Proof of Life (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 4)
Page 24
“Hadley.”
Compressions strained my ribs until they creaked.
“Hadley.”
Warm lips covered mine, and oxygen swept into my starving lungs.
“Hadley.”
The voice murmuring my name like a prayer cracked as Midas attempted to save my life.
“Hadley.”
“We’ve got a pulse,” Lisbeth announced, her delicate fingers on my wrist. “Give her room, guys.”
No surprise, the guys did not give her room. I woke with both of them leaning over me. Plus Ambrose.
“What happened?” Midas held fists of my curls like that might have held me to life. “You were…”
“Dead,” Lisbeth finished for him. “Your heart stopped for a full minute.”
“The ward,” I mumbled. “Kicked my butt.”
“Help me sit her upright.” Lisbeth tugged once before Midas shrugged her off and lifted me into his arms. “Um, that’s not what I had in mind.” The edge of his mouth twitched at her in the promise of a snarl. “But I like your idea better.”
Ford positioned himself between Lisbeth and Midas, but he let the threat pass. He understood the murky area where courtesy and instinct collided in gwyllgi and that it wasn’t always a line consciously crossed.
Basically, he saved us a lot of time by opting not to posture, and I was grateful for it.
“Help me stand.” I wiggled in Midas’s grasp. “We can’t fight if you’re carrying me everywhere.”
Reflex curled me tighter against him before he forced himself to relax his grip and ease me down.
Certain I was about to have egg on my face from collapsing at Midas’s feet, Ambrose stroked my hair, and lightning struck in its wake, jolting me awake and alert, flooding my system with adrenaline…and every last drop of the power he had borrowed from me.
“Thank you.” I patted Midas’s chest. “And they say men can’t be trained to follow simple instructions.”
A low growl was my reward, but it got his mind off Lisbeth and Ford. It was a win in my book.
“Death hasn’t improved your sense of humor,” he grumbled. “You’re still not funny.”
Smoothing my thumb over the beat of his frantic heart, I begged him with my gaze for patience.
“I’ll explain later,” I promised him in a low voice. “It’s not exactly what you think.”
Expression tight, he exhaled. “Then it’s probably worse.”
“You are a little ray of sunshine.” I frowned at him. “I’ve always considered you a Grumpy Bear on the Care Bear scale, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re a Funshine.”
“Hadley.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I—”
“—love you too,” I finished for him. “Now let’s go adventuring.”
“You are—”
“—wonderful and amazing and have great taste in side dishes?”
“You’re doing it again.” He clamped his hands on my shoulders to hold me still. “You’re deflecting.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I will get frustrated, I will get angry, I will get worried, but I will never hurt you.”
The impact of what he’d caught me doing staggered my wobbly legs, and I hated how deep the hooks of insecurity had sunk into me until I couldn’t let the man finish a sentence out of fear what he might say next.
Mostly, that he would say goodbye.
That I wasn’t worth the headache.
That I wasn’t worth the hassle.
That I wasn’t worth…anything.
“I don’t always realize I’m doing it,” I confessed. “I hear people start to criticize, and I just want to slap my hand over their mouth before they say something they can’t take back.” I tugged on his arm. “I’m sorry. I trust you with my life. That ought to prove I can trust you with my heart too.”
“We’ve got time for you to get there.” He kissed my forehead. “All the time in the world.”
Poor guy had no idea how literal his words were, if Ambrose was to be believed.
That was definitely a conversation for later.
“We’re presenting a tempting target out here, folks.” Ford glanced around us. “We need to move.”
“I’ll go in first.” I checked with the shadow beside me, who nodded. “There could be more wards.”
Muscles worked in Midas’s jaw as he chewed over all the things he wanted to tell me, but he swallowed them down with visible effort and trusted me to lead them.
Turning my back on my friends, I stalked toward the front door, shadow in tow.
“They spent a lot of time on these wards.” I checked the knob, and it turned in my hand. “Too easy?”
Then again, if no one could reach the door, did it really matter if you bothered locking it behind you?
Once inside the cavernous building, I slumped with disappointment. A wide-open space with nowhere to hide that I could see, I doubted this was where Liz had gone to ground. There were no supplies, food or otherwise. Nothing about the space explained what warranted the heavy security measures set outside.
As that doubt surfaced, an ounce of certainty trickled in that there must be something here worth protecting if they had it locked up so tight.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent Ambrose to scout the interior while I stood there, careful not to trip any traps I might not sense. We had to wipe this place clean before the others joined us. They didn’t have a handy-dandy shadow to taste the magic and report back like me.
Moments later, Ambrose returned and waved me deeper into the building.
Normally, he would have stabbed me in the brain to share his findings. “What is it?”
Again, I doubted myself. I had almost—no, I had killed myself, temporarily, to gain entrance. For what?
Placing his palm on the wall, he glanced back to make sure I took the hint.
“You want me to touch it.” I did as he instructed. “Okay, now what?”
A frisson of power sped through my hand where it touched the wall, and it rippled, wavered, as if I had dipped my fingers into a still pond and disturbed its surface. “What is it?”
