Playing with Fire (Judah Black Novels Book 4)

by E. A. Copen

  “I told you to stay away from me,” Reed said, turning his attention to me. He raised the sword again. I scrambled away from him toward the hallway, but couldn’t beat his advance. In just a few strides, Reed stood over me, the sword pointed at my throat. “Now I don’t have a choice.” He gripped the sword with both hands and drove it down at the center of my neck.

  I rolled out of the way just in time. Reed pulled the sword free of the warped wood and hacked at me. Without a weapon, all I could do was try to stay out of the way. I rolled and slid out of the way, all the while doing my best to scoot out of his range. As he swung at me and I repeatedly moved out of the way, I lost track of where I was in the room and let him back me into a corner. Reed closed on me and readied a killing blow.

  Just as he raised his sword, there was a loud whirring sound followed by a thunk. Reed staggered on his feet, grabbed at the back of his head, and turned to snarl at Creven who stood on the other side of the room, poised as if he’s just thrown a javelin instead of his staff.

  “Pick on someone yer own weight class, padre,” the elf said and smirked.

  A loud hiss carried through the room followed by a rattle and a snake reared up out of the water. It struck at Reed who swung his sword, but the snake was too fast. It bit deep into Reed’s arm.

  He jerked the snake out of his arm and threw it at Creven. When the elf caught it, the snake stiffened and transformed back into his enchanted staff. Reed charged at him with the sword. Creven blocked his advance with the staff.

  I jerked my gun up from the holster and aimed it at Reed’s back. I should have pulled the trigger. Every muscle in my body screamed for me to squeeze it, defend Creven by shooting Reed. Three shots. Stop the suspect with deadly force. Save your friend, your partner. No man left behind.

  But Reed was my friend, too. He didn’t deserve to die. Something else was going on. Killing him was wrong. My hands shook.

  Creven fell on his rear. Reed brought the sword down and it sliced through the wood with ease. With his back against the wall, there was nowhere else for Creven to go. I saw the realization in his face as he looked at me in a panic. I had to make a decision. Shoot Reed and save Creven, or let Reed kill Creven and hope that I could save Reed.

  I closed my eyes, let my breath out and pulled the trigger.

  The gunshot rang in my ears. I stood frozen, too afraid to look at the aftermath for a moment, but self-preservation took over. If I had missed, Reed could still come for me. My eyes snapped open. Reed lay in a puddle, wheezing and gasping, his eyes wide. Creven had jumped up and backed away, only the top part of his staff still in his hand. He pointed the knobby end of it at Reed with a shaky hand.

  Reed made a deep, rasping, sucking sound and touched a spreading dark stain on his white collar. “Ju…dah…” he gasped and then fell over.

  Chapter Ten

  The gun fell from my hands and into the spreading water with a dull plunk. Water sloshed up around my shin as I closed on Reed, my legs moving of their own accord. “Medic!” I shouted as I fell to my knees beside him. “We need help in here!”

  The fire was still raging down the hall and wherever the water hadn’t touched. A portion of the ceiling on the other side of the room collapsed. I put my hands up and ducked my head on instinct.

  Creven scrambled to his feet and swayed before tugging on my shirt, trying to pull me up. I ignored his insistent tugging and pressed my fingers to Reed’s neck. There was a lot of blood, but he still had a pulse. “Help me!” I shouted to Creven and put my arms under Reed’s, pulling him up.

  He was heavy, too heavy for me to move on my own under normal circumstances. If not for the icy feeling of adrenaline still pumping through me, I’d never have been able to get him anywhere. I grunted and managed to drag him a few feet. Creven cradled his bleeding arm and fumbled with Reed’s legs using the other. Somehow, the two of us managed to get enough of him out the window that the guys on the other side could take over.

  Creven and I both half-climbed, half-tripped out the same window and I lay there on the damp grass, staring up at the clear blue sky streaked with gray smoke. Firefighters in full gear hovered in my vision and lowered an uncomfortable piece of plastic over my mouth and nose. Somewhere in the distant, thinking part of my brain, I registered it as oxygen. The fog over my brain lessened and the full force of all the magick I’d used to hoist three men through a window and fight Reed hit. Every muscle in my body felt like someone had tenderized me with a sledgehammer. The effort of drawing in breath almost felt like too much.

