by Kim Harrison
I tugged my bag onto my lap to check that my splat gun was in there, hesitating when I saw Trent’s charms in a haphazard pile. Nerves were starting to hit me hard. This was the best part except for the takedown. Jenks was feeling it, too, wiping his wings and checking for tears. I reached to turn off my own cell phone, accidentally hitting Wayde. “Sorry,” I said, but he was fidgeting, trying to find a way to tell Glenn he was coming with me. Good luck there, Wayde.
Oblivious to Wayde’s distress, Glenn had slid closer to the door, his entire mien shifting to hard-assed FIB officer. “Get out, cross the road, get into the library,” he said tersely. “There’s an FIB officer behind the main desk in the back. Jenks is going to loop the cameras, but no sense in pushing our luck. They belong to the library, but Jenks assures me that someone has tapped into them for their own use.”
Own use? I looked at Jenks, surprised. “When did you have time to scope out the library?” I said, and his dust shifted an embarrassed red.
“Give me a break, Rache,” he muttered, landing on the headrest. “Ivy and I knew about the library this morning. We didn’t know if we were going to let you come or lock you in the bathroom until an hour before Glenn called.”
My eyes narrowed and my grip on my bag tightened. Lock me in the bathroom?
“There are FIB and I.S. people on-site,” Glenn was saying, and I turned my glare to Ivy, “so if you spot them, ignore them. We’ve been bringing them in all afternoon, undercover. Rachel, if you’re sure you want to risk yourself again?” Glenn prompted as the van rocked to a halt.
I scowled, not liking having been so far out of the loop. “Ask me again, you won’t have to think about your family planning. Ever.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Glenn said; then his smile faltered. “That you’re ready, not the family-planning part.”
“What about you?” I asked Wayde as Glenn pushed the rolling door open and the smells and sights of the city streets flowed in. “You’re staying, right?”
Glenn got out and stood on the sidewalk, his stance loose and easy. “He’s staying,” he said as he helped Ivy out. “Wayde, do I have to cuff you to the van, or will you be good?”
His disappointment obvious, Wayde settled back. “I’m good. Just keep her alive, Detective Glenn, or you’ll find out what a pissed Were who doesn’t care if he goes to jail is like.”
“Thank you, boys, for that overwhelming boost of confidence,” I said, impatient, as Nina still hadn’t gotten out, and getting nervous. Damn it, if they shut the door and drove off with me still inside, I was going to be ticked. “Will you get your vamp ass out of this van!” I shouted, and someone on the sidewalk turned to look.
Nina stepped gracefully from the van, and I followed, quick on her heels. My grip on Glenn’s hand extended to help me was more than a little too heavy, and he eyed me until I let go, my feet securely on the sidewalk. Reaching behind me, Nina shut the door, and the van drove off. Before us was the library, traffic moving slowly between it and us.
Arms swinging, I crossed in the middle of the street, sure they’d follow. Jenks zipped over my head to go fix the cameras. Head down, I paced quickly, Ivy meeting me stride for stride. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I muttered. “What were you planning on doing? Saying you were going out for ice cream and not coming back?”
Ivy glanced askance at me. “You were always going,” she said. “The question was, and still is, just how close to the action you’re going to get.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I grumbled.
“No, but I’m not going to let you mess up Glenn’s run because you’re too much of a carrot for HAPA.” She glanced behind us to Nina and Glenn. “Nina is going to be enough of a loose cannon. We don’t need another one.”
I frowned as she opened the library door, and I proceeded her in. She was right, but I didn’t have to like it. My gaze went up, and I felt myself relax despite the reason we were here. I like libraries, and I breathed in the smell of the books, the quiet, and the reverent feel to the air. My gaze dropped to the tiled floor, and I smiled, remembering having fallen here, swearing loudly enough to make the head librarian frown at me from across the large room.
My smile vanished, and I started for the front desk, everyone following at their own pace, trying not to look like an invasion. The lady behind the desk didn’t look like your average librarian—not with that bulge under her sweater that said pistol. “Back and to the left,” she said, glancing once at the camera on the ceiling as she lifted the counter gate and invited us in.
