The kid ought to watch The Wizard of Oz. Those flying monkeys would blow her mind. Or, you know, give her nightmares.
Head tipped back, Wu examined the ceiling for signs of life. “Where is your mother?”
“Washing clothes.” Lira curled against his chest. “I hung my dresses up all by myself.”
“That’s wonderful.” He squeezed her tight. “I’m very proud.”
The genuine affection between them started the gears turning in my head.
“Proud means I get—” she leaned in close and whispered so loudly it carried, “—chocolate, right?”
“One piece.” He pulled a shiny cube from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Tell your mother to blame me if she catches you.”
“I won’t let you get in no trouble.” Kicking until he sat her on her feet, she bolted in the opposite direction of the laundry room and called over her shoulder, “Bye, Mr. Adam. Bye, Mr. Adam’s friend.”
As we made our exit back to the rooftop, I digested what I had seen and learned. I got the feeling the purpose of our visit was multi-layered, and I was having trouble peeling them all back to see past what he wanted to show me.
“I’ll answer any questions you have, but we can’t talk here. It’s too dangerous for us to be spotted in the area.”
That worked for me. Back on the roof, I let Wu gather me against him and fly me back to a bridge that must have been in Vicksburg. I used the time to sort through the information, and I had my questions ready when we landed. Of course, they had to wait until I finished dry heaving, which was getting old fast.
I should buy stock in Dramamine.
“How is it Lira exists?” I leaned against the railing, and he stood across from me. “Kimora is old enough she might be the result of a mating prior to the NSB sterilizing Knox, but Lira is about the age of Maggie’s students. That means her mother, whatever her relationship to Knox, should have been turned in if he was playing by the rules. Unless you’re actively culling the enclave as well.”
That seemed doubtful given that allies expected you to do things like . . . Oh, I don’t know, not kill them.
“Let’s walk.” Habit sent his gaze seeking all the dark corners. “Moving targets are harder to track.”
We set off, and I waited on him to spill his guts. It was only fair, considering I had spilled mine twice.
“You’re not asking the right question” came his answer. “Think about what you saw.”
The warehouse was a massive home with all the modern amenities that catered to winged charun. Knox was the leader, and the number of mattresses indicated the place slept at least a dozen singles or doubles, so between twelve and twenty-four adults. And then there was Lira. I got the feeling where there were two illegal offspring, there must be more. The real question became why a guy like Wu, who struck me as a straight arrow, would allow the breeding to happen unrestricted and unpunished.
Culling rang with the finality of a judgment being handed down, and Knox didn’t strike me as a man who had answered that call. Wu was right about one thing: Knox didn’t have a poker face. He lacked the necessary acting skills to smile and back-slap a man responsible for executing his friends and family.
That left only one explanation that made any kind of sense to me. The only reason I could fathom for exposing your loved ones to imminent danger was if you trusted the other party to keep your secrets at any cost, and the price of that kind of trust was most often cemented in blood.
Only one possibility remained. “Knox is a relative of yours.”
“He’s my great-great-great-grandson,” Wu acknowledged.
I tripped over air and almost face-planted. “The enclave is your family?”
“Yes.”
“These are your friends with young children.” At long last the forgotten conversation had popped into my head and filled in the blanks. “The ones you mentioned over dinner that night.”
“The relationship grows more distant with each successive generation.” His voice lowered to a fine rasp. “They’re family, I will always view them that way, but it’s easier for them to see me as . . . a friend.”
“Why on God’s green earth would you expose them to me? There had to be other places we could have hidden.” I whirled on him. “What if the NSB questions me? Scratch that—what if your father questions me? Am I supposed to lie?” I punched him in the arm. “Do you have any idea how hard you screwed me over just now? I won’t be able to sit without one of those inflatable donut cushions for a week.”
The mention of donuts sent my brain skittering to Rixton, and I wanted to hurl for lucky number three.
What I wouldn’t give for a normal partner with normal family and normal drama. Hypocritical? Yeah. So?
“I gave you power over me.” He kept his voice neutral, calm. “Power is what Conquest understands best. I wanted to speak in a language she understood. This gesture sends a clear message to her that we are allies.”
“I am not Conquest,” I snarled. “And I didn’t ask for this.”
“Surrender is the ultimate form of trust,” he said, ignoring me. “My fate—the fate of my family—is now in your hands.”
“You are out of your everlovin’ mind.” I resisted the urge to stomp his insole to make my point. “This gift horse of yours is guaranteed to kick me in the mouth.”
Bad enough he was willing to risk his family by allowing mine to bunk with them . . .
Goddamn it.
Tit for freaking tat. He wanted me to defend his family if his dad came knocking, and to win me over, he had risked it all. He knew after I put eyes on them, once I knew they existed, that a haven for my family awaited, I wouldn’t turn my back if they called for help. Just as he’d known Knox wouldn’t turn his back on me after seeing I cared enough to protect my people.
Forget Knox. Wu was the one whose brain was always spinning.
When my phone rang, I lunged for the distraction. “Boudreau here.”
