In Jada’s fate, I saw nothing but shades of muted gray and dull colors, the area dedicated to romance a bland and colorless tangle of knots. Where they had once been tied to Gabriel, multiple connections had ripped, leaving only one fragile, delicate thread of renewed trust.
* * *
Jada and Gabriel destroyed dinner in record time, leaving no hope of leftovers. Ama dined with us at the table, sitting between them. And it was so adorable I stole a photo for my Instagram.
We drank until we were sloppy drunk. I didn’t think shifters could imbibe that much, but Jada and Gabriel must have had something to prove. Long after Ama went to bed, the three of us sat on the sofa with leftover tiramisu and apple pie moonshine Jada begged off our dryad neighbors when the gin she’d brought wasn’t enough.
Hell if I knew whose idea it had been, but we started a game of Diablo 3 on my PlayStation 4 and for some reason chose expert mode. Then for the next five hours, as the night melted away, the ravens frantically rushed across each level trying to out-loot each other. I was lucky to pick up the occasional piece of junk for my character.
“Guys! Leave some loot for me. Oh my God, Gabe, I swear I’m going to turn you into a fucking frog.”
He giggled like a child. Cackled worse than one of the game’s Treasure Goblins.
Nearing three in the morning, we finished the second act. I yawned and leaned my head against Gabriel’s chest, lulled closer to sleep by the steady, powerful thump of his heart beneath my ear.
“I should probably get going.”
“No, no,” I tried protesting. “I’m good.”
“You’re totally a fae lightweight.” Jada chuckled, putting on her shoes. “It’s late anyway.
Somehow, I made it from the couch to the door to see her off, but the world kept being an asshole and spinning around me and turning this way and—
I refused to puke.
“Thanks for coming. I really hope we can do this again soon.”
Jada squeezed me tight. We swayed together for a moment, at least, I thought we were both swaying. Maybe she was holding me upright. “Thank you.”
“Are you gonna be okay getting home?”
“Yeah. I have a ride. Even licensed sentinels have to travel in groups now, remember? Got some colleagues coming to pick me up at the gate.”
“That’s good, that’s good. Next time your necromonger—er, necromancer won’t get all the good armor. Gonna totally beat you two to it.”
She gave me another squeeze. “Your barbarian can’t wear it anyway.”
“Pffft.”
Once we parted, Gabe saw her down to the front door. When he came back up, I’d already crawled into bed.
“Gonna sleep across the whole thing, baby?”
I cracked open one eye. “Huh?”
Gabe chuckled and dragged me around by my feet until my head ended up on the pillow rather than the foot of the bed. Then he helped get my jeans off.
“You are, beyond a doubt, a horrible drunk,” he teased.
“But I haven’t puked.”
“Not yet.”
He danced beyond the reach of my foot, laughing at my pathetic attempt to kick him. The attempt made the room spin around, so I gave it up and rolled onto my side.
“Ugh, I’m gonna be so hungover for class tomorrow,” I whined.
“Skip out.”
“We have a quiz.”
Gabe chuckled and tucked the sheets around my shoulders. “I’ll make you a surefire remedy in the morning for breakfast.”
“Bacon?”
“Lots of bacon, tea, and chocolate chip pancakes.”
“Mmm. Best mate ever,” I mumbled into the pillow, surrendering to the haze of moonshine and oblivion.
25
A New Development
Detailed maps of the greater Chicago area covered the walls of our surveillance classroom. As I made my way to my seat, my gaze darted to the various multi-colored pins stuck in different points. Green pins marked zombie attack sites, red indicated a corpse drained of blood, and yellow meant a darkling sighting. Because Tricia wasn’t yet a nosferatu, according to the surveillance footage we’d gained of her, we didn’t suspect her of being responsible for those murders.
Still, there were way too many pins. Looking at them made me frown, filling me with both sadness and anger.
My phone vibrated with an incoming text from Gabriel. Both he and Stark had been assigned to accompany Lia and Pilar to the hospital with their usual sentinels. Sometimes visits with our charges couldn’t be scheduled on a Friday, because life didn’t wait around for our convenience. Pilar’s doctor had a huge surgery at the hospital tonight and, according to the Destiny Lines, it was a perfect time for her and Lia to bring their charges together.
I see why you wander aimlessly around the hospital now. I have never been so bored in my life.
Gabe followed the message with a bored face emoji. I grinned, but I couldn’t blame him. There wasn’t much for a shifter to do in a hospital. At least I’d been able to phase through walls and get into mischief since I didn’t have an actual ward to protect.
Play illusion games with kids if you see any, I suggested. They’re always fun. And maybe if you get a chance, prank that one doctor who works in the ER. He’s cheating on his wife.
“All right, everyone, let’s settle down and get started,” Sebastian called out from the front of the room. I fumbled my phone and quickly tucked it away in my bag. “As usual, I’m opening the floor to all of you. What theories, leads, and ideas have you all come up with over the weekend?”
Cole was the first on his feet, which surprised me since he tended to be a quiet sort. Maybe Anji was rubbing off on him.
