Crave fa-2

by J. R. Ward

  Didn’t that just send a shiver through her—in a good way. Unfortunately, the tingle was overridden by everything that was hanging over them. “Have you heard from . . . them?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do if they don’t get back to you.”

  “They will.”

  He didn’t say anything further, just picked up a taffeta gown with a velvet bodice and a broad tartan sash. “Christmas dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Thank you. Isaac?” When he looked at her, she said, “I—”

  He cut her off. “What’s that sound?”

  “What sound—”

  The suit fell from her hands as she recognized the subtle beeping and she scrambled to take the fob to the security system out of her pocket. Sure enough, a red light was flashing. “Someone’s in the house.”

  She cut the noise and started for the phone by the bed, but he caught her arm. “No. No police. We’ve got enough innocent lives caught up in this already.”

  His gun came out and so did a tube about as long as her fist. As he screwed the silencer on the end of the muzzle, he looked around and then stalked over to the grated crawl space where the mechanicals of the security system were.

  Keeping the weapon in hand, he popped off the metal face. “Get in there. And do not come out until I—”

  “I can help—”

  The expression on his face made her take a step back: His stare was cold and utterly foreign—like she was looking into frosted glass . . . with no hope of ever seeing what was behind it.

  “Get in there, now.”

  Her eyes flicked to the gun and then returned to his harsh and unforgiving face. It was hard to know what was more frightening: the idea that someone was in her house, or the stranger standing in front of her. And then it dawned on her . . .

  “Oh, my God, my father!”

  “I got him. But I can’t be effective if I’m worrying about you.” The weapon pointed at the black hole he’d opened up. “Go now.”

  Putting her faith in him, Grier ducked out of view, crouching down and breathing the musty air of the eaves as Isaac put the grate back in place. There was a shift, click, shift, click as the thing was locked to the wall, and then through the slats, she watched him leave at a jog, quiet as a passing shadow.

  She checked her watch. Listened hard.

  Dread squeezed into the tight confines of her hideout with her, taking up more space than she did, blowing up that image of Isaac as a stranger until it was all she could see.

  Silence.

  More silence.

  Which was promptly filled by a raucous paranoia in her head.

  Oh, God . . . what if all this was a trap? What if Isaac had been sent for the sole purpose of enticing her father to determine how far he would go to expose the agency?

  Except that she’d been the one who suggested it.

  Or had he only wanted her to believe that?

  His profile had said he’d needed moral imperative, though—unless that was a lie? And thus made him the perfect infiltrator? What if this was only a play to get her father to come forward with the dossiers . . . before they murdered him?

  And yet Isaac had put her in here to protect her.

  Except she hadn’t recognized him when he had—

  Dear Lord, the Life Alert—the light had been off, hadn’t it. When he’d dangled it in front of her in the kitchen this morning, the light she’d seen before had been off. What did that mean? And come to think of it, the time lag had struck her as bizarre—between when he’d apparently turned himself in until now.

  She had to get out of here. Get help.

  Grier shuffled around and squeezed behind the stacked components of the security system’s nerve center. The hidden staircase that ran down the middle of the house had been part of its original construction, and built because suspicion and mistrust of the British had still been brewing in 1810, some thirty years after the Revolution.

  Turned out the house’s tricks had uses in the present.

  The glow of the security system provided enough illumination for her to find the dust-covered flashlight that hung on a nail at the head of the secret stairs. Clicking on the beam, she padded down the ancient, hand-carved steps, leaving prints behind in the dust. As she went, cobwebs clung to her hair and her shoulders were scraped by the rough mortar between the bricks.

  When she got to the first floor, she paused. Naturally, she couldn’t hear a damn thing because of the sturdy, thick walls, but her father had added an iron vent that looked like just another part of the HVAC system. Actually, however, it served as a covert surveillance post.

  Grier went up a step and bent to the side to get her eyes in line, bracing herself on a pair of bricks that stuck out more than the others.