I glanced up at the camera, seeing Jenks’s tiny slip of silver dust sifting from it. Satisfied that HAPA wouldn’t know we were here that way, I headed for the back offices.
I’d been here before, and the desks with their stacks of books and light-starved plants were familiar, but I stopped short when I saw Dr. Cordova bent over a cluttered table, giving directions to two FIB officers. Behind her, another officer manned a portable radio switchboard. The woman looked up as Nina cleared her throat. A flash of irritation crossed her face, then vanished.
“I didn’t know you would be here,” I said, and Glenn pushed past me, telling me to mind my manners with a slight shoulder knock.
“I could say the same for you,” the woman said, her gaze lingering on my shot leg, then rising to my empty wrist. Slowly her smile faded. “How is your leg?”
“Fine,” I said, smacking it. “It wasn’t a very big bullet.”
She stared at me, her expression bland. “I’m so pleased to hear that. A human would still be in the hospital.”
It sounded like an accusation, and my tension spiked. “It went in and out, no big deal,” I lied. “If humans would try witch medicine, they’d be on the streets a lot faster, too.”
“Teresa!” Nina strode forward with the fading scent of copy paper and vampiric incense. “How pleasant to see you again. I must commend Detective Glenn on finding this place. Marvelous blending of both our respective strong points, don’t you think?”
By her sour expression, “marvelous” was probably the last adjective on her mind. “Splendid,” the woman said flatly. One of the men with her had a question, and she turned away.
I leaned against a vacant desk and crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t care if it made me look pensive. It was better than looking mad. The last time Dr. Cordova was on a run, everything went to hell and I ended up captured and then shot. She didn’t like me, and the feeling was mutual.
The growing wing clatter of a pixy was a welcome distraction, and I brushed my hair from my shoulder an instant before Jenks landed on it. “I don’t trust her,” the pixy whispered.
“Why is she even here?” I said, gesturing with one hand. Apparently my voice was too loud, because Dr. Cordova turned, her expression ugly.
Jenks snickered, and in the near distance, Glenn smirked as he picked up three radio sets. They looked very polished and professional, far beyond what the FIB usually had. “We need to get downstairs,” he said, and she turned away.
Nina eased up to me, breathing deep of the anger I’d given off, her eyes dilating. “Ms. Morgan?” she said as she extended an arm for me in a decidedly masculine gesture. “I’d be delighted if you’d walk with me.”
I just bet. The memory of her losing control rose in my mind, the snarl she’d worn, her strength that had overpowered Ivy. She had killed a man. Ivy had tried to stop her and failed. We might have gotten all of them if not for her/him. My eyes went to Ivy’s, and Nina slowly dropped her arm. “Uh, I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” I said, adding, “You going down there, I mean.”
Glenn winced at the delay, but Nina was undeterred, and she gracefully took my arm and pulled me into motion. “I’m in control,” she said, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere ahead of us as we began to walk. “I have spent two days breaking Nina of her . . . innocence.”
<
br /> Two days? No wonder Ivy was worried. Two days of practice against a thousand years of evolution meant nothing.
Jenks’s wings hummed, and I jerked away, not because I didn’t want a woman to escort me, but because the vampire controlling her was an ass. His breaking Nina was not a good thing, and I glanced at Ivy, seeing her anger. She had probably spent yesterday putting the woman back together again. Being a vampire was hard enough, but add in the depravity of a master and the demands they made on their favorites, and it was akin to legalized abuse. And Ivy thought there was a chance neither was going to survive . . .
Accepting my refusal with a fake hurt expression, Nina gallantly gestured for me to go before her. Ivy fell into place beside me, smiling falsely as she cheerfully said, “Relax, Rachel. If Nina so much as twitches in a direction I don’t like, I’m taking her down and Felix with her.” She smiled and patted Nina’s face. “Nina and I have it all worked out. Felix.”
Nina’s smile grew thinner, showing both gratitude for Ivy’s helping Nina and irritation that it gave Ivy a whisper of control over him. My mood worsening, I followed Glenn to the elevator. “Why is Dr. Cordova even here?” I groused, not really expecting an answer.
