Of the six teams still in the field, two were offline on an op, one was in Australia training with their Bureau equivalent and the three remaining were on the way from cities closer to DC than Denver. I gave instructions to stay put and meet us at the airport. I had a feeling we might be outnumbered.
The Homeland Security cock-and-bull story Ghost drummed up for us acquired a Citation Encore, easily one of the nicest jets I’d ever flown in. Once on board, I checked on Bryan’s flight and found out that he’d landed an hour before Winnie had taken over Sue’s body.
I reckoned she was already in DC. Hell, she might have skipped the moment she’d been wounded, preferring to wait for the spelled agent to come to her. Either way, it indicated she hadn’t been severely wounded and was able to travel at a moment’s notice. Everything she did was well thought out, well planned. Which made sense. After all, the Bureau had trained her.
Before takeoff, I unholstered my phone. “This’ll work?” I asked Alex.
“Should, Kal … Listen … I …” He faltered.
“You couldn’t have twigged onto Winnie’s spells,” I told him woodenly. “She was one of the best and something like this has never happened to a team before.” Raising a hand to cut off his objection, I continued, “You have talent like I’ve never seen before, Alex, but she has experience and a wealth of knowledge from two countries.”
With a whipped-puppy look, he went back to his contoured leather seat while I held up the phone and dialed Dom’s number. If things went as planned, his cell’s ring tone would be the trigger word for the small sapphire sitting on Sue’s headless body, which would explode in a ball of boiling acid that would reduce her, the entire Vic, and a good section of tarmac into a steaming puddle of foul-smelling black goo. The phone rang twice before the line went dead.
God, she deserved so much more, the least of which was a burial in Arlington with honors. Instead she had received an acid bath and a one-way trip to a toxic landfill. A little black star with her name in the center, mounted on the wall of the Warehouse’s Records Room would provide the only epitaph, seen by a select few.
Damn. Pain throbbed through my skull, sending a red haze, a cloud of fury, through my vision, coloring everything around me shades of scarlet. Cursing, I rose to my feet, the onset of a full-blown crap attack coming my way like an out of control freight train, devastating everything in its way.
The door to the lavatory slammed shut against my back and the rage crashed through me, while in the mirror I saw my eyes darken into something frightening, feral. For a moment the rage was everything, everywhere, carrying with it Leena’s clean summertime scent.
Sudden and shocking—like a hard slap to the face—the rage passed as if it had never been. I watched as my eyes faded to sky blue and an aching emptiness filled the space where the fury had been born.
I started to cry. For the first time in years, perhaps twenty, tears coursed unabated down my face and racking sobs shook my body. Coughing and hacking, I fell to the cramped floor, muscles quivering like jelly, useless. Some small part of my brain, far in the back amid the stacks of trivia, wondered if the floor had been cleaned recently, reflected that it would be pretty gross if I were lying on a carpet of dried urine and fecal particles. The things we think of when stressed, huh?
Hands over my mouth, I sobbed, the loss of my agents, the loss of Carol, the loss of my innocence finally surging through my tired mind, unhampered by my customary fury. Emotional walls I had built over the years had crumbled under the strain of time and fatigue. Eventually, the silent sobs quit and I lay there, quiet and spent, empty of purpose and volition.
Five, ten minutes later, with eyes fever red, I wobbled to my feet, turned on the tap and washed the snot and dried tears from my face.
“What’s wrong with me,” I mumbled through the tepid water. “What is going on?”
The walk to my seat lasted four days as I passed those who pretended not to notice my disheveled appearance and bloodshot eyes, pretended not to be aware that I’d been bawling myself sick in the bathroom for the last few minutes.
When the back of my lap hit the seat and the plane began to taxi for a takeoff, I tried BB’s office again from a satphone. Still, nothing but the answering machine.
“Nothing on BB’s end?” Pat’s voice had a raspy, guttural quality heard in those who spent some time screaming. She flopped down on the seat next to mine. By the color of her eyes, she’d had her own bout of the weepies.
“Just the answering machine. Doesn’t mean anything.” A lie. It meant that something was terribly wrong and we both knew who was responsible.
Pat laid her head against my arm, a gesture of solidarity or the need for comfort? Maybe both?