“Thanks to Skylar’s recent bust—congratulations by the way, dude,” Cole called over to me, “I got curious enough to start looking for other patterns around Chicago. I put my attention on the news headlines, but I cross-referenced those against smaller cases and unsolved mysteries. A friend of mine reports for a small conspiracy theorist website—”
“Those quacks are a pain in the ass,” someone grumbled from the back row.
Cole carried on, nonplussed by the interruption. “More than just old people have been disappearing. Healthy, able-bodied shifters are vanishing.”
“Right. We knew that,” Sebastian said. “Marie Kandinsky is among the missing, as are about a dozen others from here to Detroit.”
“And vampires,” he carried on despite the interruption. “Which we all know. What we didn’t notice yet are the number of fae disappearing. Their lead story was that the fae were behind these abductions and disappearing into Tir na Nog with them. The official SBA theory is that the Hidden Court may have turned them as they did with Jiro Yamazaki and Monica Cunningham. I think our doctor is trying to work his magic on them, and the missing half-fae are his test subjects for a new viral strain. They’re not evil. They’re captives.”
Silence filled the classroom.
“Shit,” Sebastian said. “We didn’t see that.”
“We should have,” Simon said, stepping way and raising a cell phone to his ear. He stepped out into an adjacent office.
“This will be even more dangerous than shapeshifters,” Cole continued. “Fae, unlike mages, use magic instinctively. It’s part of their nature from as early as puberty and comes with a thought. They don’t need focus items, wands, or staves. Those things just help them along, like training wheels. Mages use magic. Fae are magic.”
Someone swore. A low murmur traveled over the group, everyone whispering.
“And since the zombie virus reduces once-living creatures to their most basic instincts, that makes the fae the most dangerous carriers of all if he succeeds,” my friend concluded. “Imagine zombies that can warp through the Twilight past barricades, merge through walls, and teleport into vehicles because their magic instinct drives them to seek food.”
Now students had their cell phones out.
“Wait, hold on a second,”
Sebastian cautioned them. “We don’t want this traveling around the school and city yet. Hold your horses, guys.”
Students quieted. There was wisdom to Sebastian’s words.
“As much as we’d like the public to be alerted to his activities, we also don’t want the good doctor to know we’re on to him. Sentinels work best when our moves are unanticipated by the enemy. Remember that. Who all have you told this to, Cole?”
“No one else. I didn’t share my ideas with my friends. The only people who know are right here—er, well, I told my girlfriend…”
“Anji Crowder?”
Cole nodded, swallowing. “That’s okay, right?”
Sebastian brought up his phone and did some quick tapping. “I’ve let her know to keep it to herself.”
Cole’s shoulders relaxed.
“Good eye, kid. Really good eye,” Sebastian went on to say. “That is a fine example of how breaks occur in large cases. Sometimes even the professionals overlook the smallest things. But small things can snowball into facts that break open a difficult case. Do you have anything else for us, Cole?”
“Only that.”
“Anyone else?”
One by one, a few other members of the class threw out their ideas. From there we went into our lesson about how to track leads when a case appeared to go cold. A lot of it was reviewing case files and retracing steps, things I’d done in Louisiana.
“We never let a case go,” Sebastian said. “There are no such things as cold cases in the SBA. Why? Because we cannot afford to have darklings running amuck. What we can do is take a break from one and return to it with fresh eyes at a later date.”
A shifter in the front row raised her hand. “What’s the longest you’ve worked on the same case without a break?”
“Almost a year,” Sebastian replied. “It took Simon and me a while to track down a nosferatu nest in New York City. They kept moving, always one step ahead of us. We were going to suspend the investigation for a month when we got our big break.”
“I read about that. You two—”
The side door banged open and Simon quickly strode through. The grim expression on his face didn’t bode well. He leaned in and spoke quietly with Sebastian, and when the big werewolf’s face blanched, my stomach lurched. A look like that meant nothing good.
“Listen up,” Sebastian said once he’d collected himself. “We’ve got attacks in the city. All hands on deck.”
He rattled off a list of names, including Rachel. “I need you to help campus security ensure every student is brought to the ballroom. You will assist with school protection. Report to Sentinel Andrews outside.”
No one spoke as they headed out of the room. Once the doors shut behind them, Sebastian looked over the rest of us. Less than twenty of us remained in our seats.
“What’s going on?” Cole asked. “Is it the Plague Doctor again?”
“Alerts have come in simultaneously from three different intercity hospitals and two more in the ’burbs. Looks like the good doctor wanted to keep us busy. There aren’t enough hands for this.”
Five hospitals. The mere thought of the carnage a bunch of zombies could do in such a place made me sick to my stomach. Then it made me angry.
As we geared up, Simon assigned us to teams. The biggest surprise came when we were informed that the Great Fenrir himself would be leading one of the groups. Once that bit of news got out, everyone clamored to be assigned to him, and a snooty battlemage chick actually had a meltdown, like there weren’t lives at stake.
People were dying at this very moment, forever sundered from their loved ones, and she was bitching about whose group she participated in?
“Enough!” Sebastian roared. “You’ll go where assigned.”
