Bound Guardian Angel (26 page)

You make me want to heave.

You think you’re good

You think you’re great

But I do so make this oath.

I stole the key

It’s now with me

And good luck finding both.

Rage boiled inside Micah’s blood as he hit
Sev’s speed dial. That little prick.

“Our guy’s a real Shakespeare, isn’t he?”
Sev said.

“Shakespeare’s dead, just like he’s going to
be when I find him. Get over to the Heritage hotel. I’ll call you
back in five.” Micah disconnected, already storming toward the
surveillance room, where Io was hopefully making headway on his
background checks. Micah refused to rest until this cocky little
fucker went down, and everybody had better be with him on that or
they’d get his booted foot up their asses, too.

“Tell me you’ve found something,” Micah said
as he burst through the door.

Io had just stuffed half a Snickers bar in
his mouth and turned toward the door, eyes wide. He glanced at his
screen then gave Micah a helpless
I-just-got-started-so-how-could-I-have-found-something look as he
started chewing.

Micah leaned over Io’s shoulder, scanning
the screens, unable to make sense of anything Io was working
on.

Io chewed as fast as he could then
swallowed. “Jesus, Micah, I’ve only been at it for thirty minutes.
Do you know how many people live in the Heritage?”

“No.” He hit Severin’s speed dial and
cranked his phone to his ear.

Io’s fingers began flying over his keyboard.
“Well, it’s a lot. There’s a lot of people to check.”

Sev picked up. “Micah, hey, I’m at the
Heritage.”

“Find anything?”

“Define anything.”

Micah could already tell he wasn’t going to
like what Sev had to tell him. “What did you find?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

Hopefully it wasn’t another in-your-face
poem, or Io’s console might be in danger of suffering a natural
disaster at the hands of Hurricane Micah.

“Tell me.”

Sev let out a heavy breath. “You know how
Chicago has an underground pedway?”

The pedway consisted of five miles of
underground tunnels pedestrians could use to travel around the
heart of Chicago without exposing themselves to the elements.

The bad feeling in Micah’s gut intensified.
“Yeah? What about it?”

“The Heritage has access to it.”

“Motherfucker! I knew you were going to say
that.” Micah snapped his fingers in the direction of Io’s keyboard.
“Bring up a map of the pedway.”

Io made a few keystrokes, and the map popped
up on his center screen.

Just as Micah thought. The Heritage was
smack in the middle, with branches of underground walkways
extending in all directions. “Damn it.” He slammed his palm on the
desk. Skeletor could be anywhere.

“Your guy could have gone anywhere,” Sev
said, as if reading Micah’s mind.

Io’s shoulders drooped as he sat back in his
chair. “Let me guess, our guy doesn’t live at the Heritage. He only
used it as part of his escape route.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Micah said.

“So the trail’s gone cold?” Io shoved the
other half of his Snickers bar in his mouth. The room smelled like
chocolate and peanuts. Just how many of those things had Io eaten
since killing his Tootsie Pop?

“Yeah,” Micah said. “Stone cold unless Sev
can pick up any clues.” To Sev he said, “See if you can find
anything. This guy likes to play with us. Maybe he left something
for us to find.”

Or maybe he made a mistake. That would be
even better. Given Severin’s history as special forces in the human
military, if Skeletor had left anything behind, Sev would find
it.

“I’ll see what I can dig up.” Sev
disconnected.

Micah raked his fingers through his hair and
began pacing.
Think, Micah, think.
Who could he have pissed
off who would want to seek retribution against him? Well, shit,
that was a pretty long list. But who of that list had this kind of
verve? This kind of intelligence and cunning? These resources?

He couldn’t think of a single suspect.

“What the . . .?” Io said
behind him.

Micah turned around. “What is it?” But he
could already see what had Io frowning and holding his fingers
several inches off his keyboard as if it had grown snake
scales.

The monitors flashed then blacked out. Small
squares blinked randomly over the screen.

