag on the bench and grabbed his shoes. “Get your clothes. We’re going to Mississippi.”

  “I need to go in.” Kat’s voice was resolute, unyielding.

  Jackson and Mackenzie stood outside, and Andrew raised a hand in greeting as he engaged the parking brake. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The way Patrick described it…” He grimaced. “It’s not going to be pleasant.”

  “I know.” Kat rubbed her hands against her jeans and stared ahead. “I don’t like dead bodies. They’re so empty they echo, and it feels wrong. But I need to see it. I need this to be over in my head.”

  “I can tell you,” he insisted. “When I get out, I mean. Kat, really—think about it, okay?”

  “I am. I did.” She finally shifted in the seat to meet his eyes. “Death doesn’t give me nightmares. Not like killing or feeling someone die.”

  The kind of death Patrick had described was enough to give anyone nightmares, but he knew how she felt. Some things couldn’t be told, only experienced. “All right.”

  Jackson opened Kat’s door as Andrew rounded the vehicle. “We’ve got to make it quick,” he told them. “A buddy of mine has the right authorities on the way, and anyone who doesn’t want to make a statement needs to be gone by the time they get here.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be hanging out.” Andrew closed his hand around Kat’s. “Ready?”

  She nodd
ed and tightened her fingers until her grip bordered on painful. “Is Anna inside?”

  “With Patrick,” Mackenzie confirmed. “They’re getting pictures and whatever else they need.”

  This close to the small block building, the scent of burning flesh was strong enough for a human to detect. Andrew had to fight not to recoil from the doorway, but there was no turning back. Answers lay inside, information they needed.

  It certainly looked like a tiny country church, with rows of long benches and a small pulpit—the kind of place that preached fire and brimstone. Andrew shuddered and blinked against the acrid smoke that hung heavy in the air and stung his nose.

  Anna rose from where she knelt by the stage, a haunted look in her eyes. “Patrick’s in the back. That’s where the—where the bodies are.”

  Kat took a breath. Took another, and this one was shallow and unsteady. “I’m never going to be this person, am I?”

  Andrew pulled her close and buried his nose in her hair, inhaling her clean, sweet scent. “It’s a bunch of burned bodies, sweetheart. No one is this person, not really.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I shield, or if they’re not already dead.” Her shudder made her entire body tremble. “I’ve felt agony. I’ve known what it’s like to die from it. I thought it wouldn’t be as bad…but I can’t stop imagining what they went through. I can’t stop feeling it.”

  Kat had more reason than most to turn away from this place. Not only because of the pain and death, but because their fates could have been hers. The thought left Andrew’s hands shaking as he kissed her head and released her. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “I’m going to go stand with Mac and Jackson.” She managed a tiny smile. “No shame in that, right? Mac’s a badass.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Anna said quickly. “It’s a little much for me too, and I don’t mind admitting it.”

  Kat brushed her fingers over Andrew’s before retreating, Anna at her side.

  In the back he found Patrick snapping a picture of one of the corpses. The bounty hunter glanced up, his eyes numb. “You may not want to be back here. A shapeshifter sense of smell is not an advantage.”

  “I can handle it,” Andrew lied. “Which one is the guy from the other night? The astral psychic?”

  Patrick straightened and crossed the room, stepping over outstretched limbs and skirting spots where paper and wood still smoldered. “This one. We found their IDs on the desk in the back office.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want to chance not having their families be able to identify them.”

  Patrick shrugged. “We left them. Anna got pictures so we’d have the names and info.”

  Andrew knelt by the corpse, the only one untouched by the flames. Foamy spittle flecked with blood had dried around his mouth, and his face was frozen in a rictus of pain. “They didn’t burn themselves alive, I guess.”

  “Not quite.” Patrick gestured toward the far corner. “Looks like poisoning. There’s a tub over there, along with a few bottles—phenobarbital, cyanide and Valium. Jackson said—” His mouth tightened. “He was pretty sure whoever mixed it up had suicide in mind.”

  The astral projector must have gone last, after torching the others. It’d take a crazy person, all right, to still want to chug poison after watching his friends die ugly, excruciating deaths. Crazy—or dedicated. “Are there any other notes, documents? Anything in the office?”

  “A lot of it burned. They had files, but they brought them in here.” Patrick nodded to a mess of ashes. “Anna dug some stuff out of it. Not sure what else is salvageable, though.”

  The last, desperate acts of people with no options. “The astral psychic must have told them what happened. There aren’t many bodies here, all things considered.” A quick, nauseating count. “Ten. Maybe not enough to mount another attack, especially if they sent their best fighters the first time around.”

  “Maybe not, if they’re all psychics.” Patrick turned off his camera and pocketed it before giving Andrew a serious look. “Especially if they had Carmen Mendoza’s name on a list and thought her husband might have seen it.”

  “Carmen? Shit.” The carnage Alec would have visited on the remaining cult members eclipsed the scene before them—and they would have known it. “That’s as good a reason to off yourself as any. It’d hurt less.”

