by S. J. Harper
Zack peers at me, but he knows how limited our options are. He’s frowning reluctantly, but he nods. The two men shake.
Then Kallistos kisses my hand.
The sensation of his mouth on my hand lingers, warm and wet.
Revulsion tightens the lines around Zack’s mouth. He takes a step forward.
I stay him with a look that conveys Kallistos isn’t worth it. We have our own loose ends to wrap up. Alan Pierce and Davis Mager. Mager can wait a bit, but Alan is still handcuffed to the radiator in his office. We need to get back and release him.
“We should get out of here,” I say.
“Go. I will deal with this,” Kallistos assures us.
Zack isn’t ready to let go of his anger. “How are you—”
But Kallistos has Zack locked in his gaze. “Go.”
Zack backs away. A rush of anger sends blood to my face. Kallistos is compelling Zack and he is powerless against it. At the same time, I know it’s useless to object. We have to get back to Alan.
We leave Kallistos kneeling by Dr. Pierce’s body.
Once outside, I breathe in the fresh air. It clears my head and stops the pounding of a heart still racing from the encounter with Kallistos. I may be the stronger one when it comes to mind games, but he left an imprint of his power etched deep in my psyche.
“Are you sure about him?” Zack asks me as we slide into the car.
“Yes,” I say. There’s no hesitation. Still . . .
Zack fires up the engine.
Before he can pull away, I put out a hand to stop him. “Wait a second.” Someone is emerging from the building, coughing and sputtering. A man I’ve never seen before. He’s heavyset, in his forties, maybe fifties, and dressed in a uniform. The logo on his collar is the same as the one on the sign out front. He’s on his cell phone “Look.” I point him out to Zack. “Must be the security guard. Can you hear what he’s saying?”
Zack lowers his window and listens.
Just then, Kallistos strolls out. His car is waiting for him across the street. He ignores the man on the sidewalk, walks right past him, just as the man ignores him. But then he nods toward the guard and winks before crossing to his car.
“Son of a bitch,” Zack growls.
He reaches for the door handle.
I reach for him. “What is it?”
Zack points to the man on the phone. “He’s saying there’s a gas leak. Kallistos is going to blow up the goddamned lab.”
The man takes off at a slow run and starts jogging down the street, away from the building.
Kallistos’ car pulls away. If the speed in which he is making his departure is any indication, we don’t have much time.
I tighten my grip on Zack’s arm. Kallistos’ wink as he passed the guard suddenly makes sense. “You can’t go in there!”
“People could get hurt. Humans, Emma.”
“He said there were only four heartbeats. Yours, mine, Dexter’s, and that guy must be the fourth. The building’s clear.”
Zack points to the adjacent ones on either side. “Those may not be. This is far from foolproof. There’s going to be collateral damage.”
He’s right, of course. I look around. The entire area is a blend of new and old construction. An explosion and fire down here could quickly get out of control. But there’s no way we can stop it now.
“We need to put some distance between us and the building fast,” I say.
Zack is shaking with fury. “Letting him handle the cleanup was a bad call. What the hell were we thinking? Call 911. Tell them to get an emergency crew here. Jesus, Emma. We’re going to need a good story.”
Zack throws the car into gear and steps on the gas. The car lurches forward.
I grab my cell and dial.
It rings once.
We drive past the security guard, huffing and puffing.
It rings again. The emergency operator answers. I give her my name and badge number. “We’re in front of a medical building on the corner of Fourth and Hawthorn. Send emergency vehicles right away. The building’s about to—”
An explosion drowns out the rest. The force of it pushes us forward. I feel the rear tires of the Suburban lift off the ground. The cell phone flies out of my hand and onto the floor. We spin. Somehow Zack prevents us from flipping. When the car comes to a stop, we’re facing the building. Car alarms are going off all around us, and rooftops are covered with the glass that rained down upon them from the nearby buildings. A fire hydrant in front of the building is spewing water into the street. The man who called in the “gas leak” is lying facedown on the blacktop. Zack takes off at a full run in his direction. I search frantically for the cell phone, find it. I’m still connected to the emergency operator.
“There are people injured. Send help right away,” I shout. Then I disconnect and race to follow Zack.
The man is unconscious, and there’s a small pool of blood under his head. Zack’s crouched alongside him.
“Is he alive?”
Zack nods, but his expression is murderous. “No thanks to Kallistos. Fucking vampire.”
I turn in a circle, take in the devastation around us. There are sirens in the background. They’re getting closer.
Zack reaches for my hand. He pulls me forward. Plucks a piece of glass out of my forehead that I didn’t even notice was there. “You okay? Your head hit the side window pretty hard.”
My knees buckle. The adrenaline surge is wearing off. He steadies me.
“I’m okay,” I say.
He lifts my chin until my eyes connect with his. “Listen to me. This may be the only opportunity we have to get our story straight. We were introduced to Barbara Pierce at the fund-raiser. She seemed off. Toward the end of the night she approached, told us she had something important for the FBI, begged us to come to her office. There was a paranoid flavor about her, a sense of desperation. Then she disappeared into the crowd. We tried to follow her, but couldn’t. Are you with me?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“We got her address this morning, went to her office. She was completely unraveled. Said she couldn’t live with what she was doing any longer. She confessed to killing Charlotte, gave up Davis Mager and his scheme, admitted to harvesting organs from dozens of homeless. She said she wanted to show us. She opened the panel leading to her lab. She went ahead of us, slipping through a door and locking us out. You can describe the lab just as it was.”