  As she squinted, her vision penetrated the slats and focused on the front hall. If she arched a little more and craned her neck, she could see down toward the kitchen—

  Grier dropped the flashlight and clamped her hands over her mouth.

  To keep from screaming.

  CHAPTER 38

  After Isaac made sure Grier was safely out of the way, he padded out into her bedroom and gave a listen. When the lack of footsteps, scrambling, or gunshots gave him no information, he continued out into the hall. Another pause. Should he use the back stairs? The front ones?

  Front. More likely that an infiltration would occur from the rear garden. More cover that way.

  Shit, he hoped it was Jim Heron, but he didn’t think the guy would just bust in. And Grier’s father could disarm the system—he’d already proved that. So he obviously hadn’t let whoever it was inside.

  Goddamn it, if it was Matthias’s boy, why hadn’t the arrival been announced through the Life Alert? Then again, Isaac wouldn’t have let them inside, and they no doubt knew that: Matthias may have demanded that Grier and her father stick around, but Isaac wasn’t about to get himself killed in front of them.

  She’d never recover from that.

  Please, God, he thought. Let her stay where she was.

  Back-flatting it against the wall, he went down the stairs, leading with his gun. Sounds . . . where were all the sounds? There was literally nothing moving in the house, and considering that Grier’s father had been pacing like a caged lion, the all-quiet was not encouraging.

  As soon as the wall broke away and the free-standing banister started, he pulled another swing-and-drop, and deliberately landed hard as a rock on the Oriental in the front hall.

  Sometimes noise was a good directive, giving your opponent a target to come running for.

  And what do you know. The boom of Isaac’s feet hitting the floor drew their visitor out: From down in the kitchen, a man dressed in black stepped into full view.

  Matthias’s second in command.

  And he had Grier’s dad up as a human shield.

  “Want to trade?” the guy said grimly.

  The gun to Childe’s head was a nasty-looking autoloader with a silencer. So not a surprise. It was identical to the one in Isaac’s own palm.

  Moving slowly, Isaac bent down and put his weapon to the floor. Then he kicked it away. “Let him go. Come and take me.”

  Childe’s eyes went wide, but he held tight. Thank fuck.

  Isaac turned to the wall, put his hands up on the plaster, and spread his ankles in a classic apprehension pose. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’m ready to go.”

  The second in command cracked a smile. “Check you out, all compliant and shit. Brings a tear to the eye.”

  With a slash, the operative lights-outed Grier’s father with the butt of the gun, the elder Childe dropping to the ground like a bag of sand. Then it was saunter city as the second in command strolled toward Isaac, that gun trained on him and unwavering.

  Just like the man’s oddly matte, black eyes.

  “Let’s do this,” Isaac said.

  “Where’s your other gun. I know y
ou’ve got one.”

  “Come and get it.”

  “You really want to fuck with me?”

  Isaac reached in and took out his other weapon. “Where do you want it?”

  “Loaded question. On the floor and give it a kick.”

  As Isaac bent down, so did the other man. And it wasn’t until they’d both righted themselves that Isaac realized his first gun, the one with the silencer, had been picked up by a black-gloved hand.

  “So yeah,” the second in command drawled, “Matthias has enjoyed the little convos you two have been having and he wants me to keep you in holding until he gets here.” The shark-eyed bastard drew up close. “But here’s the thing, Isaac. There are larger issues at play and this is one situation that your boss is not in charge of.”

  What was with the “your boss” thing, Isaac wondered.

  And then he frowned as he realized that the guy’s arm, the one that had been broken just a day and a half ago, seemed to be fully healed.

  And that grin was wrong . . . there was something wrong about that grin, too.

  “Things are taking a different course,” the second in command said. “Surprise.”

  With that, he put Isaac’s gun muzzle to his own chin and pulled the trigger, blowing his head clean off.

