* * * *
It hadn’t taken Aliah more than a couple of days after her return to Earth to fall into some semblance of Carl’s routine. Not knowing who she could trust, or who knew Carl was a cockatrice, meant being careful, claiming she thought she was coming down with the flu, anything to explain why she—Carl, rather—might be seen as acting…off.
Now, she knew she was confidently walking through her day acting as Carl, everyone having bought the bit, as they said. Although she’d avoided contact with Carl’s home nest and family in Missouri for now.
No reason to push too hard, too quickly.
His mother was alive, even though he wasn’t super close to her. No shocker there. He seemed to have a grudging sort of relationship with her. And with his cousins, Leon and Shorty, who supervised things on that end for him so he didn’t get his fingers dirty.
Aliah had put her weeks spent in Carl’s meat suit to good use. She’d figured out exactly what he’d discovered about her and her activities.
One of the things she had wanted to do, since she now had the means and the opportunity, was to extract some long-overdue revenge of her own.
Taking out her own parents.
She’d had no contact with them in the decades since mating and marrying Cameron. They’d disowned her since Cameron was from another nest and she hadn’t gotten their permission first. They’d been in negotiations for her to marry some stupid cousin of hers, whom she’d never met, when she’d met Cameron and blasted their plans into oblivion.
The night she left her parents’ house, they’d told her they’d kill her if she ever returned.
Maybe they have that fucking backward.
Especially since now she’d discovered that Carl had indirectly been helping them with the negotiations to marry her off.
They lived in Vermont. Two weeks after her return, she left Carl’s phone at his house with it live-streaming a gay porn cam channel while she drove back roads and avoided tolls and parked a quarter mile away from their house, which lay in the middle of a thick stand of woods on a fifty-acre property that had been in their nest for several generations.
When she knocked on their front door late that night, her father opened the door and smiled when he saw Carl standing there.
The smile disappeared when she raised the gun and fired, the nine millimeter slug taking out the back of his skull and a goodly chunk of his brains. Her mom ran into the living room to see what was going on, and Aliah dropped her, too.
No one else was in the house.
After raiding their usual hiding places for cash and jewelry and a few other keepsakes she’d wanted, she went out to the shed, grabbed the five-gallon can of gas her father had still kept out there for the mower, and emptied it all through the house.
Standing in the front door, she realized she felt zero remorse.
Had “Aliah” appeared in their doorway, her father would have killed her on sight.
His own father—her grandfather—had killed her father’s sister for doing the same thing. Aliah had grown up hearing that story as a warning as to what he’d do, too.
Fuck that shit.
She pulled out a lighter that she’d brought with her from Carl’s, a fancy one he’d taken off a guy from a nest in Indiana.
Inscribed with the guy’s name.
Opening the cover, she flicked it, lit a piece of cardboard she’d ripped off a box in the shed, and tossed it into the middle of the living room where it set the gasoline alight with a soft whomp.
Closing the lighter, she rubbed it with the hem of her shirt to remove all prints, then dropped it next to her father’s body.
If anything was traced, it’d be traced back to one Benjamin Tahlose of Indianapolis.
She left the door standing open and used the growing flickering firelight to guide her back through the trees to where she’d left the car parked.
Inside her skull, Carl silently sulked.
* * * *
No one, human or cockatrice, apparently suspected “Carl’s” involvement with the murder and arson. It had made local news, but that was the last of it. Carl received a flood of reports from his network of informants about it over the next few days, but that had been the extent of it.
She had dutifully replied however he usually would in a case like that, so as not to raise any suspicions. She’d also put out word that anyone who delivered more info about the perpetrators would get a payday of ten grand.
Since then, crickets.
But it had been invaluable in showing Aliah who he had positioned and where, and how to contact them.
Carl had been holding out, rebelling where he could, trying to block her from tiptoeing through his thoughts and seeing what he knew.
That part she still had a little trouble with, even though it was getting easier for her every day. It was like wearing one of those huge inflatable T-Rex costumes and trying to make everything work right. Sometimes she moved or spoke a little awkwardly, always able to cover for it somehow.
A treasure trove of info lay inside Carl’s weasel-like brain.
The key to her successful revenge and getting her son back safely would lie inside that same brain.
That’s why, every night, she lay there in Carl’s bed and slowly started working her way through it. No telling what she might find. She’d made some anonymous contacts and was in negotiations with them to move into the Florida property now.
There were, however, plenty of reasons for her to be extremely cautious. She’d seen first-hand what those three bitches could do. Getting her son back from them—if they hadn’t killed him—meant being sneaky. Going in with guns blazing would only get her operatives killed and put the wolves on high alert.
She’d need them to be stealthy. Preferably kidnap the baby back from them without a confrontation needed, without directly facing them, even though Aliah wanted blood. Getting her son back was the priority.
Revenge would have to wait.
This time.
Patience. That’s what she’d need.
While she was patiently waiting for her plans to come together, she would explore Carl’s brain and learn everything she could about him.
