Pellini returned as I disconnected. “Can’t back in. Bertha’s in the garage.”
“Crap. We’ll have to—” I stopped and reconsidered. Bertha was Cory’s 1976 Chevy Nova, decked out with radio equipment and an antenna farm. “Load him into Bertha. You drive it and him home, and we’ll send someone for your truck and the rest of Cory’s radio setup.”
He didn’t look at all happy about abandoning his truck but was smart enough to catch on. “Not only can we use the radios, it’ll be good for Cory when he gets through, um, this.”
“Exactly,” I said then tensed at the sound of a car engine. A careful peek through the blinds revealed a government sedan blocking the driveway. “Sonofabitch. Feds.”
Pellini groaned and smacked his forehead. “Gallagher texted he was coming after us for the Piggly Wiggly debrief. I forgot because of all this.” He waved a hand at Cory.
“I’ll deal with him. Lock the door behind me and don’t let them in.” I walked out of the stinky house and closed the door, relieved to hear the snick of the deadbolt. At the end of the driveway, Clint Gallagher stepped out of the sedan.
Damn, but I sure hoped I didn’t smell as if I’d been dunked in a vat of Eau de Hell Gel.
Chapter 4
While the majority of the Feds assigned to this area opted to wear practical and comfortable fatigues, Clint Gallagher stuck with the men-in-black dark-suit-with-sunglasses look. He regarded me through those sunglasses now, mouth pursed in annoyance. I couldn’t deny that he was a handsome man in an FBI-recruiting-poster sort of way. Square jaw, high cheekbones, fierce blue eyes, and even a frickin’ cleft in his chin that I promised myself I’d someday get to punch.
Gallagher had been on Ryan and Zack’s task force, but the combination of my snark and the stick up his ass meant we’d never hit it off. I considered giving him a bright smile as I strolled toward my vehicle, but opted instead for a surly glare. He’d know I was faking any hint of pleasure at the sight of him. Besides, I didn’t want him to think I enjoyed his company and run the risk of having to be sociable.
My plan was simple: pacify Gallagher, send him on his way, and get Cory to the nexus. “You didn’t have to chase me down.”
He whipped off the sunglasses to better glower at me. “Is it in your job description to make my day harder than it already is?”
“It’s in the fine print.”
Gallagher looked past me toward the house. “How’s Cory getting on?”
“Pretty good. He’s wiped out from PT, so he’s taking a nap.” All I needed to make my day extra super special was for Gallagher to decide he wanted to visit the squishy-gooey Cory. “Pellini’s making sure Cory has everything he needs, then we’re out of here.” I fished my keys from my pocket. “I need to get home and hook up with the Russian DIRT liaison. How about we get that debrief out of the way?”
“Deal.” His mouth flattened into a thin smile. “I’ll follow you over to the Federal Command Center.”
I faked a wince. “Sorry. My schedule’s too tight to hit good ol’ Fed Central today. I’ll give you a quick verbal report and email the full thing later.”
“You had enough time to make a social call.”
His tone put my back up. “A few minutes with Cory versus the hours that Fed Central would chew out of my day? No comparison. Not to mention, how I schedule my time is none of your goddamn business.” I scowled. “Since when is face-to-face a requirement?”
“Since now.” Gallagher jabbed his sunglasses at me. “Word has it we had a Class 1A demon down in the dirt, and you let it get away.”
“We had it?” I narrowed my eyes. “When was the last time you got down and dirty with any demon, let alone a Class 1A?”
“That’s not the point.”
I took a step into his personal space and jerked my chin up. “We—the DIRT team—did indeed have the demon netted.”
Jaw tight, he closed the distance until only half a foot separated us. “Exactly. Research shows that an LG4-621S stun net should be more than adequate to incapacitate a 1A demon.”
“That’s a nice theory,” I said, planting my hands on my hips to help power my mega-glare. “Small technical difficulty, though. The stun feature doesn’t work so great when the net is here and the power supply is snowed in at Memphis R&D. All I had was an untested, undersized, unpowered net, and the wizard staff.”
