A scream. A shot. Neala staggered, eyes rounding, that apology stuttering in her head, desperately trying to find a way out, and then the chaos, the sweet, sweet chaos...
"Neala!" Rhys shot forward, grabbing her.
Hope tried to focus, but the chaos was so sweet, so perfectly sweet...
"Call an ambulance!" Rhys shouted.
It wouldn't help. Hope could feel Neala's life seeping away, her terror, chaos thundering all around, then a young man's voice yelling, "Niko! Niko!"
Footsteps pounded across the patio stones.
"Niko! Men - " Panting, gasping for breath. "Armed men. Guns. Hugh saw them. They're - they're all around - "
A scream cut him off. Then another.
Niko's voice rose above them. "No! It's all right. They aren't here to hurt us. Stay calm. Everyone stay - "
A shot. A crack. The peppery smell of tear gas. A long, keening scream. Then the smoldering pit of chaos detonated.
* * *
FINN
Finn got himself and Robyn close enough to see what was going on, but they couldn't hear it. He'd sent Damon for that. Damon hadn't been pleased; he wanted to watch over Robyn. Finn could have pointed out that if they were attacked, there was nothing Damon could do, but that would be cruel. Instead, he told Robyn they'd need to get closer, so they could listen in and, at that, Damon decided he could handle eavesdropping duty.
They were still in the small strip of woods bordering the property. Finn had caught a glimpse of Solheim, patrolling the fence. He was sticking to his post, though. His only task now was preventing Finn and Robyn from leaving.
As for who Solheim and the others really were and how they got here and where Madoz was, those were questions for later. With cell reception and the route to his radio blocked, he was on his own. As he watched the drama unfolding in the distance he had a feeling that being alone might be a good thing. Bringing in the law could turn a touchy situation into a tragedy. If Robyn was right, Adams and the others operated outside the law for good reason.
Adams, Marsten and Rhys stood in a garden between a cluster of four houses. Finn counted six people with them. There could be more standing at the perimeter, but his angle wasn't good, the houses partially blocking it.
He could clearly see Adams and Marsten, and that was the important thing. Together with Rhys, they were bookended by men with rifles, but those weapons dangled, a perfunctory threat. The only other gun he could see was held by a dark-haired girl, pointed at a young blonde whose face he'd never forget.
That face was now bloodied and battered, which brought a smile to Finn's lips. He felt a twinge of guilt at that, hearing his mother admonish him against ever taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. But it was a very small twinge.
Clearly Adele Morrissey's crimes had been exposed and now they seemed to be negotiating to turn her over to Adams and Marsten. And though they didn't seem to be in immediate danger from the commune people, he had to get a warning to them about these guys.
At a movement, he glanced over to see Damon jogging back. Perfect timing. He'd get a report on the whereabouts of the fake police squad, then -
"They're going to stone her!" Damon called, still running.
"Stone?" Finn said.
"A stone what?" Robyn said, popping out from behind the binoculars. A sheepish smile. "Sorry." She paused, then said hesitantly, "Is Damon back?"
Finn nodded. Her gaze traveled past him, searching for some sign of Damon. Disappointment flickered through her eyes, so sharp it was like an ice pick, a breathtaking jab of empathetic pain.
"Finn?" Damon waved his hands in front of Finn's face. "Could you stop staring at my wife and listen to me?"
Finn thought he heard a bite in Damon's voice, but when he glanced up, the ghost just looked impatient.
"I said they're going to stone Adele."
"You heard wrong."
"No, I did not. Her group, those people, they call themselves a company or something, they just held a trial. They convicted her of a whole pile of shit and sentenced her to be stoned by the whole group. Hope's arguing. She wants to take Adele back to that council and - "
A shot. A scream. Damon wheeled with a, "Holy shit!" Robyn lifted the binoculars, but Finn snatched them, ignoring her cry of protest and pushing her down to the ground as he lowered himself to his knees.
He swung the lenses to Adams and Marsten. Adams lay in Marsten's arms.
"Finn?" Robyn yanked on his sleeve. "What's happening?"