Nina leaned toward me, making me shiver when she whispered, “Probably for the same reason I am. We don’t trust you, Ms. Morgan.”
Swell. Just peachy damn keen. But I got in the elevator with all of them, and an uncomfortable silence grew as we descended. I said nothing, stewing over what David had said yesterday about them not trusting me. Maybe I was why Glenn was being closed with Ivy. Great. Now I was screwing up her relationships as well as mine.
“Rache, did I ever tell you the one about the pixy and the druggist?”
“Here are your radios,” Glenn interrupted, and I turned from the blank silver doors in relief. “Please wear them,” he said as he handed me one, then Ivy another. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Mia. I never heard the end of it, you running off like that and leaving your nylons to show us where you’d gone.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly, fingering the tiny earpiece. There was a mic on the battery pack. This was very high tech, far more than usual. Someone had finally given Glenn some funds, by the look of it. I’d be able to hear everything, and it made me feel professional as I dropped the battery down my shirt. Nina had already put hers on, and was making faces as the plastic warmed up in her ear.
“You just slip it, sort of . . .” Glenn was saying, his hands moving in pantomime.
“I think I can figure it out. Thanks.” My head went down, and I turned my back on them as I wiggled the wire to a more comfortable spot and clipped the battery to my waistband. A quick toss of my hair, and the wire was hidden. Not that it needed to be, but if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
“Test,” I said softly, and Glenn held up three fingers to me. “This is radio three. Test.”
From my ear came a soft, “Radio three, acknowledged. Please maintain silence.”
I smiled, feeling like a part of something big, and I stood straighter. Ivy was doing the same with her radio. Nina was looking at her radio as if wondering why the I.S. didn’t have anything this high tech, and I smiled a bit smugly, even if I’d never seen anything this elaborate, either.
“Turn it down, Rache!” Jenks complained. “It’s going right through my head.”
I fiddled with the control until he lost his pained expression, then looked at Glenn when he leaned close, his map rattling. “Rachel, I’ve put you on the outer ring at one of the surface shafts,” he said, pointing, and I sighed at the distant location. “If they get past us, you and Jenks will have to stop them if they come your way. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, but I felt as if I was being gotten rid of. I suppose it was better than being in the car, but just. At least Jenks would be with me. Or maybe they were getting rid of him, too.
“I’ll be with the main force,” Glenn said, his eyes on the map. “With any luck, we’ll get them before they know we’re here, but if not, they’ll likely head for the back door. That’s where I’ve got you,” he said, turning to Ivy and Nina. “You’ll be with a contingent of officers, since that’s where we expect them to go. It leads to the Fountain Square parking structure, if you can believe it.”
“I believe it,” I whispered as the elevator dinged, but a warning flag snapped in a cold breath of realization. There’d be no Inderlander on-site at the actual capture zone.
The doors opened onto a dusty, dim hallway, lit by a cluster of flashlights aimed at the low ceiling. Three men looked up from another radio station, clearly temporary by the toilet-paper box they had it sitting on. Soft radio chatter was coming from it, obviously a different channel from ours. One of the men snapped to attention, but the other two simply acknowledged Glenn’s presence and dismissed him. “Sir!” the one barked, and I squinted at the unfamiliar uniforms of the two at the radio. Clearly we weren’t in the hot zone yet, but the new uniforms and attitudes bothered me.
I hung back, a question rising to pop against the top of my head, sending little tendrils of thought sparking through me. Expensive new equipment, unfamiliar personnel with a whatever attitude toward Glenn, only humans at the take zone . . . Glenn withholding something from Ivy.
The silver doors shut, sealing off the last of the clean, bright light, and I shivered as I felt the underground take me. I took a deep breath, sending a thought out to make sure I could still touch a line. The energy tasted like books, and I imagined we were still in the semipublic areas.
“What’s up, Rache?” Jenks said as he landed on my shoulder, and I smiled as if nothing was wrong.
“Ask me later,” I whispered, squinting in challenge at the two radio guys before they turned away as one, heads close together as they discussed something. They weren’t FIB. I’d stake my life on it. I’d also stake my life on the fact that Glenn knew they weren’t FIB. So who were they and why were they here, the-men-who-don’t-belong?
