A Perfect Blood (44 page)
There was a scuffle as I think Glenn yanked Eloy up, and I heard the familiar ratcheting of a zip strip. “You sure it’s him?” someone asked. “He might be disguised.”
I fumbled to flick on the mic, whispering, “Check with the amulet, Glenn.”
“Holy crap, Rachel!” Glenn exclaimed. “You startled me. I forgot you were listening.”
I shifted my feet and grinned at Jenks. His dust was an excited silver. I was glad they’d gotten them. Score one for the FIB. Jennifer was pleading in the background, but no one was listening. It looked like it was all over, but I wasn’t moving. Not yet.
“Yep, it’s him,” a new, low voice drawled, and Jenks’s wings clattered. “Thank God we got them before they abducted anyone else.”
“Damn, Rache,” the pixy swore as he made the jump back to my knee. “They did it!”
“And they did it without us,” I said softly, feeling left out. I could hear the Miranda being recited, ignored. Jennifer was crying, Chris was swearing, and I think Gerald was knocked out. Eloy had yet to say anything, which wasn’t unusual, but I could imagine the scene well enough. He’d be standing with his arms cuffed behind his back and his shoulders hunched. His hair would be messed up, and he’d likely be sporting a new scrape from hitting the floor. He’d be silently thinking up a way to escape, his eyes darting about. I didn’t know Eloy, but I knew his type—my type. There was always a way out.
Calls were going over the airways to bring the vans in. And still I sat. Waiting. My tension began to build. Eloy wasn’t talking. Eloy had a way out. I knew it.
“Get up, Eloy,” Glenn said suddenly, cutting through the radio noise. “Arms out. Assume the position.”
Okay, so he wasn’t standing yet, but I could see him in my mind’s eye: slowly getting up, assessing everything, looking for a hole as he got patted down for whatever they could find. He was going to run.
“Hey!” someone said. “Lookie what I found on him! What do you think it is?”
A second man laughed. “A can of deodorant?” he said, then shouted, “Don’t point it at me, jerk-off! It might be magic!”
I reached to toggle the mic to ask Glenn to describe it to me, then settled back when a deep, almost bland voice I didn’t recognize said, “Excuse me,” and presumably took it, muttering, “Damn fools. No wonder they can’t catch their asses in a windstorm.”
They,
I thought, my eyes meeting Jenks’s. He had heard it, too. Just who was down there with Glenn if it wasn’t his usual men? But as long as Eloy didn’t have it, whatever it was could wait. It was probably a can of sticky silk to ward off Jenks.
Not yet ready to leave, I sank to the floor. There was a soft pop as someone clapped their hands, and Glenn shouted, “Okay. We got ’em. Area is secure. Everyone can come in. Nicely done, people.”
A soft cheering, both from the room and from the distant sites by way of the radio, filtered into the dark. And still I sat. Waiting.
“HAPA isn’t so happy now, huh?” Jenks said, his dust several shades brighter as he lit the tunnel with a healthy glow.
“Yes,” I said softly, thinking as I spun Trent’s ring on my pinkie.
Seeing me not moving, he landed on my knee, his dust feeling like snow as it sifted over me. “I know the way back,” he said, looking worried.
I tucked the glow stick in my bag so my eyes could readjust to the dark. “Not yet.”
Jenks’s wings stopped moving, laying flat on his back, and it grew dark. “I know what you mean. It’s kind of anticlimactic, listening to it happen. I’m surprised you stayed put, Rache. You knew you weren’t going to see any action. I’m proud of you.”
No action. Right . . .
Dr. Cordova’s voice slowly became audible, and in a confusing mix of about three separate conversations, I heard her come into the room with a bevy of aides, and my pulse quickened. “Congratulations, Detective Glenn, on a well-implemented run,” she said loudly, and the radio chatter almost doubled.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll be sure to let everyone know you’re pleased,” Glenn said, his annoyance that she was down here obvious even over the radio.
“Let’s move them out,” she said decisively. “Get them to the FIB lockup.”
My jaw clenched, and I looked at Jenks. That hadn’t been the plan. Catching them was one thing. Holding them was another. That’s where the vulnerability was, and it would take an I.S. cell to hold a magic-using human. “What the hell is she doing?” Jenks whispered, his wings lifting as he prepared to take flight.