As cool as it would have been to work with the Great Fenrir and Rodrigo—Anji and a mage named Finn were the lucky winners—I was thrilled to find myself in the group with Sebastian and Simon. They were going to Sycamore Hills, and there was no way in hell I wanted to be assigned anywhere else, not when my friends and my mate were in trouble. Cole was the only other student in my group.
“Thank you,” I whispered, wondering if I had been included by chance or design.
Sebastian glanced at me. “Welcome. You should be more familiar with the layout than anyone else on the team.”
“I’ve been all over that place.”
“Good. Any word from Gabriel or your friends?”
“No, not since class started.”
He pushed a shotgun into my hands. “Stay strong, Sky. Trust in your mate.”
“I do. I’m sure he’s got everyone secured as best he can.”
26
Evil Brilliance
Other professors charged with teaching our Subterfuge and Surveillance courses accompanied the other four groups to their assignment locations. Simon’s portal brought us to the hospital driveway, where sentinels from the local field office met us. Several mages, some I recognized as school professors, maintained a magical barrier around the building. As I watched, three nurses and a handful of patients exited the front door, accompanied by a sentinel, and were immediately ushered to a nearby quarantine tent. Magic sealed the doors behind them.
Farther back on the road, a police barrier kept traffic out. Six news vans and twice as many reporters cluttered the area, present to capture every new development.
“What’s the situation inside?” Simon asked a tall black man with a shaved head. The name tape on his tactical vest read “Jones”, and he could have been Simon’s brother.
“We don’t know the source of the outbreak, but it’s widespread. We got zombies on all levels of the hospital according to surveillance footage and our sentinels inside.”
Sebastian’s hard gaze remained focused on the hospital. “We have two campus sentinels inside, and four students. What’s their current status?”
On one hand, I wanted urgently to text Gabe; on the other, I feared the message alert would tip off zombies to their location if they were in hiding.
He’s okay, I told myself. He’d responded to me literally minutes before the attack went down. On top of that, he was with Pilar, who traveled the Twilight as easily as she walked this plane. She was a natural there.
Maybe under these difficult, strenuous circumstances, she’d even Ascend, and then Gabe would be twice as secure. Pilar’s Faerie Fire burned hotter than mine, way hotter, and could probably reduce a zombie to ash in seconds. Her Ascension would guarantee their safety, wouldn’t it?
He’s safe, I thought, refusing to believe anything else.
“Sentinel Fujimoto is the one who got the call out,” Sentinel Jones informed us. I nearly sagged in relief. “We lost contact after that, when the hospital power was cut. They’re running on generators and cell reception is spotty in some areas depending on the service. A couple patients have managed to contact their relatives and friends. Someone is live-tweeting from OB. Looks like that’s where Fujimoto and…his ward have holed up.”
“Dammit. We need to shut that down before panic spreads,” Sebastian growled.
“We tried. Twitter mods don’t care about our protocols or need for discretion.”
“And if we dampen the signal with magic, we lose touch with our teams,” Simon interjected.
Jones nodded. “Exactly. We don’t have a choice but to let it go on. As long as she isn’t forewarning the fucking Plague Doctor of our movements, it’s all right with me. No doubt he already knows Fujimoto and your students are there.” The man whipped out his phone and revealed a photograph of the nurse’s station beside the secured entrance to the OB ward. “Anyway, it looks like they’re sitting safe behind steel doors.”
I pulled up the same Twitter feed and caught a photo of Gabriel standing guard with his katana, side by side with a shotgun-bearing Holden. The photograph had caught the magic runes on Shōki. When the auto-adjustment changed the brightness on my phone, I saw the vague outline of a slender but masculine black silhouette behind
Gabriel.
Could it be the spirit of the sword? Or was it some other ominous apparition?
“I don’t see any mention of Lia here. Holly and Stark should be with her.”
“They’ll have gotten her somewhere secure,” Sebastian assured me.
As reassuring as it was to know my mate was relatively safe, I couldn’t relax. Not when three of my friends were unaccounted for.
“Edgar Ramirez and Rosa Alvarado are both on shift tonight,” Jones continued. The names struck me as familiar.
“That first guy is the Chief of Staff, right?” I asked.
“Good memory,” Simon said. “I know Edgar. He’ll do his best to get people to a protected position. Rosa, I’m not familiar with.”
“She would have been down in the ER,” Jones said. “The only other mages on staff are Marc Hoffman, who isn’t on duty tonight, and Alan Gregori, who you put in prison.”
“Right then, so minimal assistance inside. Good to know. Do you happen to have a patient count?”
As Jones read the numbers from his phone, Sebastian’s frown deepened, matching his partner’s expression. Between staff, patients, and visitors, we were looking at hundreds of unaccounted-for people, most of whom could already be zombies by now, or at the very least, zombie chow.
“All right, listen up,” Sebastian called Cole and me to attention. “This is going to be messy, worse than Millennium Park. Stay with Simon and me.”
“What do we do when we’re inside?” Cole asked, voice trembling. “I mean, what are our orders?” I looked at his aura, all pumped and full of excitement, and envied him because all I felt was nausea.
“Secure any survivors. Get them out if you can do so safely without overwhelming the guards at the doors.”
The Plague Doctor: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 3 Page 22