We stopped in front of the compound, where Alex—who else—was waiting for us. He wore muddy boots and a yellow hard hat, and he carried a clipboard.
I jumped from the jeep and strode forward to confront him, then half-turned at a shout from behind. I just had time to brace myself before a handlebar-moustached weapon of mass destruction threw himself at me. I just about managed to keep my feet.
I prized myself free of him. “Not so tight, Danny.”
“I’m just so happy that you’re alive.” He stepped back to examine me. “You are even uninjured. How is it possible?”
“No thanks to you. Falling off the bridge wasn’t as bad as landing on the road with you on top of me.” I gave Danny a mock punch in the gut. “I think you need to go on a diet.”
Danny patted his expansive stomach and grinned. “I’m a big man but, as my wife always told me, that just means there’s more of me to love.”
“Your wife was too understanding.” I patted my sides. “I think my ribcage has permanently contracted by several inches.”
Danny slapped my shoulder. “No bother to you.” Nathan and Sash joined us. “And you saved the girl too.”
“No, I saved him,” Sash said.
“The important thing is you saved each other.” Danny smiled.
“Danny told me you lost the truck,” Alex said.
His words brought my anger rushing back. I grabbed Alex’s collar, and lifted him off his feet. “What about—”
Nathan lifted me up by the back of my jacket. “Let him go.”
I dropped Alex, and Nathan tossed me away from him. I landed in a crouch, my right hand touching the ground and my left firesword springing to life.
Nathan growled, and smoke drifted from his skin as he prepared to shift.
“Stop.” Sash moved to stand between us. “We all have enough problems without fighting among ourselves.”
I let my firesword disappear and straightened. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” I told Nathan.
I leaned close to Sash. “I thought I would have had to keep you from Alex’s throat, then I went and grabbed it myself.”
“I’m as angry as you, but now’s not the time to bring it up,” she said. “You can barely stand, let alone fight.”
“I’m—” I wanted to disagree, but she was undoubtedly right. I was running on fumes, my anger giving me a deceptive energy.
I glanced across at Danny, who was looking from Nathan to me and back again. “I’d been trying to figure out how I imagined everything I saw out on that highway,” he said. “I guess it’s all real, huh?”
Alex put his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “We need you to fill out some forms about what happened tonight. Why don’t you go to the office with Nathan? He’ll tell you what you should and shouldn’t say.”
“Usually, there’s nothing I hate more than paperwork,” Danny said. “Right now, though, I don’t mind so much. I could do with the normality.”
“Hop in the jeep, it’ll take you to the office. I’ll be along shortly,” Nathan said to Danny, then very deliberately shifted closer to Alex.
Danny climbed into the jeep, and the driver drove off. Once the noise of the jeep’s engine faded, Sash addressed Alex. “Care to explain why the truck was empty?”
“Do we have to do this now?” Alex yawned. “I’ve been here all night. I’m sure you’ve figured out the gist of it.”
“We both nearly died tonight defending nothing,” I said. “We deserve an explanation.”
“You feel you deserve something from me, do you?” Alex stepped toward me, Nathan shadowing him. “That’s rich.”
“You can’t throw that in my face forever,” I said.
“I don’t see why not. They’ll be dead forever.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Suddenly my anger was gone, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed.
“Just tell us why,” Sash said.
“Fine,” Alex said. “Someone in Transkey is leaking information to the fire phoenix and his shades. We haven’t had time to figure out who yet, so we decided to use what we knew. Those in Transkey involved in this operation were all made aware of this truckload of titanium and that it was important enough to be guarded by two sentinels. Meanwhile, we brought the titanium into the city in small batches, warehoused it discretely, and we have been bringing it here as needed.”
Alex had lied straight to my face back in Gorlam’s when he’d asked me to guard the truck. He’d known all along. I opened my mouth to say something to him, but nothing came out.
“Does he need to go to hospital or something?” Alex asked.
“Who are you talking about?” I asked. My shoulders swayed from side to side.
Sash moved up beside me. “Let’s find a bed for you before you collapse in a ditch.” She put an arm around my back and guided me forward.
My head fell against Sash’s shoulder as we walked. “Why int yo tirer?”
“Huh?” Sash turned her head so she could hear me better.
I took a breath and tried again. “Why aren’t you tireder than me?” She had been the one with the worse injuries.
“I’m stronger than you,” Sash said. “And don’t you forget it.”
“I’m glad.” When rescuing Jo from Yarley, I had had to be the strong one. I didn’t have to like Walker to be glad he’d sent Sash to Lusteer.
“Wait here,” she said, leaning me against the giant wheel of a digger. “I’ll get a taxi or organize a lift for us. I watched her walk away, then an instant later, she reappeared by my side and guided me forward. Had I fallen asleep while standing?
A van drove past us, and I recognized the white haired man who drove it. He was... It didn’t come to me. It knew it was important, but the knowledge drifted just out of reach.
Sash guided me into the back of a car, and I fell asleep before I touched the seat.
Chapter 22
Thursday 16:35
When I woke, my sheets were smeared with mud and blood.
