by Misty Evans
Cole was breathing hard, but Damon didn’t seem to need any extra oxygen after the vigorous workout. I had the uncanny feeling he’d been holding back. All of us could probably have jumped him all at once and still ended up dog meat in short order. Archdemon magic was nothing to mess with, even for a superfreak like me.
A warm rush of energy tickled inside my temporal lobe. I heard Damon’s mental question, Radison?
Damon’s ability to communicate with me in this fashion drove me crazy, but it was handy at times. Parker Burkett. She’s a complete psycho, but she offered me a legitimate proposition.
My boss bowed to Cole in standard martial arts fashion, then said out loud to me, “Meet me in my office in ten minutes.”
Cole faced me and lifted one of his dark brows as Damon disappeared into the locker room. “You in need of a bodyguard?”
“If so…” Shane jumped up from his seat. “I’d be most happy to assist.”
A controlled sigh escaped Cole’s lips, but he didn’t so much as glance at the Outback Viking. “I’m sure you would.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.” At least I hoped I didn’t. Poor Cole had been tagged enough with me already in the past couple of months. “What I need is some good advice.”
Shane bounded over the bleacher, taking his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call the priest.”
“No.” I held up a hand and turned to Cole. He knew me better than most and cut me slack where Rad was concerned, even though my boyfriend had been a Noctifector until recently. “I’ve got to get that report on Damon’s desk. I’ll catch up with you later.”
Cole understood my code. He nodded and I took off.
Ten minutes later on the dot, Damon strode into his office, his lips thinning when he saw me sitting behind his desk typing on his computer.
“Just finishing my report on Lamir’s execution.” I saved the report with a click of the mouse and relinquished the cushiony leather chair reluctantly.
We traded places, him taking his seat and me pacing the floor in front of his desk. Inactivity makes me want to crawl out of my skin these days.
His gaze skimmed the report on his computer and I covertly breathed in his reassuring fresh-from-the-shower smell. The archdemon was ancient, uptight, and a stickler for rules. He often made my job harder and he was comfortable blackmailing me when necessary to get what he needed for the Institute’s highest good.
But when push came to shove, I trusted him to keep me in line, tell me the bald truth, and stay emotionally detached. All qualities I respected and lived by myself. Damon could yell at me, curse me and threaten me and I still felt safe.
He frowned as he read the computer screen. “Your report is five sentences.”
“Time, date, and place.” I ticked the necessary information off on my fingers. My brief reports never failed to aggravate him, although I always figured he of all the Council members should appreciate my concise accounts. “Subject and manner of disposal. What else is there?”
If possible, his lips thinned even more. He closed the report, sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his stomach. “I assume Miss Burkett’s proposition was not sexual.”
Eww. “Devil take me, no.”
“And it was not about Radison?”
“It was about both of us. She claims if I turn myself over to her, she’ll make sure Rad goes free from persecution by the Church.”
Damon rocked his chair in quiet consideration. “Do you believe her?”
“Hell, no, I don’t believe her. Well, maybe. But she was talking nonsense.” I decided to hold off telling Damon about the antichrist malarkey. Damon didn’t have much use for Rad as it was.
While Parker may have been off her rocker, Rad had been a Noctifector up until a few weeks ago, and therefore, Damon would give weight to any and all accusations against him, no matter the source.
He stared at me, eyes searching my face. The communication center in my brain warmed. “You want to deceive her. Use yourself as bait to…?”
I slammed my shields into place. “I want her gone. If she won’t leave us alone—if she’s purposely coming after either of us and endangering someone I care about—then I have every right to end her.”
“She’s human.”
“Give her a cookie.”
“You don’t kill humans.”
“Noctifectors don’t count.”
He fell silent, but he didn’t try to read my mind this time. “And your plan?”
Since I’d only had a flash of inspiration and the details were still fuzzy, I hedged. “If Parker captured me, would she attempt to kill me here in Chicago or take me to Rome?”
Damon loved logic and big-picture thinking. He loved the hunt for answers. This question, however, seemed to stump him. “The laws of the Church require her to return a demon such as yourself to Rome where the Pope will make you an example to others of our kind.”
As if I’d allow that to happen. “Would she follow the rules? Her vendetta is personal. What if she attempted to kill me here for her own purposes, not wanting to risk my escape during transport? She could say I broke free and threatened the members of her Order.”
“That is a possibility, but Miss Burkett’s nature is one of obedience and the desire for acknowledgement. She seems unlikely to trade her current status as leader of the Noctifector Chicago Order or the approval of her superiors, which she obviously craves, in exchange for any personal satisfaction she might gain exterminating you on her own.”
From my experience, Parker was not the subservient Noctifector Damon painted her as, but his profiling capabilities were legendary. If he believed she would follow the rules, I believed it too. “That could work in my favor.”
His brows dipped. “If you’re considering the idea of using yourself as a Trojan horse to get inside the Pope’s private quarters and murder him, I will be forced to stop you.”
How did he do that? I had barely thought that much through—with my mental shields firmly in place—and here he was, a step ahead of me. “It’s the perfect plan to put a kink in the Church’s biggest weapon against us. We tried getting them to work with the international Bridge organization and they refused. In the art of war, take out the leader and the soldiers scatter.”