“Rachel,” Glenn said softly, and I jerked. “Do you want night goggles?”
Shaking my head, I hitched my bag higher. “I’m good,” I said, my thoughts on that special flashlight of Trent’s. I had to get one of those.
Glenn started down the hallway. “The stairs are this way.”
Ivy and Nina pushed past me, clearly eager to bust some heads. Jenks had gone ahead to light the way, and the scent of vampire incense rolled over me as I followed, last in line. Nina was excited, and I breathed her in, enjoying it. It was a good thing I’d sworn off vampires or I’d be in trouble right now, walking in the dark with two of them. Nina smelled as delicious as Ivy.
As if hearing my thoughts, Nina looked over her shoulder. A stab of fear slid to my middle, and her black eyes darkened. “Rachel?” she said in warning, and Ivy took her arm.
“Isn’t she fun?” Ivy said lightly, trying to distract both Nina and Felix.
My tension eased when Nina looked away. “I honestly don’t know how you do it, Ms. Tamwood. Most of my people would have succumbed years ago.”
Jenks dropped back, lighting them with his silver dust. He’d heard everything with his exquisite hearing. “Ivy defines herself with her denial.”
Nina looked at him in question. “Do tell,” she said, and I wondered how old Felix was if he was using one of Pierce’s phrases. “Nina tells me that Rynn Cormel has given you your blood freedom?” she asked. “Is that so?”
Glenn had reached a fire door, the lock clearly having been broken recently. His face was troubled when we came to a halt before him, and I didn’t wonder why. I knew Ivy was holding Nina’s arm and flirting to distance Felix’s thoughts from me, but he might not. “We have to be quiet from this level down,” he said needlessly. “Rachel, can you still tap a line?”
“So far,” I said, but one more stairway might put me below the easy reach of one. Good thing I still
had my splat gun. And, ah, Trent’s charms.
Glenn worked the latch, and the fire door opened, showing a dark stairway leading down. The air shifting the strands of my hair smelled of oil and canned meat. Jenks hovered uncertainly, finally moving forward to light the path as I followed Ivy down.
The stairway was tight, more like an escape hatch than anything else, and I wondered if this was really a way out. I could understand it if this was a last-stand kind of bunker, but it would be a death trap if there was a real catastrophe—such as an invading force knocking at your door.
We reached the end in silence, and Nina gently pushed open the second fire door. She looked too eager for my liking, but Ivy was nearby. Maybe the pain amulet she’d asked for earlier was for Nina after Ivy cracked her head open.
“Saints alive, I’ve missed this,” Nina said as she slipped into an even darker hallway.
“Easy, Felix,” Ivy whispered, her hand on Nina’s arm.
“Dim the light, Jenks,” Glenn whispered as he followed me into the hallway, and I got a quick glimpse of a cylindrical passageway before Jenks landed on Ivy’s shoulder and his dust settled and went out. It looked as if the builders had simply set huge sewer lines and poured a flat floor in the bottom of them. Thick cords of electrical wiring snaked along the curved walls at head height. I knew there were possibly more than fifty men down here scattered about, but I felt alone, and I shivered.
“This way,” Glenn said as he brushed past me. “We have twenty minutes to get in place. Rachel, we find your service shaft first.”
Jenks couldn’t dampen his glow and still fly, and Glenn cracked a glow stick, the pasty green light making enough glow to see by as I followed him. The hair on the back of my neck prickled as Ivy and Nina whispered behind me in the dark. I couldn’t hear their footsteps, but my gut knew they were there, and I tried to slow my pulse before I set the vampires off.
Fingers fumbling, I turned my radio up, and my shoulders eased at the sound of people. Almost before I knew it, Glenn stopped, looking first down, then up. It was my air shaft, bisecting the tube we were in. One pipe went straight down, the other up. A grate covered the lower shaft, and I looked down it as Jenks went to check it out, noticing that the tube made a sharp right turn about three feet down. Jenks’s wings sounded unreal down here, reminding me of summer and dragonflies. “This is it?” I whispered, and Glenn nodded.