by Moira Rogers
A body hit the ground behind her, skidding across the gravel, but it was impossible to tell whose grunt of pain followed the impact. Not until Zel cried out her name, choked and terrified.
She slipped on the gravel just as the shotgun discharged behind her. Her knees hit the ground so hard her teeth snapped shut on her tongue, and she tasted blood. Far more troubling was the stinging in her back and side. She could have injured herself, jarred her spine so badly she’d damaged nerves.
Devi shoved back to her feet, mostly to see if she could. When she didn’t fall over, she began to run again, and the stinging melted into a fiery but localized burn.
She’d been shot.
Zel wouldn’t have used the shotgun if there was a chance of hitting her; he’d have gone for his pistol instead. Which meant he was down, and the demon—
She almost fell again.
The door was so close now, mere yards away, and Devi pushed herself. Sweat dripped into her eyes, and she didn’t even bother to swipe at them. A few feet now, just a few feet…
Devi crashed into the door, slammed her hand on the security panel and whispered a prayer. She reached for the butt of one gun, but the lock clicked and she shoved through the door, pushing it closed behind her.
Her head swam, and she leaned against the wall. There wasn’t time to pass out. She had to get downstairs, back to Trip’s office—
The door beeped as the lock disengaged again.
She had one moment to consider the terrifying possibility that it was the demon—would the biometrics work with a severed hand?—before the door crashed open so hard the glass on the inside cracked, hairline fractures shooting out in all directions.
Zel stepped through the door in a swirl of cold air and violence. He was spattered with blood—his face, his clothes, the parts of his chest left bare by his rent shirt. He held his knife clutched in one hand, and blood dripped from the curved tip to the floor.
The door swung shut in a silence cut only by his harsh breaths. He didn’t move, didn’t speak as he examined her, his gaze sweeping her body in an obvious attempt to find injury. “I thought he shot you.”
Despite his feral appearance, relief weakened her knees. “I thought you were gone.”
“No.” He bared his teeth in something that was probably supposed to be a smile, but the edge of violence made it look more like a challenge. “Give me the bag.”
Instinct told her to move slowly. She let the knapsack slide off her shoulder and held it out. “We should hurry.”
“Me first.” He caught the strap of the bag and lifted it from her hand, every careful, calculated movement screaming effort. “Stay close, but stay behind me. And don’t touch me.”
His shoulders trembled with tension. Devi stayed back a few feet, but each step was agony, and she almost ran into him a few times as they rushed back to the office.
The mechanical whir of a portable ventilator greeted them, and Cache spun to face them, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, a clear sign she was still linked up.
Her lips moved, presumably matching whatever words she spoke inside the network, but when her unfocused gaze found Devi her eyes widened and she forgot herself enough to speak out loud. Just one word, rough and a little raspy, but all of her fear and worry filled it. “Fuck.”
She pointed at Devi, the other hand flickering in gestures so fast they blurred together. She made a frustrated noise and tried again. You’re hurt. What happened?
Devi signed back. I’m fine. Then she nodded to the bag. Server. Need help?
Cache’s eyes unfocused, and her lips started moving again, silent instructions accompanied by the occasional hand gesture, more emphasis than attempted communication. Her body tilted a little, swaying as her attention focused on whatever conversation was happening inside the network.
Before she could lose her balance, Lorenzo reached out to steady her. The touch snapped her attention back to the office, but instead of the outrage or anger Devi expected, Cache’s lips pursed and her eyes tightened in a stubbornly determined expression. She held out her hand, and Zel lowered the strap of the bag onto her wrist. “Need anything else?”
Cache ignored him, either because she hadn’t seen his lips move or because she didn’t know or care what he’d said. Within moments she’d crossed the room and opened the bag, her concentration entirely on the slim silver box and the mess of cords spilling across Trip’s desk.
“I think she’s got it.” Devi’s lips were numb, and she shivered. “I’m just going out to the hallway for—for a minute…”
The world went black.
Chapter Twelve
She recognized the smell of the infirmary without opening her eyes. There was no way to escape the scent of blood and disinfectant without leaving, so she struggled to sit.
Strong, firm hands landed on her shoulders and pressed her back down. “Hey there, take it easy, honey.” Zel’s voice, soothing, but with an underlying tension.
“Cache. Did she do it?”
“Not sure. Trip’s body is stable, but they’re still doing something in the network. We moved you down here so the medic could fix you up.” His fingers tightened around her shoulders. “You should have told me you were hurt, damn it.”
“There wasn’t time.” And she wasn’t about to make him choose between helping her or one of his own people. “How bad is it?”
“Not bad. Worse for you running around and bleeding, but most of the shot missed you.” His fingers slid away, and guilt twisted his face. “I’m sorry.”
“Zel, I’m fine.” Someone must have applied a local anesthetic, because she could barely feel her side and back. “Doesn’t even hurt.”
“Good. Do you feel up to moving? I linked up to check on Trip a few minutes ago, and Cache said something about meeting us all in a private network when you’re okay. I don’t know if that’s something she and Trip set up, but she said it was secure.”