“Have you forgotten we are preparing for the apocalypse? When the time comes, the Church may be all that stands between us and the demon hordes loosed from hell.”
Chicago was already overrun with demons from the looks of stacks of cases on my desk at Sweet Investigations and the missions Damon handed out like candy. “Have you forgotten that I sent Maria’s ghost to the afterlife? Without the seventh sin walking the earth, there is no apocalypse.”
His face told me he wasn’t convinced Maria was gone. That made two of us, but thanks to me, the queen from my past had gone somewhere filled with light. If she came back in any form, I’d take her down again.
Damon pointed at a stack of papers on his desk. “In the past twenty-four hours, Bridge employees around the globe have reported an increase in supernatural activity. Here in Chicago alone, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in human death and suffering.” He flipped through the sheets. “Water is running red from Oak Park to downtown Chicago. Two high-rises along the lake have reported infestations of rodents. Every emergency room in Cook County is swarming with patients with flu-like symptoms.”
He released the papers and met my gaze. “Kirill believes this is an outbreak of malaria, dengue fever, and several other infectious diseases. So you tell me, should we not be preparing for the apocalypse?”
“That’s why you were going one-on-one with Cole, isn’t it? You’re worried. You think you might actually have to fight to survive.”
“I’d be a fool not to worry about this, Kali, and I’ve lived too long to be considered a fool.”
His sharp tone told me he wasn’t kidding. The reports on his desk seemed to mock my confidence that I had stopped Maria…and that I could stop her again. “What do y
ou need me to do?”
“Your father was a skilled historian and scholar for his time. He kept extensive journals on notable demons including Maria. I’m told he also detailed elaborate hypotheses about the Beast and the potential for a biblical Armageddon. He figured out how to stop them. His journals were confiscated by the Church many times over the years, the final ones taken on the night he, your mother and your sister were murdered.”
The mention of my family hit me like a fist to my solar plexus. It took me a minute to get the red hot anger suddenly pulsing through my veins under control. Another minute to resume breathing. “You never told me this before. Why?”
“The journals are stored in the Vatican’s underground libraries where clandestine records and protest literature against God and the Holy Catholic Church are kept under lock and key. The answer to the coming Armageddon may be found in your father’s writings…and our only hope of retrieving those writings may be a Trojan horse.”
Conflicting emotions raged inside me, but the conspiratory gleam in my boss’s eyes gave me hope. “So you’ll consider my plan to infiltrate the Vatican if I agree to find those papers.”
The phone on Damon’s desk rang, interrupting whatever he was about to say. He answered with a curt, “yes” and his eyes narrowed at me. “You’re sure? What time did the attack occur?”
A pause. “Anything else you can tell me?”
Another pause, this one longer. Damon’s eyes narrowed farther, creating lines in the corners. “I see. Yes, she’s one of mine. I’ll send her to have a look at the crime scene once you’ve vacated it. Thank you.”
He returned the handset to its cradle with slow, deliberate movements. Damon wasn’t one to sigh, so when he blew out a deep, troubled breath, no longer looking at me, a chill went down my spine.
“What is it? What happened?”
“There was another attack on a young female human twenty minutes ago in Millennium Park. Her throat was ripped out and so was her heart. She had an X carved into her forehead.”
Lamir’s MO.
The clock on Damon’s wall read one a.m. “It couldn’t have been Lamir. I offed him over an hour ago. Is your source reliable?”
“He’s a CPD officer. One you met at the rave tonight.”
“Moreno? He’s your source inside the police department?”
Damon nodded. “One of them. A good male.”
“But I didn’t sense an ounce of magic in him.”
“He’s all human. And unimpressed with your Homeland Security cover.”
Few humans knew about us and that was how we liked it. Knowledge was power, as evidenced by the Noctifectors and their ability to find our weak spots. But why would Moreno snitch for the Bridge Council if he was human?
Damon took out a notepad and pen from his top desk drawer. “He lost his wife, a woman with latent demon blood, two years ago to the Noctifectors.”
So the detective had a vendetta. My estimation of his character rose. “He was tracking Lamir at the rave?”
“A legitimate assignment since he’s in violent crimes.” He scribbled words on the notepad. “His superiors believed the recent murders to be the work of a serial killer. This fourth incident will solidify that assumption. The FBI was already reviewing the cases. Now they’ll take over, especially since the CPD is overworked with the uptick of crimes in the past twenty-four hours.”
“So if it wasn’t Lamir, who or what killed that girl?”
Damon tore off the sheet of paper, handed it to me. “That is your new assignment.”
So old fashioned. The paper held the name of the victim and the precise place of her attack. It also had Moreno’s private number on it. “What about Parker?”
“The Institute can offer Radison sanctuary so we can better protect him, but I can’t offer round-the-clock security off-site because of the current crisis. We barely have enough soldiers, even with Alexandru’s vampire unit, to cover all of these trouble spots.” He tapped the stack of papers. “And since Parker is also after you, I must insist you move back into your apartment suite here as well.”