“Ms. Boudreau,” a woman chirped. “I’m pleased to inform you that your father is awake and asking for you.”
What would I tell him when I saw him? The truth? That his best friend was locked up in a government facility? Except it really wasn’t Harold Trudeau. It was Famine, my sister. That his best friend’s wife had passed? That my uncle bartered his life for hers and became a monster in the bargain?
No. Lies were easier to swallow, and I was the only one who would choke on them. I had to be a good agent and tow the company line. I had to let him accept the Trudeaus were dead. Full stop. Even if Uncle Harold’s body was still kicking around in The Hole, there was nothing left of his partner in there.
“Thanks,” I rasped. “Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I braced my elbows on the railing of the bridge and stared down at the water swirling below us. I knew what Wu was going to say before the words popped out of his mouth, and I didn’t want to hear them almost as much as I was relieved he could issue an order I had no choice but to follow.
Yes, I was a coward.
No, I didn’t want to face my father.
His heart would break, and I would be the one left holding the hammer.
“You can’t visit him.” Wu intruded on my thoughts. “He’s hidden in the system well, but today proved Father is watching all clinics and taskforce facilities.”
Grateful to put off grim duties for another day, I angled my head toward him. “That’s how he found us so quickly?”
“He knows protocol. He helped establish it.” Wu joined me in staring into nothing. “He must be tracking me, hoping to catch you.” He tossed a leaf into the air. “No one is that lucky.”
I cranked my head toward him. “He can track you?”
“Not me, but my ID number. It’s entered into the system every time I access a facility. The same is true for all taskforce members. The receptionists we’ve met have used our names to search the system for the code to plug in our arri
val and departure times as well as the purpose for our visit and who we saw.”
“I bet it collates surveillance footage too.” Meaning the computer attached our IDs to the videos of us taken from all cameras while in the facility. In some instances, it even created files and tucked them away for later perusal. When I caught Wu starting at me, I shrugged. “Santiago was griping about it after . . . ” I rolled in my lips then popped them out again. “Sorry, the rest is classified. Coterie business.”
I wasn’t sorry.
Wu didn’t even do me the courtesy of pretending to believe me. “Your poker face is worse than Knox’s.”
“Maggie used to say I was the worst liar.” The smug grin fell off my mouth. “She used to be right.”
“She’s still right.” He forced a smile, but it had weary edges. “How do you want to proceed?”
The coterie had to be warned about the threat from Wu’s father. Meeting with Death’s mate also rated a mention. Even with Wu as backup, the others would want to be there, and I wanted them with me too.
“I’ll call Santiago. His line is the most secure.” And he checked my phone for bugs and other infestations routinely, so it ought to be safe enough to use. “He can get in touch with the others easier than I can out in the field.”
“All right.” Wu swept the sky with his gaze. “Let’s get moving.”
We left the bridge and headed for the city park where we found a bench sheltered by the trees to cut down on our aerial visibility. I dialed up Santiago and didn’t give him a chance to be an ass. “Wu and I are being hunted.”
“I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Are you secure?” Cole rumbled. “Do you need an extraction?”
“Yes.” The sound of his voice made me flinch, and I was grateful he wasn’t here to see it. “And no.”
I launched into a brief explanation of who and what Wu’s father was and what he wanted.
Namely, all cadre heads served up to him on a silver platter.
“That makes sense,” Miller said thoughtfully. “We suspected there must be a higher power than the taskforce in control of this terrene. There would have to be for this world to stand against the cadre for so long when there are no native charun, only the descendants of past cadre coteries.”
“What are you?” Portia asked. “Not to be nosy, but we need to know what we’re up against.”
Wu mashed his lips into a flat line.
“Google seraphim,” I told them.
My new partner cast me an incredulous look that said I had ruffled his feathers with the comparison.
“What? My uncle and aunt were very active in their church.” I attended bible school with the kids from their congregation each summer until I graduated. I participated in the early years then stepped up to help the frazzled adults when they were short on volunteers. “Dad and I might not have spent as many Sundays on a pew as we did on the bench of his johnboat, but I’m not totally ignorant.”
“Jesus,” Portia breathed.
“Not exactly.”
“We figured help was coming from above,” she said, “we just didn’t give the charun who came before us enough credit for creating their own myth.”
“What is above this terrene?” Cole demanded. “More of you? A six-winged legion?”
“Seraphim—to borrow from Luce—are royalty. So, no. There are very few of us, at least within several terrenes of Earth. This is my father’s territory, and no one in their right mind would challenge him for it.” Each word felt pulled from his throat. He gave as little information as he could, but it still pained him to share. He was a man of secrets, and this plan of his—using me to help end the war for good—was unraveling him. “The elite soldiers guarding the next terrene are more along the lines of archangels. The infantry itself are more angelic.”
A thought occurred to me that I had to put out there. “Did your father decide anything that ascended from below Earth qualified as a demon? As evil?”
Wu cut me a wry look. “What do you think?”