The more weakness she showed, the worse he’d feel. “Yeah, sure.”
He pulled out a data pad but hesitated. “The rest of your crew is still sleeping, as far as I know. I offered to send someone to bring them here, but Cache said they were better off there until you were awake to keep Tanner calm.”
She sat up slowly. “He gets upset.” It was an understatement, but people often mistook Tanner’s protectiveness for proprietary interest. The last thing she wanted was for Zel to do the same.
Zel helped her from the cot. The curtain to her right was only half-drawn, and she caught sight of Trip, still as death and surrounded by old-fashioned medical equipment. A young woman with Zel’s dark hair and eyes stood on the opposite side of his bed, fiddling with a machine, but she spoke as Zel led Devi past. “Don’t take her far, especially if you plan to link up. Go sit in the reclining chairs in the next room.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Whatever. No back talk, or I’ll tell Mom.”
Zel let out a long-suffering sigh and steered Devi to the right. “Sometimes I wish I was the sort of man who wouldn’t feel guilty for locking a younger sister in a closet.”
Chuckling hurt. “Do you feel guilty, or just reasonably sure she’d beat the crap out of you?”
“Oh, Clara’s not violent. She’d tell our mother, who would tell my other sister, who would most assuredly beat the crap out of me. Darcy’s husband is the third highest-ranked warrior in Rochester, and he tiptoes around her when she’s angry.”
“Obviously, you learned everything you know from her.”
“She learned everything she knows from me,” Zel countered, but his voice was warm and amused. He braced her body carefully with one arm as he edged open a swinging door with his foot. “I turned out a lot tamer than I have any right to be, thanks to the soothing influence of four younger half-siblings.”
It sounded wild, chaotic. The type of childhood Devi had once wished for. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
“Some days I’d call you lucky. Some day
s.” That edge of pain had returned to his voice, but this time he didn’t leave her wondering. “The trouble we had a couple months ago, it involved one of my brothers. And Drake. They were both frustrated that I’m following in my stepfather’s footsteps instead of shaping Rochester into a city prepared for aggressive war.”
“So they mounted an attack.” She’d heard about it, but only as a weak rebellion quickly suppressed by the city.
His eyes tightened. “First they talked. My stepfather was a strong summoner. So are all of his children. Summoners… They’re vulnerable to halfbloods. But they can have influence too.”
“He encouraged them, you mean? The halfbloods who wanted to fight?”
“Henry was charismatic. He inherited Oliver Wetzel’s silver tongue and all of our mother’s brains, so people listened to him. Believed in his cause, because he was telling them everything they wanted to hear. And when he got them fired up…”
There would have been no stopping them. “What happened?”
“Escalating raids. The first few were successful, because they were mostly halfblood warriors, and humans can’t compete. Not in a fair fight.”
“The city heads wouldn’t tolerate ‘fair’ for very long anyway,” Devi murmured, “not if it meant losing.”
A second door led to a quiet, comfortably appointed room filled with decadent leather chairs with high backs and plush armrests. Zel urged her toward one as he confirmed her words. “Nicollet stopped fighting fair, and the next time the group tried to capture a trade transport, seven of them died. Drake made it back, and two others. Henry wasn’t one of them.”
Not only had he been dealing with his people’s pain, but his own tragic personal loss as well. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head as he helped her into the chair. “Things have been tense ever since. Drake hasn’t forgiven me for not trying to take revenge. People question Hailey’s loyalties, because the father of her child was one of the ones who died with my brother. And now Nicollet has sent a spy, which means they’re not done with us.”
It was a lot of delicate information, most of which he shouldn’t have been sharing with an outsider. “Zel?”
“Your friend is saving Trip’s life.” His voice was low, intense. “You got shot for him. And Lorenzo and Cache have been in and out of each other’s heads all night. He trusts her. I trust you.”
The words ignited a warmth inside her, one that grew as she stared into his eyes. “Okay. Were you able to learn what the spy was sent to do or find out?”
That got a response. Anger. “Information on children.”
“To what end?”
“We don’t know. Not for sure.”
Devi worried her lower lip with her teeth. “It would have to be something special about the children here. The demon or summoner blood, maybe?”
“We’re into the third and fourth generation of mingling bloodlines. People have powers, that we do know. What I don’t know is what they want with the information.”
It could be anything, including morbid curiosity. “What are you going to do?”
Zel pivoted and sank into the chair next to her. He still had the data pad in one hand, and he punched something onto it without looking up at her. “No damn clue. I just pinged Cache to let her know we’re ready. How does this—”
Devi was familiar with the disorientation of being inexorably pulled into the network, but Zel wouldn’t be. She reached out and grasped his hand.
The transition wasn’t as difficult as usual. Maybe Cache was being extra careful, or maybe Devi was just growing accustomed to it. Either way, she opened her eyes in Cache’s familiar office, which looked every bit as militaristic as the last time. If anything the weaponry on the wall seemed to have multiplied, and the windows were barred and boarded over.
Cache and Trip sat on opposite sides of her desk, their heads bent close and their conversation measured in snatches of barely audible whispers. Lorenzo stood by the wall, studying a map in silence.