The idea made me want to stick out my tongue in true Maddy fashion. “Rad’s living at my place and there are five other vitiums there most of the time. As long as he doesn’t go anywhere without backup, he’s safe.” I decided not to mention there was no way I was moving back in. “I’ll take Cole with me as security detail on my jobs.”
“I can’t spare Cole. He’s the best trainer and strategist we have, and we are at war, Kali. But I will request Alexandru loan us Brianna Mullins to escort you on jobs. Cole recently passed her with the highest of clearances for security operations. He claims she’s almost as good as he is.”
Oh, joy. Nothing like having the Master vamp’s undead snack source hanging out with me. Brianna and I had a love/hate relationship and there was no way either of us would be on the love side of her playing my bodyguard.
Damon rose, came around the desk and placed a hand on my arm. “If I could, I would insist you stay here around the clock until we could deal with the Noctifector situation, but I’m afraid you’re the best field soldier I have. The Bridge needs you out there, stopping as many of these supernatural monsters as possible.”
A hundred and one questions swirled through my brain. Parker, Rad, Maria…
“Take care, Kali.” Damon squeezed my arm. “We’ll discuss Parker and her proposition when you get back.”
“But…”
Go, he interrupted, breaking through my shields. Make sure this attack isn’t Maria.
Maria. I would always be looking over my shoulder because of her. “Yes, boss.”
I heaved my own sigh and headed for my car.
Chapter Five
Moreno warned me over the phone that the crime scene was too hot for me to be poking around. He would call me when the cops were done. I wanted to see the body, but calling attention to myself was out of the question. He promised to email me a picture of the vic’s body as soon as possible and give me a heads up when the scene was clear.
I had time to kill, but wasn’t in the mood to work on any Sweet Investigations cases. Instead I headed home.
The place was hopping as was normal these days with all the supernaturals living there. Shane, Akimo and Seraphina were still at the Institute, but Salmad, the priest, and Bronwen, the sixth vitium representing sloth, were in the sanctuary.
I live in an old church that resembles an ancient castle. A few years after the Civil War, it was abandoned and condemned. I used my magical talents and a lot of elbow grease to turn it into a home. Never did I guess that the east wing I’d closed off would eventually become Hotel Kali for five of the seven deadly sins.
My Sweet Investigations computer guru, JR, was also in attendance. He was on his laptop, Bron was hanging maps and sheets of paper on the walls, and Sal had a handful of markers and was making colored X’s on various spots on the maps.
“Why aren’t you at SI?” I asked JR.
He glanced up but didn’t meet my gaze. “I’m using social media and other online resources to detect disease outbreaks, violent crime upswings, sudden crop failures and mass deaths.”
Nice.
Salmad turned, pointed a marker at me and then the map in front of him. “JR has found over a dozen reports claiming the water in the Mississippi River has a reddish cast.”
“And that means…?”
“Pestilence. The first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The red tide, parasites, boils, plague. Chicago appears to be ground zero for six different deadly viruses and two fatal disease epidemics, and the waterways are carrying most of it. Even Lake Michigan is darker than usual. One of the last seven plagues will be inland waterways turning black.”
Bronwen yawned. “Can we take a break now?”
I cocked my chin at the map. “What are the X’s for?”
Sal’s sad eyes met mine. “JR has his way of tracking. I have mine. Green for Pestilence, Red for War, Black for Famine, Yellow
for Death.”
There were green X’s on multiple points on the Chicago map. All at once the weight of what we were facing made my knees weak. “The Horsemen signal the Apocalypse?”
He nodded.
Because of Maria. “How can Maria be back? And where is she? How do I hunt a ghost I can’t find?”
Bron leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “You could kill one of us instead.”
The thought had occurred to me on the drive over. I looked at Sal. “Would that do it?”
“Once the Horsemen appear, it means the first seal is broken. There’s no going back.”
A part of me felt relieved. I didn’t want to kill any of my fellow vitiums.
Okay, except when they ate all my food and wrecked my house, but that was different. They may have strained my patience, but I’d grown fond of them. “So hunting down Maria won’t do any good either, right?”
Salmad tapped the marker against his chin. “I don’t believe Maria is back, only that her ghostly arrival last month tripped the apocalypse switch before you could send her from this world. According to prophecy, each vitium is supposed to have a certain time on earth. We rotate, in other words, every three to four hundred years. A couple of us may overlap, but we are never here all at once. And yet, for some reason, we did end up here at the same time, only Maria was here as a revenant, a ghost. Apparently, that was enough to complete the circle and open the door to the Four Horsemen.”
Somehow, that seemed worse. If Maria walked the earth and I could hunt her down, at least I had a target. A mission to focus on instead of drowning in a sea of how do I stop plagues, war and certain death for most of the world’s inhabitants.
I needed time to think. To take in the fact that humanity was about to be destroyed. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I found Rad upstairs pretty much how I’d left him the previous evening…pants, no shirt, a guitar in hand. His music was raucous and upbeat—a scintillating song about a hook-up. Not his usual angst-y rock song, and yet, this almost pop-sounding version worked for him.