“You okay, kid?” I asked, laying my cheek on the top of her head. Her hair smelled of lavender and mist.
“Who you calling kid, old man?” she joked sadly.
“I am officially the oldest cat here, so everyone is a kid.”
“Harrumph.”
“Don’t ‘harrumph’ me. I’m the old man. Not a man jack one of you has hit 30 yet. You’re only—”
She broke in. “A young girl still and never mind about my age!”
“So ‘kid’ is actually a compliment.” I may have looked like hell, but my tone was light and playful.
We shared a long silence until the jet reached thirty thousand feet. With a sigh, she rolled her head away. “I’ve seen a lot of bad things in my life, both in and out of the Bureau, but that … that was a something out of a nightmare, her head exploding like that.”
Nightmare, or a scene from Scanners. “Yeah, it was bad.” Once again I felt the patter of shredded bone against my skin.
More silence. More memories of blood and death. “Can I tell you something, Kal?”
“Of course.”
A long, indrawn breath. “I’ve worked with Special Branch for six years now, worked with five different teams. All good people, all people of character, but you, Mr. Kalevi Hakala, the Ferocious Finn, are my favorite.”
“ ‘Ferocious Finn’?”
She looked at me curiously. “You didn’t know?”
“I never bothered to ask.”
Her hand rubbed my shoulder. “You always have this shell around you, stronger than any armor. You smile and joke and say the right things, all the things a normal person would say and do, but it’s just an act, Kal.”
A normal person? Since when were the people in the Bureau normal?
She must have read my silence as an affirmation. “The only time I see you, the real you, is when you rage, when you lose control. That’s the damaged part of you coming through to roar its pain to the world. A beast and a wounded child at the same time.”
“Thank you Doctor Phil,” I remarked dryly.
An iron hard finger poked me in the side hard enough to hurt. “There you go again, jerkwad, throwing up a glib remark to deflect a serious conversation. It’s been your M.O. for as long as even BB remembers.”
“You talk to BB about me?”
“I’m Special Branch. I’m not only a Receptionist, but I also have an M.A. in Psychology and do psych-evals on all team members, just like all the other Receptionists.”
I scratched my head in puzzlement. “You’ve never done a psych-eval on me.”
“Not a formal one. When you’ve had an eval done in the past, it was always at Warehouse or while being investigated, right?”
“Right.”
“It was a Bureau Receptionist who did it. Just like you, Kal, so blinded by your revenge you didn’t even know it was the Receptionists who head-shrunk you.”
It was? My mind filed back to the countless evals I’d had in the past. Same dumb questions, same bs answers … scritch scritch scritch went a pen on pad as every one of the Special Branch evaluators wrote down how I felt—my ‘feelings’ being of special interest to the Bureau. Can’t have any budding psychos running around with the power of a Bureau agent, can we? And Pat was right, all the docs were ladies, dressed to kill, with minds sharper than razors—those keen intellects cutting deep into my brain and scooping out the damaged bits for scrutiny.
And boy was I ever damaged—a haunted soul bleeding rage and pain whenever hurt. But this was old news to the Bureau. As long as I could focus my fury on the Supernaturals without hurting others, I was aces.
“No,” I muttered when the pause became too long. “I never noticed. Why the hell are you talking to me about this?”
When she looked at me, the force of her gaze rocked me back. “Because this is the first time I’ve seen you experience an intense emotion that wasn’t anger. Do you have any idea what this means?”
“No. I’m not a psychologist.”
Another poke in the same spot. It was going to leave a mark, I knew it. We Finns bruise like bananas.
“You’re doing it again, you big idiot,” she growled. “What it means is that you’re starting to break. A crack has finally appeared in that invulnerable armor of yours. And just when I’d given up on you being human, too.”
“Cute.”
“What it also means is that if you don’t seek professional help soon, on a regular basis, you could have a serious emotional crisis.”
My laughter, when it came, carried enough bitterness to corrode the strongest metal. “Oh, Pat, you don’t get it.” More caustic mirth bubbled out of me. “Maybe no one does. I know I’m deeply damaged, like one of those hoarders you see on TV, their sickness displayed for all the world to see, but unable to do anything about it. I have that same kind of obsession. Instead of being unable to stop my actions, I want to continue this path toward my self-destruction.”