"They're down - taking cover," he added quickly. The lie came easier than any he'd ever told. "They're okay. Just - "
Another scream. Another shot. Armed gunmen rushed from behind the buildings, shouting orders. A mushroom cloud of tear gas exploded.
Finn shot to his feet. Robyn grabbed his pant leg. He put his hand on her head, keeping her down.
"Stay here."
"I'm not - "
He dropped to one knee, his face coming down to hers. "You need to stay here, Robyn. Please. Do you still have the gun?"
She nodded.
"Then stay. You aren't trained for this, okay?"
That did it - not safety issues but the reminder she wasn't qualified.
She lowered herself into the grass, then stopped, looking up. "Damon? Go with him. Help him."
Damon leaned down, kissing the top of her head. "I will, baby."
Finn cut through the field, praying everyone was too busy to notice him. Damon ran ahead, ready to call back a warning if anyone took an interest. No one did.
The smoke floated out until Finn couldn't see, and moved by sound alone. After a moment, he recognized one of the shouting voices. Karl Marsten calling for Adams. When he ran toward the voice, he smacked into Marsten, who spun, lips curling in a snarl.
"I'm not working for the Nasts," Finn said quickly. "I - "
"I know. Find Hope," Marsten said, then was about to dive back into the smoke when Finn caught the back of his shirt.
"Is she shot?" he said. "I saw her fall - "
"No, that was - " He waved Finn off. "We - " A coughing fit cut him short. "We need to find her before she gets shot."
He turned again, but Finn still had a grip on his shirt. "That gas is going to knock us flat before we do."
Marsten's red-rimmed eyes blazed, and Finn thought he was going to deck him. Then his jaw flexed and he gave a curt nod. "We need gas masks. I thought I saw - "
A figure staggered out, bent double. Rhys. Marsten grabbed him, just long enough to recognize him - and recognize that he wasn't someone with a gas mask - then dropped him. Finn dove in to catch the man before he toppled.
"I thought I heard you," Rhys croaked, squinting up at Marsten. "Where's Hope?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. They have gas masks, right?"
"What?" Rhys coughed so hard that blood flecked Finn's pants.
"Those men. They have gas masks, don't they?"
"I think so."
"Good."
Marsten strode back into the thick of it. Finn tried to grab him.
Rhys caught his hand. "If you like the current configuration of all your body parts, I wouldn't do that. He'll be fine."
"I'll cover him," said a voice behind Finn.
He turned to see Damon jog off after Marsten.
"Does he have a gun?" Finn asked.
"He doesn't need one. You're the detective who's after Adele, right?"
Finn nodded and looked in the direction Damon and Marsten had gone.
"He's fine. Really," Rhys said. "But if you want Adele, she's long gone. Last I saw, she was making a break for it."
"Robyn."
"What?"
Finn took off at a run. He'd left Robyn alone, without even Damon to watch her, and now Adele - the woman who wanted her dead, and who could find her anywhere - was on the loose.
He didn't slow until he reached the spot where he'd left Robyn. There, on the ground, lay the pair of binoculars.
* * *
HOPE
When the tear gas exploded, Karl knocked Hope to the ground. It wasn't necessary - she was already headed that way and grabbing for his arm to yank him down with her, the demon's hunger for chaos temporarily overridden by its hunger for continued life.
As Hope was twisting to pull him down, someone barreled into him. Hope rolled out of the way so he wouldn't drop on her and then...
She wasn't really sure what happened then. The demon decided they were out of danger long enough to enjoy a chaos snack before completing their escape. That interlude of euphoria ended when a foot crunched Hope's spine, she realized Karl wasn't beside her and the demon shouted at her to get the hell out of there.
She got on all fours, shut her eyes and crawled as fast as she could, ignoring the blows and kicks of people tripping over her. When she finally tasted a current of fresh air on the breeze, she opened her eyes. The chaos-laced smoke still eddied around them, but she could make out the shapes of buildings and people. One person in particular - Adele Morrissey racing across the field.
Hope scrambled to her feet and shot after Adele.
