“I know what that is.” Miller flared his nostrils. “How—?”
“Lorelei,” Santiago swore. “That’s why she met Cole here.”
“Where is he?” Thom strolled in from the mini kitchen, holding a raw fish in his hand. “He was waiting on you.”
“Who knows?” I flapped a hand at him. “He’s gone to find this Lorelei person.”
“Is she lost?” He crossed to me and sat on the floor at my feet. “I saw her earlier.”
“She got her feelings hurt.” Emotions I didn’t want to identify in my present mood. “She bolted after he presented his gift to me, and he went after her.”
Miller turned his head to hide his expression from me, but Santiago I could trust to make the direct hit.
“Who is she?” I would know no peace until I understood what wasn’t being said so loudly.
No one answered me. Not even Santiago, and the force of maintaining his quiet caused his jaw to bulge.
Thom held the fish aloft, offering it to me, and it took every ounce of patience in me to reach down, sift my fingers through his hair, and tell him, “It looks fresh. You should keep it.”
“I caught it after I finished scouting the area where the body washed ashore.” He bit into its belly, his teeth having sharpened to catlike points. “I stole one from the market, but it wasn’t fresh caught today. The man lied on his sign.”
“People do that.” I cupped Sariah’s elbow and led her into my room. “Come on.”
“I’m not sleepy,” she grumbled, her speech already solidifying. “Or are you going to lock me in there?”
“I’m going to let you shower, find you some clothes, and locate a map.” She would fit into my spares until I could buy supplies for her. “You took an eight-hour nap. It’s time for you to earn your keep.” I didn’t notice Wu slipping in behind me until I turned and smacked right into him. “I can handle her.”
“I don’t doubt it.” His gaze touched on the bed, king-sized, like I might be sharing. But there were no dragons here. No Coles either. And he gave the impression of liking that just fine. “You’re the one who captured her.”
Eyebrow cocked, I let him get away with herding me. “Then why are you backing me up, in my bedroom?”
“You’re emotional,” he said calmly. “I only came in case you needed assistance.”
“You did not just say that,” I growled. “Just because I’m a woman—”
Wu closed his hand over my throat, his thumb caressing my carotid in a slow glide that turned my blood to honey. “You don’t think clearly where Cole is concerned, and any distraction around a predator will get you killed.”
Pulsing slowing, head clearing, I bobbled my head on my neck. “You’ve done this before.”
The night we confronted Famine at the Trudeaus’ home, he had calmed me with the same technique. Chokeholds weren’t exactly soothing, but since I hadn’t kneed his balls so far up his throat he sprouted a second pair of tonsils, my boneless response must be a charun thing. Biology at work. Yeah. That sounded good. Better than any other excuse that leapt to mind.
“To you?” Gold warmed his brown eyes. “Only once.”
“It’s a dirty trick.” I exhaled slowly. “But I needed it. Thank you.”
For another thirty seconds or so, he kept caressing me, and I kept letting him. The more he touched me, the less discordant he became, until I had to wonder if he hadn’t somehow attuned himself to me. How, unless he hid his rosendium better than us, was he resonating with me at all?
Wu might look at me like he wanted to take a bite out of me on occasion, but I always wrote it off as posturing. That it might mean more . . .
The skip in my sluggish pulse furrowed his brow, and I broke free of him before he figured out why my heart had broken into a samba.
“Luce.” Tablet in hand, Santiago shouldered past Wu into the room. “We got a problem.”
The intrusion spared me from answering the question in Wu’s eyes, and I blessed Santiago and his lack of personal boundaries.
“Is that—?” A security feed clued me into what I was seeing. “You’re spying on Lambert?”
“He’s awake.” Santiago pressed the device into my hands. “We might ought to do something about that.”
“Do something?” I studied the image, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. “One, two, three . . . ” I counted the hospital personnel in the room. “There are four people seizing on the floor.” I spun it around for Wu to see. “You said he wasn’t contagious.”
