Night's Black Agents (Paxton Locke Book 2)

by Daniel Humphreys

  “Nothing,” Val declared. “We wait for our witches to show up. We observe, no more, no less.”

  “We should be doing something,” George muttered. “They don’t seem to be up to much across the way.”

  Paxton

  Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday afternoon

  Backup arrived right after noon.

  Carlos and the rest piled into the Sikoras’ living room, and all at once, the house overflowed. I hadn’t known who to expect when my friend had promised help, but I was not disappointed. Carlos, Javier, and Scope were there, along with someone unexpected but welcome, nonetheless.

  “This is Father Rosado,” I said to Cassie by way of introduction. “He tries to keep me from guilt-tripping myself into depression.”

  He was a good six inches shorter than she was, but he pulled himself up to his full height and vigorously shook her hand. “Call me Joe. I’m glad to see someone has finally made an honest man of young Paxton.” He winked at me. “He’s much too hard on himself.”

  The arrival of my friends was a much-needed morale boost; the entire atmosphere in the house changed. I filled them in as fast as I could. Carlos and Javier left, in search of information and supplies they hadn’t brought along—though the back of the De La Rosa brothers’ van was heavily-laden with duffel bags and exotic equipment.

  I hadn’t said the words, but Carlos had taken the subtext in my plea for help to its logical conclusion. The De La Rosas had geared up and were ready to go to war.

  After what we’d been through the last few days, I was all for it.

  While they were gone, I made my own searches, and by the time we reconvened, we had what I hoped was everything we needed. One of the first lessons I learned hanging around Esteban and the rest of his family was that the Internet is a private investigator’s best friend. Social media, web forums, image sharing sites—they all add up to a voluntary disclosure of formerly private moments. Creeping around with a camera was still done, but it was old school. For all his bluster and self-importance, it was a simple matter of persistent digging to determine that Donald Thibodeau had been a founding member of Upward Path’s board of directors before joining the mayor’s office. The public relations photos of Donnie standing there with a shovel on the day the project broke ground were quite good—and displayed for all to see on his social media accounts.

  High-quality satellite maps were another boon. Given the relative isolation of the campus, any sort of recon on the ground was tricky. Courtesy of a local office supply store, we printed out a large-format color printout of the campus and immediate surrounding area. With the corners held down with cans of soda and bottles of beer, we stood around the Sikoras’ dining room table and sketched out our plan of attack. Smaller prints of pictures Carlos and Javier had taken on a quick drive past the building littered the edges of the map.

  The facility was huge, but most of it was open space. A nine-hole golf course occupied the back half of the acreage. The brilliant green of the grass stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding desert. At the front, basketball and tennis courts commingled between dormitories, office buildings, and a massive, Olympic-sized swimming pool.

  There weren’t any labels on the satellite map, of course. The marketing materials and PDF brochure on the website had filled in most of the blanks for us, and we’d labeled each building with a Sharpie.

  Scope fingered the map. “Standard infiltration is going to be tricky.”

  I followed his fingers with my eyes along the main road to the guard shack at the public highway that ran along the front of the property. “Why’s that?”

  “Fences all around, even on the golf course perimeter. The only way in or out is the guard shack.” He tapped one of the smaller pictures. “Ten-foot military link, razor wire on top. Even if you were able to climb it and avoid getting cut to hell, I’d bet these boxes every so often are some sort of motion detector.” He shook his head. “If they spent that much money on passive security, who knows what sort of reaction force they have. That’s not the sort of thing you advertise.”

  “The bigger question,” Carlos said, “is where would they hide a couple of kids? They’d have to keep them away from the dorms, right? There have to be some normies in the facility. They couldn’t have turned them all, could they?”