He blinked and retreated a step. “I didn’t get that in the briefing.”
“I reported the missing power supply before we engaged the demon. If you’d stayed on top of it, maybe you wouldn’t be badgering frontline people over bullshit.”
“There’s more on my plate than incursions,” he said, exasperation in his tone. “I dropped everything when the 1A capture report—”
“Who classified the Piggly Wiggly demon as 1A anyway? No one asked my opinion.”
“It looked like a 1A.”
“And an alley cat looks kind of like a panther.”
He shook his head as if he was struggling to keep up. “Are you saying it’s a new breed?”
“I’ll be sure to include everything in my emailed report to Command.” I opened the Humvee door. “Are we done here?”
“No. Wait. You have to—” His phone rang with an annoying laser beam sound, and he snatched it from its holster. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I muttered as he turned away to answer. I cast a furtive look at Cory’s bedroom window. Pellini would signal me if something had gone wrong—wronger—unless he was stuck like I’d been earlier. I sent a quick text.
Good deal. House security was on the ball. Now I just needed to clear Gallagher’s rigid ass out of here so we could get Cory to the nexus.
Gallagher cursed under his breath. “But she was holding her own a half hour ago,” I heard him say as I oh-so-casually eavesdropped. “I thought the techs weren’t going to—” He broke off and listened. “Jesus. How many more?” Pause. “Dammit. I’ll be there in fifteen.” He slammed the phone into its holster, but remained facing away from me for a good five seconds before turning. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, suddenly looking as weary as I felt. “Look, Gillian. You need to come to Fed Central.”
Under normal circumstances I’d have told him where he could shove Fed Central, but the uncharacteristic hint of desperation in his voice capped my snark.
“Gallagher,” I said then took a deep breath. “Clint. If you’re like me, you haven’t had a full night’s sleep since the valve explosion. Why don’t we call this a standoff and leave it at that. Command will get their report, just not in person.”
“What if I swear you won’t be tied up for more than a half hour?”
“I’d say you were a liar.” I kept my tone light, but the worry on his face deepened. “What the hell is wrong with you, Gallagher? Is your ass on the line if you don’t get me in there?” I didn’t like that thought one little bit. “If that’s the case, put me on the phone with your boss. We’ll sort it out here and now.”
“No. I’m the only one who wants you at Fed Central.” He swept an oddly furtive glance around, as if he suspected ninjas might be hiding in the bushes.
I threw my hands up in the air. “Spit it out. I don’t have time for—”
He stepped close. “A consult,” he said, voice low. “I need an arcane consult.”
“Great. Fine.” Except that I really didn’t have time for a consult. “I’ll have DIRT expedite your request, and we’ll get it scheduled.”
“I can’t put in a request.” He did another wary check of the area. “But if you just happened to be at Fed Central . . .”
“Hold on. If you can’t put in a request, that means your bosses haven’t approved a consult.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Or you’ve sc
rewed up and need help covering your ass.”
Frustration washed over his face. “I don’t know why they won’t call in an arcane specialist, but our orders are clear. No consults.”
This kind of shit was exactly why I didn’t want the Feds knowing about Cory. “Let me get this straight,” I said with heat. “You want me to waltz into a hornet’s nest, take a big stick and start swinging it around while I sing Fuck the Feds? Half an hour, my rosy red—.”
“The task force has David Hawkins.”
I blinked, nonplussed. David was a pleasant, unassuming man who’d spent his life savings to open Grounds for Arrest, the coffee shop across from the PD. The distress in Gallagher’s tone made it sound as if David was next in line for execution.
Clearly I was missing a chunk of vital information. I counted to five in Portuguese and fought for patience. “What, pray tell, does the FBI Special Task Force want with the owner of a café?”
Gallagher scrubbed a hand over his face then blew out a breath as if resigned to being “that guy” who leaked classified information. “There’s a . . . I guess you could say it’s a plague. People are going into stasis in something like a cocoon. The CDC is all over it, but they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve already managed to kill three plague victims. We still have two, including David, and four more were just brought in.”
