Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  Another strand. Another.

  Not enough.

  So much pain.

  More and more of the working is grounding through me, but it’s still not enough. It will kill me before I can break the lock.

  My screams reach out to Kaothos, and she comes. She manifests, blotting the stars out of the sky.

  And then Kaothos is grounding the energy through herself instead.

  Kaothos is screaming. The whole Taos community of Adepts scattered around the hillside, all of them, are screaming. All of us are bound into this one, hideous pain.

  Then there’s no lock. No Diana. No Adepts. Just a ball of flame in front of me, like a sun going nova.

  Floating. Falling. Everything falling into the sun. No screaming. No sound but a single note, a note so deep I cannot hear it, only feel it.

  And then silence. Abrupt. Final.

  No Adepts.

  Kaothos?

  Kaothos?

  KAOTHOS?

  Silence.

  Emptiness.

  And into that silence—

  Shock like a blade falling.

  But the Adepts were still screaming.

  Wait. The Empire’s Adepts, not the Taos Adepts. The noise was here, all around me—shrieks knifing through my brain.

  And the truth began to cut into me.

  Kaothos was dead. Breaking the lock had killed her. They’d felt her die.

  No!

  Not Kaothos, with her huge golden eyes and her laugh hissing like steam from a hot griddle.

  Kaothos. Diana. Tullah?

  Tears were streaming down my face, and a huge grief tore at my chest.

  “What happened?” Correia was shouting. “Do we need a healer?”

  I looked up.

  One of the Empire Adepts had curled into the fetal position. Huang knelt next to him.

  What the hell? Was this something I’d done? Or Skylur?

  “What did Farrell do?” Correia demanded.

  “Nothing, House Correia,” Skylur said.

  “Diakon?” The gently worded question of Ó Ruairc seemed to surprise Huang, who held up his hand and spoke with a sigh in Athanate.

  “Not for you to heal this, House Ó Ruairc,” Yelena translated.

  “The truth, Diakon Huang,” Skylur said in English, his voice hard and snapping like a whip.

  “He was the Chosen,” Huang replied wearily. “An Adept, trained from birth for one task, to host a dragon, on the possibility of one appearing in his lifetime.”

  “But Kaothos wasn’t his dragon,” I said. “She is…she was Tullah’s.”

  Kaothos. No!

  Tullah? Oh, my God. What must she be going through?

  “You misunderstand the nature of the dragon,” Huang said, oblivious to my churning grief. “They are attracted to power. An immature dragon would be unable to resist the lure of a powerful Adept. The dragon would have changed hosts.”

  What? They had planned to steal Kaothos from Tullah? Who did he think he was?

  Huang’s remaining Adepts recovered themselves and started to speak quickly to Huang in Chinese dialect.

  I was trembling with anger. Yelena’s voice in my ear seemed to come from a long way away: “Careful. We need him to honor his side of the bargain first. Focus, Mistress.”

  Skylur heard and looked over. The tail end of that awful power I’d sensed seemed to lash across the room. I didn’t think Huang had any option.

  Huang silenced his Adepts and held up his hands as if to ward us off. “Your friend would have died if she’d kept the dragon,” he said. “What we intended was for everyone’s benefit, truly. With the power of the dragon behind us, the path for Emergence was clear. Without the dragon, not so clear, not certain at all.”

  Correia forced herself in front of Skylur.

  “Another disaster of your making, Altau. Your presidency has become a litany of catastrophes. You disregard the Assembly and the Agiagraphos, you provoke mainstream Athanate with the appointment of an unstable hybrid as a House, you barely bother to conceal your endless ambition. Now the inept mishandling of the situation in New Mexico by that same hybrid has lost all of us the use of a dragon and the Kumemnon. Without the Kumemnon to restrain your ambition, the Hidden Path believe you are no longer fit to preside over the Assembly. I demand a vote of confidence and you must comply.”

  “This is not the Assembly,” Skylur said.