“He shouldn’t be.” Wu cut his eyes toward the bathroom. “Keep an eye on Sariah. I’ll go check it out.”
And risk him dismissing this incident out of hand too? No thanks. “Santiago, can you babysit our guest?”
“Sure thing.” His smile was all teeth. “I’m sure we can find some way to entertain ourselves until you return.”
“Don’t let her near Miller,” I warned him. “I don’t want either of them hurt.”
Last time they butted heads, Sariah almost killed him. She’d had help. Lots of it. From her siblings. That didn’t mean I wanted them left unsupervised. Miller was dangerous, that’s what everyone kept telling me, but all I saw when I looked at him was a pool of blood on the kitchen floor in the farmhouse where I grew up, and a friend we had scrambled to save.
We left Santiago in the bedroom and gave Portia orders to select clothes that would fit Sariah. As dangerous as it was to let the two of them tag team our spy, I had no other choice.
A tentative hand on my elbow stopped me near the door, and I found Miller beside me. “Yes?”
“I’m not a liability.” A flash of hurt made it clear he resented getting benched. “Santiago and I can handle Sariah. Maggie isn’t ready for this.”
“You’re not a liability,” I agreed quickly. “That’s not why I’m asking you to stay out of that room and away from Sariah. I just don’t want her near you unless I’m here to mediate.”
“She can’t kill me.” He gentled his tone. “Not without signing her own death warrant.”
So everyone kept telling me. “Remember when we agreed to try and understand each other’s perspectives?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I was going to lose you.” I removed his hand from my elbow and squeezed his fingers. “I don’t see you as some world-ending super demon. You’re my friend, Miller, and you lost more blood than most horror houses use at Halloween because of her. Just humor me this one time. Can you do that?”
“For you.” He pressed a fond kiss to my forehead. “But I will open her stomach and feast on her entrails if she harms Portia or Maggie.”
Aware of the signals my body transmitted without permission, I smothered my fear, grasping the cold place with two hands and diving deep before the predator in Miller scented my panic. An unearthly calm spread through my limbs, and the tension in his shoulders eased. With emotion walled up behind bricks of ice, I saw things more clearly.
“I expect nothing less.” Frost crackled in my mouth. “I respect your right to protect what is ours.”
“It’s time to go.” Wu studied me, his eyes flecked with gold, his lips thin. Conquest always put him in a mood. For someone so eager to watch her rise in me, he sure preferred her tamped beneath my personality. “Your coterie can handle Sariah.” Glancing past me, he singled out Thom. “Come with us. You have a soothing effect on her.”
Thom discarded the remains of his fish sullenly then washed up to his elbows in the kitchen sink.
The urge to laugh plucked my vocal cords. “I can soothe myself just fine.”
“Maintaining a partial shift for too long is dangerous. You need to settle your nerves.”
Partial . . . shift? Embracing the cold place ceded that much of me to her?
“Come on, Luce.” Thom took my hand. “Let’s go.”
A flash of warmth spread up my arm, thawing my heart, and that calculating place in my head dismissed Wu. The cold place lasted for as long as it was req
uired and not a second more.
Thom led the way, and Wu looked on, amused. Thom had a set of SUV keys in his pocket, but he passed them over to Wu. I claimed shotgun, and Thom climbed in behind me. After we cleared the parking lot, a rush of energy tickled my nape, and a boxy tomcat leapt onto my lap. His purr rattled my teeth when he leaned against my chest to scratch the underside of his jaw on my shirt buttons. That, or he was scent-marking me. Probably the latter. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one with possessive issues.
“Does that help?” Wu flicked a glance at Thom. “The purring, I mean?”
“I like the sound.” Already, I was more myself. “I like the feel too.” I rested my hand on Thom’s back, and he revved up his motor. “She must have too.” He understood I meant Conquest. “All the coterie appears to have feline attributes.”
The sound Wu made, a tight half-chuckle, had me glancing his way. “What’s so funny?” I scratched behind Thom’s notched ears. “Conquest, Scourge of the Terrenes, was one charun away from crazy cat lady status. Does that amuse you?”