“We would have tried to go after her,” I say.
“We did. She knew exactly what she was doing. Along one wall were rows of tanks. Some were clearly labeled oxygen. Others were marked with unfamiliar letters and symbols. Pierce opened the valves on all of them. Then she held up a lighter.”
The sirens are getting closer. Zack’s voice is sounding farther and farther away.
He continues. I’m desperately trying to follow. “She yelled for us to go. To get Mager. To tell people that in the end she did the right thing. I started to break the glass, to try to get to her. But she was determined. It was save ourselves or die in the blast. We ran and called for help.”
I can barely hear him now. Darkness is closing in from all sides.
Zack is shaking me. “Emma? Emma?”
It’s the last thing I remember.
CHAPTER 23
My head spins. I feel Zack’s arms around me as he lowers me to the ground and calls for help. By the time the paramedic is at my side, the darkness has receded and I’ve shaken myself back to full consciousness. I sit up, waving the guy away. “I’m fine. Tend to the guard.”
Zack is protesting that I get checked out. But the paramedic shines a light in first one eye and then the other and stands up. “Someone’s with the guard.” He’s speaking to Zack about me. “Her pupils are equal in size and reacting to light. Still, she lost consciousness. We sh
ould get her to a hospital.”
“I’m not going to a hospital. The guard, he’s going to make it?”
“Looks like it. We’re lucky he was the only one seriously hurt.” He looks down at me, then up at Zack again. “If she gets nauseated, dizzy, get her to an ER, okay?”
But his words barely register as I try to get my head around all that’s happened.
I can’t believe the mess this case has turned into. I’ve worked missing persons in the San Diego FBI office for six years now. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across a supernatural element in need of containment. In those other rare instances, justice was served and the fantastical easily buried. Yes, the link to the vampires needed to be covered up. But for Kallistos to blow up the place? I think of the guard, lying injured in the street. What the hell was he thinking?
“We should take you to a hospital,” Zack is still insisting.
My head is pounding; my shoulders and neck muscles are clenched so tight that it hurts to turn toward him. Still, I do, even managing to shake my head—carefully. “No hospital. I’ll be fine.” And I will be. Whatever injuries I might have, I won’t die from them. Thousands of years and more than a few bumps and bruises testify that I know my body. Besides, there’s something more urgent we need to do than take what would be a wasted trip to a hospital. “We’ve got to get back to Alan. It’s been close to two and a half hours.”
“Could be two and a half years. I’m telling you, he’ll be right where we left him.”
“Unless someone showed up at Green Leaf and freed him. Alan’s recollection won’t corroborate our story. We need a vampire to wipe his memory, and I’d much rather ask Evan to do it than try to reach Kallistos.”
“We are not asking Kallistos,” Zack says, his tone and expression thunderous. “He’s helped us enough for one day. If we can’t get Evan, I’ll make a call or two.”
He helps me to my feet. A couple of Bureau representatives are already on the scene and taking charge of the joint investigation with SDPD, freeing us to take our leave and return to headquarters. One of the Suburbans they arrived in is at our disposal, and we head for it now.
Only we’re going to make a quick stop before reporting in.
A fifteen-minute drive never seemed so long.
When we finally arrive at Green Leaf, I have to climb carefully out of the SUV. I stretch to loosen the knots, slowly, and take a deep breath.
“Emma?”
Zack’s pointing to the front gate. It’s open. His gun is already out.
“You’re still feeling the effects of the explosion,” he says. “You should stay here.”
Like hell. “Yeah, yeah.” I pull my gun, look around. There are no cars parked in front except ours. Nerves tingling, I walk through the gate, then quickly move up the steps to approach the front entrance. My back is flat against the front of the house. Zack’s is, too. We form mirror images on each side of the door, which is ajar. It’s cracked just enough to give me a glimpse of inside.
Zack points to his ear, shakes his head, then tilts it toward the door. He’s not hearing anything inside.
I give the door a push, calling out, “Hello? Agent Monroe here.”
No answer.
I slip inside the entryway, leading with my gun to sweep the area.
It’s so quiet I hear the beat of my heart.
“Alan?”
No answer. No noise at all.
Zack comes in, gun at the ready. He moves past me, through the waiting room. I see his shoulders relax. He lowers his weapon.
“Damn it!”
“What?”
I take a step closer, then see what he does. Across the way the door to Alan’s office is standing wide open.
Zack’s cuffs are still attached to the radiator.
But Alan is gone.
“Shit.” I holster my gun. He couldn’t have left of his own accord.
A kernel of suspicion takes root in my stomach. But someone could have taken him. I don’t like what I’m thinking.
I release a breath, holster the Glock. “Fucker.”
“Sums it up nicely.” I watch as he walks to the radiator, unhooks his cuffs, and pockets them. He turns and frowns. “This has Kallistos written all over it.”