Her look of dismay was like a slap.
“Why am I still an agent?”
No words, just a shake of her head as tears gathered in her eyes.
“Why am I granted so much latitude? Why haven’t I been officially reprimanded for my drinking during an op? Why haven’t I been benched for destroying my office? I have the worst morale of any agent in the Bureau, but instead of a room with rubber walls, I am still issued a team and given license to kill Supernaturals as I see fit.”
“I don’t know.” The words might have been a prayer, they were so soft and sorrowful.
“The reason isn’t hard to fathom, Pat. BB doesn’t want me to be sane, to shed my obsession like dry skin. The crazier I am, the more effective, and right now I’m very effective indeed. That’s why my leash is long and loose. There is one thing I can be absolutely sure of … as long as I pose no threat to the team or Straights, the Bureau will use me until I’m empty and useless.”
Silence. Pat stared toward the front of the plane, eyes set and glassy.
“Of course, you knew that already. I think everyone with half a brain knew.”
She nodded.
“It’s okay, Pat, I don’t mind. I’ve been living with this … thing in my heart for so long, it’s no longer a burden. I may be a bit friable right now, but I’ll pull through like I always do.”
Perhaps a minute went by before I felt warm lips brush my ear. “I love you, you big dope,” she whispered. “And I don’t want to see you hurt or in pain.” That said, she rose and sashayed her way to the back of the cabin. The back of her front carried a lot of appeal.
One nap later we entered DC airspace and after an apple juice we landed. Before the jet could taxi to a stop, black Vics and SUVs surrounded us, federal cop chic.
Teams Delta, Iota and Beta spilled out of the vehicles, a sinister version of the clown car trick. The team leaders surrounded me as my feet hit the tarmac: Ayre Grossman, tall, rail thin and no sense of humor. Malcolm Czerny, short, balding and strong as an ox. Audrey Washington, a dark haired stiletto of a woman with almond eyes and midnight hair. All of them deferred to me as the senior man in the field. Not sure if that was a good thing.
Audrey, a three-year agent, looked me up and down, focusing on my gore-stained chinos. “Kal, you look like hell.” She offered no warmth and would welcome none.
“I feel worse.” Not far from the truth.
“What’s the play?” Ayre asked solemnly. Everything he did was with heaping doses of solemn.
“You all got the update, so the rest is easy. We suit up, hit the Warehouse with everything we’ve got and save the day.”
Ayre’s hairy eyebrows shot up. “That’s it?”
I gritted my teeth. “Yah, that’s it. Except, if you see a skinny red-haired witch, shoot to kill. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
Audrey smiled, a sight that would scare most people. “Good. I like it.”
Malcolm’s voice rumbled up from some deep pit. “We brought an extra SUV for your team.”
I turned to my people lined in an arc behind me. “Suit up, load up and let’s roll.”
Agents die in the field, but the Warehouse has always stood resolute amidst the carnage of war with Supernaturals. A good dollop of paranoia saw the Bureau office shift from location to location every few years, in case some clever Supernatural came a-calling, a policy that had worked since the Warehouse had been established in 1866. My palms grew clammy on the drive to Arlington, heat building up behind my eyes as I became more and more excited at the prospect of a good dust-up.
Tires squealed as we rounded the corner into the Warehouse parking lot. Low rent Dodges, Hondas and Fords were parked in the employees’ spaces—nothing flashy, nothing that would draw a second look. Another ordinary day at Maxine’s Data Storage (don’t ask, I don’t know, either) where the good guys fight the good fight.
Everything seemed normal as we pulled to a jittery stop, SUVs and Vics leaving smoky black streaks on the pavement. Before I knew it I found myself running toward the single point of entrance, a glass (actually panes of wurtzite boron nitride, 58% stronger than diamond) and carbon steel door with the cheesy company name stenciled in white.
I risked a quick glance inside before jinking my head back out of sight from within. What I’d seen had soured my stomach. “Delta, go round back to the door marked ‘Exit.’ Three feet to the right and three up is a hidden panel. Push and it will reveal a keypad.”