  I thought about the crowd that had nearly taken me and Cassie and tried not to shudder. “Maybe, maybe not. But I tend to think you’re right. Any sort of ritual, they’re going to want to keep it away from prying eyes, as well as somewhere quiet.” I scanned the map. The gymnasium was the one building situated away from all the rest. The shape seemed a bit off to me for some reason—it was a giant square rather than the rectangle I associated with ‘gym.’ I flipped through the drive-by pictures until I found one that caught a chunk of it. The building was a three-story affair, with each upper story a little smaller than the one below. The effect, I realized, was a rough pyramid shape, and I thought back to the vision I’d had at the crime scene. Could the design be a coincidence? My gut told me no. All at once, I felt a little better about the investigative path we’d taken. If I’d made the most recent crime scene my first priority, we might not have encountered Angie, and this truncated pyramid wouldn’t speak to me as it did now. I thought back to what the vision of my dad had told me when I’d been fighting the Edimmu inside my own head.

  All things have a purpose. All things serve, in the end.

  I tapped the map. “Here. It’s got to be here.”

  “That’s pretty definite, bro,” Carlos said with a grin.

  “We need an up-close look,” I admitted. “But something tells me it’s the place.”

  “So how do we get in? Visit, pretend we’re a potential patient, and try to look around without attracting attention?” Javier shook his head. “If these nuts are brazen enough to attack you in broad daylight on a city street, what will they do in their own place?”

  “Carlos is a gambling addict,” Scope said with a shrug. “Let’s check him in.”

  “Wanna bet?” Carlos snapped back. “Oh, wait.”

  “I’ll go,” Cassie volunteered.

  “Absolutely not.” I regretted the phrasing as soon as it left my mouth, but it didn’t change the sentiment. Her eyes shot daggers at me.

  “Why? Cause I’m a girrrrl? Cut the shit.”

  “No. Because if more than a few of them know what we look like, they may all know what we look like. And if they try to take you, you can’t cut your way out like I can.” I shrugged. “It’s a no-brainer, honestly. It’s got to be me.”

  Cassie opened her mouth, but Father Rosado put a hand on her arm. “Let him finish before you tear his head off.” She flushed, then nodded.

  I tapped the map. “If this is where they’re sacrificing, there might be ghosts around to help guide me. If not, I can still check the building. I can walk through any locked doors, and I can go invisible on the way in and out of the campus. They’ll never know I was there.” I hope. “If you could find the spells in the grimoire, I’d love to have you tag along, but last we checked it’s still being a pain in the ass.”

  “Fine,” Cassie said. I had a hunch that it wasn’t, completely, but she seemed willing to drop it for the moment.

  Javier cleared his throat, scanned the table to determine whether he had everyone’s attention, and said, “Okay. Assume that your recon is successful. Next steps?”

  “If I find the kids, I pull them out with me. It’ll suck spreading the invisibility spell out to cover them, but I’ll manage.”

  “Pack some candy bars,” Cassie suggested. The ghost of a smile on her face told me I was on the way back into her good graces. I hoped my responding grin didn’t look as goofy as it felt.

  “Yeah, probably so. Worst case scenario, I come out and then we roll in. It depends on how many, uh, well.” I tossed terminology around in my head and finally went with it. “How many cultists there are.”

  Javier scratched his chin. “Bearing in mind
I’m still amazed I’m saying this, but—can you make our vehicle invisible?” Carlos and Father Rosado had spread the word during the trip over, and even with a priest vouching for me I’d had to provide a quick demonstration. Once I phased my hand through the kitchen table and floated a beer out of the fridge, Javier and Scope bought in.

  “Oof. Maybe?”

  “Is that the best idea?” Kent asked. “There have to be some cops that aren’t part of this group. You go in and start shooting up a rehab clinic with automatic weapons, someone is going to have something to say about it.”

  “You going to arrest me, Chromedome?” Javier grinned.

  Kent gave him a look. “I’m just saying. We need to be clear on where we go with this, where our boundaries are. Say we rescue the boys. What then? Do we hide them away for the rest of their lives? Anyone who brings them to a police station is going to be the prime suspect in the murder of the parents, no matter what the kids say.” He shot me a glance. “Especially if they start talking about wizards and monsters.”