* * * *
At the start of Aliah’s fifth week back, Carl’s phone beeped with an alert, signifying an e-mail dropping into an account she hadn’t even realized was on that phone.
The terse message ruffled Aliah’s feathers…until she started to plumb the depths of Carl’s mind.
Damn fracking quake. Irrigation well fucked. $10k to second account asap. - M.
The only person with that e-mail address, she realized, was Carl’s mother.
She logged into his personal laptop and searched his brain for information on what to do. Sure enough, she located a secure website login page for an off-shore bank account. It contained a lot of money, way more than what would be needed for this transaction.
Perusing the account’s history, she saw where Carl had made transactions in the past to only one account.
Apparently one controlled by his mother.
Without replying to the e-mail, she went ahead and transferred the requested money despite Carl grumbling in her skull.
“Keep it up, buddy,” she mumbled. “Just keep it up, and we’ll hit the bar again tonight and you’ll get to experience the joys of anal DP.”
He shut up.
“Atta boy,” she said.
* * * *
Aliah had also given thanks to the Dark Ones that part of one of the scans she’d sent to Carl contained the bulk of the protection spell she’d used directly from the book.
She had been careful not to give him any pages that contained a complete spell, but she’d been through the book enough times, and had prepared this particular spell so carefully, that she could replicate it even without the missing portion.
So one of the things she did was cast a protective circle around Carl’s house and his main office.
It might not stop those damned bitch
es in Florida, but it would hopefully slow them down, or at least keep Kitty Blackestone or any of the other cockatrice hunters from sniffing Carl out.
She’d hired the guys for the Florida job, using anonymous servers for it so it couldn’t be traced back to Carl. They would report their findings back to her before she okayed the final part of their assignment—to get the baby.
Hopefully the assholes were smarter than the ones she’d hired to help her kidnap Lacey. It pissed her off that she hadn’t anticipated Carl having pre-bribed guys.
Before now, she’d considered herself and especially Cameron pretty damned smart.
According to Carl, the two of them had been something of a joke, only tolerated because of Cameron’s Heisenberg skills at cooking meth and setting up lab operations.
Who’s the motherfucking joke now, Carl?
Wasn’t even a metaphorical question. He was listening to her thoughts but increasingly unable to resist her control over his body.
All those years together, when all she and Cameron wanted was to make a life for themselves, to have a family.
To not get tied up in nest politics.
To be left alone.
Her mate—dead.
Her son—missing.
She didn’t even have a picture of her baby, or of her mate, to look at.
All she had was her vengeance, and she’d enjoy every second of it.
Chapter Eight
Three nights after Elain’s meeting with Ryan and his guys, Elain, Lina, and Mai sat around Mai’s dining room table, with Zack and Kael filming them.
It was late on a full-moon night, the yard outside illuminated nearly as brightly as noon to Elain, Mai, and Kael’s shifter sight.
Lina and Zack just thought it was bright.
The children were all asleep, with Elain’s men taking care of Connor and Ellie, and Rick and Jan hopefully holding their own against their twin dragon sons.
Jim and Micah were upstairs, presumably watching TV in bed and trying to ignore what was going on downstairs, but less likely to burst in and interrupt them regardless of what they might hear than Elain’s guys. BettLynn was sound asleep in her bedroom.
Mai was four months pregnant now, with a healthy baby girl.
Of their immediate family, only Elain knew that Mai’s baby was the reincarnated soul of Rodolfo Abernathy.
Mainly because she was the one who’d put his soul there in the first place.
Elain had revealed it to Lacey, who’d pleasantly surprised her by saying that she liked the irony of Rodolfo being born into a woman’s body this time around, with her mother a coyote shifter that Rodolfo had tried to have killed.
Mai’s baby bump was moving from molehill to mountain status by the week at this point.
Elain wondered how big she herself would end up since she was pregnant with twins this go-round.
“I’m feeling a little left out,” Lina softly muttered as they sat there holding hands around the table. “Not that that’s a bad thing. But you two are like holding hands with hormone soup.”
“Then get yourself knocked up, goddess girl,” Elain shot back.
“No, thank you. Not yet, anyway. My nipples still cringe at the thought of trying to nurse another dragon baby.”
Zack snorted, but otherwise remained silent.
Mai finally let out an aggravated sigh. “I’m not getting anything. Even when I try to drop myself into the damn vision, I can’t.”
“Me, either,” Elain said. “What the hell is going on? Usually we can at least drop into and out of the vision at will.”
Over the past three days, their efforts to make progress with unraveling the secrets of the nuclear bomb vision had come to a grinding halt. Even with all three women getting DP’d by their respective guys, something usually guaranteed to give them a vision of some sort, they’d had zip.
Other than good orgasms.
Those explosions weren’t the kind they were looking for more information on.
“I’m spitballing here,” Zack said, “but could this possibly mean something changed and it won’t happen now?”
Elain shook her head. “No, I don’t think we’re that lucky. Something might be in flux, but I don’t think we’re in the clear.”