  With a small force of will, I turned my head sideways. Half the side yard was a black, simmering wasteland. The firefighters were scrambling to put out the last bits of flame with their hoses. Creven had put pressure on the gash in his arm, but it didn’t look like it had slowed the bleeding much. Blood still poured out from between his fingers. The EMT peeled Creven’s fingers away and even more blood came out. He turned, shouted a series of orders for supplies at someone and then turned back to Creven.

  With the charred grass, the smoldering remains of the house, the squad of police, firefighters and EMTs crowding in around the house, it didn’t look like the house had just caught fire. It looked like a war zone.

  A dull thud on the other side of me made me turn my head back the other way. Abe knelt next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. He gave me a nod of thanks. “Are you hurt?”

  I tried to tell him it was just me, overextending my magickal muscles so to speak, but it came out as a garbled, “Hrumphel.”

  “I have seen bomb blasts close up,” Abe said. “Some of them have been less destructive. You did the right thing, shooting Father Reed.”

  My hand flopped up to grip the oxygen mask over my face and move it aside. “How bad is he?”

  As if in answer, a squad gave a loud sound of its horn and its siren cut through the cacophony of sound. Abe glanced up. “On his way to the hospital, which is where you should go as well.”

  I pawed at the strap that kept the oxygen mask on me and fumbled to pull it off. Abe reached down to help. “Can’t. Hospital won’t help. Too much magick too fast. Just need rest. Be fine soon.”

  Abe sighed, raised one knee out of the mud and leaned on it. “I did not suspect you would listen to reason. Well, if you are going to lie there and refuse treatment like the stubborn woman you are, you might as well tell me about Creven. What is he doing here?”

  “Helping.” My throat felt raw, my head floating. I couldn’t tell him Creven had broken into the place to look for something, mostly because I didn’t know what it was he’d wanted. The elf might still have it on him, and I couldn’t let Creven get arrested, not while he was still my teacher.

  Abe shook his head at my non-answer and gripped me by the forearms. “Come on, then. Let us get you up and on your feet where you belong.”

  He stood, pulling me along with him. The world turned into a tilt-a-wheel and my stomach lurched into my throat. My legs shook with the effort of keeping me upright. Abe gave me just enough support to stand without holding me up until I finally steadied myself.

  “A moment of your time, lass?”

  Creven’s voice beside me grabbed my attention and held it. They’d loaded him onto a wheeled gurney in a sitting position and had heavy, bloodstained gauze pads taped over his arm. Beads of sweat dotted his pale forehead. He glanced to Abe and added, “Alone.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I told Abe. “Go check on Espinoza, will you? He’s human. He won’t recover as quick as you did.”

  Abe frowned, but let me go without any verbal protest.

  I gripped the railing of the gurney. “I need answers, Creven. I’m going to have to explain what you were doing in there.”

  He shifted his injured arm and grimaced. “In me trousers, lass. Make sure no one sees.”

  My eyebrow shot up. “You want me to do what now?”

  “The pocket, Judah. Now’s not the time for flirtin’.”

  “What’ll I find the
re if I go digging?”

  Creven swallowed. “Answers, probably to questions you never thought you needed to ask.”

  “This had better not be some kind of trick.” I sighed, lifted my right arm and reached across for his pocket.

  Creven grabbed my wrist with his one good arm. A grave shadow crossed his face as he warned, “Make sure no one else in BSI knows. Not even your new partner. Promise me. Swear it.”

  I swallowed the scratchy, steel wool feeling in my throat. Such promises carried a lot of weight, especially when they were made with a fae. Creven had never used my word against me like most fae. The seriousness with which he spoke set off alarm bells in my head.

  “I swear it, Creven. I won’t show Abe or anyone else in BSI.”

  He nodded, his face relaxing, and took his hand from around my wrist.