“Yes,” he admitted so quickly I knew that’s not what had tickled him.
“Come on. Spill.” The cold place had evaporated, leaving me in my own skin. “Why the laugh?”
“I’ll show you one day.” He dared me with a glance that left me with sweaty palms. He really shouldn’t take his eyes off the road while driving. “Will that work?”
“I’m guessing I don’t have a choice, so sure.” Scooping up Thom, I cradled him against my chest while he kneaded my shoulder with wickedly sharp claws. “Thank you, Thomas.”
“Mmmrrrrpt.”
“You identify most with your coterie in their natural forms,” Wu mused. “That’s unexpected.”
“People are hard to parse.” People lied, manipulated, stole, cheated. “Animals are simpler. Their motivations are easier to read. So are their moods.” I used Thom as an example. “When they’re happy, they purr. When they’re not, they bite or scratch or both.”
We reached the hospital before Wu could psychoanalyze me further. Thank God.
Thom hopped in the back while Wu parked. When we exited the vehicle, Thom did too. On two legs. He sniffed the air a few inches from my ear then licked the upper shell with his dry, raspy tongue that never seemed to shift back all the way.
“You’ll be all right,” he pronounced. “Your elevated testosterone levels have normalized.”
“I, ah, okay.” Resisting the urge to wipe my ear dry made my fingers twitch. “Good to know.”
“Comb the lobby,” Wu told him. “Keep your ears open for gossip. We must consider public opinion when deciding how best to suppress the spread of sensitive information.”
The order curled Thom’s lip, but he did as he was told and walked ahead of us into the hospital.
“I’m part of a cover-up,” I muttered. “I can’t believe this.”
“Would you rather we warn humans about the end of days? Open their eyes to what lives among them?” He scoffed at the idea. “Imagine if this boy is contagious, if the origin is in Death, what then? Humans would sensationalize a zombie plague, and mass hysteria would reign. Consider how many more lives would be lost.” He tamed his exasperation. “Humans die, thousands of them, sometimes hundreds of thousands of them, each time the cadre breaches. It’s inevitable. We do our best to minimize the casualties, but there are environmental factors as well.”
Thom was gone when we entered the lobby, so we hit the elevators. “What environmental factors?”
“Cadres unbalance the worlds they claim. Between them, they hold too much power. It disrupts the ebb and flow of the environment. That’s why they aren’t given the same chance at rehabilitation as other charun.”
“You let me live this long,” I pointed out.
“You were only one,” he said, shuttering his expression, “and your condition muted your significance. You weren’t expending energy, you weren’t disrupting the natural order. Even with all the power at your disposal, you left no footprint. There was no harm in monitoring you.”
“Now there are three of us.” The elevator spit us out on the third floor. “What have I missed?”
“Small atmospheric disturbances. Low-grade tornadoes, minor earthquakes, a weak tsunami. Weather that might cause a meteorologist to remark on an active season, but nothing alarming.”
I heard the yet clearly.
“No one told me.” There was so much I didn’t know, so much I didn’t want to know but must learn.
The problem was that survival was taking up all my spare time. I was being given the CliffsNotes version of my past on a need to know basis instead of being handed the entire book to peruse, but I had come awake too late to catch up on my reading.
“Conditions will deteriorate quickly once Death arrives.”
Note to self: Download weather app.
We turned the corner onto madness, and that spared him from answering more questions.
Wu at my side, I waded in. “What in the . . . ?”
Gurneys clogged the hall, convulsing bodies strapped to them. Nurses huddled in groups, some in triage mode while others wept and fluttered over fallen coworkers. Doctors waded in, and hands clutched at their white coats. Security officers milled among them, pushing the crowd back. More men in blue arrived and began herding anyone symptomatic into rooms down the hall.
One of them noticed us and whistled in our direction. “You’ll have to come with me.”
Wu started to protest, his hand reaching for the badge at his hip, but I gripped his wrist. “All right.”