“What the hell is it?” Arye asked, voice dead as Disco.
“Director’s escape route in case something like this happens. Access code is Whiskey Foxtrot Tango 113. That’ll get you in the back. Keep in touch. Check?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Friends in low places. Now get gone.”
“Check, boss.” Delta team made themselves scarce.
“Everyone else, follow me. Magicians in the middle. Stay frosty, people, you’re not going to like what you see.”
The lobby looked the same as the last time I’d seen it, with the exception of a spray of red and pink against the puke-yellow wall behind the Receptionist’s desk. I knew exactly what I’d find and wasn’t disappointed. Kim, a two-year, lay on the floor behind the faux-wood desk, a neat little hole between her eyes. Somebody had used a high velocity round to redecorate the wall behind her. I checked the shotgun mounted under her desk. Not a round fired. Bryan/Winnie’s handiwork was my guess. A ghoul would’ve just torn her to shreds. How the hell did Bryan/Winnie get past the outer defenses?
A tap on a button and the panel door popped a couple of inches. The Lahti preceded me into the long hallway, the others filing close behind.
Arye’s somber voice sounded over the earwig. “You weren’t kidding about a hatch. It’s barely bigger than a body can get through. Going in now. Out.”
My skin felt tight as a scream across the bones of my skull as I reached the first door, the Combat room, its black lock plate charred and still smoking slightly, the acrid smell of burning wire and insulation irritating my nose.
I pushed the door open with the toe of my boot, revealing black with a good dose of deep dark. Quickly, I slipped on my night-vision glasses, and the cavernous combat room revealed itself in glorious shades of black and white. Infrared would’ve been useless. Zombies and ghouls tended toward room temp.
Two steps in and it hit me. The smell … blood, bowels, and piss, the smell of violent death along with the acrid stink of fear. Somebody had died … check that, a lot of somebodies had died.
Six steps, seven. More blood smell. Eight, nine and I spotted it … or them … the bodies, a whole mess of them, two or three teams worth. Not that they were recognizable, I was going by sheer volume of bits and pieces. They had been literally ripped limb from limb and then stuffed into the weapons racks in a macabre display of horrific humor, blood dripping blackly to the floor.
Dripping? This had just happened!
Too late I turned my attention upwards where ghouls dropped like spiders into our midst. The Lahti silently spoke twice before a slimy, warty body hit mine, razor claws flashing, tearing at my body armor.
“Brasssalmon!” I grunted as I bounced off a wrestling mat. Twin booms from the explosive rounds nearly tore the ghoul in half as it raked another claw across my chest, shredding Kevlar and leaving deep grooves in titanium. I cursed myself for not leading with the .44 and dug my hands into the thing’s putrid, slick innards. Setting my shoulders, my biceps, I heaved, tearing the monster in half, finishing what the explosive rounds started. Thick, dark, foul fluid sprayed across my face. I nearly lost what I’d eaten for the past two decades as the putrid stuff entered my nostrils. The legs and lower torso landed next to me, twitching, while the upper body flipped end over end to land flopping and gnashing at Matt’s feet. Two explosive rounds from his .44 into the thing’s head ended the monster.
Six more ghouls jumped like jackrabbits around the room, and the teams, clustered together, were firing back to back in a tight group, keeping each other safe in the eye of a storm of bullets.
Another ghoul sped toward me, almost too fast to see. I managed to draw my own .44 and get a round off, which took the creature in the knee, blowing the joint apart, causing it to stumble and fall wetly onto the mat. More explosive rounds tore it to bite-sized pieces.
Four more went down, shredded in a hail of exploding bullets, and I felt like we might come through this battle unscathed, but the sight of two agents down, writhing in agony in the center of the group, brought my rage surging to the fore.
One more ghoul, dodging bullets and whirling across the floor like a dervish—a blur of undead wrath—came at me at speeds I couldn’t fathom. The fury that powered me was easily up to the task. The .44 fell to the mat, but the Bowie appeared as if by magic, and I ducked and swung, slicing clean through its arm. A gurgly shriek came from its armored throat as it passed and turned so quickly that the laws of physics might have been made of rubber. Again it rushed me, but I spun, Bowie flicking out to catch it above the knee, half severing its leg. The monster tumbled to the ground, and I was on it as its shriek ripped through the air—the sound of metal being shredded—but that didn’t matter because my hands grabbed both sides of its slimy head and wrenched!
