“Where’s Michael?” I growled, closing in on him while my crew spread around the table, trapping them both. I gripped and regripped the hilt of my sword as I moved closer, watchful, in case it was a trap. “Where’s Hope? Where are the others who pledged their service to the girl?”
Arthur shoved away a chair, transforming in an instant, his majestic wings bursting forth as if he could shield Mona from the inevitable as he drew his sword in a spray of sparks.
“He’s not here,” Arthur said steadily. “None of them are. Except me.”
My temples pulsed, disappointment and fury warring with one another. A cry of impotent rage escaped my lips. Convulsed with resentment at this unexpected disruption of my plans, I swept my sword in a broadside against the table, sending china and glass-ware careening around the room.
How was I supposed to humiliate Michael if he wouldn’t even show up to honor his own oath?
Arthur braced himself. “He’ll come. They all will, you’ll see,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “In the meantime, you’ll have to get through me,” he pledged grimly, his sword poised above him for first strike.
My mind went blank with rage as I raised my sword and charged.
“No!”
The single word, a shriek of denial, cut me off. I wheeled to find Aurora—my dear sweet Aurora—standing in the doorway in her pajamas, her jaw slack with disbelief.
My rage cleared long enough for me to enjoy the shock of recognition on her face as she realized just who I was.
“Rorie, run!” Mona lunged as if to save her daughter, and I kicked her hard in the stomach, laughing. She crumpled immediately, more quickly than I’d expected. Then I kicked her again, and again, and again. When she lay moaning on the floor, motionless, I drew myself up, my chest heaving from the effort, my rage spent, my mind clear and focused on what needed to be done.
“Take the girl to the car with Macey,” I finally said dismissively to one of my crew, sending him barreling after Rorie where she stood, frozen. As he left, I wheeled back to Arthur, ignoring the sounds of Rorie’s futile struggle and the grating distraction of Mona, hunched on the carpet and coughing up blood.
I graced Arthur with a mock bow. So unfortunate that he was the only one of my enemies to have the good manners to keep his promise. But so be it.
“After you,” I offered politely, brandishing my sword with a flourish.
eleven
HOPE
We saw the smoke before we’d even gotten to my street. It was a black plume that stained the Buckhead sky. As we huddled in the backseat, pushing our feet against the floor of the car as if we could make it go faster, Tabby squeezed my hand.
“They’ll be okay, Hope.”
“You don’t know that,” I shot back, my words laced with fear and guilt.
“It would take a lot to get through that gate. Not to mention through Arthur.”
“Not for him. Nor for one of the Fallen,” I replied, under my breath. But I desperately hoped she was right.
When we pulled up, we found the gate completely crumpled in, smashed as if it had no more substance than a wad of tinfoil.
“Oh, no,” Tabby whispered.
“Stay here,” the GBI agent ordered as he appraised the situation. “I can’t have you wandering the property—not when it still may be an active crime scene. Stay put until I tell you it’s okay to move.”
He jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
The black smoke was getting thicker now. From the curb, I couldn’t tell what was burning, or how bad it was.
“Come on,” I urged Tabby. “We have to go help them.”
We slipped out of the car, careful that nobody saw us. The driveway was full of police, fire, and GBI personnel, all trying to sort out who was in charge and from where, exactly, they could pump water to douse the fire. I gestured to Tabby, pointing her toward the tree line that edged the perimeter of our property. Wordlessly, we ran the entire length of the yard to get to the house.
The whole back of the house was in flames.
I dashed across the yard, grabbing a thick fallen branch along the way. The dining room windows, blank and huge, offered the perfect point of entry.
“Give me your jacket,” I ordered Tabby. She peeled it off and handed it to me. I wrapped it around my arm and picked the branch back up.
“Stand back,” I cautioned, before approaching the window. I could feel the blistering heat. Wincing, I swung the branch into the glass. It shattered and gave, big chunks of glass falling into the dining room. With my wrapped arm, I knocked out the remaining pieces and motioned to Tabby.
“We can climb in here. Be careful.”
I helped her climb over the low ledge and into the dining room, and then I pulled myself in after her.
Deeper in the house, I could hear the crackle and rumble of the fire. Though the dining room wasn’t on fire, its walls and ceiling were marred by long scorch marks. Chairs were toppled all over the room, leaving it in disarray.
“What are those?” Tabby asked, pointing at the black trails that arced across the planes of the room.
I thought back thirteen years, to when I’d seen Michael and Lucas warring with each other in full angel regalia in the basement of the abandoned warehouse in Cabbagetown, and I felt the dawning of recognition.
“The angels have flaming swords,” I answered. “There must have been a fight. Maybe that’s how the fire started. We don’t have much time. We need to find everybody.”
“Should we split up?” Tabby asked.
I shook my head. “Too dangerous. Stay together.”
We began cautiously picking our way through the room, stepping over the overturned chairs as we headed toward the front hallway and my mother’s study.
We hadn’t even gotten through the door when Tabby grabbed my arm.
“Do you hear that?” she asked. We paused, and I strained to hear whatever it was that had caught her attention.
“There, there it was again,” she insisted.
I shook my head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“It’s Ollie! Upstairs!”