I groaned and rolled into a sitting position. Not only had I not undressed the night before, I hadn’t even taken off my jacket. I didn’t remember even arriving at Ten-two—had Sash carried me to my bed? My whole body felt stiff. I stripped off my clothes piece by piece and left them in a messy pile.
The hot water from the shower loosened my muscles, and once I redressed in clean clothes, I felt almost new. I ran my fingers through my still damp hair, then examined myself in the mirror beside Jo’s bed.
I looked normal. No one could have guessed that I’d fallen off a bridge the night before. I picked up my leather jacket and brushed off the worse of the crusted dirt. Lifting it higher, I turned it one way, then the other, noting the tears and holes which allowed light to stream through it. In places only the stitching on the edge held it together.
Still, I put it on. It’d do for the present. I went downstairs, and the Buffy theme tune drew me into the living room. Pete and Tyler were both leaning forward, watching an episode from one of the later seasons.
The living room was less chaotic than usual, though the hole in the wall that Tyler had made with a hammer hadn’t been repaired. I had a feeling that it had become a permanent feature of the house. On the coffee table, an A4 notepad lay open. I picked it up and read some of the scribbles. “Are you taking notes on the show?”
Tyler paused the episode. “We have to, dude. It’s complicated. Lots of twists and turns.”
“What are you trying to figure out?” I remembered what Sash had said. “How to roundhouse kick vampires?”
“No. We want to know who the bad guys are,” Pete said.
“Vampires bad, humans good, is the general message of the show, I think.”
Tyler stood and picked up the notepad. He walked across the room, then back again, turning pages. “We have Angel, who is a vampire but good.”
“Except when he lost his soul,” Pete interjected.
“Except then,” Tyler agreed. He flicked through a f
ew pages. “And then we have Spike. Also a vampire. Pretty bad all round.”
“Except when he redeems himself at the end,” Pete said.
Tyler walked to Pete and offered him the notepad. “Do you want to do it?”
“It’s okay, you do it,” Pete said. “Just making sure you are getting it right.”
Tyler resumed pacing. “So vampires are usually bad, but not always. And there are several instances of humans who are bad.”
“Cordelia was really annoying,” Pete said. “Did you write that down?”
“We are crossing too much into judgment territory there,” Tyler said. “We have to remain objective.”
“I admire your diligence,” I said. “I honestly didn’t think you two had that much dedication inside you. But I’m not sure it’s going to help you much.”
Tyler ignored me. “We are thinking that we can map shades to vampires. And humans are humans of course.”
“And we map the chosen ones to sentinels,” Pete said.
“You know about sentinels?” I asked cautiously.
“Of course. Ever since that picture appeared in the paper, everyone’s talking about the girl who saved the mayor. Allegedly, sentinels are the guardians who protect humans from shades,” Tyler said. “Same as Buffy.”
“So the sentinels are the chosen ones like Buffy?” I liked that.
“But we can’t assume these sentinels are good either,” Pete said.
“That I can agree with.”
Tyler flicked through the pages and came to a page where he’d drawn a big massive snake. He pointed at it violently, his finger almost tearing through the page. “See! See!”
“I’m seeing, but I’m not seeing,” I said.
“The mayor of Sunnydale was a villain who turned into a giant snake monster and one of the chosen, Faith, was on his side.”
Pete held up the newspaper. The main picture was Sash holding off Heff with Mayor Maxwell being escorted away by his bodyguards. “The mayor and his chosen one. Coincidence?”
“Of course it’s a coincidence. You can’t pick plot points out of a decade old TV show and think they hold relevance. That’s crazy even for you two. You are making better progress when you stick to generalities.”
Tyler held up his picture of the snake again, as if that made his point, then sat down beside Pete when he realized it didn’t. “Maybe.”
“The Lusteer Shade Society hold meetings to introduce people to the world of shades,” Pete said. “All welcome, they say.”
“Surely no one would be crazy enough to go to such a meeting?” I asked, watching them both carefully.
“Both the Gazette and the News Network have presented this society as being evil. The mayor clearly feels the same way.”
“Of course. They are shades and criminals,” I said.
“When the mainstream media, big business and the politicians are all in agreement, it’s never good for the ordinary person,” Pete said.
“Not everything is a conspiracy.”
Tyler’s phone rang, and I decided to use that as an excuse to leave.
Tyler called me back. “Rune, wait. It’s for you.”
I returned to the living room. “Who would be calling me on your phone?”
“It’s Jo.”
I hurried over and snatched the phone off him. “What’s going on?”
“Are you okay?” Jo asked. “I kept trying your phone and got nothing.”
“The phone and I went skydiving without a parachute. Only one of us survived.”
“I think I figured out what’s happening in Gorlam’s. But there’s something else.” Jo’s voice had an edge of panic.
“Where are you? Are you in danger?” Tyler was watching me, so I retreated to the hall for privacy.
“I’m fine, but when I couldn’t get in contact with you, I went to Alex’s room. His book shelf is broken, books split everywhere. It looks like someone took him.”
“I just saw Alex not...” I trailed off. It had been seven or eight hours ago, and he’d been intending to return to his bed for rest. “You said you discovered something. What was it?”
