The Pretender (The Soren Chase Series Book 2) (28 page)

Curly shot a wary glance at Friday, and then mimed drawing a blade across his neck. Soren forced himself to remain calm.

“Well, maybe I’ll go down there and kick his corpse,” he said, hating every word.

He didn’t wait for a response, but walked quickly past Curly through a backdoor, Friday following after him. He went down a staircase to the otherworldly labyrinth of hallways beneath the pub. The walls were paneled in aged, brown wood, dimly lit by gas lanterns hanging at irregular intervals. The hallways jutted off in all directions, rather than in perpendicular lines. There were hallways moving diagonally across the space and then others crisscrossing that. There were doors everywhere. All of the hallways seemed to stretch on forever.

“What the hell?” Friday said behind him.

“Witch worked a spell down here a few decades ago,” Soren said. “I’m pretty sure Rakev ate the last building inspector that tried to look at the place.”

Soren had to think about where Alex was kept. Gregory hadn’t known the exact room; Lochlan had always escorted the boy to and from meetings with the boss. But there were only a dozen or so true rooms in the place, despite the presence of hundreds of doors. At least four of the rooms were outfitted for prisoners. The problem was all four were spread out within the maze. He couldn’t just easily run from room to room; that would take at least an hour. Only Rakev could move through this place so fast it wouldn’t be a problem—which was the idea.

Soren sifted through Gregory’s memories. Instead of imagining them like artwork in a museum, the way he’d seen Ron Davis’s memories, he saw them as a comic book. He flipped through the pages of the book, trying to pull up any mention that would tell him where Alex was.

Finally, Soren found the memory of Alex first being brought in. Alex had asked to be taken to “the cell.” There were multiple rooms for prisoners, but only one had that nickname. And it already had a prisoner inside it, making Alex’s choice dangerous.

Soren shuddered. Gregory hated and feared the little girl who lived in that cell, the one who watched him with her hazel eyes, but never said a word. Still, that was where Soren had to go.

“This way,” he said, and dove into the labyrinth of hallways. “Stay close.”

They turned into a dimly lit, diagonal hallway. In theory, it looked like all the others, but Soren noticed subtle differences, including where the lanterns were hung, that let him know he was in the right place. If that wasn’t enough of a clue, two stoneskins stood outside one of the doors.

Soren approached the creatures confidently, as if he had every right to be there. His first thought was that he didn’t even need to acknowledge their presence. Gregory seldom interacted with the monsters around him.

But when he made a move to open the door, one of the stoneskins put out a hand, stopping him.

“No,” it said. “The little boss said no one can enter.”

Soren gave him a nasty look.

“Yeah? Well the big boss says I need to talk to the fookin’ leprechaun,” Soren replied. “He’s in there, right?”

The stoneskin didn’t respond. He just stood still, his hand blocking Soren from entering.

“Let me in, you big, dumb son of a bitch,” Soren said.

But the stoneskin didn’t budge. It didn’t grow angry or hostile; it just calmly kept its hand there. The other guard barely looked over. Soren searched Gregory’s memory for something that would make the two of them step aside and came up with nothing. Rakev, and to a lesser extent, Lochlan, gave the orders around here. Gregory had no power over them.

“Fuck it,” Soren said. “We don’t have time for this.”

He forcibly removed the stoneskin’s hand, pushing it away with effort while trying to open the door. But the stoneskin backhanded Soren, hitting him in the face and knocking him backward. Soren rushed the stoneskin that had attacked him, while Friday assaulted the other guard.

It was like attacking a wall. Soren threw punch after punch, all of which connected, but none appeared to do any damage. He punched the stoneskin in the face, but it might as well have been a slap for all the reaction it made. Soren landed several blows before the stoneskin delivered a fierce uppercut that knocked Soren into the air.

He fell hard on his ass, his spine sending a shock of pain so intense Soren felt it in his teeth. He looked over at Friday, whose own punches appeared to at least have an impact. He wished he had a gun or knife or sword—or anything, really. He would have been satisfied with a brick.

