Fire looked at the men who had been fighting with the pack and said, “Either we all leave or all the humans burn.”
A sudden gust of air caught Fire’s gown. It flared out and found the leg of one man’s jeans. With a cry, he dropped the pipe he’d been holding and smacked at the burning fabric.
“Police! Drop your weapons!”
Many voices made that demand as men rushed through the open doors, then came to a fast stop when Fire turned toward them.
“They’re here to help, and we need help.”
Hearing the quiet words, Simon glanced at Kowalski. The man’s face and clothes were bloody, but the hands holding a small gun were steady.
Yes, they needed help, but he didn’t recognize any of these police officers.
Then Captain Burke walked through the door. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at Simon and waited.
Time to make a choice.
Simon said.
She turned back to him, and he realized it hadn’t been whim that had brought her and Air to the stall market to rescue him and the rest of the pack. The Elementals hadn’t even done it for him; they came here for Meg.
she asked.
Not all of them. He didn’t want to think of what she might do if he answered her question that honestly, so he settled on,
Sensing that she was too close to expressing her full fury and burning everything in sight, he said the one thing he thought might sway her.
He didn’t care if Fire charred the entire building and everything in it, but he wanted to get his pack away from here first, and there were still too many humans between him and the door.
A heated silence. Then Air said,
Simon nodded, relieved the Elementals would compromise that much.
Fire tipped her head . . . and disappeared.
Police rushed toward them, restraining the men who had attacked them. At least, restraining the ones who weren’t dead or badly injured.
Kowalski lowered his gun but had trouble moving one arm and ended up tucking the gun in the waistband of his jeans. Simon did his best to shift enough to look passably human. Then he heard two voices.
Ruthie saying, “Hang on, Lawrence. Hang on. The paramedics are here.”
And Jenni crying, “Crystal? Crystal, wake up! Simon says we have to leave now.”
He stepped aside as men from the ambulance rushed in, guarded by police. He looked at his pack.
Henry had a deep, bloody furrow along his right cheek from the bullet that had struck him when he swatted Simon out of the way. Michael Debany was limping and couldn’t seem to bend one knee. Ruthie was all bloody, but he couldn’t tell if she was wounded or if it was all Lawrence MacDonald’s blood. Merri Lee had bruises already blooming on her face, arms, and legs—and a bone sticking through the skin of one finger on her left hand. Vlad appeared unharmed. So did Jenni and Starr. But Crystal . . .
The back too arched. The feet pointed so hard they were almost curling. The eyes that should have been dark and shining were already dull. And feathers had partially sprouted along her stiff arms.
He looked at the bloody magazines that had fallen around her and thought, This is the vision Meg had seen about Heather. If the human bunny had been working in the Courtyard, she would have come here with the other girls. Would Crystal have lived if Heather had died here?
He didn’t know how much of a prophecy could change and how much was going to happen, regardless of what someone did. All he knew right now was he hurt and he wanted to go home.
he called.
A hesitation.
Too much noise. Too much confusion. He felt dull and sick as he watched the paramedics rush MacDonald to the ambulance. He watched police lead the attackers with minor injuries out of the building. And he watched Captain Burke speak briefly to Kowalski and Debany before approaching him.
“Mr. Wolfgard? What can we do for you and your people? You and Mr. Beargard are wounded. So is the Wolf who was in the bus.”
“Our bodywalkers will take care of us,” Simon said. “We just want to go home.”
“Your bus is too damaged to drive, but we’ll get you home.”
“Crystal too.”
Burke nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He wanted to get away from this place. He wanted a chance to rest and heal. Then he remembered the other part of Elliot’s message. “Tell Lieutenant Montgomery to keep the Lizzy away from the Courtyard. Something bad is going to happen there . . . or has happened.”
“What kind of bad?”
“Don’t know. Meg saw . . .”
“Simon is hurt,” Henry said. “He needs to go home.”
“Captain Zajac and his men also responded to the call for backup. Give me a moment to talk to him; then I’ll make arrangements to get you all home. We’ll need statements from all of you, but that can wait.”
As Burke walked away, Kowalski walked up to Simon and Henry, his arm around Ruthie.
“I’m sorry,” Ruthie said, crying. “I am so sorry.”
“We talked to the merchants’ association last week and asked them if there would be a problem with terra indigene visiting the stall market to shop. We were told it wouldn’t be,” Kowalski said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Wasn’t your fault,” Simon said. “You wanted to give the Crows a treat. Other humans took the opportunity to try to kill us.”
No, this wasn’t Ruthie’s fault. Allowing himself to be lured to a place where the terra indigene had so little chance of surviving an attack was his fault. As the leader, he should have remembered why the terra indigene didn’t go to movie theaters or concerts or any other place where a mob of humans could attack a small number of Others. He should have heeded Vlad’s concerns about going to the stall market instead of relying on Kowalski’s and Ruthie’s trust in these humans. Crystal Crowgard had died because of that trust, and Lawrence MacDonald was badly wounded.