  “All the Athanate representatives who will comprise it are here. If we say this is an Assembly, who denies us?”

  Alex, standing at my shoulder, spoke. “This Assembly won’t function without Were support. We support Altau.”

  “Do all Were?” Correia snapped back.

  “The Midnight Empire also supports Altau.” House Stanbrigge of the Midnight Empire edged his way to the front. “We offer condolences for the loss of the Kumemnon, caused not by any action of Altau, but by the actions of Adepts in league with Basilikos and other traitors. The alternative for presidency would appear to be House Correia, and we find her and the Hidden Path tainted by their links to that same Basilikos. So, I will take this opportunity to inform my fellow representatives that the Midnight Empire has decided to join Panethus en bloc.”

  I had no doubt it’d been agreed a while back and been held so it could be revealed at just the right moment.

  Smooth move, Skylur!

  It looked as if Correia wouldn’t have enough support. And her move tonight had put her position as leader of the Hidden Path on the line.

  Who will take over next? Will they be better or worse than Correia?

  I was surprised by a tinge of regret at the thought. At least Correia engaged in dialogue. Who knew what crazy would take over?

  Then came Ó Ruairc’s voice. “Ireland cedes from the Midnight Empire. We will not join Panethus, but neither will we join the Hidden Path. Yet, we are at the heart of the Athanate world. We tend your sick and traumatized, those beyond the help of your healers. That should continue, without regard for the creed from which they come. We will remain outside of politics, and we offer a permanent home for the Assembly. Ireland will become the one place in the world where every peaceful Athanate is welcome.” He bowed his head as if in prayer. “May that lead to every Athanate being peaceful.”

  That got a response from everyone. The site of the Assembly was one of the big unresolved issues that had dragged on. No one would be against the proposal to make it permanently in Ireland.

  Something good had come of this, and the removal of Ireland from the political balance wasn’t enough to swing it back in Correia’s favor.

  “What does the Empire of Heaven say about the presidency?” Correia said to Huang, and silenced the buzz of conversation.

  That’s a Hail Mary, and goodbye, Correia.

  Huang’s face was somber.

  However he’d positioned himself against Skylur, it was another matter to position himself for Correia. The Empire of Heaven was as aware as the rest of the Assembly that the Hidden Path had too many links with the old Basilikos. The vote would go against her and Correia was finished.

  “The Empire of Heaven cannot support the presidency of Altau in the new Assembly at this time,” Huang said.

  No!

  There was a stunned silence. Correia herself seemed shocked.

  She simply waited with everyone else, eyes fixed on Skylur.

  And he was looking at Huang, his eyes narrowed.

  “Very well,” he said finally. Then, as if nothing had happened, he indicated me. “Diakon Huang?”

  Huang nodded. “I gave my word. The helicopters are waiting. The flight will take no more than fifteen minutes. Strike, in memory of your Mentor, the Kumemnon. As she said, to the swift the race, to the brave the prize.”

  Skylur’s eyes narrowed at that, but he took my arm and urged me to the door. “Tarez has ordered forty Altau security in full assault gear to assemble outside and I put them entirely under your command. Take the helicopters and go.”

&nb
sp; “But…” I looked back at the faces as he pushed Alex, Yelena and me out the door.

  You’re just about to lose the presidency of the Assembly!

  “Attend to your battle,” he said. “This one is mine.”

  Chapter 66

  Twenty minutes. Halfway to getting a plan together.

  Split the forty Altau into two teams. Pick leaders for the teams.

  Review the information Huang provided. Agree on tasks.

  Not enough. A lot of bidders, and all of them with armed bodyguards. Too many innocents.

  Call the Pasadena Were and beg for their help. Wait for the return call.

  Ignore the pain of loss and the fear of all of Emergence coming apart under Correia.

  And then Prowser was sprinting down the steps toward us.

