Luxury at last.
It was, at best, a gilded cage.
A month had passed since his television announcement of the dissolution of the CCC. Since then, he had retreated into his office in the Consortium’s temporary headquarters in Portland. The organization was slowly being dismantled; no one needed him. Umar was forced to contemplate what his future would hold now that he no longer was a high-profile spokesman for a politically active institution.
A far cry from his arid home on the toe of the Arabian Peninsula.
All of it was simply another facet of his curse.
“I can’t fight fate, Umar? Is that what you say?” His wife blocked the door to their small home, a package of scarlet and gold held closely to her chest. “The fate that would have me a captive here all my life, the ill fortune to be your servant and whore? The destiny that you were meant to take my wings from me and I was meant to remain earthbound, a crippled, stunted thing, unable to fly?”
“I took your feathered dress and you must obey me. You are my wife. I wanted heirs. You are obligated to bear them.” Umar shoved her with his shoulder until she bounced against the door frame. His hands clawed at the bundle in her arms. Desperation strengthened him beyond his normal vigor. Thrown off balance by his attack, she fell to the hard ground of their threshold. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
Only a barbarian drew blood on a woman. He dropped the parcel and held out his hand to clean the injury. “I am sorry, my love,” he said.
Ignoring him, she rolled to her knees. She untied the bundle from its wrappings. His wife flung her dress of sun-bright feathers around her. As the unearthly material settled against her, she changed into the form of a giant roc. The legendary bird’s saber-long claws punctured the dry earth next to their small hut. Enormous wings the colors of the sunset unfolded. Their radiance blinded him.
“Fight your own fate, husband.” She stretched her giant feet, trapping him between her toes. “You will know no safe perch. Your every ambition will fail.” She fixed a whirling, sun-green eye on his face. “You will know what it is to be denied your true self. Last, you will suffer a year’s torment for every day that you kept me prisoner. Only then will you die, forgotten and alone.”
Umar had bound her to him five years ago. He did not deserve to suffer this for nearly two thousand cycles around the sun. Pain shot down his left arm at what awaited him.
He clutched the fastening of his robes, baring his heart. “Kill me,” he begged. “Have mercy for the nights I played music for you, finish it now.”
She moved closer until her head filled his vision. He locked his knees to keep them from shaking.
Her beak was longer than his entire body. How could he have forgotten how powerful she was?
The breath from her nostrils blew into his face. “I will allow one exception. If you consent to a woman’s control, you may live as a man.”
He sneered. “Place my neck under a woman’s foot? Impossible.”
“So be it.” With those cruel words, his wife took to the air and abandoned him.
A bold knock on his office door forced Umar Mernissi into the present. He straightened his tie to ease the memory. His past had sharp teeth.
His temporary office manager flung the door open. The cold green-tinged florescent light flooded the room. The harsh illumination shocked Umar’s sensitive eyes. Blinking, he extended his hand palm out to block the glare.
“What is it?”
The young man, barely into his twenties, announced, “Special Agent Katsumi Tanaka is here. She says, ‘You can’t fight fate.’”
Hawk claws broke through Umar’s toenails. His leg hair quivered, fighting the fear-induced transformation. He clenched his gluteus muscles against the adrenaline push.
“What did she say?” he demanded, the echo of a bird of prey’s cry in his throat.
“Uh, ‘She can’t wait.’ Are you okay, Mr. Mernissi? You sound funny.”
“My questions will not take long. If you would bring us coffee, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” another voice answered. This one stroked his tail feathers just right.
His assistant wrote down the order and money changed hands. When did she discover his love of vanilla Italian sodas?
Umar blinked until his eyes adapted. Su Tanaka, the special agent for the Federal Bureau of Paranormal Relations currently leading the investigation into the activities of the CCC. She was tenacious, intelligent, and he wanted to fuck her where she stood.
The petite Asian woman’s conservative suit jacket prevented him from seeing the silhouette of her figure, but the sight of velvety-looking skin made his fingertips restless. A large messenger bag crossed her body. A badge was clipped to the strap. He could not see her weapon but knew it had to be on her. Federal agents were funny that way.
She was a seemingly delicate woman with her doll-like looks and smooth black hair, but earlier this year, she had pierced his previously impenetrable mask of Middle Eastern stereotypes. He dug his nails into the leather arms of his chair.
Somehow, she had found enough about him to know he was truly not a conservative Saudi Wahabist known for his insistence on the subservience of women, but a secret donor to women’s movements all over the world. He’d depended on that pretense to prevent anyone from learning his past. Umar would not bow before a woman, but he now understood how he had wronged his wife.
All Su had to do was dig deeper to uncover everything about him.
The thought terrified him, for it made him want to kiss her feet in gratitude. Living a lie killed a man inside.
“He’s all yours, Special Agent. I suggest a chair and a whip,” the younger man deadpanned as walked away.
Umar scowled as she smiled at his far too smart-mouthed office assistant.
“I can take care of the whip, but I will accept the loan of a chair.”
Su’s words straightened his spine into full erectness. What did this innocent-looking woman know about whips?