That deep voice, faint from being whispered, came again. “Don’t let her move them, Detective. If she does, they’re gone. I promise you.”
“You tell me how I can overrule her, and I will,” Glenn said, his voice tight, and then louder, with a sliver of false respect, “I’d rather wait for the I.S. containment people, ma’am. It was arranged that they’d hold them, not us.”
“Allow humans into I.S. custody?” Dr. Cordova snapped. “We have them. They’re strapped. They can’t do any magic.” The voices in the room died away, leaving only the background chatter of independent conversations revolving around traffic and where to park.
Again that deep voice began arguing with Glenn, even as Glenn tried to do everything he could to no avail. “Don’t do it . . .” I whispered, the sound of my feet scraping on the cement loud as I began walking in circles, trying to wake up my cold, stiff muscles.
“Ma’am,” Glenn started, but was immediately cut off.
“You, and you,” Dr. Cordova demanded. “Take them out.”
“Ma’am, I protest,” Glenn said. The unnamed man in the background swore, then began barking out orders and clearing the room.
Jenks was hovering beside me, his expression worried. “Glenn is more pissed than a foreclosed troll,” he said, and I nodded, balancing on one foot to pull a knee to my chest to stretch my cramped leg.
“Do you recognize that man with the deep voice?” I asked, and Jenks shook his head.
“Noted,” Dr. Cordova said sarcastically. “Excuse me, you’re in the way, Detective.”
Glenn make a low sound deep in his throat, and I winced at the sharp clatter and pop as he took his earpiece off and set it on some counter. Dr. Cordova’s voice rang out loudly, “I want them out of here in separate vans in five minutes. Move!”
Jenks had landed on the opening to the ventilation shaft, his silver dust lighting the corridor, when Ivy’s voice, smooth and silky, came faintly. “Hey, good tag, Glenn.” She hesitated, and then asked, “What’s the matter? You okay?” His answer was hardly more than a growl, and Ivy exclaimed, “She’s retaining custody? Is she fried?”
I carefully stretched the other leg as I turned the speaker up as far as it would go. “I thought you were going to put them in our custody,” Nina said.
“Apparently not,” Glenn muttered.
“Look out!” a voice cried, and there were several exclamations and the soft pop of gunfire. “Fire in the hole!” someone else shouted. “Loose gun!”
My pulse quickened, and I quietly wedged the lower grate aside, dropping my shoulder bag into the lower shaft and out of sight. Jenks’s tiny features creased. Wings going full tilt, he said, “Oh, this isn’t good.”
“Shhh.”
“Stop!” Glenn shouted. “Someone get him!”
“Son of a fairy!” Jenks said, rising up to light a six-foot circle. “They’re escaping! Right under their fairy-wiped noses!”
I took a deep breath. Faint, so faint I almost didn’t hear it, the man with the deep voice said. “Alpha unit, prep beaters. Beta, stand by to receive game. Keep it tight, people. Reassemble at bird nest.”
Put me in the dark by myself, will they?
I thought as I carefully swung myself over the side and stretched to find the bend, four feet down. A shiver went through me as I hung my feet over the edge of the hole and stretched until my toes brushed the curve of the pipe. If I hadn’t guessed right and he was actually headed for the back door, he was going to get away.
A cry of surprise went up, and someone shouted, “Get the lights! Get the lights!”
“Eloy! You son of a bitch!” Chris’s shrill voice rang out. “I’ll kill you for this! I swear, I’ll kill you if you leave me behind!”
I couldn’t help my grim smile as I settled inside the pipe below the level of the floor. Apparently we were all having a great day. As Jenks hovered, I dragged the grate closer. I could tell when the lights came back on in the distant room because everything got quiet, then the noise started back up again with demands for information. I didn’t hear the man with the deep voice. He was gone. I think the men at the radio station were, too.
“Spread out! Find him!” Glenn shouted, and I knelt in the shaft with my feet running down it, my head poking above the level of the floor. I fumbled for my splat gun, the cold metal making me shiver as it met the small of my back.
“Is anyone still at the back door?” someone yelled.