“I found some emails that Director Wells sent to a friend of his, a fellow amateur archaeologist. Director Wells claimed he had found a crystal in a dig, an artifact he didn’t share with the rest of his team. He said that the crystal was yellowish in color but when light touched it, a fire lit up its center.
“Don’t crystals sometimes change color with light?” I asked.
“Director Wells’s colleague told him that was likely what caused it, but Wells claimed this was different. He was convinced there was something supernatural about what he found, even discussing it with the shaman in a nearby village. The shaman talked about fire summoning crystals from his people’s mythology. Needless to say, Director Wells’s colleague thought his friend had gone off the deep end.”
“But we know better,” I said, feeling excited. “A fire summoning crystal. It must be able to allow fire elementals to cross from Brimstone. That’s why none of the three children have smoke elementals inside them. That’s why Sash’s test didn’t work. There never was a rogue sentinel.”
“That’s what I figured as well,” Jo said. “This fire summoning crystal must be for real.”
Suddenly I remembered something from the night before. The glimpse of a man’s face through the windshield of a van. My recognition faculties had been dimmed by exhaustion, but now I realized it had been Travis driving a van out at the Collier estate. “Did you find out any more about Travis?” I asked Jo.
“No. Why do you care about him now that we know who’s behind this?”
“You’re right, forget about it,” I said. “Where are you right now?”
“In my room in Gorlam’s.”
In the center of trouble. “Stay exactly where you are.” Being outside Gorlam’s would be better, but best not to risk traveling the corridors when she didn’t need to. “Okay?”
A silence stretched out.
“Okay?” I repeated. “If shades are involved, I’m the one who has to confront them. You know that.”
“Rune, be quick. I’m sure something bad has happened to Alex.”
“When I’ve found Alex and everything is sorted, I’ll come and let you know. Have you rang the police?”
“They weren’t interested. I was told Alex needed to be gone twenty-four hours before a missing person’s report could be filed.”
“Try the mayor’s office. The Collier name is being put on the prison they are building so maybe you can get someone there to listen to you.” I hung up,
I took two steps into the living room and threw Tyler’s phone back to him. He tried to snatch it out of the air, but missed. The phone bounced off the couch and onto the floor.
“What’s happening?” Tyler asked. “Is this to do with shades?”
“I have to go.” I nodded at the phone. “Ask Jo.”
Chapter 23
Thursday 17:30
I pulled hard on the brakes, and my scooter skidded to a stop. The gate to the back entrance to Gorlam’s had always been closed whenever I’d been there before, but not this time. It was wide open.
I was as worried about Alex as Jo was, but on the way over, with time to consider, I had decided it was best not to charge blindly through the front door. It was best to figure out what I was dealing with. I could have done with some backup but, unfortunately, I had no way to get in contact with Sash. Her phone, like mine, was broken, and she had never told me which hotel she was staying at.
Inside the grounds, I immediately directed the scooter off the road and into the trees. I cut off the engine, then continued on foot. A black van was parked close to the orphanage. Was it the same one Travis had driven to the prison build? I couldn’t be sure.
I crept up alongside it and looked in the window. The front was empty, and two large wooden crates were crammed into the back. I pressed my cheek against the window, trying to get a look at the writing s
tamped on the crates, but I couldn’t make out anything. I was nearly sure, though, I had seen similar crates at the prison compound. They surely contained titanium.
I continued past the van and to the double doors that Travis had taken Sash and me through a few days earlier. They were slightly ajar, and I peeked inside. The room was no longer empty. Hundreds of large crates were stacked inside, of the same type I had seen in the back of van.
I turned my body to the side and eased myself between the doors and inside. Each crate was waist high and cube shaped, stacked four or five high in places, almost reaching up to the rafters on the ceiling. I walked between two rows of crates, twisting around as I did so, keeping an eye out for anyone else. Dead silence was all that greeted me.
Am I’m being paranoid? I thought to Jerome.
He loved to gleefully made fun of me at times like this, but he stubbornly remained silent. He hadn’t spoken to me since just after I’d crash landed. I struggled to remember what had gotten him mad. Right, something about me not respecting him as an individual. Stupid necklace.
Some things were making sense, though others continued as murky as ever. Alex had needed to warehouse the titanium before bringing it out to the prison build and had chosen a place he knew well. Clearly, Travis was working for Alex, which explained how Alex was capable of equipping his room as an office and leaving whenever he wanted to. How did all that fit in with Director Wells and his summoning crystal, though? And who had kidnapped Alex, if that was what happened?
A forklift with a single crate under its prongs faced the far wall. Beside it, a crate lay open, and I peeked inside, the silver shine of metal confirming what I had already guessed. I ran my hand against the cold titanium and shivered.
Beside the crate, a section of the floor had been turned into a workspace. Hammers and masks and gloves, plus a welder and the large machine I had previously noticed, a plasma cutter, were scattered about with scraps of metal between them. It took me a few moments to spot what was being worked on. Strips of metal had been twisted into the beginning of—I peered closer—some kind of cage. I shivered again. Who was a titanium cage being built for?
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