The only thing I knew for sure was that Max himself had pretty much said he couldn't be trusted.
"Anything yet, Obi?" I asked. We had rented two adjoining rooms, and now I sat on the edge of his bed and watched his fingers fly along the laptop's keyboard. Every time I looked at him, I thought about what he had told Elyse. I tried to find sympathy for him, or empathy, or something that didn't feel selfish. So far that had been a failure.
"Getting there," he said. "I got a line into Madalytics, working on pulling up their calendar. Hopefully he's got something marked off that we can find you a way into."
"I have a feeling he won't be putting 'S and M session' on his corporate calendar," Max said with a laugh.
"Meeting with Mistress Pain?" Obi replied, grinning. "I could be wrong, man, but I'm guessing that's not the best outlet for Rebecca to do her thing."
"I don't have a 'thing'," I said.
Obi glanced up at me, but didn't say anything. He didn't need to. I bottled my angry retort and sat quiet instead.
"Here we go," he said a few minutes later. "I had to get into his Google account. He's got a meeting tonight with an investor. They're supposed to hit some restaurant called 'El Goucho' at eight."
"Business meeting? How is that going to help?"
Max put his hand on my shoulder. "Do you have any experience as a waitress?"
I looked up at him. "What do you think?"
Obi started laughing.
"What's your problem?" I asked.
"I think your definition of 'eating out' doesn't lend itself very well to this. Let me find something else."
"No," Max said. "We don't have time." He looked me over. "Waitress may not be the right part for you to play. No, I have another idea." He flipped his eyes to Obi. "Can you get into the restaurants reservation system and make sure Mr. Rutherford and his guest wind up sitting next to you two?"
"Yeah, sure man. I... Wait. What do you mean?"
"We can't have a gorgeous young thing like Elyse sitting in an upscale restaurant by herself. At least not at first. Here's what I want you to do."
Max explained the plan. Obi didn't like it, but he set to work on getting into the restaurant's booking system. At the same time, he ordered me to head out to Nordstrom to find something to wear. I was fine with the denim and leather, but I couldn't argue its appropriateness. I unloaded all of the hidden daggers, pulled off my glove, and left everything at Obi's side, taking only the black stone that would summon the spatha.
"I know you won't let anything happen to this," I said, opening the pack to take one last look at the pulsing blue runes before letting it leave my sight.
"You've got that right."
I zipped it up and headed for the door. "Be back in a few."
I made a straight line to the elevator, and then out the door onto the street. It was a cool day, with a bit of mist hanging in the moist air but otherwise fair enough. Not that I would have cared much if it were sunny or raining - I wasn't thrilled to leave the Box behind, but I was happy to break away from Obi and Max for a while. Max was a little eccentric and I was still on the fence about how well we could trust him, and Obi alternated between grating and impossible. I knew a lot of his pain was indirectly my fault, but he didn't need to keep taking advantage of every opportunity to salt the wound.
That was only one of the thoughts that ruled my mind while I made the short walk from the hotel to Nordstrom. My head wandered from one thing to another: Hell, Landon, Elyse. I even went back to an outing with Merov when I was seven and he had taken me to some fancy store in the garment district and let me pick out a ten-thousand dollar gown to wear for my birthday party.
I was so wrapped up in the memories that I nearly ran headlong into a changeling. I angled out of his path to avoid a total collision, settling for his shoulder clipping mine.
"Excuse me," he said, his voice soft and meek.
I know he couldn't see what I was, and at first I wasn't even sure what he was. His face was red, his eyes downcast. He looked like he was in a bit of pain, his hands curled under a draped wool coat. There was no sign of the sense of superiority or the aggression that had marked my other interactions with the altered humans. Instead, he only looked afraid. It was the eyes that had given him away, an odd tinge of red, and his fingers. He hadn't realized that his sharp claws had dug their way through the wool.
I turned to watch him as he hurried past, and then across the street. His head darted left and right, on the lookout for something. It was suspicious in a way that captured my attention and didn't want to let it go. I should have continued on to the department store, grabbed something short and tight that would attract lots of attention, and gotten Elyse's ass back to the hotel.
I had two hours, and I could find a suitable strip of cloth in a matter of minutes.
I followed him.
He walked for a while, east to the Pike Place Market, disappearing into the crowds of tourists there and making it hard for me to follow. I managed to keep the tail, flowing through the traffic and leaving an eye on his back. Watching him, I could tell by the way he maneuvered that he wasn't just hiding his clawed hands. He was holding something in them, and I wanted to know what.
He kept going, weaving through the foot traffic and jaywalking whenever he could. I stayed a few dozen feet behind, in the shadows when possible, and always with a few people between him and me. I stalked him like a cat, focused and intent, all the way to an alley between two old buildings.
I started running, eager to catch up before he could vanish.
I was too late.
The alley was empty - nothing but trash bins and leaky pipes. There were no doors he could have gone into, and no fire escapes he could have climbed. He had vanished into thin air. How?
I was trying to work out how he'd worked his Houdini magic when I felt a presence behind me. It wasn't the changeling, but the smell gave him away.
"Elyse."
I turned around.