Panting, I finally came to myself, holding a ghoul’s head in my hands, watching its mouth open and close spastically.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like that,” someone breathed in awe.
“Then you ain’t never worked with Kal,” said Dom, sounding proud.
I dropped the head and wiped slime off my hands. “What the hell are you two talking about? We have agents hurt.”
“It’s okay, Kal,” Alex interjected wearily as he wobbled to his feet. Two other magicians had their hands on the downed agents who now seemed to be asleep. “Me, Carl and Ilena have them in hand. They’ll be fine after a little nap.”
A nap. A nap sounded good, real good. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days, but I still had miles to go … “Any anti-healing, possession or tagging spells?” He shook his head. “Good job then. You, too, Ilena, Carl.” They tipped me a nod each.
Malcolm broke free from the bunch and trotted over while I retrieved the Lahti from a pool of translucent ghoul goo. “How did you do that?” he demanded.
“Do what?” A pant leg became the resting place for more slime.
“Move like that, man. No way was that normal!”
Fury still had a hold on me and it showed in my eyes when they met his. He blanched and backed off, muttering an apology. “I need two volunteers to escort the wounded to the cars. The rest come with me,” I said tonelessly, keeping my gaze fixed on Malcolm. It was a little Alpha Male of me, but we were in a bad situation and couldn’t afford dissention in the ranks.
Pat bulled forward from the group. “What the hell is this, Kal? These things didn’t stand a chance. Why would this Winnie person waste them this way?”
Arye broke in, “Everyone okay, boss? We heard fighting.”
“Fine. Gimme a sitrep.”
“In the BB’s office, waiting for you.”
“Stay put. We’ll be there. Check?”
“Check.”
“I have an idea why, Pat,” I growled. “But we have some housecleaning to do.” Storming past, my blood up, I signaled the rest to follow. Next down the hall was R&D, a Special Branch room. I paused, readying my glasses in case that room proved to be dark, too.
Alex stepped up, whisper low and harsh, features uncommonly tense. “Kal, you ever been inside R&D?”
I shook my head. “That’s where the geeks go to die, not me.”
“The walls are lined with Lexan cubicles, about twenty-five of them. Ten by ten, but that’s not the issue. It’s the gem locker.”
“The what?”
“Gem locker, a safe mounted into the floor … state-of-the-art electronic/magical lock. If this Winnie managed to open the safe, well … there’s about twenty million in spell gems in there.”
“Jesus … Twenty million?”
“Yeah. And at least two hundred class-one gemstones.”
I didn’t need this right now, but I had to ask. “Class one?”
He leaned in close. “Max quality gems of all kinds, the purest an unlimited budget can procure.”
Wasn’t that a comforting thought? “Just great,” I muttered. “It’s a wonder I don’t have ulcers.” Pissed, I kicked the door in.
Nothing.
Well, not nothing. If you had plopped a tornado inside the room the damage wouldn’t come close to what we found in there. In the black-and-white world of night-vision, broken sheets of polycarbonate resin lay scattered everywhere, along with what I reckoned used to be some very expensive electronic equipment. Add to that enough body parts to have come from at least six victims as well as enough blood to warm the heart of any die-hard Cronenberg fan.
Including one ghoul.
Its head had been literally crushed to a fetid black pulp. The weapon had been a large microscope, judging from the ghoul ichor liberally coating its base. The wielder of the fatal microscope lay next to the ghoul she had killed.
“Oh, crap … Ariel!” Suddenly the rage vanished as it had never been and I found Ariel in my arms, her body still warm. Through the torn remains of her left sleeve, I could see the shredded flesh of her arm, still sluggishly oozing blood.
“Alex!”
“On it, boss,” the little magician breathed, falling to his knees next to me, hands cupping Ariel’s unblemished cheeks, closing his eyes. A few incredibly long, agonizing seconds passed before his lids fluttered open. “She’s alive, just barely. Ilena, Carl, help me.” The other two magicians stumbled forward. “Boss, move.”