Then a message began typing out in large
letters.

You’re a day late and a dollar short

But oh so fun to watch

As you chase, toil, and try to keep up

While I knock you down a notch.

The key is mine, with me it stays

No more of your concern

Because I’m better, a real go-getter

So fuck you, Micah. Crash and BURN.

This prick wanted a war? Well, he just got
one.

Chapter 14

Cordray rubbed her sandpapery eyes as she leaned back
in her desk chair. In the three hours since breakfast, she’d
accomplished a lot.

First, she’d searched the Dark Net for
references to Grudge Match. That seemed like the easiest task to
tackle first, and her search paid off. Not only had she found
information about where the underground fight club met, but how to
join. She’d even filled out the interest form. Supposedly, she
would receive a text within twenty-four hours with more
information.

Next, she had logged into Bain’s personal
archives and searched for anything related to ankhs. And what do
you know? She struck gold. Turned out that ankhs had been used by
the lycans in the time of the pre-dynastic Egyptian pharaohs to
open the gateways between dimensions. It had been how they’d
traveled between their world and Earth, but sometime soon after the
pyramids were built, the gateways had allegedly been sealed. At
least as sealed as they could be, with the lycans securing the
ankhs and hiding them away.

Vampires had discovered these gateways, too,
coming from their planet in some kind of teleportational accident a
few decades after the first lycans arrived. Call it a gateway
glitch, but when the lycans opened one of the portals during a
ceremonial rite, a whole bunch of vampires poured through.
Apparently, their planet had been in the right place at the right
time and they’d been sucked into the worm hole that brought them
here.

But at least now she knew why vampires
couldn’t tolerate the earth’s sun. According to the translated
history, they’d come from an earthlike planet whose sun was a dim
but powerful white dwarf. It churned out a lot of warmth, but not a
lot of light, so when they came through the portal, the earth’s
brighter sun caused an illness they called sun sickness, which led
to a large number of deaths in the early vampires, forcing them to
become night dwellers. The only vampires capable of surviving the
sun were those born from a union between a vampire and a
human . . . or with a lycan. But lycans hadn’t been
keen on seeing their kind mix with vampires, so there weren’t a lot
of half vampires-half lycans walking around, if any.

Scouring the background material had made
for an interesting history lesson, but the part about the ankhs was
what had interested her most. Ankhs were keys. Each opened a
different portal or set of portals to a different dimension or to a
different location in one dimension. From the crude map she’d
pulled up, if she read it right, it looked like some dimensions had
multiple doorways, all marked by pyramids or obelisks. The bigger
the structure, the bigger the gate, and the more supernatural
entities could enter or exit through it.

That must have been quite a site on the Giza
Plateau—seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of beings appear out of
nowhere or vanish without a trace—given that there were three
massive pyramids on site. And back in pre-dynastic times, who knew
what other structures had been there to enhance the effect?

It was all very confusing and hard to
understand, but one thing was clear. Each ankh had a protector to
keep it from falling into the wrong hands, with one master ankh
that belonged to Memnon, the alpha of the lycan race, which opened
all gates. Obtain the master, and you could unleash hell on Earth,
but from what Cordray had read about Memnon, good luck prying the
master ankh from his powerful lycan fist. Ole Memnon had a nasty
reputation and an even nastier disposition, at least according to
the picture the archives painted of him.

So, the question was, why did Micah have an
ankh? Furthermore, how did he have a key that opened a doorway to
another dimension and not even know its purpose?

No sense dwelling on that question, though,
or she’d just give herself a migraine.

With Grudge Match and ankh research off her
list, she turned her attention to learning more about Skeletor. It
was a good bet he was aware of the ankh’s purpose, or he wouldn’t
have stolen it. Maybe he was linked to the lycans and knew about
the ankh that way, but that would mean the lycans had given Micah’s
father the ankh or had at least known about it. Cordray wasn’t sure
of either option’s plausibility. Maybe Skeletor had hacked into
Bain’s archives to learn of the ankhs’ importance, but that didn’t
explain how he’d known Micah possessed one or where to find it.
Skeletor had known right where to look.