Hope started along a house, darting from bush to bush. But she quickly realized it wasn't necessary. Adele never glanced back, which told Hope she'd already been spotted. Adele must have caught a glimpse when Hope first started after her, and now she watched Hope's progress remotely, letting her think she hadn't noticed. Hope played the game, and kept her gun holstered, out of sight.
When Hope rounded the barn, she saw Adele's destination - a small outbuilding in the middle of a field. For an ambush or hiding place, she'd have chosen the barn, but Adele's trajectory put her on target for the shed and, sure enough, a moment later, she was inside it.
Hope darted to the door, then waited, ears and chaos sensors on full. A key clicked in a lock. Then a rhythmic clang-clang, growing distant until it faded. Hope slipped inside. One section of the hay-covered floor had been hastily cleared. Beneath it was a hatch, conveniently left open, should Hope not be clever enough to figure out where Adele had gone.
Beneath the hatch, a metal ladder descended into darkness. With a distant click, a dim light filled the bottom. The sound of one lock opening. Footsteps. The scrape of a key. The creak of a door. A blast of manic voices. Cartoons? The noise faded, and Hope dismissed it as shrieks from outside.
She climbed down the ladder, closing the hatch behind her so no one would follow her down. As she neared the bottom, she hunched down to get a better look at what she was descending into, but all she could see from her vantage point was an empty room with a door. She called on the demon to pick up any tremors of chaos. It reported negative. Hope still lowered herself as slowly as she could, knowing Adele could be waiting at the bottom.
She wasn't. She'd even left the door ajar for Hope.
Hope crept up to it, taking out her gun now, keeping it hidden under her jacket in case Adele was watching. Hope eased open the door. It led to a dimly lit tunnel and another door at the end, a sliver of light telling Hope it too was cracked open. She did a chaos check, then crept down the hall and pulled open the second door.
Adele stood right there, looking into the room, her back to Hope.
"Come in, Hope," she said. "It is Hope, isn't it?"
She spun, gun flying up... only to see Hope pointing at her. She looked at it. Blinked. And laughed, a high girlish laugh.
"The element of surprise is lost with us, isn't it?" She lowered her gun. "I'm not going to shoot you. Read my mind or whatever it is you do. You need to take me out of here alive. I want to leave alive, and the only way I'm doing that is in your custody."
She turned her back to Hope, a mind-blowing act of trust. Or, Hope suspected, arrogance. But she was right. Right now, their goals coincided. Still, Hope wasn't lowering her gun.
"Close the door," Adele said.
Hope did - she didn't want anyone sneaking up behind her.
"Might as well get comfortable. I have a plan to get us out, but until someone shows up to negotiate with, we're stuck."
Again, Hope had to agree. The property was swarming with armed men - cops or Cabal, she wasn't sure. Add the rifle-toting kumpania members, and she wasn't setting foot outside this bunker until someone granted her safe passage.
As for what they were in, bunker was the word that came to mind, but as she passed through the entryway into the main room, she had a vision... of a playground, the one she and Karl had been standing outside only hours ago. That's what this looked like: a day care, all bright colors and plush furniture. A TV flashed now - silent cartoons. There was even a crib pushed against the wall. Why would there be - ?
" 'dele?"
"It's okay, sweetie," Adele said. "That's Hope. Oh, you like her, do you? You like pretty girls." Her voice was light, but a hard note crept into it, and the look she shot Hope was dagger-sharp.
Hope sidestepped to see around Adele. There was a boy in the chair and, for one jolting moment, she thought it was Colm. But it was a distorted view, as if the angle was skewed, something not quite right.
"Come meet Thom," Adele said. "I think he likes you." Her lips curved, but there was too much snarl in it to be mistaken for a smile.
As Hope moved forward she tried not to stare. The boy in the chair wasn't much older than Colm, with the same blue eyes and red hair, but his head was slightly oversized and misshapen, with plastic tubes running out of it - shunts, she realized.
Thom watched Hope. There was a keenness in his eyes, a probing curiosity.
Adele walked over, her arms going around his neck, lips to his bulging forehead.
"Yep, this is Thom. The proud daddy. Aren't you, sweetie?"