  “That’s the truth. And it’s not even taking into account what they’ve done to Kat. Making a move on her was a last-ditch effort, guaranteed to bring down a world of pain if they fucked it up.” Patrick nodded to the bodies around them. “Maybe they were ready for that.”

  “Maybe.” Andrew closed his eyes and suppressed a shudder. “Do you guys have everything you need? I don’t know—samples and pictures and stuff?”

  “Yeah. It’ll take us a few days, running down the info and tying up loose ends. Anna’s going to check the IDs against what we found. But every lead we chased to get here seemed to indicate there were a dozen of them at most.” Patrick dropped a hand to Andrew’s shoulder. “I think it’s over, Callaghan.”

  His tension didn’t abate. It would take time for him to believe it, to relax and let down his guard. “I’m not used to trouble being over,” he admitted.

  “Because trouble’s never over,” Patrick replied, in a tone that said he understood. Completely. “But there’s trouble, and there’s catastrophe. And we’re on the other side of that now.”

  “Yeah.” He couldn’t draw a deep breath, not until he’d gotten about a hundred miles away from the place. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the cops show up.”

  Patrick actually laughed. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that…”

  Sometimes, you either had to laugh or lose your fucking mind. “Me too.”

  Outside, Jackson leaned against the sloppily painted wall, hurriedly pressing buttons on his phone’s keypad. Mackenzie and Kat were huddled around Anna and her phone.

  Kat broke away as Andrew approached. “Some of the names on the ID match the lists. The list of kids to recruit.”

  A mirror of her greatest fear, realized. “That doesn’t mean they were here voluntarily.”

  She stopped a foot away, her hands fisted. “Voluntarily or not…it would have been me. If my mother hadn’t—” An unsteady breath, but she didn’t look spun now. She looked like she’d finally found somewhere firm to stand. “Whatever kind of crazy she was, it wasn’t this. She had lines, and that means I can find them too.”

  The words gave him pause. “Was that even still a question?”

  “It has to be, at least a little. As long as I’m asking it, I’m okay.”

  She never wouldn’t ask it, and Andrew had to get used to that. He reached for her, pulled her close and whispered against her hair. “You’re okay.”

  “I know.” This time, she sounded like she meant it. “Are we almost done here?”

  Behind them, a squat building held death, the remnants of an obsession that aimed to destroy the lives of far too many people. But at the moment all he cared about was the woman in his arms—her life and her happiness. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two weeks. It had been two weeks since she’d spent any time in her own damn apartment.

  Kat shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. The leather couch was the same one Derek had given her when she’d first gotten her apartment, though somewhat scratched and worn from lack of care. She’d spent hours on it every week, her feet propped up on the coffee table and her laptop balanced on her legs. Three weeks ago she’d spent an entire Saturday afternoon in this exact spot while Sera worked her way through two DVDs of one of the eighteen billion CSI shows.

  Two weeks, and it didn’t seem like home anymore.

  Miguel arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re fidgety.”

  Kat made a face at him and shifted again, tucking her feet under her. “It’s been a weird couple weeks. I don’t know if I remember how to relax.”

  “You’ll fi
gure it out.” He turned his attention back to the video game he was playing, though a particularly vigorous movement snapped the thumbstick on the controller. “Shit.”

  It had happened enough after Miguel’s transformation to a full-blooded wolf that Kat had started keeping extra controllers in the closet. Of course, it hadn’t been happening lately, and that stirred worry. “You doing okay? You were looking rattled the other day at breakfast.”

  “I’m fine.” The words came too quickly.

  With Miguel, she never felt guilty about snooping. Other than Callum, Miguel was the only person she knew with shields strong enough to keep her out if he wanted to.

  And he did. Her gentle psychic touch slid across shining steel, slipping right past him. Worry twisted into concern, and she reached out to touch his arm. “If you decide you’re not…tell me? Please?”

  “Kat—” His words cut off in an exasperated sigh. “I’d tell you, I swear. But there’s nothing wrong with me that time and a good, long run won’t fix, okay?”

  “All right.” She settled back against the couch and watched him. “I guess…I don’t know how this goes. There are so many rules I don’t get. The ones that no one explains, like what it means to your instincts if I’m with Andrew.”

  “Honestly? Not much.” He tossed the busted controller aside and used the remote to turn off the television. “We were never going to be a thing, not like you and Andrew. There’s no sense in getting upset about it. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know.”

  He always had, because she’d never lied. There was no reason to—both of them understood the futility of lies when dealing with powerful psychics. It was why she told the truth now. “I was avoiding you. If Andrew had tried to tell me I couldn’t hang out with you…it would have gotten ugly. I couldn’t handle any more ugly last week.”

  Miguel snorted. “If Andrew had a problem with me, I’d know better than you. He couldn’t hide that, any more than I could lie to him if I wanted you for my own. Some things, you just can’t do.”

  A dish clattered in the kitchen, and Sera stuck her head out. “He’s right,” she said, proving that she’d been enjoying the shapeshifter pastime of eavesdropping on conversations they shouldn’t have been able to hear to begin with. “If Andrew was having instinctive issues with you and Miguel, he wouldn’t have been able to leave you here. The place smells like Miguel, you know.”