  Fishing around in someone else’s pockets is always awkward. Creven was no exception. Considering how short I was, I had to lean across him to do it. Holding myself up while leaning forward proved to be difficult. Luckily, whatever he had hidden there wasn’t anything small. My fingers closed on something metallic and thin. It snagged on the inside of his pocket as I slid it out, but came free with a little wiggling.

  The thing I held in my hands was only slightly bigger than a deck of playing cards. It was a metal case with a white label bearing all kinds of technical specs I didn’t understand. I did recognize it, however, from when I’d had to replace one in my laptop a few years back.

  “A hard drive?” I asked, searching Creven’s face for answers. “Reed’s? Creven, who asked you to get this?”

  He gave a little shake of his head. “Quick, get it out of sight, Judah. Remember your promise.”

  The EMTs, who had been standing nervously a few feet away, finally had enough standing around and came to collect Creven. I hurriedly jammed the hard drive into my jeans, hoping my clothes weren’t damp enough to damage it.

  “There’s one more thing you should know,” Creven said, leaning forward to catch my eye.

  “Sir, please try not to talk,” one of the paramedics said, strapping him in.

  “What is it, Creven?”

  He winced as the paramedics tightened the straps. “It’s Seamus. He’s here.”

  “He swore not to harm me for a year and a day.”

  “Aye, he did, but that won’t stop him from using an agent to do it on his behalf. This could just as well be him as anyone else.”

  “That’s enough,” The EMTs lifted the rails on the gurney and rushed him toward the waiting squad.

  “What did the elf want?”

  My head snapped back to see Abe standing beside me, his head tilted to the side quizzically. “Nothing,” I answered, clearing my throat. “Nothing too serious, anyway. Just wanted to make sure he wasn’t in trouble. He did kind of intrude on a police investigation, Abe.”

  Abe gave me a sideways look, his face blank. I couldn’t tell whether or not he bought it. Could half-vampires hear lies in your heartbeat like vampires or smell them like werewolves? Shit, I wished I’d thought of that before I opened my big mouth. I cleared my throat again.

  Abe held a bottle of water out to me. I took it, unscrewed the cap and dumped half of it in my mouth. The other half went to washing soot and blood from my hands. “Well, you are standing on your own,” Abe said. “I am surprised at how quickly you have managed to recover. Good, for a human.”

  I tipped the water bottle up and swallowed the last of the water. “How’s Espinoza?”

  Espinoza, who sat on the grass a short distance away, coughed, drawing my attention. He looked terrible, his face covered in streaks of black and gray. He held an empty water bottle in his hand that he laid on the grass in front of him. “Is this Seamus someone I should know about?”

  “I don’t think so.” I shifted my right hand away from my pocket, hoping he hadn’t watched my exchange with Creven. “I’m going to need to talk to Ed as soon as possible.”

  Both men frowned at my change of subject. “Ed Petersen. How is he connected to this case?” Abe asked.

  “He’s Mara’s boyfriend, and he’s not buying that Mara joined the Adventists voluntarily. I can’t say I blame him. She’s never struck me as a girl to fall in with a cult. Something else is going on here. Reed wasn’t himself, either. Too many people are acting contrary to their personalities, Abe. We need to get to the bottom of this.”

  Abe raised his head to look at Espinoza. “Will you live?”

  “Smoke inhalation’s a bitch,” Espinoza answered. “But I’ll be good. Let me catch my breath and deal with this shit before I start digging up what I can through informants, see if anyone’s seen anything. In the meantime, Judah, you’d better go down to the station in Eden and bail out your werewolf friend. You can expedite his release by claiming he’s a key witness. Can’t promise those trespassing and harassment charges will go away, though. I’ll call you when I know more, I guess.”

  “Call me? Call me how? My phone died last night.”

  Espinoza pulled a cell phone from his pocket and tossed it to me. “Take it. It’s a burner. You ought to invest in a couple dozen of those.”

  I thanked him and dropped the phone in my other pocket.