She snuggled against him, her breasts rubbing his face. When Adele had named her baby's father and called him "retarded," Hope had assumed she was lying, trying to shock the kumpania into outrage so she could escape. Now she saw the truth. Adele had seduced not only a fifteen-year-old boy, but his mentally handicapped brother, an act as horrific as molesting a child.
Adele pulled back, but not before squeezing his crotch. "You gave me a wonderful gift, didn't you, sweetie? One that will make my fortune." She looked at Hope. "When I told Irving I was carrying the child of a seer, I swear the old man got a hard-on just thinking about it."
"Seer?" Hope forced the word past her revulsion.
"Powerful clairvoyants who can project visions to others. Irving had heard stories about them - that's all most people hear, stories. But here they are, and Thom is the most valuable of them all."
"Them?"
Adele waved at the room and walked to a cupboard, taking down a bottle. Hope turned, slowly. Her gaze moved past the flashing TV to another chair, a recliner this time. In it, a hairless man stared vacantly at the cartoon.
"That's Melvin. Veggie Boy." Adele tapped her head. "No one's home. He's practically useless, but he's Niko's son, so they have to keep him alive."
Hope stepped sideways to see what Adele was doing. Filling a syringe.
Hope's hand tightened on her lowered gun. "What's that?"
"A sedative for Thom. He has a wicked temper. When the kumpania or the Cabal starts banging on that door, things will get ugly. I don't want him upset."
"When they do show up, let me do the talking. I'll negotiate - "
"With what?" Her look dripped disdain. "I'll do the talking. I know what we've got in here, and how to use it to our advantage."
"Adele, we - "
A noise behind Hope. A rustling. From the crib.
She'd forgotten the crib. Her knees locked, brain ordering her to stay where she was, not to look, that it wouldn't do any good.
And what good would it do to not look? Cover her eyes, plug her ears and whistle past the cemetery? When she got out, she had to do something about this, which meant she had to take the story back to the council. The full story.
Hope stepped to the crib, and a scream congealed in her throat. It wasn't a baby. It wasn't even human. It couldn't be. A doll. A prank.
Adele's plan to shock Hope, distract her so she could get her gun.
It moved.
Hope's scream escaped in a strangled yelp.
Adele laughed. "That's Martha. Freaky, isn't she? Like a giant slug." Once she said that, Hope couldn't shake the image, as hard as she tried to see what lay in that crib as human. It was a woman with long, tangled white hair. She was limbless and eyeless, her body so white it blended with her diaper. She writhed from side to side, mouth opening, mewling.
"She's probably hungry." A flat statement, carrying no sense of obligation to do anything about it. "She's the most powerful of them. But we can only pick up her visions - she can't communicate. That's why Thom's the most valuable. Aren't you, sweetie?"
Hope looked from Adele, pinging air bubbles from the needle, to Thom, watching Adele with that intent stare.
" 'dele," he said, the guttural word carrying the same edge as one of Karl's warning growls.
"Everything's okay, sweetie. I'm just giving you one of your shots, to calm you down."
"No."
"Oh, I know you don't like them. They make you feel all fuzzy, don't they?" She paused, head cocking. "Hear that, Hope? Seems they finally found us."
Hope caught the faint clink of metal. Someone descending the ladder.
"Don't worry. They can't get in." She took a key from the tabletop, waved it and dropped it into her pocket. "Once the door is closed, no one gets in or out without that. Of course, to get out, we're also going to need to get past them."
Adele lifted the needle to check the dose.
"You're going to hold the seers hostage," Hope said.
"It doesn't matter who's coming down those steps - Cabal or kumpania - for either one, these guys are the most valuable things on the property."
She started toward Thom. Chaos buzzed from him, fear muted by uncertainty, sensing danger but seeing only someone he trusted.
" 'dele..." He grabbed the arms of his chair, rising.
"I don't think that's necessary," Hope said. "He seems fine."
"Bold moves, Hope. You have to be willing to make the bold moves." She stopped in front of her. "When you see the options, there's always one that seems like it's too much. It goes too far. That's the one you need to take."
Hope tried to pick up a stray chaos vibe, a thought, anything to confirm her fears. Adele only looked at her, mind blank, face expressionless. But Hope knew. She knew.