He begins rummaging around on Alan’s desk. The spreadsheets have been disturbed, and a file that wasn’t here earlier is thrown haphazardly on top of them. He picks up the folder, opens it. Without a word, he pulls out a sheet of paper and after perusing it, hands it to me. It’s a computer printout, a list of surgeries Dr. Pierce performed in her hidden clinic.
“Why would Alan have this?” I ask.
“He shouldn’t have it,” is Zack’s curt reply. “It’s Pierce’s personal log, a record of the illegal organ transplants. She names Mager as her accomplice. The names of their human victims are listed, too, as well as the names of the organ recipients. She even notes dates, how much they paid for the surgery, and how much she earned from each.” He looks up at me. “It’s all here. Up to a point.”
I release a breath. “Up to the point where she started using vampires. Either those surgeries weren’t logged—”
“Or Kallistos omitted those pages in order to protect his own.”
“Still, he’s given us evidence,” I say. “Evidence we can use against Mager.”
Zack’s expression doesn’t soften. “Frankly, I’d rather he’d left Alan.” He holds another scrap of paper out to me. “Besides, he has an ulterior motive—you. This was clipped to the spreadsheet.”
It’s a note addressed to me. Precise, old-world cursive. Emma. You owe me. If you don’t get Mager, I will. Until next time. Kallistos.
I scrunch the paper up into a tiny little ball. “Is this a game to him?” I feel as if my head’s about to explode. I pull my phone out and start to dial once more. “I’m calling Liz. She’ll know how to reach Kallistos. Ask him if he took Alan.”
“If?” Zack stays my hand. “Wait. How did Kallistos know about Alan?”
“Maybe he was following us earlier? Or had someone else following us? He knew about the investigation. About the missing vampires.”
Zack thinks about the possibility for a moment, then rejects it. “I don’t think anyone’s been following us. Checking for tails? It’s a hard habit to break.”
I have another idea. This one chills my blood.
How did he know about Alan? Maybe he divined it from my head when I was so cleverly testing him. Or when he was kissing me.
“You think maybe he just wiped Alan’s memory and sent him home?”
Zack gives me a look that tells me I don’t want to know what he’s thinking.
“Spit it out,” I say.
“I don’t think Kallistos is that forgiving. He didn’t bat cleanup to help us. He did it to make sure we didn’t get our hands on evidence involving his vamps.” He points to the spreadsheet in my hand. “He left what he wanted us to have. If we don’t move quickly to see that Mager is brought in, that note says he’ll exact his own brand of justice.” He jabs at the spreadsheet. “He played us.”
“He played me, you mean.” I stuff the note he left for me in my pocket. When I do, my fingers brush against the object Zack placed in my hand earlier. I pull it out. It’s a smooth, polished stone the size of a quarter. “What is this?”
Zack plucks it from my outstretched palm. “No, I mean he played us.” He palms the stone. “It’s an old talisman. It’s supposed to offer protection. It didn’t. Kallistos used thrall. Either he’s exceptionally strong or the power’s faded.” He slips it into his pocket.
“Well, my power is perfectly intact. In thousands of years I’ve never been wrong when reading someone. Whatever he’s done with Alan, he decided to do it after we left him. I’m sure of it. Unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“U
nless I didn’t probe deep enough, push hard enough.” Unless I was as caught up in Kallistos’ spell as he was in mine. I find myself thinking of his kiss, the heat that infused my body, the same heat sending color to my cheeks now. I give myself a mental shake. Concentrate on what is real. Tally up what we were able to accomplish. We saved Isabella, Amy, Evan, and Owen. We lost two other vampires, possibly more, depending on how long Pierce has been running her clinic from hell. Possibly one human—Alan. Shit. I look hard at Zack. “Well, at least we have something to give Johnson. With the spreadsheet we can link Mager to Pierce.”
“We can tell him Pierce gave it to us.” Zack looks around the office once more. “I don’t see anything else here that’s out of place. Do you?”
Before I have a chance to reply, my cell phone rings. I turn to answer it. “Hello?”
“Agent Monroe?”
It’s Michael Dexter. He sounds almost euphoric.
“Yes, Michael. How are you?”
“Never been better. You aren’t going to believe this. Isabella is home!”
“Wait a minute, Michael. Zack is here. I’m putting you on speaker.”
We listen as Michael explains how Isabella had fallen off the wagon and fed from a human. The shame drove her into isolation. “She just needed to get her head on straight. Do some soul searching.”
“That’s wonderful.” I pause. “How are you feeling?”
I can hear his breathing through the phone. “Better, now. But we had a bit of a scare last night. You know I’d been working really hard on that piece so it would be ready for the auction? I guess it all finally caught up with me. Alan says I literally passed out on him once we got home. I scared you to death, didn’t I?”
There’s a murmur of response in the background.
I look up at Zack. Alan’s with Dexter?
Zack moves closer, listening.
“I remember him pouring us both a nightcap,” he continues. “I must have gone out like a light. But damned if I don’t feel better than I have in weeks. I slept for an unbelievably long time. I feel like a new man.”