  “No,” I said. “If—when—we rescue them, they deserve a normal life.”

  “Which is an honorable sentiment, son, but how do we accomplish that? Have you got your guardian angel on speed dial?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. And while you seem to have a get out of jail free card, that may not necessarily apply to the guys, here.”

  He was right, of course. If anything, a battle at Upward Path was liable to be an order of magnitude worse than the confrontation we’d had with the drones on the street. I couldn’t doom any of my friends to accusations from the court system. Judges and juries didn’t tend to be friendly to the magic and monster defense. That had been a good thing when Mother was on trial. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, I didn’t like the fit.

  I glanced at the De La Rosa crew. “You guys go in incognito. On foot, maybe, so your vehicle doesn’t get caught up in the whole mess—”

  “We’ve got some local contacts,” Scope mused. “We can pay cash for an untraceable junker. It may not be in the best mechanical condition, but it doesn’t need to last forever. We dump and burn it after we make our exit.”

  “Fair enough. Meanwhile, I stay behind to greet the first responders.” There was a chorus of muttering from around the table, but I raised a hand for quiet. “I hate doing it, but I can just push them to forget my face. I can create a memory of some super-secret human trafficking task force. ‘Paper trail? It was too sensitive, your Honor.’”

  “What about security cameras?” Javier mused.

  I made a face. Another good point. I doubted there’d be many in and around the gymnasium if it was their actual abattoir, but there was probably some sort of closed-circuit surveillance system around the rest of the campus. Showing up on video footage would be a good way to wreck our lives down the road. “Can we cut the power?”

  “What do you think this is, SEAL Team Six?” Scope waited for a beat, then winked. “Hell, yeah, we can cut the power.” He tapped a spot on the map a quarter-mile down the road from the main gate. “No neighbors. It’s isolated enough, I bet this electrical substation is their only source of power.” He flipped through the drive-by pictures. “No poles, which means buried lines. No sweat. A little bit of C4 on the transformer, out go the lights.”

  I fingered the map and nodded in satisfaction. “All right, then. What’s next?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Paxton

  Phoenix, Arizona—Saturday night

  Nightfall.

  As the sun slipped below the horizon, streaks of red and orange painted the sky.

  We couldn’t know if Donnie had anyone watching the house, so we played up the subterfuge as best we could. Cassie and I hauled our stuff out to the RV. Scope had taken the rental Explorer back to the airport, where he’d met with his local contact and picked up their incognito transportation. He waited for us a few miles from Upward Path. We planned to stash the RV and the De La Rosa’s van behind a gas station, switch over to the burner vehicle, then make our move.

  The fact that Father Rosado was staying behind seemed to ease the tension Cassie felt at being off the team. If it was still there, I couldn’t detect it—which, of course, didn’t mean my hunch was accurate. Sometimes, I’ve got the intuition of a tree stump. Particularly concerning women. That naivety elicited endless amusement in Carlos’ wife, Karen, who was always trying to set me up with one of her girlfriends.

  Although I guess it could be the same ones. I grinned as I perched on the edge of Kent’s sofa and unfolded the papers Carlos had handed me in the midst of chaotic preparations.

  Like always, Karen had come through. There was a Post-It stuck to the inner third of the folded letter—a phone number, and in flowery writing, ‘She’s cute!’ Pulling it off, I rolled it up into a ball as I scanned through the fruits of her research.

  Either someone is putting on airs or you’re into some bad stuff, Pax.

  Right before the Aztec Empire collapsed, the Emperor’s son elevated their god of War to the top of the pantheon. It might not have been so bad if they’d stuck to the war, but they also began to ritually sacrifice defeated soldiers to Huitzilopochtli, the war god.

  Sacrifices were taken to the top of ceremonial pyramids and strapped to stone altars. The high priests would cut their chests open with crude knives of volcanic glass and tear out their beating hearts for all to see.