Lina let go of Elain and Mai’s hands and folded them in front of her on the table, dropping her head onto them. “Me, either. It feels like it’s still there, waiting.”
“Ditto,” Mai said, propping her chin in her hand.
“Have you tried talking to Baba Yaga?” Zack asked.
“Good luck with that,” Lina muttered. “I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”
Mai and Lina looked at Elain.
“I haven’t tried to reach her lately.”
“Maybe try that,” Lina said, sitting back in her chair. “Maybe she’ll say, ‘Whoops, forgot to tell you events have shifted.’”
“We aren’t that lucky,” Mai said. “But it couldn’t hurt.”
Everyone stared at Elain.
“Okay, fine.” Elain closed her eyes, expecting to open them in Baba Yaga’s house. When she looked around, she found herself on Lacey’s thinking rock.
In Maine.
A sweet, cool sea breeze blew in off the water, bringing to Elain’s sensitive shifter nostrils the smell of the ocean, of fish, of seaweed washed up along the shore, and damp beach earth.
“Yes?”
Elain startled and turned to see Baba Yaga sitting there next to her on the rock, staring out at the brightly moonlit water.
“I…” Elain swallowed. “I wasn’t expecting to come here.”
“I know, child. You were looking for me?”
“Did I summon you like when I call for Ryan?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Is that what you needed to ask?”
“Snark doesn’t become you.”
“I’ve earned the right to be as snarky as I choose, considering how old I am. What did you want?”
“We’re stuck.”
“Stuck how?”
“On the vision. We’ve tried everything and we can’t make any progress with it. We can’t even drop into it like we could before. Is it because Mai and I are pregnant?”
“No. If anything, you should be more powerful because of that.”
“Then what the hell?”
Baba Yaga closed her eyes for a moment and Elain resisted the urge to bombard her with questions.
When the woman opened her eyes and looked at Elain, she seemed to peer through Elain’s soul. “Something’s shifted.”
“Please tell me that the bomb’s not going to happen.”
“No, it still is. But something’s…shifted.” Baba Yaga got to her feet and climbed down off the rock, Elain following her.
Baba Yaga walked down to the edge of the water and washed her hands in it before holding them up to the sky, spread wide, and softly chanting too low for Elain to make out what she was saying.
After several minutes, Baba Yaga turned to her. “I don’t understand it, but there’s a new blank spot in my vision.”
“Terrific. Any idea why?”
She frowned. “No. The three grimoires. Who has them?”
“They’re locked in a safety deposit box in a bank in Arcadia. Why?”
“Are you sure?”
“What do you mean am I sure? Of course I’m sure. We put them there ourselves. Me and Lina and Mai.”
“Who else has copies of them?”
“Just us. The guys—”
“Guys?”
“Kael and Zack. They have it rigged so no one can get the copies off our tablets. The tablets are locked with a code. Why?”
“Because I’m sensing a darkness clouding the vision, one which wasn’t there before. I know it’s not something Ryan will be able to sense. He certainly couldn’t be causing it.”
“Try him.”
“It’s occluded. It’s specifically blocking me…and the three of you as well.”
“Can we try hi
m?”
Baba Yaga held out her hand, indicating for Elain to summon him.
“Ryan, appareo.”
He appeared next to them a moment later. At least he didn’t look like she’d awakened him out of a dead sleep this time. He was dressed in slacks and a button-up Oxford shirt, light blue, the sleeves rolled up below his elbows.
“You rang?”
“We’ve got a problem,” Elain said without preamble.
“We always have a problem, love. That’s the nature of what it is that we do.”
“No, I mean a different problem.”
He looked from her to Baba Yaga and back again and tucked his hands into his pockets. “What’s going on?”
“The Triad can’t see shit about the bomb vision now,” Elain said. “We can’t even drop ourselves into it like we could before. Not for the past couple of days.” She pointed to Baba Yaga. “She says she can sense a new darkness occluding her vision. I don’t even know what the fuck I’m looking for. Help?”
He frowned and focused on Baba Yaga. “Darkness?”
“What Elain doesn’t understand, Amiago, is that unlike the Seers, you don’t have the same prescient abilities that I and my sisters—and the new Triad—all possess.”
“That is true.”
“Can ya at least give him a chance to look into it before you shoot him down, huh?” Elain asked, desperately trying to rein in her snark.
He held his hand out to Baba Yaga, who finally took it. Elain found herself studying the two of them, trying to see a familial resemblance now that she knew they were half siblings, but she couldn’t.
After a couple of minutes, he released her hand, a deeper frown creasing his brow. “She’s correct, I’m afraid,” he said. “I can see the blank spot through her, but I’m unable to trace its source or cause.”
“You said you could see energy signatures, like that amulet. Can you go look?”
“Oh, absolutely I shall go look, but I suspect if I do have any success it will not be the answer you seek. I will notify you immediately if I find anything out.”
“Thanks.”
The Fire Road Page 6