The tilt of her lips and her lifted eyebrows challenged him. Go ahead. I dare you.
“Yeah, coffee. Be right back.” The assistant commented into the awkward silence between the two adversaries before escaping the charged atmosphere.
Umar paid no attention to the announcement. His gaze was fixed on the woman crossing the worn industrial green carpet.
“Never fear, Mr. Mernissi,” Su said as she crossed the room and extended her hand. “I’ll be gentle.”
She saw him too clearly for his comfort.
“Special Agent Tanaka. It is surely my pleasure to see you again.”
She smiled, her face more satisfied than Umar liked. He instinctively knew he had to wrest control back from the small human. With grim determination and a set face, he remained seated until her hand started to drop. Only then did he stand and reach across his desk.
He took a risk by simply touching her.
Their hands made contact.
The world shattered in an apocalypse of fire as the building exploded. Gouts of red shot through the corridor and ripped the door off Radu’s office. The metal fire door cleaved through the administrator’s desk like a hunter’s javelin through an animal’s heart.
Her mouth opened as she tugged his hand and gestured toward the window. She was shouting orders that would take them to safety. He heard nothing; only felt a trickle of moisture down his earlobes.
The rage of the detonation had punctured his sensitive were-hawk’s eardrums so quickly there had been no pain.
He clapped his hands to hide the blood, but not before her eyes widened. She stretched across the desk to haul him out.
The headquarters tipped sideways under their feet, a slab of masonry crashed onto the floor. Umar extended his arm, reaching for Su.
A tile landed on his head.
His vision darkened. He dropped to the floor, insensate.
Everyone was panicked and screaming. But FBPR agents are shaped from day one to deal with threats beyond human comprehension.
As he fell, Su dove under Umar’s sturdy desk. She had finally gotten the man loosened up enough to flirt; she wasn’t going to lose this chance at romance because of a mere bomb. Books, shelving, even his red tape dispenser, flew toward them. If she didn’t get them both under some cover, they would have the choice of being pummeled or crushed to death.
She wrapped her hands in his blood-and dust-streaked caftan, and pulled with her considerable strength. She might be small and mortal, but braced against the solid desk, she had leverage.
He was lighter than she anticipated; he slid across the floor easily. Heavy three-ring binders slammed into her back and cracked across the back of her head.
“Fuck.” The curse took too much energy. She tightened her jaw against the pain and kept pulling. Once he was under their makeshift cover, Su jammed his cushiony chair between the desk’s legs. It was the perfect shield from the plummeting dangers.
Bookshelves rocked and teetered. At first, the earthquake proofing held. Then with a scream of metal and concrete, the bars tore free of the disintegrating walls. An empty metal bookcase fell on top of the desk, trapping them like raccoons in a deadly cage.
Su tucked her knees under her chin. She shoved her courier bag against the encroaching rubble and pressed against it, trying to expand their rapidly shrinking haven.
The aftershocks eased. Stillness, if not silence, reigned. The floor underneath laid at a precarious angle, but they were safe, for the moment.
Su took stock. Umar lay boneless but breathing. Plaster dust, cordite, and rock filled the air. Dust coated the inside of Su’s nose and mouth. The abrasive particles scratched her eyes, making her eyes stream with hot, painful tears. Umar sagged against the far desk leg, his eyes glazed and a large goose-egg bump rising on his temple. He panted and wheezed like an asthmatic child.
Her adrenaline-fueled instincts for survival faded. Su’s legs shook, causing the desk to tremble under its deadly load. Cursing, she hugged her knees to her chest, steadying herself.
They could die here.
But Katsumi Tanaka was damn well going to kiss Umar Mernissi before her world ended.
CHAPTER 6
When Lance Soleil got his first view of the damage, he thumped his fist over his breastbone. His heart ached with the rampant, reckless ruin of lives. Willful destruction always horrified him.
The explosion had thrown bricks and cement over a ten-block radius. The sluggish wind picked up the lightest dust particles and coated the entire Portland metropolitan area with the abrasive grit. The thick air smothered everyone in the odor of explosives, and the cries of the lost and injured hung in the hot air.
He lengthened his wings and hung suspended in a sustained hover. Bomb experts and rescue dogs climbed the wobbling piles of debris, searching for both clues and survivors. EMTs and the Red Cross set up a quick field hospital to triage the injured and to identify the dead.
The Angel of Death was everywhere at once, closing the eyelids of fallen with its skeletal fingers. Others, it merely touched their foreheads with careful delicacy. Those fell into comas. Their lost minds cried out to Lance. As he touched them, a few lifted into a healing sleep. Others refused, their souls needing to roam the in-between until they made the decision to move on or come back to the living.
Lance alighted near the makeshift infirmary. Beyond the moans and screams of those injured, a dog’s excited bark told everyone she and her handler had found a living survivor. A tired cheer lifted the hopes of those surrounding the disaster site.
Death crouched in the corner of the tent, cradling the crushed head of a small child. The body, dressed in what once had been an orange T-shirt and blue shorts, was barely larger than Minerva. Lance placed his hand on the shoulder of his dark-robed friend.