Burke returned as Debany and Merri Lee joined them. “Officers, you and the ladies are going to the hospital for treatment. I’ve left messages for Lieutenant Montgomery and Pete Denby, so they’ll be aware of the situation and will take precautions. Mr. Wolfgard, there’s transportation waiting for you and the rest of the terra indigene.”
“We’re ready.”
Vlad joined them, carrying Crystal and trailed by Jenni and Starr.
Nodding to Burke, Simon walked outside, followed by Vlad and the Crows, with Henry bringing up the rear. Nathan waited for them near some kind of police van. The Wolf was still bleeding from some of the deeper cuts, and judging by the way Nathan moved, Simon suspected there were other, deeper injuries. He just hoped those injuries were things Jane Wolfgard could fix.
As they drove away from the stall market, more ambulances were turning into the parking lot—and Simon wondered if the humans who started this had any idea how much damage they had done.
* * *
Blair growled and looked over his shoulder, but the warning ended quickly as Elliot joined them and said, “I have news.”
“Simon?” Blair asked.
“He’s hurt,” Elliot said. “So are Nathan and Henry. Crystal is dead. Jenni and Starr are upset but don’t appear wounded. Vlad is unharmed. They’ll all be here in a few minutes. The human pack is being taken to the hospital. Various injuries. One of them is badly wounded.”
&nb
sp; “Let’s move these carcasses.” Blair hesitated. Then he looked at Tess. “Are these meat?”
She considered the two men, who were already beyond answering questions, and acknowledged to herself that she’d harvested more than she’d intended. She shook her head. “They’re rotting too fast.”
“Mine is weakened, but the meat and blood are fresh,” Nyx said.
Blair nodded. “We’ve also got the van’s driver. Two will provide enough special meat for everyone who wants some.”
Jake Crowgard reported from his position on the roof.
“Then we need to hurry,” Nyx said.
Blair fetched the drop cloths he’d left at the end of the hallway. The four terra indigene wrapped up the three bodies and hauled them down to the Utilities Complex’s pickup, which he had parked near the back stairs. They also took the soiled rug.
As soon as Blair and Elliot had driven off with the meat, Tess opened windows in all the apartments—even the ones that hadn’t been invaded. Then she wiped the floors while Nyx arranged to have the personal belongings returned after the police left.
By the time Nyx returned and police officers were coming up the stairs from the street door, Tess had everything sufficiently tidy.
She let the officers look around. She answered the questions she chose to answer, and the officer in charge, a Commander Gresh, who had provided assistance on previous occasions, was smart enough to be satisfied with the answers he’d been given.
She told him he could do the smudging thing on the street door to check for fingerprints. The cars in the Courtyard’s parking lot? Not customers of any of their shops, so the officers were welcome to seize them, detain them, tow them, or do whatever else they pleased with them.
“A police van just drove in,” Nyx said once the police were sniffing around the parking lot. “Vlad says the police will take Simon and the others to the Market Square medical office.”
“I don’t think our humans will be returning soon, but let’s put everything back as best we can.”
“Everything?”
Tess looked at Nyx, knowing the Sanguinati was asking about the pink book. “Not everything.”
CHAPTER 48
Watersday, Maius 26
Smiling as he listened to the children’s excited jabbering, Monty pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and turned it on. Not that he expected anything. Captain Burke knew he’d taken the day off to spend time with Lizzy. Now that the question of custody was settled, at least for the time being, he had decided it would be safe to take Lizzy to the movies as a treat and had invited the Denby family to join them.
“Do we all want something to eat?” Pete Denby asked.
“Pizza!” Lizzy said.
“Pizza, pizza, pizza,” Sarah said.
“Hamburgers,” Robert said. “I’m so hungry I could eat a hamburger the size of a cow!”
“A whole cow?” Eve Denby gave her son a disbelieving look. “Even the hooves?”
Before Robert could reply, Lizzy looked at Monty. “Daddy! You turned on your phone.”
“I have to check in, Lizzy girl.” And what he saw made him uneasy. Three messages from Burke’s phone number while he’d been in the theater? That wasn’t good.
“You always put work first. Mommy said—”
“That’s enough,” Monty snapped, stung to not only hear the same words but Elayne’s disapproving tone of voice coming out of his own daughter. He looked at Pete. “Check your messages.” Then he listened to his own.
“Lieutenant, there’s been an incident at the stall market. Call me when you can.”
“The Courtyard is under attack. Do not, I repeat, do not take Lizzy back there until you talk to me.”
“Lawrence MacDonald was shot. He’s in surgery. Come to Lakeside Hospital as soon as you can.”
“Mikhos, watch over us,” Monty whispered. As he put his phone away, he looked at Pete’s pale face and grim expression.
“We’ll take Lizzy with us back to the duplex,” Pete said.
