Silver Bound (Sammy Davis Book 1)

by Holly Rutan

  "And no one bothered to tell us? Dumbasses. All right, mail me the info. Might as well get started now." If I wasn't holding the phone, I'd have slapped my face in disgust. We could chart this whole disaster up to another San Francisco fuckup; if they'd bothered to notify anyone of a mage exodus, an investigation would have been launched immediately. Mages made absolutely wonderful canaries—their movements predicted surges and droughts in the current, usually well before the authorities caught on. A huge migration should have made the news.

  "You've already got it. Antonio's family has gone so far as to give us full access to the Street for our investigation. They are pissed. Really, really pissed. Watch your step. I don't need any more dead agents." Voneshi disconnected.

  After that bombshell I couldn't possibly focus on my work. I paced back and forth for a while, called up Moira, who still didn't answer, and then headed for the local hospital. I wanted to check on Tamara and Antonio. Perhaps if one of them was conscious, they could fill me in on what happened. I would read the e-mail with Investigations' notes later; there was nothing as good as a firsthand account.

  It was easier to ignore the public's response to my presence on the bus this time. I was lost in thought. I felt responsible for Georgia's death in a peripheral sort of way. Not guilty, just responsible. If I had not requested those two, they would not have been blown up. But it probably would have happened to any team we sent in. It was not my fault.

  In an odd way, I was angry at the agents. They had been a tough, experienced pair who knew how to handle dangerous situations. I hoped they hadn't been careless or overconfident. If any information came out indicating they had been, Antonio's family would probably demand retribution. Better to focus their wrath on our common enemy.

  I'd calmed down by the time I reached the hospital, which was probably a good thing. Weres are barely tolerated in medical facilities at the best of times, since we so rarely need treatment. Some hospitals even refused us admittance outright. Storming through the halls growling to myself would probably get me thrown out.

  Tamara was too badly injured to disturb; only family members were allowed to see her. I didn't know most of the people lingering outside her room. After a week most of her casual acquaintances had settled for visiting only intermittently, leaving only her closest and dearest. I felt uncomfortable, so I whispered my well wishes awkwardly and departed.

  Antonio was a different story. Two of his thugs were on guard outside his room, matched by two police officers who met them glare for glare. I felt like I'd walked into a stand-off from an old spaghetti western. Somehow one of Antonio's boys recognized me, despite my not being in battle form.

  "Hey, loba, the boss has been asking after you. Back from vacation, huh?" he called out cheekily.

  "Some vacation," I replied, holding my ID for the police officers to inspect. "Go up north, pull a few lucky people out of the mud, find more bodies than I care to count, and come home to find my case blown all to hell."

  "Tough business. Momma is pretty angry. You find out who blew up our boss, hey?"

  "You got it," I agreed.

  The police waved me through without comment. I was a little too friendly with Antonio's gang to make them feel comfortable, but I'd spent a long time cultivating a relationship of mutual respect.. Let the police think what they wanted; our almost-friendly relationship with the leaders of Valerio had saved lives.

  Antonio was laid up in bed with casts on both legs and one arm, stitched up like Frankenstein's monster and purple with bruises. One of his eyes was covered with a white foam patch. I wondered what shape he'd been in when they got him here, if he looked like this after being hospitalized for days. I had to move a couple of presents to sit on the chair next to his bed.

  "Hey, Antonio, you look like shit. They going to send you home soon?"

  He shifted, turning his head so he could see me with his good eye.

  "Loba," Antonio croaked.

  "I heard you were looking for me," I replied. "Here I am."

  "I lost some good people, loba."

  "I did too. What are we going to do about it?"

  His hard brown eye met mine fearlessly. "Find the fucker and kill him."

  "Good, we're on the same page. Tell me how it went down." I pulled out my recorder and set it on the tiny bedside table, next to a plastic pitcher of water. After his nod, I turned it on and recited the date and time.

