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Flashing lights filled the entryway Seth had created, and a steady stream of well-equipped and armored officers flooded in, guns up. There was something about walking into a fresh death, especially, I imagined, an explosive death like this one. Seth and I had our hands up, but they paid us no attention. They dropped their muzzles and stared into the air.
I admit it was rather impressive, all the bits and gobbets of Heath’s body falling from the ceiling where the impact had spewed them. Gross, but impressive.
“What in the hell is going on in here?” Ethan roared from behind the small army of officers. “Zoë Delante!” He pushed through until he stood between us and them, hands on his hips around the bulletproof vest, his face a smooth mask marred only by the unmistakable line of a frown.
“Right here, Dad.” I moved from behind Seth. “Oh, and this guy?” I motioned to the doctor like Vanna White. “He’s one of the good guys. Please don’t shoot him.”
“Stand down! Everyone stand down.” He holstered his side arm. “Zoë.”
I cleared my throat and exhaled one long, slow breath. “I... I don’t even know where to begin, Ethan.” A thought occurred to me. “You guys found the missing people outside?”
Ethan gave a terse nod. “With the leader of the Holy Church of Light.” He grunted. “And some men with weapons.” He took off his vest and unbuttoned his shirt, then handed it to me without a word.
“Oh.” I’d completely forgotten I was naked. “Thank you. Did they surrender?”
“Yes.”
I slipped the shirt on and buttoned it up. The shirt reached my knees and billowed around me. “Good.”
“Those were your bad guys?”
“I... can I explain it to you in the car? I promise I will, but we’ve got a really short window of opportunity here, and I don’t want to miss it.”
Ethan considered me for a moment. “Fine, but this doesn’t clean the slate between you and the BPD, do you understand me?”
I ran my hands through my hair. “I know. Just... I need you to trust me a bit longer. Wait, where are Daniel and Mike?”
He waved a hand in the air. “They’re following up on a lead. Want to tell me about this mess, or do we not have time for that either?”
An unhappy sound escaped my mouth. “He is, er, was a bad guy. He was one of the bad guys we were looking for, and in the process of trying to get away from him, I kind of... well, there’s just no easy, non-creepy way to say this. Ethan, I kind of blew him up.”
His eyes grew wide. “You did this?”
He stepped back, and a tight knot twisted in my stomach. “Yes.” Please, oh, please, don’t be afraid of me.
The officers behind him shifted, nervous whispers rumbling in their ranks. A couple even crossed themselves.
I wanted to scream that I wasn’t a monster, that I was one of the good guys, but that was a hard sell given the evidence still occasionally dropping from the ceiling.
“How do you want to play this?” Ethan asked.
“How do you want to play this?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be straight. It’s been a shit week for you—high stress, too personal. It’s why I took you off the case, as much good as that did. After what you did to West... well, they will never let you in that precinct again. Hell, I’m going to strongly suggest that you take a hiatus after we’re done here.
“But I know in your heart of hearts, you’re a good woman, Zoë. A stubborn pain in my ass, but with a good heart and a good soul. We’d miss out on catching a lot of future bad guys if we stuck you in a jail cell. As long as you can keep the explosions from hurting our guys....”
“Yes, I’ll be good.” Dammit, I was going to cry. I brushed the tears away. “Thank you, Ethan. I know where the babies are being kept, but I think they’re getting ready to transport them. So—”
“Our window is very small,” Ethan finished for me. “We’d better get our asses in gear!”
***
I watched the ambulance pull away with Sera on a gurney—alive, thank the gods, but in need of medical care. After all, we can’t all be quick-healing werewolves.
Ethan hustled me to his car, and I rode in the back with Seth. It didn’t take long to detail what I’d found out. As Ethan barked orders over the radio, the two of us sat in relative quiet. One of the EMTs had extended the courtesy of handing me a set of scrubs, so I sat there, lost in that minty green fabric—short girl problems.
“You’re awfully quiet,” I said, poking Seth in the arm. Queen of small talk—yeah, that was me.
Seth rubbed his face with both hands. “I wish....” He shook his head. “You didn’t tell me that he’d killed Aatmaj.”
I dropped my eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were all so connected.”
He gave me a small smile. “There are only about twenty-five of us in the United States, two hundred in the whole world. Mostly in India, but I don’t know... I feel like an endangered species. There are no female naga, so the chances of getting a boy, much less a full naga, from breeding with a human makes our numbers hard to grow.
“Aatmaj, Simon, Hartiej and I all came from the same rural village in India. You can imagine their surprise to see me, with light eyes and blonde hair, but my mother was an English tourist who fell in love with the dark shadow of my father. I got her looks and brains, and his... well, scales and tail.”
He sighed. “We were all born within twenty years of each other, Simon only three years older than me. Eventually, one by one, we all left the village as men seeking our fortunes. A hundred and fifty years, and somehow we all ended up here. I’m pretty sure Simon brought, uh, Heath—that’s what you called him, right?—with him. He was the youngest of us, the most easily manipulated, and for a time we all existed in harmony.”
He turned to stare out the window. “We play at being human, Ms. Delante, but your vices are contagious. We had all found our fortunes in one way or another, but Simon wanted power, something beyond our magick, our shapeshifting. That’s when we parted ways. I became a doctor to do better by humans. He chose to find ways to control them. Hartiej wasn’t lying when he said Simon would be unhappy that I’m involved, especially in direct opposition to his work.”
“Will there be repercussions?”
He took my hands in his and squeezed them gently. “We’re about to walk into a battlefield.”
***
The hour-and-a-half trip took a great deal longer in my head. While we filled the time with strategy and nonsense—and even a touch of levity—something in the center of my body tugged at me. Hurry, hurry, little witch.
In a moment of silence, as the men stared out their windows, I couldn’t shake a growing bad feeling—the sense we were about to walk into something nasty. Heath’s warning echoed in my head: ‘As strong as she is, I don’t know if she’s strong enough to defeat him.’ What if he was right? What if firepower and magick weren’t enough? It wasn’t even the possible cost of our lives; if we didn’t figure this out, a dozen babies were lost forever.
That thought made me want to cry. Instead, I closed my eyes and prayed.
Prayer was always odd for me. I grew up in a Christian household that used it to secure whatever we wanted. When I first converted to Wicca, I felt like I was betraying my new traditions by using my old ones. What I learned from pagans much wiser than I, like my amazing best friend, Lucy, was that to pray was human. Not Christian, not Wiccan, not Buddist—just human. The Powers that Be didn’t really care how we did it.
So now I said a nightly prayer, and a daily blessing when I remembered, but the well of emotion bubbling up inside me demanded something different, something far more personal. I poured my soul into it, and bowed my head over clasped hands.
O’ Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, Mother of Logic, please guide me in my time of need. I seek You in my hour of darkness. The fight is coming, and I need to be strong enough to save the babies. If that means my final death, then so be it, but please, please, please let it be Your will that they survive. That’s all I want. Oh, and that You protect the men and women about to walk into this insanity with me. One life to save and preserve the many—I’m good with that. If that’s Your will, so mote it be.
“We’re here,” Seth whispered as the car rolled to a stop.
I looked up and through the grid partition. “Is that snow?”