“What are you doing?” He pitched his voice low as we kept to the path the officer cleared for us.
“We need to find out what’s wrong with these people. It will be hours before the staff is settled enough to answer questions, and we’ll have to stand in line for a turn.” I patted him reassuringly. “Why not go right to the source?”
“They might be contagious.” He hesitated on the threshold of a room that would be difficult to fight our way out of if it came to that. “Assuming this illness spread from the corpse, we might be at risk.”
“Well, that’s one way to prove I was right.” I waltzed right in. “I’ll try not to gloat.”
“I hope we live long enough for you to fully enjoy proving me wrong.”
That made two of us.
We worked the crowd for two hours. There were three dozen people sequestered. Almost half of them wore scrubs. The first three or four had no information. They had been herded in here before grasping the situation. The next five or six had either been visiting family or seeking treatment when a commotion drew them out into the hall. The rest were starting to sweat and tremble.
“Are you . . . cops?” Winded from the short walk across the room, a nurse wearing baby pink scrubs latched onto Wu’s arm to keep her knees from buckling. “I saw . . . you interviewing . . . everyone.”
“We’re with the FBI.” Wu adjusted the woman and reached for his badge. The flash gave me a pang of envy. I felt naked without one. Done impressing her, he put it away. “Can you tell us what you saw?”
“I was meeting a friend for lunch. I work in maternity. He works in ICU. I waited at the nurses’ station on his floor, but he never showed. It’s not like him to stand me up without calling, but sometimes we get busy. It’s easy to lose track of time. I gave him fifteen minutes then I went looking. I found him collapsed in the hall outside Jay Lambert’s room. He was foaming at the mouth and speaking in tongues.”
“Speaking in tongues?”
“The way some religious people do? It’s all gibberish to me.”
Wu tensed beneath her hand, his face a calm mask that hid the cracks I heard in his resolve. “Can you remember anything he said?”
“There was so much of it, but he kept repeating ‘ah-tru-ha-dal’.”
The sheen sparking off Wu’s brown eyes was in no way human, and the nurse wasn’t so far gone not to notice.
Power radiated off him in
waves that lifted the hairs down my arms. He was going nuclear, and there wasn’t enough time to insulate everyone from the blast. I had to get him calm and fast. God only knew what charun lived beneath his skin. This was not how I wanted to make that discovery.
“Here, let me help you to a chair.” I accepted her weight from him and guided her to the conference table. The crowd around the oval had thinned a bit as people grew bored and started pacing or standing in front of the doors like they might forge their combined will into a key that would open them. “There you go. Just sit tight. I’m sure it won’t be much longer.”
“I’m a nurse.” The stare she leveled at me would have done Rixton proud. “I’ve worked in this hospital for fifteen years and been certified for twenty. Go pull someone’s else’s leg. Your arms will get tired if you keep yanking on mine.”
CHAPTER TEN
Wu and I huddled in a corner as far from the others as space allowed. I wasn’t convinced rubbing his arms like he was cold and I might warm him was the best idea I had ever had, but touch soothed the coterie, so why not him? Eventually, the fury vibrating through him abated enough he could open his eyes without gilding the room. He captured my hands in his and placed a kiss to the back of each, a formal gesture that nonetheless sent tingles radiating up my arms.
I wondered if it had to do with the fact he had cranked the dial on his power so high a moment ago, but I didn’t ask. Tipping him back toward anger in the presence of so many innocents might spell disaster for us all.
The burning question of what “ah-tru-ha-dal” meant and why it flipped his switch was sidelined too.
I would get my answers, but first I had to get us out of here.
“The windows are all locked this high. We can’t jimmy them without drawing attention, and I doubt we can break them without causing a riot. Odds are high they’re plexiglass. We’d have to hammer on them to make a dent.” I scanned the room, talking to myself as Wu calmed. “Looks like there’s a bathroom.” I tipped my head back. “Breaking those foam board tiles is easy, but the grid is weak. The drop ceiling won’t hold us if we try to climb out that way.”
Death Knell Page 7