  “Farrell! A message just came in from Huang’s spy. You have to go now.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Prowser’s face twisted. “It’s the second girl. Dante.” She paused before rushing on. “He says Forsythe plans to have her raped and murdered as…as entertainment in the middle of the auction.”

  Focus. Breathe. Going crazy will not help.

  “How long have we got?”

  “I don’t know. The spy said it depends on the bidding.”

  No time for the Pasadena. No time for last minute reviews and summaries.

  “Load up,” I yelled. “Go, go, go.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Crazy woman. Crazy woman. Victor was muttering it like a mantra.

  I was strapped into his Gazelle, fifteen hundred feet up, between Van Nuys and Burbank airfields, flying at well over a hundred knots through the night sky.

  Except for a center console jammed with the soft LED glow of instruments, the cockpit was a study in how sparse you could make it. It felt like we were in a glass bubble rushing through the night. It was cold and noisy.

  And my gut was telling me it wasn’t fast enough. Every second mattered and it’d taken too long to work out a plan, and the Pasadena hadn’t gotten back to me.

  It was in their territory. Billie was too far away. Everyone else was too far away; the auction was being held on a ranch up against the San Gabriel Mountains.

  I’d spoken to the Pasadena lieutenant I’d met at the concert. He wouldn’t commit, but he’d given me an email address where I’d sent the information we had about the ranch and an outline of my plan. Such as it was.

  No call back from the alpha.

  Too late now.

  Yelena and Alex, Julie and Keith were with me in the Gazelle. The Altau had found us all Kevlar vests, helmets with milspec comms and the ugly P90 submachine guns that they favored.

  Victor reached out to the console. His finger stabbed the GPS and the screen scale jumped up a level.

  Real close now.

  “Empire Flight, waypoint Zulu, confirm,” he said over the RT.

  “Empire One, roger.”

  “Empire Two, roger.”

  The two Sikorsky helicopters were a hundred yards behind us, thundering along with their lights blazing, lit up like a pair of Sci-Fi spaceships. The two Empire of Heaven pilots had convinced Victor they knew what they were doing, and that was good enough for me. They’d come up with their part of the plan once I’d told them what I needed.

  Victor settled himself down into his seat, took a moment to quickly wipe his hand down his pant leg.

  “Approaching Skyfall. On my mark,” he said over the comm. “Three, two, one, mark.”

  Victor flipped a row of buttons and our console and navigation lights went out. He pushed the collective control down and eased the cyclic forward. The Gazelle began to fall. The engine noise that had been a constant hammering on my ears died quickly away.

  Below us, and not that far below us, the ground was still racing past. The Foothill Freeway peppered with the headlights of vehicles. The last few loops of residential streets with houses, some lit up. And then the looming darkness that was the San Gabriel Mountains, which we were rushing toward.

  And a last crop of bright arc lights.

  A ranch tucked into the protection of Milagro Canyon.

  A ranch that was no ranch at all.

  There was a blank spot in the arc lights. A two-story, rectangular building the size of a football field: the livestock auction center. It had an expansive parking lot, big enough for livestock rigs to turn, with raised loading bays to collect stock in trailers. It was full tonight with massive SUVs and sleek limousines for the bidders and their guards.

  But we weren’t just rushing toward the ranch; we were hurtling toward it. I sucked my breath in.

  Too fast. Too fast.

  I braced.

  “Showtime,” Victor called.

  The first of the Sikorskys came thundering past, barely fifty feet above us, all lights on and engine at full throttle.

  Just as the auction center seemed to completely fill the view in front of me.

  Victor hauled up the collective control and the Gazelle bucked. It felt like I’d hit the end of a bungee rope. My stomach tried to get out through my eye sockets. But we didn’t go back up. Instead, we sank, gently, down to the roof of the building.

  The second Sikorsky was overhead, even closer. At this distance, it was so loud my ears gave up and I felt it rather than heard it. The noise entirely masked the sound of our Gazelle landing. That was good. On the other hand, the noise from the Sikorsky was trying to turn my bones into mush and push my brain out of my nose.