Shit. A cocoon? I restrained the urge to ask if it was gooey, red, and slimy. This “plague” had to be the same thing Cory was going through, but I wasn’t convinced that a trip to Fed Central with Gallagher would be worthwhile, especially not if I ran the risk of getting detained because the higher-ups didn’t want an arcane specialist nosing around. No, my best hope for getting useful information was to assess Cory on the nexus. I’d sort out the Fed mess afterward. “Whether they chose to call me in or not, I should have at least been notified,” I said, more annoyed at being out of the loop than I’d realized. All these damn agencies were more concerned with hoarding secrets than cooperating on problem solving. “Who’s blocking channels?”
Gallagher winced as if he had the mother of all headaches. “It’s Garner’s case. He hasn’t been himself since he returned from leave. Maybe because Ryan still isn’t back to work.” His mouth pressed thin. “Or maybe power has gone to his head. He’s the hot shit Division Chief of the new Arcane Investigations expanded task force.”
Gallagher was still speaking, something about caseload and divisions and seniority, but I’d stopped listening. Garner. Zack Garner. Two months I’d been searching for him, his caretaker Sonny, Ryan, and Ashava: my “AWOL four”, as I’d come to call them. And now Zack was doing his FBI thing as if nothing had happened?
I tuned back in to hear Gallagher finish with, “—and he’s been on call twenty-four seven.”
“Got it. No worries,” I said. Gallagher needed an under the table, no strings attached consult. Meanwhile, I needed to pay a visit to Division Chief Zack Garner and, as a side bonus, I could check out the slime victims. “I’m starting to see the wisdom of going to Fed Central . . . to give my report.” I stopped short of giving him an over-the-top sly wink. “Let’s go. I’ll follow you.”
Chapter 5
Zack Garner was back. Without a word to me. No phone call, no email, nothing.
I followed Gallagher out of the near-deserted neighborhood, past shaggy yards and boarded up houses, while my confusion rose along with my anger. Clearly, Zack’s return from his “leave of absence” hadn’t been in just the last day or two. No, he’d been back at work long enough to be well-established at Fed Central. But what about the others? Szerain and Zack had taken Ashava then fled—with Xharbek in hot pursuit. Sonny Hernandez, Zack’s caretaker, was also missing, and I could only assume that he’d gone with them. Yet if Zack had returned, did that mean the others were still in hiding? Or had something happened to them?
Not long after I met Zack, he and my best friend, Jill Faciane, became an item, and then he’d failed to tell her that he was a demon before he “accidentally” got her pregnant. And not just any old demon. Zakaar was one of only eleven demahnk: mind-reading, shape-shifting, power-wielding, secretive beings who were oathbound to the demonic lords—and, as I recently discovered, were the nonhuman “daddies” of the half-human lords. Which meant Jill’s baby was a demonic lord.
But had Zack prepared any of us for that little surprise? Hell no. It didn’t help that I had a really tough time believing he’d knocked up Jill by accident. I wanted to, but . . . damn, that dog just didn’t hunt, especially since Jill had been using protection, and Zack was—to put it bluntly—a super-being. I also wanted oh-so-badly to believe that his original intentions were nice and benign and involved everyone being happy and in the know, and certainly not at all like the godawful shocking way we found out about Ashava’s true nature. Jill had given birth to her mere minutes before the valve explosion. Except, instead of wasting time with actually getting born the old fashioned way, the kid had teleported herself out of Jill’s body . . . in baby dragon form. Then again, Ashava had good reason to be in a hurry. It was her efforts that kept the valve explosion from being about a thousand times worse.
Yet after Ashava saved the world, Jill had barely a minute to hold her before Zakaar and Szerain appeared and stole her away—ostensibly to keep her from Xharbek. And I wanted to believe that stealing Ashava was in her best interest. But now Zack was out of hiding? Just like that?