  CHAPTER 39

  Jim came out of his coma with the nape of his neck on fire. He had no clue how long he’d been out, but Ad had clearly moved him back to the bed: The softness under his head was definitely a pillow and not the cold, hard tile by the shower.

  As he sat up in the darkness, he was shocked: He felt curiously strong, miraculously steady. It was as if whatever state he had been in for . . . well, hours, assuming he was reading the clock right . . . had rebooted him inside and out.

  Which was all good news.

  The tightness at the tippy top of his spine, however, was anything but: Isaac.

  Isaac was in trouble.

  Swinging his legs off the bed and bolting upright, he felt no dizziness, no nausea, no aches or pains. Except for the ants at the base of his skull, he was not just ready to go, but roaring.

  “Adrian!” he called out as he went to his duffel and yanked out a pair of jeans.

  Where the hell was Dog?

  Through the open connector, he could see that the lights were on in the other room, so the angel had to be in there.

  “Adrian!” He went commando and jerked on his pants; then grabbed for a shirt. “We’ve got to go!”

  He snatched his crystal gun and dagger along with his coat. “Yo, Ad—”

  Adrian all but skidded into the room with Dog under his arm. “Eddie’s in trouble.”

  Well, didn’t that just make that nape of his feel soooo much better. “What?”

  Adrian undid Dog’s leash and let him scamper over to say hello. “He’s not answering his phone. I just called. And called again. And called a third time. Never happens.”

  “Fuck.”

  As Ad weaponed up, Jim checked over Dog and put some food down and then he and his wingman—literally—took off. Man, he’d never been so grateful for the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ride of those flapping numbers on their backs: Only minutes later, they were in Beacon Hill.

  He and Adrian landed in the walled garden in a shimmering blaze and they kept themselves hidden from prying eyes because it was only four in the afternoon. The house looked fine on the outside and the red glimmering spell was still in place, but his neck was killing him. And where in the hell was Eddie—

  “Shit,” he spat as he saw the soles of the angel’s combat boots sticking out from under a bush.

  Jim beat feet over and crouched down. The guy was flat on his ass, looking like he’d played chicken with a bulldozer and lost. “Eddie?”

  The grounded angel opened his eyes. “Holy hell . . . what . . . I don’t know what happened. One minute I was up. Next . . .”

  “You were a welcome mat.”

  Adrian reached out a hand to help his best friend up. “What the fuck was it?”

  “No clue.” Eddie slowly got to his feet. Then he looked over at Jim and cringed. “Jesus Christ . . .”

  Jim frowned and glanced around. “What?”

  “Your face . . .”

  Okay, maybe he only just felt better. Hopefully the looks part would come later. “You’re saying my days as a calendar model are over?”

  “Didn’t know you were into that.” Eddie shook his head. “Listen, Isaac wants to talk to you. ASAP.”

  Jim glanced at Adrian. “You stay with the welcome mat.”

  “Like I would be anywhere else?”

  Jim jogged over to the house. The back door was wide open, which was another piece of bad news—and shit only got more critical as he went into the kitchen.

  God, you never got used to the smell of a mortal gunshot wound: There were different flavors, gut versus chest versus brain, but the palette was everything metallic between the lead of the shot and the copper of the fresh blood.

  First body he found was a man he knew: Captain Alistair Childe. The poor guy was lying in the archway that led out into the front hall, having crumpled to the floor in a heap.

  Not the source of the blood, though. There was none on the clothes or the tile, and Childe was breathing evenly in spite of the little knockout nap he was having.

  Body number two was halfway down to the front door and clearly the source of the smell. . . . Yeah, wow, that bastard was a candidate for a closed coffin if Jim had ever seen one: His face was distorted from the inside out, the bullet having traveled up the meat and bone of his chin and nose before exiting on a hrow-open-the-doors-and-sing-like-Ethel-Merman routine at the crown of his skull.

  Going by the snake tattoo around the guy’s neck, it had to be Matthias’s second in command.