  But old training took over and I was already out of the Gazelle, crawling to the edge of the roof.

  The auction hall was shaped like a huge E, with the flat-roofed double-story section we’d landed on forming the backbone and the three pitched roofs of the auction sheds stretching out between us and the main parking area.

  As it had shown in the plans Huang had provided, all the sheds had skylights. Only the one in the middle showed lights inside.

  The Sikorskys had lifted over a ridge at the far end of the ranch and climbed away up into the mountains. The violence of their passing faded and was replaced by confused shouting from below, car alarms going off, doors opening and closing as guards craned their necks looking towards where the Sikorskys had gone. Good—the more commotion, the better.

  No one looked back up into the darkness on the top of the roof where we’d landed, and we weren’t about to shine any lights.

  The only problem was there were no trapdoors to get down, and we only had five minutes before the Sikorskys came back, when we planned for all hell to break loose.

  There was no time for anything spectacular. Alex and I could jump down from this height, but we couldn’t guarantee that we wouldn’t be hurt.

  Keep it simple.

  Julie reported from her lookout position. A group of nine guards had come out the front door to look around and see what all the noise was about. All of them armed. Assault rifles. They were wandering around the south side of the building to look down toward the parking lot, in the direction the Sikorskys had taken.

  Alex and I sprinted to the north end of the roof.

  He held me over the side and I broke a window.

  If an alarm went off, they’d think it was caused by the helicopters.

  I hope.

  I pulled the window open and braced myself against the frame.

  Julie, Yelena and Keith climbed down, using Alex and me as a bridge. Victor was under my instructions to remain with the Gazelle. We might need to leave quickly.

  As she swarmed over me, Julie reported that she’d seen the eight guards going back inside the front of the building.

  She couldn’t see the back of the sheds and the parking lot, but any guards there couldn’t see us either.

  Keith pulled me inside and then we both reached out of the window and grabbed Alex’s arms. He swung down and bounced against the wall lightly on his feet before we dragged him inside after us.

  There was an alarm going off inside the building. />
  The office we’d dropped into was bare, functional. Single florescent light. Plain desks and chairs. A couple of old metal filing cabinets. No carpets.

  A light showed at the bottom of the door. And we could hear the sound of two men coming down the corridor, feet scuffing lazily and voices unconcerned.

  “…probably some search and rescue shit out in the mountains. Not our circus.”

  Keith flattened himself against the wall next to the door.

  The rest of us waited in the darkness.

  The first guy walked through and reached for the light switch.

  Keith shoved him at us and hauled the guy behind him inside.

  The first guy stumbled. His assault rifle was still slung over his back and his hands were stretched out to break his fall. Julie slammed her knife into his throat and I caught the body, lowering him quietly to the floor and getting soaked in his blood.

  The second guy managed to get his hand on his weapon. Yelena ripped it away before he touched the trigger.

  Keith snapped his neck and let his body slump to one side.

  Given what was happening here, which they had to know about, I felt no sorrow at their deaths.

  We waited, listening.

  Other voices floated down the corridor. No particular tension.

  Yelena used her flashlight to look at the window alarm system and shook her head.

  “Sensor embedded in the glass,” she murmured. “Can’t fix this.”

  The rest of the guards would soon realize something had happened when these two didn’t return.

  We edged down the corridor.

  The building was symmetrical, arranged around a central stairwell. The corridor opposite us was dark. Downstairs, all the lights in the hall looked to be on.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” one of the remaining guards said.

  “I’m guessing that helicopter bust a window. Melvin, turn the alarm off. Jed, you go check what they’re trying to do. If the glass is broken, there’s no point doing anything. Maintenance’ll fix it come morning.”

  Jed complained, but he moved.

  Julie caught my eye and nodded. The guy who just gave those orders would die first. But we wanted that alarm turned off before we made a move.