We dashed out of the room and raced up the staircase, a wave of stifling heat descending upon us.
“I can hear him!” I shouted to Tabby, picking up my pace.
Around the corner we found him. He was hovering over my mother, guarding her and pulling at her clothing as she tried to pull herself across the floor.
“Mom!”
I rushed to her side and helped prop her up. Her face was bloody, although from what injury I couldn’t tell. She looked up at me, and I saw her eyes were having trouble focusing. She was trying to speak. I leaned in closer to hear.
“You have to get out of here, Hope,” she whispered. “It’s not safe.”
“Mom, we’ll get you out of here. But you have to tell me—where are Arthur and Rorie? Concentrate, Mom. I need to get them out, too.”
“Gone,” she answered before a cough wracked her body. “Arthur tried to fight them off, but there were too many.” Her eyes fluttered closed.
My heart sank. I shook her gently until she opened her eyes.
“And Rorie? Mom, what happened to Rorie?”
She shook her head. “They took her. I couldn’t stop them.”
She began to weaken, sagging in my arms. “Not human,” she whispered as her eyes rolled back in her head. “Angels.”
My heart sank. It was happening again. My family was being targeted, picked off one by one, all because of this damn Mark on my neck and everything that had come to pass because of it. I swallowed my tears, unbelieving that after all this time, after everything I’d done and learned, I was still unable to stop it.
Ollie barked, insistently. I looked up. The hallway was beginning to fill with smoke.
“Let’s get her out of here,” I shouted to Tabby.
We draped an arm each over our shoulders and began dragging my mother down the stairs, doing our best t
o cover our noses and mouths. The smoke was getting thick now, and I could hear the roar of the flames, could see them licking through the walls of the front hall. We didn’t have much time.
“Hold on to her,” I told Tabby when we got to the front door. Tabby held my mom like a sack of potatoes, all dead weight, while I got the door open. I turned back, grabbing my mom’s feet, and we hustled her out to the front lawn. We laid her down carefully, trying not to panic about the groans of pain that were the only sign she was still truly alive.
Behind me, I heard the frame of the house shudder and sigh. I turned to watch. Through the open doorway, I saw the staircase explode into flames and the chandelier crash to the ground. The roof was on fire, now, the flames glowing against the black night sky.
Ollie was missing.
“Ollie!” I shrieked, starting toward the door.
Tabby grabbed my hand. “You can’t go back in there!” she yelled. “It’s too late, Hope!”
“I can’t leave him in there to die, Tabby!” I shook free of her restraining hand. “Ollie!” I shouted again, wondering if he could even hear me over the noise of the destruction that was engulfing our home.
The roof shuddered. I could see the waves of heat emanating from the house now, warping and distorting the night sky. My mouth fell open as I watched the roof collapse in on itself.
At the last second, Ollie darted through the door, leaping off the porch to run straight to us on the lawn.
Relief flooded through my system, and I knelt down to welcome him in my arms. “Good boy,” I whispered, my voice catching. “Good boy.” I kept petting him even as I dragged my sleeve across my face, wiping away my tears.
Emergency personnel descended upon the three of us, checking for smoke inhalation and other damage. I was reminded that I had no time to feel sorry for myself. Swatting away the EMT fiddling with an oxygen mask, I grabbed one of the firemen who were working to drag their heavy hoses closer to the house.
“Listen, there were two other people who were supposed to be here tonight. Before she passed out, my mother said they were gone, that they aren’t in the house. Did you check the carriage house—is anyone there?”
He shook his head.
“Make sure your crew keeps an eye out for them, just in case. If you can get someone in now, before the whole thing collapses, then we can be sure they made it out safely.”
He whipped out a walkie-talkie and began to confer with the rest of his department. I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see Tabby. Her face was covered with soot, her eyes sad.
“They’re taking your mom to Piedmont Hospital,” she said. “I’ll take Ollie home with me. You should go with her.”
I nodded. She squeezed my arm.
“We’ll find them, Hope. I just know it. Now, hop in that ambulance before it takes off without you.”
I looked back at the house as it burned. But I was certain my mother was right—they wouldn’t find Arthur or Rorie in the ruins. Arthur was gone, vanquished by the Fallen—and Rorie was somewhere else.
The fluorescent lights of the hospital room seemed harsh and cold. My mother lay in the bed, a jumble of cords and wires surrounding her. She was tiny, her body barely a bump where the thin sheeting draped over her body. She’d been tubed through the nose for oxygen, the doctors having determined from her persistent coughing that she’d suffered from severe smoke inhalation before she managed to crawl away from the fire. Her arm had strayed from under the covers. It had a bluish tint to it that stood out against the starkness of the white sheet.
The whirr and buzz of the machines that monitored her every breath formed a steady hum in the background.
The doctors’ words swarmed in my brain. Edema. Bronchos-copy. Contusions. Concussion. They couldn’t operate on her internal injuries—probably the aftereffects of a severe beating—until her breathing stabilized. So all we could do was wait.