Death lifted its head at Lance’s touch. “He was drinking a hot chocolate,” it said. “His father was cut in half by flying glass.”
“Shit.” Lance knelt next to the angel, his own hand touching a white shard of bone that poked through the ripped skin. “It is hard when the little ones come to you.”
Death’s body was a skeleton, its head a dry skull. Tears of liquid bone rolled down past its nose cavity and clung like stalactites off its sharp cheekbones.
Lance heard a harsh rasp coming from Death’s mouth. The black-winged one ground its jaws as though it was chewing on something vile.
“That is not the only thing.” Death gripped Lance’s gray shirt with its bloodstained phalanges. “Listen to me carefully.” It tugged, pulling Lance until he was forehead to forehead with the angel’s skull.
“This bomb was set by vampires,” it hissed. “I can smell them.”
Lance blinked in surprise. How could a being without olfactory bulbs smell anything? Then he remembered. An angel’s physical manifestation was symbolic, a projection of its personality and the viewer’s needs.
His friend’s words broke through his confusion. Angry, he dropped his hands on Death’s collarbones. “Valerie did not do this,” he growled. “She has changed.”
“No, no,” Death said, its tone exasperated. “I do not know these perpetrators. They are newly made, that I can tell. As for their motive, I do not know.”
Lance bared his own teeth. “Only one other vampire is old enough to make new children. Radu.”
“I am hiding this information from the humans’ minds,” Death whispered. “If the true origins of this atrocity come free, then there will be war. And it will go badly for everyone.”
Lance couldn’t help himself. “How badly?”
“Do you know the true meaning of decimate?” Death replied.
One in ten dead. A horrible fate for the world.
“Worse than that,” Death said.
Lance dropped his hands to the gore-spattered ground.
“Vampires.” Death extended its fingers toward the wreckage of the building as though claiming it. “They must be brought to justice before the anger erupts.” It turned its empty eye sockets to Lance. “We need a hunter.”
Lance closed his eyes. “We cannot ask this of her at this time,” he protested. “Find someone else.”
“Who else can do what must be done?” Death called its scythe to its hand. Bones rattled as it stood. “We must unleash Dracula.”
CHAPTER 7
Chad threaded his way through the gurneys of devastated bodies. Crying people huddled together under blankets. A cluster of werebears held oxygen masks over their blank faces. A human woman held a lamia as she sat on the sidewalk. The snake-woman’s hands were crossed over her chest as she rocked back and forth crying in huge, gasping sobs. Every single person was covered in gray dust. The dirt erased the differences between the victims until they blended together. The pain and loss united every being.
Chad pressed the heel of his hand against his cheekbone and wiped away tears of anger and fear. Where was his father?
A rescue dog’s bark interrupted the screams and sirens. Chad’s eyes dried. Perhaps his father was one of those who were being found right now. He slogged over to stand close to the police tape.
A flash of acid green linen sports jacket dragged his gaze to the right. Two EMTs pushed a bed that held someone dressed in an eye-melting swath of fabric. His mother kept trying to throw it away, but somehow it always made it back to his father’s closet. Chad sidled closer to the ambulance. What other person would wear something that ridiculous?
The emergency workers slammed the ambulance doors shut. Metal crashed against metal, and the overly bright fabric disappeared from view.
Shit. He had to know.
The driver closed the doors behind the wheeled bed. One broke into a tired-looking trot, heading for the driver’s side.
No. They couldn’t leave without him. Chad’s aching feet moved into an unthinking run. Adrenaline pushed his body faster and faster. His sneakers slapped hard on the uneven surface of the street. He pushed his body further than he ever had.
The engine started.
Shit.
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br /> He had never examined the depths of his love for his parents, but now it sustained him, held him, and drove him to endurance’s limits.
He collapsed across the ambulance’s hot hood.
“Hey, kid! Get out of the way,” the driver yelled.
Chad slapped his hands on the dirty white metal. “Who is that?” he shouted over his panting.
The scrubs-clad woman leaned her forearms on the wheel and leaned forward. “What are you on about?” she yelled at him.
“I think you’ve got my dad,” he heaved, trying not to throw up from the reaction to the fading adrenaline.
Her bloodshot eyes studied him a long, long time. Despite the heat of the engine under him, Chad shivered under her gaze. The way she held her shoulders and the pinched corners of her mouth warned him that this was a woman who could sniff out bullshit at five hundred paces.
She had beautiful brown eyes. Canny and piercing, just like the vampire woman he had met last year.
Eventually, she nodded at someone in the back, and the rear doors opened.
His knees weak, Chad hobbled around the vehicle. Please, please, he prayed, not even sure what he was begging for.
Gravel had ripped the skin off the injured person’s face, but his dad’s big nose was unmistakable. And only one human in the world would wear an emerald green mermaid patterned tie with that jacket. His throat swelled closed. He couldn’t breathe.
His father lived.
“Well, kid?” the driver called.
Chad gulped air and managed a single syllable. “Yes.”
Black spots floated in front of his eyes. His legs wobbled. Chad opened his mouth to say something, anything. Instead, he leaned against the ambulance’s side.
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