  "It went like this: Your agents met up with my crew on time. They came down to meet me. I keep a record of everyone on my turf. Everyone. So I brought out my little list of mages, and I sent my boys to hit the street. Came with 'em. You 'n Moira can come around any time, but I don't want no strangers walking around outside my view."

  I poured him a cup of water and gave it to him when he paused. He held it in his one good hand and sipped through the little bendy straw, then continued.

  "Most everybody checked out okay. My boys could find them, they were where they were supposed to be. Mostly just off in their own little worlds. Bad as the druggies. But there's been a lot of traffic through my turf lately. A bunch of mages drifted in from up north and clogged everything up."

  "From Santa Cruz maybe?" I straightened, muscles tightening as something clicked internally.

  "Yeah, some of 'em. It took longer than we expected to get through the list, an' we were at it a couple days. Had to be slow and careful not to tip our man off."

  I nodded and then verbalized for the recording. "Of course."

  "Anyway, by Saturday we'd managed to narrow it down to this one place over near the border. The house had passed through a few hands, nothing official lately, but we couldn't find the resident. Sometimes if there's a problem with rent, I'll come down in person, to give them a friendly message. You know." He took a big swallow of water, then put the cup down.

  "So I tell your girls to go around the back, see if the door was locked. I stood out front, had one of my boys go tap on the front door, polite like. The door swung open. And then the whole damn thing blew up in our faces. Just like that." Antonio snapped his fingers.

  "You see anything inside before the house went up?" I wasn't hopeful.

  "Yeah. The room looked empty, no furniture or nothing, and there was something on the walls. Couldn't read it before the place blew," he answered.

  "Read it?"

  "Yeah, it looked like it might be writing." Antonio closed his eye.

  "All right. Anything you want to add before I turn this thing off?"

  He shook his head slightly. "Just catch the bastard, loba."

  I turned off the recorder, stood up, and stretched. Antonio really did look like hell. It was time to let him get some rest. He sounded like he might have fallen asleep, so I walked out without saying good-bye, closing the door quietly behind me.

  I left the hospital more shaken than I was comfortable admitting. Seeing Antonio so busted up made me want to bite something. The leader of Valerio was not supposed to be weak. That's why he and I enjoyed our little contest every time I visited with Moira. The man understood dominance in a way that was almost wolf-like, and he'd never been afraid to display it like the ruler he was.

  He was never supposed to send my protective instinct into overdrive like he had, but he'd just reminded me he was human. I'd find the mage who'd hurt Antonio and kill the bastard with my own teeth and claws if I could.

  Chapter Seven

  I returned home that night around eight, after struggling my way through the evidence forwarded by Voneshi. The information from Santa Cruz hadn't made it down to me yet, which I figured was a blessing. Intelligence had provided reams of information about the blast in Valerio. No unusual or out of place chemicals found on-scene. Study of the residue indicated blood magic had probably been used. Not a surprise, since that's what brought us there in the first place.

  Our Investigations team had found several bodies inside the house, but preliminary analysis of the deceased indicated they were probably not snaps of any sort. Identif
ication of the bodies was still underway; the corpses had been too damaged to lift prints or provide much in the way of dental imprints. I wondered if they were accomplices or hostages.

  The population at Valerio was composed largely of transients, the paranoid, and criminals. It was impossible to verify whether anyone had entered or left the scene in the hours before the blast. No one was interested in coming forward to the authorities, nor to Antonio's people, who ruled as much through fear as any other method.

  I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my meal of mostly raw meat and a few grudging vegetables sitting like rocks in my stomach. Was there a tie between the Santa Cruz mages and my case, or were they just in the way, detritus blown in by the storm?

  I rolled over, feeling like I was chasing my tail. Tomorrow I would sniff out the scene with Moira and our new teammates. Perhaps then things would make more sense. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

  * * * *

  I rolled out of bed the next morning, determined to find some answers. After a quick breakfast, I headed down to the office. Once again, I took the bus. Moira still wasn't answering her phone. I put on my MP3 player and ignored the other passengers. That bubble of silence could go two ways.