For the first few hours, the interviews with the investigative team kept me occupied. There was the arson squad, trying to determine cause and evidence of arson. I thought about answering, Flaming sword and Fallen Angel doesn’t work for you as a cause? I’d smiled wistfully to myself, and then I’d given a straight answer, explaining very carefully the situation in which my little sister had found herself, handing over last year’s school photo, preserved in my wallet, for the APB.
Then came Agent Hale. He was not there so much to question as to break further bad news.
“Our perp—or perps—unfortunately got to the Jacksons’ home before our dispatcher could get a squad car deployed.”
“The Jacksons?” I asked, confused.
“Macey’s parents,” he explained. “Or, I guess I should say, her foster parents.” He rubbed his face, his eyes weary. “I should have just retired. I didn’t need to see this on my way out, that’s for sure.” He sagged, defeated in the vinyl chair. “They’re dead, Miss Carmichael. They’re dead—one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’ve ever had. And Macey is gone, just like your sister. Searched the whole damn house, and there’s not a sign of her.” He eyed me speculatively. “How one family can go through so much tragedy as yours— especially so entangled with minor sex trafficking—is beyond me.”
I let him wonder. There was nothing I could say that would make this seem any less strange.
All I knew was that Lucas had outsmarted us. We’d fallen victim to a divide and conquer strategy, allowing whatever Fallen Angels he’d amassed to overpower Arthur—who would now be the equivalent of benched until he was strong enough to return to the fight. And it appeared that Lucas was dragging my sister and her friend right back into the center of the filthy human trafficking trade.
And through it all, Michael was nowhere to be found.
I let the surge of anger wash over me. Yes, I was angry. How, exactly, had he failed to come to my side—to Aurora’s side—when she was so obviously in danger?
I could feel my self-doubt and self-pity bubbling and swirling inside me, threatening to pull me down into a paralyzing spiral. But I squared my shoulders and pushed it away. I didn’t have time for that. Not now.
Hale and I sat together and stared straight ahead at the cinderblock wall. The only noise was the loud ticking of a wall-mounted clock and the occasional ping of elevators as the devastated relatives of the intensive care unit patients came and went, their voices quiet murmurs.
“Arson told me they already took your statement. I’ll just draft off of that, spare you the trouble,” Hale said, breaking the quiet.
“Are you going to see it through?” I asked abruptly, focusing on one of the spots of faded cement between the cinderblocks.
“What?” he asked.
I turned in my chair to look at him. “If my mom were able, she’d be the one asking you. But she can’t, so I will. Are you going to see my sister’s case through, or are you going to hand it off to some rookie so you can skip out of here to the greener pastures of retirement?”
“Miss Carmichael,” he began, but I cut him off.
“After all this time, the least you can do is call me Hope. Are you giving up on us now, Agent Hale? Are you leaving my sister in the hands of some stranger?”
“I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled.
“Say you’ll help us with the case. If it’s trafficking again, help us track these people down. Help me find her. Please, you’ve got to help me find her.”
He gripped the arms of his chair and tilted his head back against the wall.
“You really know how to put the screws to a guy,” he muttered. “You’re making me feel really guilty.”
“That’s what you get with the best legal training money can buy,” I quipped. “Hale, you can’t hand this off. I know you’re the best guy in the GBI on trafficking. You probably already have three suspects in your head. Nobody else can do what you do. Nobody has the experience.”
Hale ignored my flattery. He simply laughed, a cynical, hollow sound. “I could give you a list as long as my arm. Bu
t when it comes to Atlanta, the same names always rise to the top. You’ll have the Mexicans, who still operate here, of course. Given that this Luke character had Macey in the Bluff, you can’t rule out one of the gangs. And then there’s your old friends at Triad.”
I sat up in my seat. “Triad is still in operation?” I hadn’t thought about the Chinese crime syndicate that was presumably responsible for my father’s death—nor Chen, the man at its head, with whom Michael and I had directly tangled—for a long time. Not since Chen had been thrown into prison over ten years ago.
He snorted. “You think a big drug, arms, and human smuggling operation like that goes down just because you locked up one of their majors? Nah. They just shoved another guy in place to keep things going while our old friend Chen rots in his cell. He probably still calls the shots from prison, though, filtering orders through his lawyer.” He looked at me, visibly excited. “If your family is being targeted, which it looks like it is, it would make sense for it to be Chen and Triad.”
“See?” I urged him. “You’ve got to keep on it, Hale. It would have taken a new guy days, or even weeks, to figure that out. Where is Chen? Maybe we should go see him.”
He shook his head. “You’ll never be able to get to him. He’s in Florence ADX now.”
“ADX?”
“Administrative Maximum Facility. The toughest super-max prison in the US. The most violent criminals—the ones the authorities think are still controlling their organizations from the inside, or the ones most likely to be broken out of prison by their cronies—are all sent there to serve out their sentences. It’s full of baddies: foreign and domestic terrorists, drug cartel leaders, gang leaders. Real psychos. No visitors; not ever. The only way he’ll get out of Colorado is in a pine box. And that’s the only way you’ll get to see him, too: when he’s dead.”
Another spasm of frustration gripped me. “Then how are we ever supposed to find Rorie and Macey? You know what they’re up against, Hale. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Dark Before Dawn Page 13