  “Would you like me to give you a ride?” Abe offered.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have accepted. The weight of the stolen hard drive in my pocket, however, reminded me that my bailing out Ed would serve a dual purpose. If anyone could find out what was on that hard drive and why Creven might have been sent to steal it, it would be Ed. But I wasn’t in any condition to drive the twenty miles to Eden from Paint Rock, either.

  Espinoza seemed to sense my hesitance and dug in his pocket, pulled out a set of keys and tossed them to me. “She’s parked around the corner from the church. Consider it a test drive. If you like her better than your Firebird, we’ll talk about a trade.”

  “Thanks again, Espinoza.” I waved to Abe and let the keys dangle from my fingers. “Can you finish up here while I go deal with this other mess?”

  Abe pursed his lips. “You are certain you are fine to drive? A moment ago, you could barely stand.”

  “I’m fine.” Another lie. Maybe Abe wouldn’t pick up on that one either. My heart rate could be elevated for any number of reasons. I’d just shot a man and jumped out of a burning building, after all. I still ached all over, and I wouldn’t be able to tap into my magick for a while unless I wanted to completely lose my ability to walk or move, but I wasn’t going to die. I suppose there was a grain of truth in my lie. I was more fine than Reed, anyway.

  The image of him bleeding out in the back of a squad on his way to the hospital hit me. Gideon Reed had been my friend, even if we hadn’t always gotten along, and I knew deep down that he was innocent. Someone or something else was making him attack people. No matter how many times Abe assured me shooting him was the right thing to do, it still felt wrong. You don’t shoot your friends.

  I closed my hand around the bright red key fob and turned my back to Abe and Espinoza to walk away. My feet felt like they had lead weights attached, and my hip hurt something awful, but I fought the limp. Abe’s eyes made the back of my neck itch until I slipped around the corner and stopped to press my back against the wall of another building. The air I’d been holding in my lungs escaped in a slow breath. My shoulders relaxed as the pounding in my chest faded to a gentle flutter. I slipped my fingers into my pocket to feel the hard drive sitting there.

  Answers to questions I never thought to ask. What the hell did that mean? Why would Creven want me to keep it from BSI specifically? Did Reed have dirt on BSI? That didn’t make sense. Reed was a priest. It wasn’t like he kept confessions on his hard drive. Whatever it was, it had to be something big. Creven wouldn’t have gone after it if it wasn’t.

  Aside from being my magick tutor, Creven also worked as Kim Kelley’s bodyguard, which linked him to the vampire, Marcus Kelley. I’d long suspected Marcus was up to something. The guy was
the CEO of a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company that had employed a wendigo named LeDuc, plus whatever the hell Doctor Han was. His company, Fitz Pharmaceuticals, had an exclusive government contract to provide testing materials for supernaturals. It was Fitz’s equipment every school, employer, and agency in the country used to identify supernaturals. Even BSI used them.

  Could that be the link? I wondered, gliding my thumb over the cool surface of the hard drive. Maybe what I’ve got here isn’t about BSI at all, but dirt on Marcus Kelley. He wouldn’t want BSI to have that and he just might send Creven to get it. But then why hand it over to me? That didn’t fit. Besides, why would Reed be looking into Marcus? He worked for Marcus as far as I could tell. Half of Concho County worked for him.

  I needed to know what was on that hard drive and the only person who could help me was sitting in a holding cell at Eden PD.

  I pushed off the wall with a grimace and stumbled down the sidewalk, mashing my thumb on the lock button of the key fob. A car up the block chirped and I stopped in my tracks at the sight of what he considered a trade for my beat up, mismatched old Firebird. Espinoza drove what looked like a brand new, jet black Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat with tinted windows. I hit the button again, just to make sure. The headlights lit up and it gave a quick beep. There was no mistaking it. This was the car he’d loaned me.

  I stole a glance over my shoulder, wondering if he’d hit his head on the way out of the building after all. But hey, I wasn’t allowed to look a gift car in the grill. I unlocked it, pulled open the door and peered in on black leather interior with red accents. When I sank into the seat and it contoured to my aching rear, I thought I’d fallen in love and things couldn’t get any better. Then, I put the key in the ignition and started her up. She purred. There was no other word for it.