"Father."
He was in a long overcoat and a fedora, the bulges beneath the coat unmistakeable. He was armed for both conventional and Divine warfare. Two more of the Nicht Creidim fanned out behind him. Elyse's sister Rae, and an uncle, Paul.
"How did you find me?" I asked.
He laughed. "That's the funny thing. I wasn't even looking for you. I was following the changeling. Now that I have you though... Messy business back in New York."
"You followed Ulnyx?"
He nodded. "It wasn't easy, but they weren't expecting we would know where to find them. I heard about what happened at the house. You attacked your own family? Really, Elle... I know you're stubborn, but don't you think you took it a little too far."
"Ken was going to kill me to get the Box. You would too, except you can see I don't have it."
"I also know you were traveling with the diuscrucis' boy toy, the marine. I'm assuming you left the Box with him, somewhere in the city."
There was no point in denying it, it was a big city. "True. Which leaves you with a decision. Do you try to kill me and find Obi on your own? Or do you try to capture me and get me to tell you where it is? Or do you let me walk away and tail me back to the Box?" Or do I let go of Elyse and take control of your meat? I wasn't sure I could.
"Considering you're out here unarmed, I'm leaning towards making you talk. Yet, I'm curious. Why were you tailing the changeling?"
"He intrigued me."
"That's my girl," he said. "Do you know what he was carrying?"
I shook my head.
"An artifact. A scrying stone. I was going to use it to find you, which is why I'm also considering letting you go. I don't want to harm you, daughter, despite your treacherous indiscretion. You're willing to do what it takes to hold to your beliefs, and considering I taught you that, I can't really blame you for it."
A scrying stone? I hadn't known something like that even existed. I could understand why Joe would want it. I also knew it could come in handy.
&nb
sp; "Who is he bringing it to?" I asked.
"A seraph," he replied.
"An angel hanging out in an alley?"
"Not an angel. A seraph."
"There's a difference?"
He shrugged. "There is to me. This one hasn't died yet. He's a changeling. The first seraph I've heard of. It turns out he's been able to use his new situation to rally a lot of the other changelings in the city here, though I'm sure it doesn't hurt that he's rich."
Was the world really that small? "His name isn't Brian Rutherford, is it?"
"Bingo. How'd you know?"
I took a deep breath. So I was suppose to seduce a mortal seraph who was already at the top of Joe's hit-list, and who was about to have an artifact that could tell him the future? I needed to stop the chit-chat and find the were changeling.
I wasn't about to clue him in that I knew anything about the Deceiver. The question was, did he know? "I've heard he's been collecting a lot of artifacts. I wanted to find out exactly what, to see if he had anything that might help me deal with the Box."
"I can help you deal with the Box, Elle."
"No, father, you can't. Now if you'll excuse me, he's getting away." The only trouble was, I didn't know where to.
"Look around, sweetie. I think he's already gotten away." He unbuttoned his coat and spread it wide. He had a shotgun on one hip and a sword on the other. "Are you going to come quietly? I know your hand-to-hand has gotten better, but you're outnumbered three to one."
I started reaching for my pocket, to the stone nestled there against my leg. Was I being foolish? I wasn't sure.
Rae drew a pistol from a holster on her thigh. "Elyse, don't." She was older than Elyse, someone the girl had always looked up to. A beauty in her own right, with dark skin and almond eyes.
My hand stopped. I counted my heartbeats. One...two... I was calm, despite the situation. I dropped my hands to the side. "Okay," I said. I couldn't beat them like this. It was better to let them take me and then catch them by surprise.
"That's my girl," Joe said.
He started walking forward when I saw a dark shape falling towards him from the rooftop above.
"Joe!" I tried to warn him. I don't know why, because under different circumstances he would have killed me already.
He heard the vamp coming, and he twisted and raised the shotgun, falling on his back and firing up into it. The changeling cried out, thrown off-target by the force of the blast. He landed at Joe's prone feet. He wasn't alone.
The alley filled with changelings, jumping off the rooftops to land with us in the dark corridor. Weres and vamps mostly, but one of them was a nightstalker. He came down next to Uncle Paul and slammed him with a fist that sent him crashing into the wall, bouncing off and landing with a groan.
Rae started shooting, silver bullets tearing into the false demons and creating a din of pained cries. They hurt them, but they didn't stop them, and three of the changelings charged towards her.
I found the stone in my pocket, pulled it out and summoned the spatha. A vampire came at me, claws leading fangs, and lost his hand and then his head to the blade. I ducked under a swat from a were, pivoted on the balls of my feet, and shoved the sword backwards into his gut, ripping it forward and using the flat to block a second attack. Behind me, Joe tried to get to his feet, but the nightstalker had reached him, and he picked him up by the neck.
"Son of a..." he thew punches into the creature's chest, but it didn't seem to notice. He howled in Joe's face and squeezed tighter.
I looked back down the alley. There was nowhere the changeling could have gone. There was no way he could have escaped. Yet these altered mortals were here, and they had to have come from somewhere.
It was the Deceiver, I realized. A glamour. It had to be. Max had said I could see through it, but that clearly wasn't the case. At least, not like this.