Yeah, I had a few trust issues where the various demahnk were concerned. I liked Zack, but he and the other demahnk were playing deeper games, with rules and stakes they refused to share.
And we’re all players—or pawns—whether we like it or not.
Adrenaline surged, and I slammed on the brakes, managing to avoid plowing the Humvee into Gallagher’s car by at least a whole millimeter. When my brain caught up with my reflexes, I realized he’d stopped at the ID checkpoint into the restricted area. For security and public safety reasons, no unauthorized personnel were allowed within a two-mile radius of Beaulac’s former police department building.
The guard scowled my way. I mouthed “sorry” as my heart lurched its way back to a semblance of a reasonable pace. After Gallagher was cleared through, I pulled up to the checkpoint and submitted to the ID/fingerprint scan/smile-for-surveillance routine.
A block away, the Federal Command Center loomed—formerly the top-ranked Southern States Heart Hospital. It had been a logical choice for the command center since a) no heart patient in their right mind wanted to be in a hospital that was a mile and a half from ground zero, and b) being in the restricted zone gave Fed Central yet another layer of security. The hospital building and grounds had been converted into a compound that served as local headquarters for several agencies, including DHS, NSA, CIA, and others, with the FBI task force supposedly taking the lead. Joint occupation of the building gave the illusion of hand-holding cooperation, but with each organization in its own wing, the reality fell short.
I passed through a second checkpoint at the facility’s perimeter fence and into the shadow of the monstrosity that had once been a sleek, modern building. The ground level windows had been bricked over, with no consideration for aesthetics, and the upper level ones barred, giving the place an overall grim prison effect.
Gallagher parked and headed for the door with only the barest of glances my way. I parked a few spaces away then followed. I had no clue what his plan was to facilitate this unauthorized consult, but apparently he trusted me to follow his lead when the time came. Gallagher was sharp and dedicated. He’d never have been recruited into Zack and Ryan’s task force otherwise. And though he and I butted heads constantly, I was confident he’d come up with a way to get me past the “no arcane specialists” order and into the medical wing.
Security had increased in the two weeks since I’d last been here. Substantially. Not only had two machine gun turrets been added on the mezzanine overlooking the e
ntrance, but the checkpoint at the door included a blood test, for additional identification. In the lobby, a handful of agents and support personnel passed through as they went about their business. Gallagher was nowhere to be seen, but I figured he’d find me when the time came.
Since my cover purpose was to file my report on the Piggly Wiggly incident, I made my way down the corridor to the communication room. The computer station nearest the door was empty, so I snagged it, logged in, and pretended to be absorbed in the details of the morning. And waited. The wall clock—like all the Fed Central clocks—had a sharp and annoying tick tick t-t-tock at the top of every minute, emphasizing how much time I wasn’t spending helping Cory. I had faith that Gallagher wouldn’t leave me hanging, and he clearly had the same sort of faith in me, but it would’ve been nice to know the basics of his plan. Should I be bracing for a distraction? And if so, what? Fire alarm? Inexplicable swarm of ferrets?
Ten years later—or about five minutes, if the clock was to be believed—I heard Gallagher’s voice down the hall, coming closer.
“We’ll get the logistics sorted,” he was saying. “Will allocation of another twelve rooms be adequate for today?”
A woman’s voice replied. “I can only hope. We barely have the resources for the victims brought in this morning, let alone a dozen more cases. But best to have space ready.”
“Medical personnel screenings for Level 1 clearance are underway,” Gallagher said as he and a petite older woman wearing a white lab coat passed the doorway. “You’ll have more support by tonight.”
Good, no ferrets or fire alarms. High level security clearance for standard medical conditions wasn’t the norm, which meant that was my cue. I stepped into the corridor behind them.
“Excuse me, y’all,” I said amiably. When they turned, I smiled at the woman then peered at her name badge. “Dr. Patel is it? I’m Kara Gillian, Arcane Commander. I couldn’t help but overhear you mention victims and Level 1 clearance in the same context?” I gave her the gently perplexed look of an authority figure who expects nothing short of a full explanation.