An elegant shrug rolled through Ambrose’s shoulders.
That was helpful. “Any idea why I can’t see through it?”
He spread his hands wide.
“They know I have the sight,” I realized. “This is like the glamour Liz used at the clinic.”
For them to switch it up, I must have proven myself too adept at locating their safe houses and allies.
Frak.
Maybe I should have been a smidgen less competent.
“For what it cost me, I’d hoped to get more use out of it.”
Ambrose made an encompassing gesture, a question, and waited to see what I would decide.
“We don’t have much choice,” I told him. “We can’t go in blind.” I stood back. “Strip it down.”
Rubbing his hands together, Ambrose did that. He punched his hand through the illusion and yanked it out in curling ribbons he slurped like spaghetti noodles. The bond between us hummed as he filled his stomach, and the excess spilled over into me, better than a shot of espresso.
The illusion shattered into a million points of light that blinded, and the insidious whisper that I was in the wrong place, that I had come to the wrong conclusion, evaporated along with it.
“That was one heck of a compulsion.” I rubbed my forehead as my thoughts finished clearing. “It didn’t hook me, exactly, but not for lack of trying.”
Given more exposure, I would have bent to its will, decided I was wrong, and left without looking back.
The space hidden behind the false wall gobsmacked me, and my jaw scraped the poured concrete floor. Except, it wasn’t concrete, or a floor at all. It was a yawning maw that stretched from corner to corner, a good twenty feet across, and this was the cusp.
“Goddess,” I breathed, then wished I hadn’t sucked in the sulfurous mist lapping across my ankles.
The sentiment pulled me up short.
Tombs.
“What the frakking hell is that?” I turned to Ambrose. “Can you tell if anyone is home?”
The shadow gave a definitive nod, and knowing coven milled below us gave me the willies.
Mostly because I couldn’t see them.
“Bring the others.” I stood watch at the rim. “We’ll need all the backup we can get.”
Ambrose zipped past me, on his way to Midas, the only one who could see him to decipher the message.
Pulling out my phone, I snapped a dozen photos and forwarded them to Bishop.
This was not good. This was so very not good. This surpassed the realm of super not good.
The coven had an underground city with the capacity to hold hundreds of families by my count.
Had they built it? Had they slaughtered its original inhabitants and claimed it? Or had they done worse?
A vibration in my palm had me checking my phone for updates.
>>Get out of there.
>We’re closing in on Liz.
>>Check the first picture.
I did as he said, and I almost swallowed my tongue. I stumbled back, smack into Midas. “Run.”
“What?” Scanning the area, he settled his focus back on me. “What’s wrong?”
“Run.” I took his hand and dragged him. “Ford, get her out of here.”
Scooping up Lisbeth, which cost him seconds, he ran after us. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”
“Get in the truck.” I shoved Midas in, climbed onto his lap, and slammed the door behind me. “We need to go now, now, now.”
Ford jogged to his side, dumped Lisbeth onto the bench seat, then hopped in and cranked the engine.
Heart a frozen lump in my throat, I waited a good ten or fifteen miles for it to thaw.
“What happened?” Midas pulled me close. “What did you see?”
Rather than tell him, I flashed the screen and let him see for himself.
Ghoulish faces screamed in silent fury, crowding the vast opening like ants swarming picnic food. Blueish light emanated from them without illuminating the darkness around them. Their clawlike hands grasped for the edge where I had stood gazing down at them without realizing the terrible danger I was in.
Midas pinched his fingers to zoom in on the creatures. “What are those things?”
“I have no frakking clue.” I dialed Bishop then demanded, “What are those things?”
“That’s the closet.”
“I’m sorry, but it sounded like you said that was a closet.”
“I did, and it is.” Keys tapped in the background. “We got big problems, kid.”
“Only always.” I leaned against Midas. “How did you figure it out?”
“I had help.” He exhaled. “I’ll meet you back at the Faraday.”
“Okay.” I glanced behind us, but the road was empty. “See you in a few.”
The gwyllgi had overheard both sides of the conversation, as usual, but even Lisbeth sat close enough I didn’t have to repeat myself.
“He sounded freaked,” she said when no one else spoke. “Bishop doesn’t do freaked.”
“This is going to be bad,” I agreed. “It’s hard to get under his skin.”
With that settled, the four of us spent the rest of the drive lost in our own thoughts.
Mine kept circling back to Boaz and Addie. I wanted them gone. Tonight. Back safe in Savannah.
I had no idea what we had uncovered in that warehouse, but it promised me nightmares for days.
“We’ll meet you upstairs.” Ford pulled to a stop in front of the Faraday. “Give us ten.”
“Sure.” I slid off Midas’s lap, and he exited after me. “See you up there.”
Hank was polite as you please, but I chalked it up to my sister’s kidnapping and not a permanent shift in his general attitude toward me. That would be too weird. Hmm. Maybe he ought to get tested again just to be on the safe side.
No one stopped us in the lobby, but everyone stared, and it creeped me out.
When the elevator doors rolled shut behind us, I slumped against the back panel. “Ares?”