I moved. I waited. I fretted and paced as the trio laid their hands on the woman I had come to admire but had needed to bounce from the team. Her flesh began to knit and regenerate right before my eyes, blood drying, flaking off her chocolate skin to land on the floor as fine, rust-colored dust. Alex rose from the group and staggered to me, face older by at least ten years. “She’ll be okay, boss, but she needs fluids, lots and lots of fluids. I’ll have someone take her outside.”
My hand found his shoulder. “Thanks, Alex,” I said, voice thick with emotion.
He nodded. “She wants to talk to you.”
All I needed to hear. Shouldering the other two magicians to the side, I knelt at Ariel’s side, staring into her pale, pale face. Her head was cushioned by her carefully folded jacket. A moment later, her eyes fluttered open.
“Hi, Kal,” she sighed.
“Hi, yourself,” I answered gently.
“You were right, you know.”
“About what?”
Slowly her face crumpled. “I hesitated …
“Ariel—”
She wailed, “I hesitated and three magicians died in less than five seconds!” Sobs racked her body.
Carefully I drew her into my arms and she clutched at me with the singular power of her despair. “It’s okay,” I crooned as if to a child.
“No! It’s not, Kal! You were so right about me.”
“Ariel, Ariel … shhhh. I know, kid. But the important thing is you’re all right.”
No response.
“Ariel?” Still no response. “Ariel!”
“Boss, she’s unconscious.” Alex’s small hands gently pulled at me, and I let Ariel go. The two other magicians converged on her supine form, hands fluttering over her cheeks and neck. “Don’t worry, Kal. They’ll take care of her.”
I nodded. Emotions warred within and for a split second I didn’t trust myself to speak. Eventually, though, I shrugged off such distractions, willing the doors to my heart to swing shut. “Alex, check the gem locker. Matt, you and I will cover.”
“Check.”
From a hip pocket the little magician produced a one-carat diamond that shone with a soft green glow. It held it hard in his fist and stepped into the room, careful of the rubble. Matt and I followed, weapons at the ready. Forty-nine agonizing steps later the young magician reached his destination and knelt.
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Wait a second, Alex. Check for bugs.”
“What?”
“Humor me.”
“Check, boss.” A hand dipped into another pocket and rooted around for a second, producing a topaz the size of my pinky nail. Holding the gem in one hand, he closed his eyes and sighed.
Suddenly the stone glowed yellow through his fingers, outlining the bones of his hand, and something went pop behind and to the right of me. I whirled, ready to face a reasonable facsimile of hell, but there was nothing, only a wisp of grayish-black smoke. Three more small reports sounded a second later.
“Got to hand it to you, Kal,” Alex uttered aloud, trembling slightly. “Four cams, three tech, one magical.”
“Good job, kid. Carry on.” Clever, Winnie, real clever, I thought.
Nodding, he turned his attention to the floor, running a hand over a section of short-pile carpet. A strip separated from the rest and found the magician’s fingers. He pulled and a three by three square came loose, exposing plain gray concrete. Almost lovingly, he set the diamond on the hard surface and stood.
He said, “Better back up a little.”
Easy enough to do when magic is involved.
Alert for ghoulish intervention, I kept my eyes peeled and tried to grow a couple in the back of my head. From the hole in the carpet came a soft white glow, accompanied by a gentle whine. The whine and the glow remained steady for about thirty seconds before abruptly cutting off.
“Looks like no one has opened the safe,” announced Alex, back on his knees next to the hole.
I took a quick look. No concrete and no evidence there ever had been, only a dark steel door with a keypad and rotating handle. “How can you tell?”
“Locking spell is still in place,” he replied while he punched the star key. A yellow light blinked four times. “No one has entered the combination recently, at least not in the past four hours.”
I nodded and pointed to the charred remains of the spyeyes. “She wanted to see where we hid the locker and the combination.”
Alex produced another diamond and set it on the safe. More glowing and whining and—voilà!—the slab of cement was back in place. A trick most contractors would sell their grandmothers to learn.
“Kal, something has been eating at me,” Alex said as he drew close.
“You’re wondering how she disabled our spyeyes, defensive spells and lockdown protocols.”