There were dozens of possible answers to
every question Cordray came up with.

She checked the time. Surely, Micah would
have come up with something by now. She logged in to the AKM
mainframe and piggybacked into the data from Tristan’s team. She
wasn’t exactly hacking, but then again, she was. Her actions fell
into a grey area.

Almost immediately, videos from the night
Skeletor broke into Micah’s apartment popped up, along with a map
of Chicago’s pedway. She quickly scanned the videos and realized
why the pedway was of interest when she saw Skeletor enter the
Heritage building.

Smart little fucker. He’d known he was being
watched, so he’d ducked into one of the buildings with direct
access to the pedway so he could slip away unseen.

Clever.

She closed her eyes and stretched, yawning.
God, she was tired. Spending over eight hours in Trace’s proximity
had taken it out of her. Who would have thought experiencing
physical sensation could be so exhausting.

She was about to head upstairs and go to bed
when her screen flashed then went dark. What the hell? An array of
tiny squares danced around the screen.

All semblance of exhaustion evaporated as
letters began appearing at the top of the screen.

Well, hello, little mouse. Following the crumbs, are
you?

The green cursor dropped to the next line
then blinked off and on, off and on, as if waiting for her to
respond.

Fine, she’d play along.

Who are you?
she typed.

Tsk-tsk. It’s not going to be that easy, Cordray
Buveau.

Her blood ran cold. He knew her. How did he
know her?

I’ll ask again, who the fuck are you?

She waited several seconds before he began
typing again.
I think you refer to me as Skeletor. I like that.
Let’s stick with that.

Bastard! How . . .?

Letters began stringing into place on her
screen before she could reply.

And yes, I got quite the Skeletor boner watching you
three stooges bumble around as if you’d found something of
consequence in that little parking lot. It was very
entertaining.

She’d known he was watching.

She could almost hear his laughter. And
wherever he was, he
was
laughing. At her. At them. He was
playing a sick, twisted game, and he was getting off on it.

Taking a deep breath, she decided to take a
different tack.

What’s your interest in Micah Black?

Seconds ticked by. A minute. Two.

Just when she thought he wasn’t going to
answer, the letters began falling into place again.

We all have our secrets, Miss Buveau. Including you,
it would seem.

She bobbed backward. What secret was he referring
to?

I’m an open book
, she typed.
Maybe
you should be, too.

Are you now? I wonder . . . how many
people know you and King Bain are brother and sister?

Her heart swan-dived into her intestines.
Oh, God. He knew. How did Skeletor know about her and Bain? She was
going to throw up. Who the hell was this guy?

Her fingers shook as she slowly typed,
We’re not brother and sister.

Oh, that’s right. He’s only your half-brother, isn’t
he? Tell me, how does it feel to be excluded from the royal family?
To be forced to keep your secret even though it means you will
never share the same wealth and status as your dear brother? To be
shunned by those who worship your own flesh and blood as if he were
a god while ignoring your existence as if you’re just another face
in the crowd? A nameless faceless nobody?

Cordray frowned. Okay, what was up with all
that? She didn’t like that Mr. Sticky Fingers knew who she was, but
she didn’t resent Bain or her relegation into virtual anonymity.
Skeletor’s last message came off a lot more aggressive than the
others, which had been more playful. It was as if he was taking his
anger out on her. But anger over what?

I don’t know how you know about Bain and me, but
gee, Skeletor, you seem to be taking the news a lot more personally
than I am. Is this some kind of identity crisis you’re having, or
is something else at work here you aren’t telling me?

She waited for a reply.

And waited.

Five minutes passed.

Skeletor? Did I lose you?

Nothing.

Radio silence.

A few seconds later, her screen flashed and
recovered, taking her back to the map of the pedway she’d pulled
from Io’s search data.