  I know what you’re thinking, but it gets worse. After that, the bodies of the sacrifices were butchered, their organs used to prepare special meals for the high-born. Their skulls were boiled and put on display.

  The capital of the empire, though, had two temples, and the second was dedicated to Tlaloc. Unlike Huitzilopochtli, he was the god of rain and lightning. When it came to sacrifices, Tlaloc held very particular tastes.

  He preferred children.

  Keep my family safe, Pax. I hope this thing is a poser, but if it’s not—don’t hold back. It is an abomination.

  I lowered the letter and told myself my shaking hands were just a figment of my imagination. Closing my eyes, I took a series of deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself. At first, it didn’t work, but I felt a strange sort of disconnect to the situation. In a way, it was not unlike the sense I’d had before the final confrontation with the Edimmu. No way would I lay money on my odds of survival, but either way, I was giving it my all.

  I stood, folded Karen’s letter, and headed to my room. I needed to get my shotgun.

  More likely than not, the De La Rosas had some high-tech piece of equipment of extreme lethality, but I wasn’t kidding myself. I was most comfortable with my Mossberg. When you’re fumbling in the dark, it’s best to be holding a weapon you know by touch. Maybe one day I’d upgrade, but this wasn’t the right time for it.

  I shoved the shotgun into a bag and turned to head out the door. I jumped a little as I saw that Cassie had followed me into the room, closing the door behind her. Suppressing my wince, I forced myself to say, “Hey.” We didn’t have time for an argument, but then again, my big mouth merited it. I set the duffel on the dresser and tried to stand casually.

  “Hey.” She held up a Snickers bar. “Peace offering?”

  I took it and gave her a quizzical look. “I’d have buried the hatchet without the bribe.”

  “I know how you get if you push the magic too far. Call it emergency wizard fuel.”

  “Maybe I should start hauling around a canteen of sports drink, too,” I laughed. “Never know when you’ll need an energy boost. I’m—”

  Before the ‘sorry’ could get out of my mouth, she stepped up against and wrapped her arms tight around my chest.

  In the movies, this would have been one heck of a scene. As the music rose, the camera would do a slow turn around the couple as they made out. Doves would fly, courtesy of John Woo.

  What actually happened was this—after a split second of shock, I realized what was happening and lowered my head to cue the cinematics.
Unfortunately for both of us, Cassie was, at the same time, coming up on tip-toe and raising her own head.

  My nose slammed into her forehead, and for a moment I saw white. Purely out of instinct, I stumbled backward. My knees ran into the bed, and I pulled Cassie down with me as I fell onto the mattress. At the same time, she reared back, pulling her head out of the way. This, thankfully, meant that my now-aching nose didn’t take another shot, but as I blinked away the sudden tears and cleared my vision, I realized that the not-entirely-uncomfortable weight on top of me was the amazing girl I’d head-butted in the middle of our first kiss.

  We stared at one another for what felt like an eternity before we both started laughing at the absurdity of it all.

  “I—” she started, but I reached up and pulled her closer—much slower, this time around—and when we kissed this time, there was no trauma on either side.

  A sharp rap on the bedroom door pulled us away from each other as Carlos bellowed, “Five minutes!”

  Cassie’s cheeks flushed red, and I was pretty sure I looked about the same, with a throbbing nose to boot. She covered her mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

  “I have never claimed to be smooth,” I managed. “Truth told, I’m out of practice.” Huge understatement, considering your last date was the Homecoming Dance, sophomore year.

  “Baby steps,” Cassie managed. “We should have done this sooner.”

  “Well, there was the whole partner thing…”

  She punched me in the arm. “Oh, this doesn’t change that. It just means you’ve got to balance a relationship with a coworker.”

  “I hope no one turns us into HR.”

  She kissed me again, and it was luxurious and energizing all at once. I wanted to lock the door and forget about the mission.

  Except—that feeling didn’t last long.

  Sometimes it sucked to have a conscience. I pulled back. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Be safe, all right?”

  “Well, with that kind of encouragement, how can I not?”