  On my computer monitor was a note informing me Moira had called in sick. This was the first time in the four years I'd been her partner that she'd missed a day. Normally, she was reliable as a rock. Santa Cruz must have been harder on her than I'd thought.

  Agents Irwin and Smith were supposed to meet up with Moira and me at the border between Van Nuys proper and Valerio Street. I wheedled a ride from a pair of police officers on their way out to patrol. The bus didn't go that far, and I was in a hurry. The officers were only too happy to take me as far as the Rite-Aid, and I trotted over to the knee-high concrete barrier that divided Valerio from the rest of the city only a few minutes late.

  "Sorry, guys. Moira's sick, I had to get a ride," I called out to the two sweaty, black-clad agents waiting for me.

  I could spot the mage a mile away, since a fat, striped chipmunk perched on his shoulder. That would be his familiar, Pygmalion, and the mage would be Irwin. He had the Magus title, which meant he had power, but I couldn't see a sign of it in his nondescript features and lanky form. The mage was staring down the cracked pavement of the Street and looking vaguely confused.

  When the mage's partner turned toward me, I practically skidded in my attempt to stop. The black-haired man stood casually, with his hands in his pockets, but even with his casual posture, he radiated the sort of awareness of his strength that separates predator from prey. Two holstered revolvers were strapped to his belt, and he stank of silver. I fought the urge to bare my teeth and instead nodded to him respectfully.

  "Werehunter," I said.

  "Agent Davis," he greeted me, his tone just as guarded.

  "Voneshi said he'd be sending help. Thanks for coming," I said, extending a hand.

  The werehunter shook my hand firmly, showing none of the hesitation I'd grown used to from other agents when my sleeve pulled up to reveal my black band. I could feel strength in his grip, and his body language was unyielding. I consciously avoided looking at his eyes; he was neither dominant nor submissive to me, and we both knew this wasn't the time or the place to sort out our status.

  "I'm Agent Smith, and this is my partner Magus Irwin," the werehunter said, putting his hands back in his pockets. "You said your partner is sick? How much help are you going to need?"

  "I should be fine," I assured him. "Just worry about Irwin. The current is stronger than usual. Boss says there's a surge going on. Hey." I straightened up as the breeze wafted the scents of the two men in my direction. "Boss didn't say you were a were. I didn't think they let them become werehunters, let alone partner with other snaps."

  "I'm not. I'm a kin, not a were," Agent Smith replied, his shoulders relaxing. "From my mother's side. She taught me how to hunt."

  "Cool, I've never met a werekin before. Wolf? What pack?" I sniffed again curiously, my shoulders slowly relaxing as I rolled his musky canine scent over my tongue as though it would reveal his lineage.

  Weres have a notoriously difficult time having children, since females miscarry if they shape-shift while pregnant. We typically bond for life, and usually with each other, so we have children only rarely and on purpose. Every now and then, someone steps out of the gene pool, though. A child with one were parent and one human will be a were half the time. The other half the time, they are more or less normal humans, which we call werekin, or just kin for short.

  "Red Fire, out of San Diego," he answered, and I nodded. That was not a pack I was familiar with.

  The three of us approached the guard at the barricade, flashing our badges. He must have been notified that we were coming because he let us through with a nod. The three of us headed down toward the Street. Agent Smith kept his hands in his pockets, taking in his surroundings warily. I didn't blame him; even a human had to be able to feel how thick the air was. The werehunter had to keep up a running monologue to keep Magus Irwin focused. The mage would get busy looking at thin air and murmuring to himself, and would fall over really obvious obstacles or walk in the wrong direction and have to be pulled back. That worried me. All mages feel the pull of the current to varying degrees, and the strength of the Valerio spring was distracting even to me, but a mage that couldn’t keep his mental feet on the ground would drown.