“I think he set the stage so that if humans ever found out about us, they would side with him and revile us on principle.” I massaged my temples. “There’s no good or evil?”
“I wouldn’t say that. There’s good and evil within all species, within each of us, within all of us.” Wu looked like he would rather be having a root canal than this conversation. “There’s no heaven or hell, if that’s what you mean. At least not as in a physical plane of existence accessible by the living. Earth is the midpoint of . . . everything. The only difference between my kin and yours is we had to descend to get here, while you had to climb.”
Uncle Harold would have had a stroke right about now. “That explains the myth of fallen angels.”
“We have fallen,” he said softly. “Some of us farther than others.”
“You’re telling me that if the cadre managed to claim this world,” Santiago said, “we’d still have to climb the distance from Earth to Otilla to reach the pinnacle?”
Massaging my forehead, I glowered at him. “There will be no world claiming.”
One nutso overlord was a nutso overlord too many.
“Yes,” Wu answered as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Fuck that noise,” Santiago growled. “I thought this was the finish line, but now you’re telling me it’s just another starting block?”
“We have bigger concerns than breaching a new terrene,” Miller counselled after casting me an apologetic glance. At least one person was listening to my free Earth agenda. “We still have to meet with Janardan if we have any hope of figuring out what Death is up to before she breaches.”
“Someone’s really got to tell that guy the whole waterlogged carrier pigeon shtick isn’t working for him,” Portia added. “Human corpses are smelly, for one thing. They’re also—”
“Living, breathing people who were murdered so he would have fresh paper for his pen,” I snapped, hating I lost my temper when I never had with Mags. She’s not Maggie, I reminded myself, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Neither did snarling at Portia for placing less value on the lives of those outside our coterie, a view Conquest had no doubt encouraged. I was willing to kill charun to spare humans. How were her values any different? “We have to put a stop to his killing spree if we want to control the contagion the victims are spreading. That’s one epidemic even the NSB can’t kick under the rug.”
Cole entered the breach blasted wide open by my temper. “What do we do with Sariah?”
“Bring her along. Leaving her unsupervised is asking for trouble.” I braced for the next admission. “One more thing. I also made a new friend today. He has offered asylum for my family among his people.”
“We haven’t come across any friends during our time here who could make such an offer and uphold their end,” Santiago said, and the others murmured agreement. “How certain are you that he can be trusted?”
“I met with him. I’ve seen his home, what he’s offering.” I mashed my lips together. “I trust he can do what he says.”
“It’s Thom’s choice,” Miller said.
Santiago agreed. “I don’t want him out of my sight this close to the endgame but . . . ”
“His wounds go deeper than his wing.” Maggie lowered her voice. “He’s grieving.”
“Any inattention on his part will get him killed,” Portia finished. “We can’t risk him in open battle.”
The coterie had nothing to say to that. Neither did Wu. Their wings were part of their culture, their identities. Without them, they were earthbound. Crippled. Though none of them would use that word.
“Bring him,” Wu decided. “We’ll ask him, and if he chooses the enclave, I’ll deliver him there myself.”
“No.” I put a hand on Wu’s arm. “His pride couldn’t take it if you flew him.”
“I’ll do it,” Cole offered, regret thick in his voice. “It won’t be the first time.”
“I’m going to knock his ass out,” Port
ia decided. “He’s not going to know how he got there.”
“Good idea,” Santiago agreed. “He’s got a crapton of sedatives in his med kit.”
A rueful smile threatened to overtake my face. Catching a case of the warm and fuzzies after hearing a group of charun planning to drug one of their own into unconsciousness was probably wrong, but I still loved them for it all the same.
With our plan solidified, we signed off and set out for our meeting with Janardan.
*
Considering the amount of effort Janardan put into snaring my attention, I expected him to step from the bushes along the river and shout “ah ha” or “gotcha” or the charun equivalent. Other options included an ambush, the use of sniper rifles once he got us where he wanted us, or an escort of goons to ensure his safety when he approached us.
What I didn’t expect, even in my wildest imaginings, was the short man who strolled the river wearing a saffron-colored robe that belonged on a monk. Sun glistened on his dark skin, including his bald scalp. His eyes were a milky silver that made me wonder about his vision, but his steps were sure. I wasn’t sure what to make of him, especially after he smiled at me . . . and seemed to mean it.
“Welcome,” he said, his voice as gentle as the breeze swirling off the river. “I’m pleased you received my message.”
“I did,” I replied carefully. “Several, in fact.”
“Lovely.” He remained sincere. “You saved me the effort of sending another.”
“I would prefer you not murder innocents, use them as stationery, then toss them in the river like trash in the future.” Damn it. So much for keeping my cool. “Still, your methods on Death’s behalf are more peaceful than those employed by either War or Famine, so for that I am grateful.”
“My apologies.” He glanced between Wu and me. “I did try more orthodox approaches, but I’m afraid my touch is rather toxic to humans, and there is no one I can trust for such a task.” His lips twitched. “They say dead men tell no tales, but I’ve found that to be untrue. They are the most faithful of all messengers.”
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