But failure wasn’t an option. He stood up and tried to remember what Friday had taught him. Pretenders didn’t just rely on sneaking around as someone else, they used their targets’ memories and feelings to draw strength. Soren pulled on Gregory’s fear of the monsters around him and the man’s own love of inflicting pain, launching himself in another attack.

Soren fared better this time, his first punch snapping the stoneskin’s head back. A blow to the creature’s stomach caused it to double over. He followed up with a vicious hit to the monster’s head, successfully driving it to the ground. He reveled in the pain he must have caused the thing, savoring his first taste of victory.

It turned out to be short-lived. As he aimed a kick at the stoneskin, it reached out and grabbed his foot, tugging it upward and knocking him over. Soren tried to roll away, but the stoneskin scrambled up and grabbed him before he could get away. The thing picked Soren up with both hands, and threw him into the wooden wall across the hallway.

Soren slammed into the wall and fell to the ground, hitting it with his face. He felt several teeth jarred loose and his mouth fill with blood. He wasn’t strong enough to fight this thing. And even if he was, there was no telling how many more might be behind the door.

He needed a new emotion, something else to hold onto. But Gregory didn’t have one. He was a sadistic bastard, but Rakev had ensured there wasn’t much of an inner life. He followed orders and hurt people—and that was it.

Soren pulled on something else, conjuring the image of Alex in his mind. He saw the kid holding Sara’s hand as they walked down a street. He remembered the boy anxiously looking inside Soren’s car when he stopped to greet them. Alex was behind that door, and Soren was the only one who could save him.

He picked himself off the floor and shot toward the stoneskin, feeling a renewed sense of strength and vitality. Soren saw something like surprise flicker across the creature’s face before he collided with it. He began pummeling it with his fists, keeping a vision of Alex in his head as a reminder of what was at stake.

He was hitting harder than before. He drove the stoneskin into the wall, his punches keeping it off guard. It no longer seemed impervious to them, grunting in pain as Soren hit it. Soren swept its legs, knocking it to the ground and then kicking in its head until it stopped moving. He kicked it several more times for good measure, and looked over to see Friday drive the other stoneskin’s head into a wall repeatedly until it slumped over, either unconscious or dead.

Friday looked over at Soren.

“For Alex,” Friday said.

Soren nodded. Friday was still pretending to be Ken Sharpe, and there was no doubt that the detective loved the boy as well.

“You’re Soren again,” Friday said.

Soren looked down to see that sometime during the fight he’d shed Gregory Ivanovich for good. He touched his face and noticed sunglasses on his eyes. He’d become Soren Chase once more. He suspected that had occurred right at the moment he’d summoned a memory of Alex and made the battle about him.

“Let’s bring Alex home,” Soren said.

Soren opened the door the stoneskins had been blocking, unsure of what he would find on the other side.

The cell lay before him, with Alex lying in the middle of it. Lochlan stood over the boy holding a knife dripping with blood.

Sara paced around the conference room of the police station, looking anxiously at Alice.

“What the hell is taking so long?” she asked. “Soren and Ken have been gone for over an hour.”

Alice shook her head.

“They’re probably just working over Ivanovich, and don’t want to come back until they get something out of him,” Alice said. “I texted Glen a few minutes ago. He said they still hadn’t come out.”

Sara didn’t like it. She hated watching Ken go off with Soren. She should have insisted on going with them. There was a gnawing feeling in her gut. Everyone around her kept trusting Soren, even Wallace, who knew what he really was. But it made her uneasy.

For the past hour, she and Alice had been going over aspects of the case. Alice had done most of the talking. Sara found it hard to concentrate on their discussion because she was so distracted thinking about Alex. Was he still alive? She’d called out to him with her mind, but heard nothing back.

“Let’s go back to Rakev’s plan,” Alice said. “There’s still something we’re missing. He already has the knife and he’s been charging it for, what, two years? So what’s he waiting for? Why not punch a hole in the universe now and blow us all to hell?”

Sara forced herself to consider the question. More lives were at stake here than just her son’s. There was a possibility she could help them.

“Maybe he has to act on a certain day?” she asked. “Maybe portals only open at certain times of the year. Wallace told me there was one that only opened around Halloween.”