Devi cleared her throat. “Cache.”
The girl grabbed Trip’s hand and squeezed it, then shoved back her chair. “You okay, Devi?”
“No big deal.”
Cache hugged her anyway, wrapping both arms around Devi’s waist and clinging tight. Her body trembled, just a little, not enough to be visible, but her tension and fear were easy for Devi to read.
She smoothed Cache’s hair. “Are you making it all right?”
“It’s not enough.” Her voice was small. “If I can’t figure out a way to reintegrate Trip with his body, or if there was too much damage and his body can’t wake up…”
Devi’s stomach turned. “Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.”
Cache’s hands fisted in the back of Devi’s shirt. “He’ll be here. There’s more of him in the network than there is in his body right now. I—I copied him. He can live here indefinitely, and he says it’s enough. But it’s not.”
Living inside the network wasn’t living at all. Trip was stuck there, his consciousness floating around, dependent on circuits and switches, on the power fueling the server that housed him.
Is that any different than being dependent on a body that can be injured or fail? The tiny voice was a rationalization, a way for her mind to escape the horrifying notion of never being able to leave the tiny room in which they stood.
Cache was still talking. “I’m helping him use that server I bought to build a home base. It’s got the processing power and memory to host a miniature network of its own, and once we’re sure everything’s secure he’ll be able to jump to the Global whenever he wants.”
Slow breaths, Devi. “That’s good.” She looked up, over Cache’s shoulder, and found Lorenzo watching her, a panic identical to her own reflected in his icy blue eyes.
Cache would never understand. The network was an escape for her, a way to hide from the body that had betrayed her. Even now she was stepping back, shaking off the shock and horror until only stubborn determination and a wild thread of curiosity remained. “Lorenzo jumped into my head to tell me about Trip. Don’t kick his ass too hard. If I’d lost even a few seconds, I might not have been able to pull it off.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Zel and Trip were still talking, and Zel looked tense, grim enough that Trip had to have given him the same verdict Cache had delivered. “Is that what you wanted to talk to us about?”
Cache’s fingers tightened on Devi’s arms, then she shook her head. “Trip can’t meet them in the network until we know his signal is clean, so I brought them in here. But Juliet and Tanner are still back in their rooms, and we need to talk. I was going to split the room, let Lorenzo and Zel talk to Trip here, and jump us somewhere private so we can yank the crew in.”
She was tense, though, her thin body rigid. “But you don’t want to?”
“It’s complicated.” She turned. “Trip, we need to talk. Ping me if anything changes. You remember how to drop them back out when you’re done with them?”
He looked almost distracted. “Yeah, I got it.”
The room blinked. It came back a heartbeat later, a little off-center, as if Devi had moved a few inches to the left. Cache still stood in front of her, but the men were gone.
“We’re alone?” Devi asked.
The girl turned abruptly, pacing across the thick, worn carpet that covered the hardwood floor. Her shoulders were tense, her back ramrod straight. “I need to talk to you first.”
It was the only explanation for her behavior, furtive and edgy. “What’s really wrong?”
She didn’t turn around, instead stopping next to the table and dropping one hand to the old-fashioned globe. Her finger traced North America, dragging along the edge of the eastern seaboard before looping around what had once been a state called Florida. “I want to stay.”
She spoke as if she expected Devi to be surprised, but running with the crew hadn’t been easy for Cache. She wasn’t a fighter. Even before the complications that had left her deaf, she’d be
en at risk. The rest of them had tried their best to take care of her, and her contributions had always far outweighed her liability.
But that was just it. Here, Cache wasn’t a liability at all. She had valuable skills. They needed her. “I understand.”
“It’s terrifying. I can’t really talk to anyone outside the network, and the thing with the halfblood, with Lorenzo… It’s fading. It was easy when I was worried about Trip. I could reach out and find him, kind of. The same way I reach for the network. Maybe it was something left over from when they healed me, but either way it’s almost gone. I don’t know any of them, and some of them may not trust me. And with all of that, I still want to stay.”
“You’ve never been as fond of the road as the rest of us.” Devi hesitated, torn between offering comfort and permission. “Do you need me to tell you it’s okay? Because it is, Cache. You have to do what’s best for you.”
Her shoulders trembled. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can be on the truck without Shane.”
Devi drew her close again. “I know, honey.”
“I can’t go back out there,” she whispered, the words wreathed in shame. “The demons here can play games, but most of ’em couldn’t pop me. Not as fast as it happens out there. And it was so close, Dev, so fucking close. I’m scared every damn second.”
There was nothing to say. Knowing the threats that awaited outside secure walls didn’t help you understand the danger on a visceral level. You had to experience it, have it panting and smiling in your face before it became real.
Cache’s fingers dug into Devi’s shoulders, holding tight. “It doesn’t matter how far you go. The network means I’ll always be a call away, and I’ll do anything you need. Forever, no matter where I am.”
Devi smiled. “If you start dodging me, I know where to find you.”
“Yes, you do.” Cache straightened and scrubbed at her cheeks. “Should I get the others? They’re going to be so mad at me for not waking them up before now.”