“Can you drop me close to Lakeside Hospital?”
“Sure.”
“What’s going . . . ?” Eve looked at both men and didn’t finish the question.
“One of my men,” Monty said, knowing he didn’t need to say more.
They hustled the children to the car. Monty wondered if he looked hunted. The gods knew, he felt that way.
* * *
“Gods above and below.” Captain Zajac shook his head as he looked at the destruction outside the stall market, which was in his precinct.
The older patrol captain had brushed against the Others when a former Courtyard employee named Darrell Adams died under mysterious circumstances—and a lot of people in the same area ended up in the emergency room with sudden ailments. Since then, Zajac had been fiercely insistent that he be kept informed about the “doings at the Chestnut Street station.”
“A third of the vehicles in this lot destroyed in seconds,” Zajac said. “I saw them burst into flames and felt the explosions as we were pulling in. Saw that female running past the cars just before they went up.”
“It could have been a lot worse,” Burke replied. He watched as the Courtyard bus was righted and attached to a tow truck. The bus would go to a garage that serviced police vehicles. If it could be sufficiently repaired, they would do that. If it couldn’t, he’d be sitting down with the mayor and the city’s comptroller, doing his best to persuade them of the necessity of purchasing a new bus for the terra indigene. The Others could afford another bus, and it wouldn’t be a hardship on the Courtyard’s annual budget—provided, of course, there were buses in the appropriate size for sale. A shortage of steel was starting to make itself felt in several industries, including the manufacture of vehicles. He’d heard from a couple of his sources that public transportation like cabs and buses would be given priority, and individuals might end up waiting six months or more to purchase a family car—and would have to choose from whatever models were available at the time or do without.
What his sources couldn’t tell him was why there was a shortage of steel when the terra indigene were selling the same quantity of raw materials to the manufacturers as usual.
A problem for another day, Burke thought when he heard the older man sigh.
“I know it could have been worse,” Zajac said. “Two exits for the whole damn building, and the back exit blocked by debris that had been thrown against the door. And people stuck behind a barricade of tables and merchandise blown around by a freak wind, with no chance of getting out if a fire had started in that part of the building.”
“That wasn’t a freak wind,” Burke said quietly. “That was done by an angry Elemental. The debris wasn’t blocking the back doors by accident, the roof wasn’t torn off this place by a chance gust of wind that just happened to find a weak point, and those cars didn’t explode because of a leak in someone’s gas tank and the heat of the sun on the pavement. That would be a plausible explanation—maybe—and if we’re smart, we won’t offer a different explanation, because if Fire had entered the building first instead of burning the cars as a way to disrupt the attack on the Courtyard bus, we would have had a lot of corpses and very few survivors.”
“Is this going to spoil things?” Zajac gave Burke a bitter smile. “Besides paying attention to what is happening at your station, I do keep my ear to the ground, Douglas. I’ve heard the Courtyard stores aren’t open to humans anymore. I’ve heard Wolfgard has bought at least one building outside the Courtyard to use as rental property. And I’ve heard from a couple of friends who serve on the Talulah Falls police force, what’s left of it, so I have some idea of just how bad it can be for us humans when the terra indigene truly hate us.”
Burke had heard a few rumors about Talulah Falls too. If anything like the attack in the stall market had happene
d there, the Others would have killed everyone, and it wouldn’t have mattered that the majority of those people hadn’t been involved in the attack. “Simon Wolfgard wants to use the Lakeside Courtyard as a kind of graduate school for terra indigene who need to interact with humans in one capacity or another. The shops might be closed to the general human population, but all their stores are open now to a select group of humans who are interacting with a lot more of the Courtyard’s residents. That gives us a chance to show the Others that humans can work with them for the benefit of all of us.”
“All of that would have been gone if Wolfgard had died today?”
“All of that would have been gone. And the next leader would not have looked favorably on any of us.”
They stood in silence for a couple of minutes, watching people absorb the loss of property. Watching people follow paramedics to the ambulances that would take loved ones to one of the city’s hospitals.
Watching the medical examiner’s van take away the dead.
“Douglas? Don’t know if you’ve seen the alerts yet, but there’s a lot of people who have gone missing all of a sudden.” Zajac stared straight ahead. “Not from Lakeside, thank all the gods. Closest to us is a dozen people in the Finger Lakes area, all from the same town.”
“Maybe they ran off together.”
“A fair number of alerts have come in from all the regions,” Zajac said as if he hadn’t heard Burke’s comment. “Groups of people all gone missing around the same time. Almost like someone had decided to put a company out of business by eliminating the employees. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that so many people can disappear and no one has caught sight of any of them?”
“Did the missing people live close to roads where the pregnant blood prophets were found?”
“Close enough.” A beat of silence. “What are you thinking?”
I wonder who gave the order to hunt down the people who ran the breeding farms. “I think those people are truly gone, and we shouldn’t look too hard for them or ask too many questions.”