“He’s not opening a portal, he’s tearing a hole,” Alice said. “Those rules don’t apply.”

Sara began pacing again.

“The knife,” she said. “Where was that found again?”

“Kutna Hora,” Alice replied. “In the Czech Republic. Why?”

“It was found inside a mine, right? It was in some cavern that they suspected was used for—”

“Human sacrifice,” Alice finished, jumping to her feet.

“What?” Sara asked. “What did I miss?”

“It’s not enough,” Alice said. “All the psychic energy he’s been collecting. It’s not enough on its own to tear open a hole in dimensions.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because he would have done it already if that’s it,” Alice replied. “Which means he needs something else.”

“Like what?”

“At a guess? Blood,” Alice said. “Human sacrifice is at the center of some of the most dangerous magical rituals in existence. And tearing a rip among dimensions is as risky as it gets. This knife was found near the site of human sacrifice. That’s not a coincidence; it’s a sign.”

Sara felt like she was two steps behind her.

“Of what?”

“That this was tried before,” Alice said. “It wasn’t Rakev; the knife predates him. But somebody tried to use the knife to cross over and for all we know, it worked. That could be why Rakev even knows about it. We don’t know how long the knife was buried down there.”

“So Rakev needs to kill people?” Sara asked, thinking of Alex.

“It could be bigger than that,” Alice said. “The knife wasn’t found at the site of any old human sacrifice, but a mass grave. This wasn’t some virgin thrown into a volcano. This was a lot of people killed all at once.”

“Good God,” Sara whispered.

But Alice snapped her fingers. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s what he’s up to. Rakev needs to find a place where a lot of people gather, somewhere he can kill them all at once.”

“Where?” Sara asked. “There are too many places to choose from. He could pick a mall or a restaurant. He could head to any number of national monuments or museums.”

“Bigger,” Alice said. “There were thousands of skeletons in that mine. And he needs them all in the same place, not spread out in a museum or outside.”

“That still could be anywhere,” Sara said. “This is Washington. There’s a protest or march here every other week.”

Alice was already pulling out her phone. Sara watched her, feeling envious of her calm.

“I’m texting Glen,” she said. “He might have some ideas, too.”

Sara couldn’t stop herself from watching the door. She kept expecting Glen, Soren, or Ken to walk through it at any moment. She looked at her watch. More time lost. She had some idle hope that maybe Ken and Soren had beaten the truth out of Ivanovich, and had headed out to find Alex together. But she didn’t even know if Soren was on her side.

“I don’t see any marches or rallies,” Alice said. “The president is at some fundraiser in California, and Congress is on break. I’m looking at the Verizon Center and M&T Stadium in Baltimore. There’s nothing on at Nat’s Ballpark, either. Thank God, we’re out of baseball season and the Redskins are playing in Dallas.”

Sara couldn’t stand it anymore. She headed to the door, opening it to find a bustle of activity in the police station around them. She saw officers running back and forth, some with their guns unholstered and in their hands.

Sara took a step outside, only to see Ken round the corner. Her relief at spotting him was tempered by the look of terror on his face.

“Thank God, you’re okay,” Ken said, reaching her.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

Ken shook his head and looked around, then pulled her back into the room she’d just left and shut the door.

“Soren knocked me out and infiltrated the interrogation room . . .” he stopped talking.

“What? What happened?” Sara asked.

“I kept trying to tell them I didn’t go in that room with him,” Ken rushed to say. “Thank God, they found security footage of the parking garage. I finally convinced them I couldn’t be in two places at once.”

Sara reached out and grasped Ken’s face.

“You’re not making any sense,” she said. “What footage? Why would you be in two places at—”

“Ivanovich is dead, Sara,” Ken said. “And Soren is gone. I don’t know how to tell you this, but—”

“He’s a pretender,” Sara said. “That’s what you saw on the security footage. He turned into you.”

“No, he didn’t become me. He became Ivanovich. The other one, the girl with him, she’s the one who was impersonating me.” He stopped short, staring at her. “Wait . . . you knew? About Soren?”

Before Sara could answer, Alice came up behind her. “Where’s Glen?” she asked. “He said he was waiting in the hallway for you.”