  I interrupted once. "So you gentlemen will be partnered with us for the rest of the case?"

  "We're here for the long haul," Smith answered. "Voneshi's pretty pissed at losing two agents so early in the case and decided to send you some heavy hitters. Irwin and I are between jobs at the moment, so it fell to us."

  The mage diverted his attention from the current long enough to nod, his blue eyes watery and unfocused. I frowned, struck by a sudden thought.

  "Am I under evaluation?" I asked. "I haven't gotten my scores from my last test yet, but it didn't feel like it went well."

  "Yes," Smith answered, not unsympathetically. "You scored a four. On the other hand, your performance in the last Search and Rescue operation was exceptional. Evaluating your behavior in the field is part of why I am here; admin doesn't like puzzles."

  I shivered. Part of a werehunter's job was to eliminate feral weres before they went rogue and killed the humans they should be driven to protect. The Hopkins-Edwards battery was a whole series of tests that had been designed to measure the mental health of weres, and I scored low on it time after time. Four was a new low, even for me. I would live or die based on Smith's assessment, and no one, no human or snap, would lift a finger.

  On the other hand, I was likely to die in the line of duty anyway, so there wasn't much point in worrying. That fact was drilled into us over and over during Academy, until the weak quit. If you weren't human, you ended up in the thick of things more often than not. Mages got lost and drowned in the current, the fate Irwin appeared to be teetering toward. Weres tended to get killed by things too nasty for humans to go toe-to-toe with. We all knew the score, but the job was worth it. I told myself that at least twice a day. Sometimes I even believed it.

  I shoved my worries aside and paid attention. Valerio Street was just as crowded this time as it was on my last visit, and the people just as energetic. Our black uniforms were no deterrent to thieves. I caught a pickpocket trying to get lucky and slapped his hand with a growled warning. He cringed and darted away, probably more frightened by my golden wolf eyes than my angry words.

  Irwin's familiar sat up straight, eying the crowds of brightly dressed people and rickety charm stands with interest.

  "Hey, hey, hey, what's all this, all this?" Pyggie asked in a lightning-quick, high-pitched voice.

  "I'm told there isn't a mage left in all of Northern California," Smith answered, idly picking up a bottle of unidentified fluid from a stand and examining it. "Huh. I think this might actually be real." He set it down and continued past the outraged vendor.
<
br />   "Well, that's perfectly understandable. Understandable! Can't be hanging about where there's no magic. But this? What's this? A forget-me-not charm for only fifty bucks? Fifty? That's insane!" the familiar squeaked, his stubby tail standing straight up and quivering.

  Pyggie seemed hell-bent on shopping, and Irwin only too happy to oblige. Smith firmly took a hold of Irwin's arm, steering him away from the vending stalls while I chuckled at his familiar's excited chatter.

  "I wonder if they're paying sales tax," I mused. Smith shot me a look, and I held up my hands innocently. "What?"

  "Not what we're here for, stay focused."

  "But look at all that great stuff," I marveled. If anything, the Street was busier than it had been the last time I'd been there. We passed by the obsidian Earth Kin again, with his varied assortment of sculptures, and I sniffed at him. The elemental bowed and moved his arm in a grand gesture at his art.

  Music thrummed under my feet, and I hummed as I padded over to the elemental to examine his wares, curious about the way light reflected off the smaller statuettes. They sounded happy, sweet chirps of magic emitting from them in gentle chords only a mage would be able to hear.

  A hand on my upper arm interrupted my inspection. Annoyed, I snapped at it, teeth clicking together as I hit only air. The hand grabbed me by the collar and pulled me away. I growled, only recognizing Charles when he moved between me and the Earth Kin's sculptures, breaking my line of sight.

  The crime scene was at the far end of the encampment. As the crowds receded to reveal the usual disreputable, dangerous-looking residents, my senses cleared. I shook my head and pressed my lips in a thin line. Irwin was in worse shape, pale and shaking.