“Yes.”
“The pack needs to get over it.”
Rather than answer, he pressed a kiss to my temple. “You have a way of simplifying things.”
“Mostly I open my mouth and see what falls out. Usually, I’m as surprised as you guys.”
Soft laughter moved through him, and I grinned as I buried my face in his chest.
All too soon a ding announced our arrival, and we trudged over to the door and let ourselves in the loft.
Bishop stood in the center of the living room, legs braced apart and arms crossed over his chest. He glared at the couch. Specifically, he glared at someone sprawled on the couch.
The fae who had gifted Midas and me with the sight sat with his arms around a pillow on his lap in what reminded me of a petulant child’s pose. Dressed in what I was coming to think of as his standard uniform, he looked the same as he had the last time we met.
Black leather pants encased his legs, and a whip hung from the silver-studded belt wrapping his narrow waist. He wore no shirt, but the oversized pillow shielded us from a view of the pale muscle he displayed as casually as if my living room was his. His heavy boots made the coffee table groan when he twitched his crossed ankles on its edge. But what caught my eye and held it was the blue-black hair that slid over his shoulders in a seductive curtain. His fingers clenched and relaxed on the poor pillow’s tassels while he stared at Bishop’s forbidding profile, as if his hands would rather be squeezing…
Ahem.
When our guest spotted us, he rose with leonine grace, giving Midas and me an eyeful of a tattoo of bird wings covering every inch of his back before disappearing into his waistband. I hadn’t noticed the design on him before, so it could be cosmetic. He did love his glamours. I was no expert on corvids, but I pegged them as belonging to a crow or raven.
“Bishop,” I said warily. “Introduce us to your friend.”
Once I had known the fae’s true name, but the memory of it was slick as Crisco when I tried to grasp it.
“This is…” he hesitated over what to call him, “…a pain in my ass.”
“Only if you’re lucky,” the fae said toothily, fingering his whip. “You may call me Vasco.”
“Okay, Vasco.” I hit the kitchen for bottled water and tossed one to Midas. “You guys thirsty?”
Vasco slid his admiring gaze down Bishop from tip to toe. “Always.”
Grateful for the icy drink after our frantic run, I took long pulls from my bottle as I brought them each a water. Vasco sipped from his, but I worried for half a second Bishop was going to chuck his at Vasco’s pretty head.
After checking my phone, I came out and asked Bishop, “Any word from Linus and Grier?”
“They ought to be back in a few hours. Grier lost sight of him in a used bookstore.”
I read between the lines: Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut around Vasco.
“A few hours?” I played along. “More like a few days.”
The elevator chimed out in the hall, and I tossed my empty while selecting two more bottles. Since Midas and I hadn’t bothered shutting the door, Lisbeth and Ford invited themselves in.
“Hello,” she said, her eyes lighting on Vasco. “Are you a friend of Bishop’s?”
“It’s more accurate to say Bishop is a friend of mine,” Vasco all but purred. “Aren’t you a lovely trifle?”
A slight glaze covered her eyes, and Ford wrapped a hand around her upper arm before I noticed she was attempting to walk straight into Vasco’s arms.
“Stop pla
ying with my friend,” I warned him and dipped my hand into Ambrose, unsheathing a sword. “If you can’t behave, you need to leave. Whether or not you do it with your head still attached is your choice.”
“He’s got information we need.” Bishop heaved a sigh. “Leave the head where it is, for now.”
“I knew you cared.” Vasco traced a finger down the center of Bishop’s chest, stopping when the tip brushed the metal of his belt buckle. “Do they know what this is costing you?”
“Leave them out of this.” Bishop fit his palm very gently across Vasco’s throat. “This is between us.”
“Yes.” His lids fluttered closed. “Us.”
“Don’t get cute with me.” Bishop leaned in close. “Do what you came here to do and then leave.”
“As you wish.” Vasco rested his palm over Bishop’s heart, smiled at what he felt there, then retreated. “All right, children.” He draped himself across the couch once more. “Gather ’round for story time.”
Given he might have been around to watch dirt born, I didn’t object to the insult. Out loud, anyway.
“You found an archive,” he began once we had formed a semicircle around him. “That’s remarkable, and I’m impressed you’re here to ask what it was that almost killed you.”
“An archive?” I reflected on what I had seen. “You’re saying that hole was an underground library?”
“Bishop tells me you consider that which the coven harvests to be skins, suits that can be worn and then returned to their collective closet. Not unlike what skinwalkers do, though theirs is a more violent path.”
There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Guess that grisly old chestnut applied to skinning people too.
“Information on witchborn fae is scarce,” I defended us. “We’ve done our best with what we’ve got.”
“That I don’t doubt.” He appeared earnest despite the sting of his words. “You’re wrong about the visages. They aren’t skins. They’re souls. Or, if you prefer, they’re essences. They’re the sum of the person. From the way they looked to the way they talked, laughed, walked, even breathed. The coven fully embodies those they have stolen. There are no spells capable of such lawful insanity, but there are worlds in which the dead walk and the souls linger.”