“How did—”
For the first time in the last few hours, something like a smile touched my face, but couldn’t find a grip. “As senior field agent, I’ve been read in on all Warehouse defensive protocols—magical and otherwise. The answer is simple. Just like you killed the spyeyes, she disabled the Warehouse defenses by using magic.”
“Do you have any idea how much magical energy it takes to do that?”
“By your horrified expression, I’d say a metric ton.”
“Not funny, boss. It would take a couple hundred magicians working in concert to pull it off, and even then it would be problematic!”
I felt the beginnings of a major league headache coming on. What was Winnie up to? How did she get that kind of power? Some terrified part of my lizard brain didn’t want to know.
First things first. “Arye, we’re on our way.”
“Check, boss.”
“Audrey, you and yours take Medical. Mal, check out Records, then both of you check the Dormitory.”
“What’s going on, Kal?” Audrey asked, stone-faced. Malcolm glowered over her shoulder like a protective golem.
“This was a waste of time. She knew a few prepared teams would take out her pets.” My voice grew hoarse. “This evil twist wanted to delay us so she could get away. I’ll bet you serious money there’s spyeyes in every room. She wanted to find the gem locker.”
“That it?”
“No, that’s not it,” I answered, staring hard into her eyes. After a moment she dropped hers. “She wants BB and may have him. And … she wants to send me a message.”
“What message?” Malcolm grated.
What message indeed? It took about two seconds to come up with an answer. Snarling, I snapped, “Go on, get to Records, the Dorm and Medical. When you’re done, get to Admin.”
Both nodded and followed in my furious wake as I spouted out orders. “Have your magicians check for spyeyes and listeners and burn them out. Alex, you and Matt go to Combat and sterilize that, too. And, Alex, find out what happened to the defensive protocols, if they were dispelled, burned out or circumvented. And don’t forget the ghouls; they probably have gems we can use, most likely in their stomachs.”
“Check, boss.”
The rest of Epsilon followed me down the hall to Admin, where Arye and his group waited patiently, weapons at the ready. At their feet lay the headless body of a sturdy looking man. The walls were covered in a patina of blood, bones and brains. It was Bryan; I could tell by his shoes.
Damn her.
“Stand down, everybody,” I announced, heading toward BB’s office, a good case of mad building up.
BB’s office wasn’t as big as the previous Director’s, but a few families could live inside and still have room for privacy. The old, clunky science fiction desk had gone the way of the DoDo and BB’s sleek, blacktopped mahogany number had plenty of tricks built in; they were just less obvious. Touching the polished surface, I was rewarded with … nothing. No icons or virtual keyboards popped into existence.
I pulled the plush leather chair to the side and crawled under, rooting around for the desk’s CPU. Nothing. Gone. Gone, too, were the two 500 terabyte hard drives.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
Dom bent over to look where I was crouching. “What, boss?”
Scrambling out, I started to remove my armor, setting the Lahti and .44 on the desk along with my Bowie. “Might as well stand down, Dom. I finally got the full picture here.” Soon the bulky breastplate and leggings joined my weapons on the desk.
“What’s it about, then?”
Instead of answering, I looked around. Where would she put it? I wondered. Not in the corners of the room; that wasn’t elegant enough for her. No, she wanted me to find it, but where?
The portrait of the President, slim and dapper in a dove-gray suit, his soulful brown eyes staring with great compassion and intelligence, hung a few short feet away from the desk.
Of course.
Striding up to the portrait, I stared into those soft, brown orbs. “Okay, Winnie, what do you want?” I asked tersely, broadcasting my ire through my eyes.
My phone vibrated in its holster. I answered with a snarly, “What?”
“You’re much better than I expected, Kal. I’m glad you resisted my effort to kill you.”
“You weren’t trying to kill me, Winnie. You wanted my mind going in a hundred different directions.”
Her laugh made me gnash my teeth. “Don’t frown, darling; you’ll wrinkle so. And don’t even think about trying to back-trace this call. I am magically and technologically shielded from detection.”
I tried for the heart shot. “You missed BB, didn’t you? He’s safe and out of reach and you are screwed, Win.”