  And Isaac was standing over the guy with a puss full of what-the-fuck.

  Rothe looked up and raised his weaponless hands. “He did it himself. He fucking did it . . . himself. Damn it. . . . How’s the father?”

  Jim knelt beside the captain to double-check. Yup, Childe had been beaned on the head, likely with the butt of a gun, but he was already starting to moan as if he were coming around.

  “He’ll be all right.” Jim rose up and headed down to Isaac and the other guy. As he got closer, the smell got worse—

  He slowed and then stopped altogether. And rubbed his eyes.

  A shimmering gray shadow covered the body of Matthias’s second in command from head to foot, moving around the arms and legs and blown-off head in the same way Jim’s spell shifted and covered the house they were all in. And the blood was all wrong—gray, not brilliant red.

  Devina, Jim thought. She was either in the man or had taken him over.

  “He just put it under his chin and pulled the trigger.” Isaac sank down onto his haunches and nodded to the gun that was in the corpse’s right hand. “He used my weapon to do it.”

  “Get away from the body, Isaac.”

  “Fuck that, I have to clean it up before—”

  Jim wasn’t interested in arguing and grabbed hold of the guy, pulling him up and back a couple of feet. “You don’t know what it is.”

  “The hell I don’t. He came to pick me up.”

  Jim glared at Isaac. “Last I heard you were lamming it.”

  “Change of priorities.”

  Damn it, get abducted for twelve hours and the world goes to shit: Isaac turning himself in, dead demon in a civilian’s front hall, no one making sense anymore.

  “I won’t let you go back in, Isaac. Or sacrifice yourself to keep someone else alive.” Because how much you want to bet that was what was going on here.

  “Not your choice. And no offense, but I still can’t imagine why you give a shit.” The soldier took out one of XOps’ transistors, which had this time been disguised as a Life Alert. “Besides, it’s moot. I’ve already resummoned.”

  That blinking light made Jim want to holler. So he did. “What the fuck are you doing? Matthi
as is going to kill you—”

  “So.”

  A patrician voice interjected. “I thought you were coming forward with information on Matthias.”

  Jim glanced over his shoulder. Alistair Childe had gotten to his feet and was coming down to them, his hand on the wall like he needed help balancing.

  “I thought that was the plan, Isaac. And, Jim, I thought you had died over in Caldwell. Three or four days ago.”

  Jim and Isaac both hopped on the Total Pass Train and ignored the rhetoricals. Which was easy to do considering how much needed figuring out.

  The fact that Matthias’s number two had come in and killed himself with Isaac’s gun was only surface dressing. The core truth was that Devina was all over this situation. But to what end? If Isaac was the target, why the fuck hadn’t she just taken him now while Jim wasn’t around?

  “Did she—he have a clear shot at you?” Jim asked. “At any point?”

  “You mean to kill? Hell, yeah—I was up against the wall, palms planted, with my weapons on the floor. That’s about as clear as you get.”

  “This makes no sense.” He looked down at the body. “No sense.”

  “We have to get rid of the body,” Isaac said. “Before I go, we have to—”

  “I’m not letting you turn yourself in.”

  “Not your call.”

  “God damn it—”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Isaac frowned, his narrowed eyes roving around Jim’s puss. “And what the fuck happened to you last night?”

  For a split second, Jim strongly considered banging his head against the wall, except that was redundant, given the shape he was in. How the hell was he going to get Isaac out of this mess?

  It wasn’t like he could come clean and explain what was really doing: Well, see, I really did die, and Matthias is not the problem. I’m trying to keep you away from a demon who wants your soul. And I don’t have a clue what she’s playing at here.

  Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon.

  Isaac didn’t wait for an answer to the question about Jim’s face. Clearly, the guy had been in a brawl with eight hundred bouncers or some shit, and that was not his business. What did have his name written all over it was this operative who’d somehow managed to magically fix his own arm before he killed himself.