Another were pounced at me, and I jerked to the left and punched him hard in the kidney. He landed and turned, twisted in pain and opening his mouth to huff for breath. I loosened my control of Elyse, holding onto her soul but letting her take her body back.
"Rebecca, what the f-"
I saw it, as nothing more than a suggestion in the simplicity of my raw spiritual consciousness. The building to the right had a door. I could see it as though it too were an apparition, a transparent overlay to the visible lie.
"To the right. There's a door."
"I can't see it," Elyse said.
"Just go."
She ran towards the wall.
"Two feet to your left, the handle is in line with your ribs."
She reached out towards the wall, moving her hand until she found the knob that she couldn't see. She pulled the door open and stepped inside.
"Close it," I said. "We don't want Joe to follow."
She pulled the door closed, and then we looked around. I could see the truth over the glamour - the dirty, cracked mortar of the walls, and the set of old steps that led down, overlaid with a small storage room filled with boxes.
"There are stairs in the middle of the room. Old stone stairs. Climb down them."
Elyse walked forward more slowly, unsure of my instructions. "There's nothing there. Just boxes."
"There are stairs. Do it."
She put her hand up to her head. "Rebecca."
"Do it!" I screamed at her soul and she cried out in pain.
"I can't see it."
"You have to trust me, Elyse. If Rutherford gets the scrying stone we'll have no chance at getting close to him."
She growled and stepped forward into the boxes that should have prevented her forward motion. When they didn't stop her she started moving more confidently.
"Down the stairs, right in front of you."
The first step was timid, but then she ran the rest of the way down. We dove about twenty feet underground and spilled out into a long corridor of dirt and wooden planks. The glamour didn't extend down here.
"That was-"
I didn't let her finish. I took hold of her again, forcing her eyes to become my eyes, and her body to become my body. I continued the run down the tunnel.
It fed into an abandoned city, an underground world of wooden structures that would have been commonplace in the eighteen hundreds, but surprised me with their existence. They had been cleaned up, painted and patched, glassed and lit. I stumbled into it unseen, but now I could hear the voices of this secret world in hushed murmurs around me. What was this place?
I was on a wide street that looked recently swept. It continued a few hundred feet ahead, and I could see two more streets stretching off to either side. A neon sign over one of the larger structures read 'Brian's' next to a flashing beard and mustache. I could hear eighties rock music pumping from inside.
"You've got to be kidding me." I was here to get the Deceiver, and I had a feeling the sword was waiting for me in the old-time bar.
At least it looked like I might be able to skip the seduction after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rebecca
My first thought was to walk right in, head held high and nothing but confidence oozing out of every one of Elyse's pores. It was a part I knew how to play, having perfected it as the laughing stock daughter of Merov Solen, the weirdo who didn't think vampires needed to drink human blood. I had poured millions of Merov's money into the research, and all the while it had been a front, a way to distance myself from my father, and a means to get the diuscrucis to trust me. The Beast had told me that was what I had to do, and I had done it. I had played that part well, and it had worked to convince Landon I wasn't like the others. It was heaped in with all of my other regrets.
The idea of making a grand entrance as Reyka Solen fell to the curb when one of the patrons made their way through the open doorway of the bar and hurried past my makeshift hiding place in the deeper shadows. She had a look of concern on her face, and tears in her eyes, and I could only guess she was going to find out what had happened to the group that
had jumped us. I watched her back disappear down the tunnel, and tried to decide what to do. In two minutes she would discover their ambush party was dead, because I was sure Joe and family was too much for a bunch of new demons with zero fighting skill. She would come running back with the news, and then what?
At the same time, I had to assume Brian Rutherford was in there, and that he had the scrying stone. If I gave him enough time to use it, would he be able to know what I was going to do even before I did?
Whatever I did, I needed to do it fast. I left my place in the shadows and dashed across the lit areas of the underground village, keeping my eyes out for anyone on the streets. I could hear things happening in the other buildings - clattering plates, laughter, conversation. It was as though the changelings had come down here to find the normalcy that the Beast's power had stolen from them. And maybe they had. Maybe that's what they had gone out into the alley to defend.
I reached the side of the bar and crouched beneath the flashing facial hair. I had an idea, and a violent and simplistic backup plan.
"Wait here," I said to Elyse, letting go of her and propelling my spirit form out of her body and into the void. I passed right through the wall of the structure, fighting to keep my energy focused on the motion. I needed to be fast to make it in time.
The place wasn't crowded. Eight changelings sat around a single old wooden table, directly in front of a bar where a nouveau-were poured drinks. The eighties hits were blasting out of an old jukebox hunched in the corner, and on the table sat a simple rough stone, covered in demonic runes.
My mark was there, sitting to the left of a young, bald man with a thick, trimmed beard and mustache and wearing blue jeans and a brown sweater. He had to be Brian Rutherford. There was nothing about him that would give him away as a seraph, but then again his back was covered.
"I don't like it," the mark said, digging his elongated claws into the table. "Whoever she was, she was good. I wouldn't have even noticed, except she smelled so sweet."
Bound (The Divine, Book Four) Page 16