“I didn’t miss anything, you impudent ass. He’s right here, and if you want him back alive, you’ll do exactly what I say.” Hate roughened her voice and her East Anglian dialect started to show, her west Texas drawl slipping away like the tide.
“You know the drill, then. Proof of life. Now. Or I hang up and you can go pound sand.”
“Listen you little—”
“No!” I shouted into the phone, spit flying. “You give me proof of life or all bets are off and I will spend my life hunting you down! So don’t dick me around, bitch!”
Silence. A long one and I began to wonder if I had just killed BB. Arye, no slouch, stood in the doorway, normally deadpan face slack with shock.
“Kal?”
My temples throbbed. “BB?”
“Whatever she wants, don’t—”
“There you go, Kal,” Winnie cut in. “You have your proof.”
“What do you want, Win?” I had a good idea and I prayed to god I was wrong.
“The keys to the kingdom, dear Kal. I want you to give me the keys.”
The phone’s plastic casing cracked in my hand and I eased my grip. “BB wouldn’t give them up. What makes you think I will?”
Once again that laugh that made me want to hurl. “How about this?” Next came the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh and Win’s voice demanded gruffly, “Speak! Now!”
By the pricking of my thumbs …
“Kalevi?”
My heart hit rock bottom. “Dad?” I whispered. “Are you okay?” Tears began to well.
Winnie’s voice returned, triumphant. “He’s fine, Kal.”
“How did … when did you …” My throat closed.
“Imagine my surprise when I found out you were still in the Bureau when you came to kill my zombies in Denver. It was a simple matter to quietly avoid Bureau watchdog programs and Google your family. It cost me a couple of my nicer gems, but the men I hired to kidnap your father did a splendid job. Too bad they didn’t live long enough to spend their pay. And don’t worry about your mother. She’s just fine. As far as she knows he had to go out of town for work. He’s been making regular calls home. You see, Kalevi,” she turned my name into a curse. “After you killed the first ghoul, I thought that maybe a little insurance would be an intelligent move on my part.”
It took a few moments, but I finally found my voice. “Damn you, Winnie.”
“Damn me? Damn you, Kal, you and BB. Because of you I’ve suffered what no human being should ever have to suffer! So you are going to give me the access codes to BB’s computer and then your father can go home.”
I’d been around the block enough times to know a lie when I heard it. “You hate me because of San Antonio, I understand that, but my father has nothing to do with that. Promise me you’ll let him go. Let me hear the words.”
“Of course. I promise, Kal.”
Still lying. “Okay, Winnie, anything you want. Where and when?”
So she told me.
Angrily I agreed, then had Arye’s magician burn the spyeye to char.
A few minutes later found me outside, phone in hand, furiously dialing Alex’s number as Dom looked on in consternation. “C’mon, Ghost … answer. Ghost?”
Bzzz …”I’m here, Kal. What can I do for you?”
“I need a favor, Ghost. The biggest mother of all favors.”
“What is it?”
I filled him in on the day’s events.
Bzzz ... “Anything you want, Kal. She must be stopped.”
“Ghost, she said we couldn’t back trace her, that she was magically and technologically protected. But can you do it?”
Buzzcracklecracklecracke! I’d never heard the Ghost make that kind of noise before. A few seconds passed before I realized he was laughing. “She may be sly, but so am I,” was all he said before disconnecting.
Minutes later, Alex and the rest of the magicians joined me outside. “Every camera, spyeye, defensive spell, alarm spell, and weapons emplacement have been disabled, dispelled or destroyed.” He shook his head in wonder while the other magicians looked stunned and at a loss. “The power needed to do that is off the charts, Kal.” His world had been rocked and now he was trying to make sense of the chaos.
I shook my head. “I don’t know how she did it, Alex, but it was just her, her and her ghouls. She’s not the type to share power; she wants it all to herself.”
“How, then?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. Right now the question is, how much silver wire can we lay our hands on?”
“How much do you need?”
My eyebrow tried to reach my hairline and he smiled. “The defensive spell over the roof the Warehouse is Shaped by silver wire,” he explained. “A lot of it. It’s how we can sense a Supernatural from over a mile away. All we have to do is dig under some gravel and roofing tar.”
“Good.” I grinned nastily. “Let’s head in. I have a plan.”