A faint voice called out, “Not enough,” and Ivy swore.
“Nina, give me your finding amulet,” she demanded, and then I heard her run. For an instant, I considered telling her where I thought he was heading, but then didn’t; what if I was wrong? This way, both bases would be covered.
Nina was laughing. It seemed to be the right response, as all hell was breaking loose.
“There is nothing funny here,” Dr. Cordova snarled, barely heard over the back-and-forth chatter on the radios.
“Teresa, you are funny,” Nina said, sounding sourly amused. “You should’ve listened to your detective. Knowing your limits is a strength, not a weakness.”
“This is not my fault!” Dr. Cordova shouted. “I hadn’t taken custody of them yet. Detective Glenn, I’m holding you responsible for this! That man wasn’t searched properly! He had a weapon!”
“Of course you are, ma’am,” he said, and I exchanged a wide-eyed look with Jenks, who was now standing on the grate, hands on his hips and wings silent.
“You think he’s coming this way?” Jenks asked, and I nodded. From the radio burst a shouted realization that the can of spray was gone, too. Fingers fumbling, I turned the radio off. Grabbing a couple of zip strips from my shoulder bag, I stuffed them in the tops of my boots. No wonder Ivy wore a waist pack when she was on a run. I had more stuff jammed in my boots than toes.
“What are you doing?” Jenks hissed. “You should call for help!”
“Go get help if you want,” I said, and he darted up as I repositioned the grate so I could poke my head out. “He’s coming this way, and I’m going to stop him. Douse the light, will you? It takes forever for your dust to settle.”
He frowned, hands still on his hips. I made a questioning, waiting face at him, and slowly his look changed to one of amusement. There was a faint glow from the floor, but it might just have been a memory on my retina. “I get first crack at him,” Jenks said as he landed on my shoulder.
“And I’ll get the last,” I said, my heart pounding as the faint sound of running feet broke the stillness, the sound as old as the savannas.
H
eart thudding, I reached back for my splat gun, bringing it forward and peering into the blackness of the tunnel. If I couldn’t bring him down with the gun, then I’d consider the charms. Reaching for the line, I filled my chi with a bright, scintillating glow of power, letting it leak over my soul and spindling a wad of it in my head just in case. Satisfaction was almost as warm as the line in me, and again I wondered how I could ever have willingly cut myself off from this. It was like bathing in light.
I heard Eloy slide to a stop, and I peeked up through the opening I’d left in the grate. There was a faint glow from a cell phone being used as a flashlight—he was looking for the air shaft, running his hand along the ceiling. It was hard to see, but his face was still bruised from Winona’s beating. Breath held, I watched him. Grinning, I took aim. This was going to be easy.
The gun clicked . . . and Eloy dropped and rolled, right out of my line of sight, his faint light extinguishing. The blue ball burst open against the far wall of the shaft, useless. Damn!
Jenks flew through the grate, his sword out. “I told you I get first hit,” he said, and the ping of pixy steel rang followed by the hiss of propellant.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Eloy said, and I poked my head out of the hole in the floor, fear for Jenks making me careless. “A bug?” His shadow tensed. “Morgan? Is that you?”
“Give it up, Eloy!” I shouted, shooting at his voice. The light was gone, and I heard him swear. Crouched in the shaft, I waited for a sound, not wanting to get sticky silk in my eyes. At point-blank range, it would glue them shut. I had only so many sleepy-time balls left, or I would have peppered the hallway. Jenks was probably down, staying silent to keep from being stepped on. I wanted to keep Eloy busy until he was up again.
“When this is done, I’m going to come for you,” Eloy said, and I shot at his voice, hearing him scramble back with another half-heard oath. “I know where you live. I’m bringing you in.”
“Everyone knows where I live,” I said from inside the lower air shaft. “I’ve got a sign out front with my name on it, moss wipe!”
“I’m going to find you,” he whispered, and I shivered at the hatred in his voice, his sureness. “I’m going to sever your spinal cord in your sleep. You’re going to wake up with me bending over you, unable to move. And then I’m going to milk your blood for the next one hundred and sixty years like the animal you are. I’ll use you to wipe your species from the earth.”
His threats were not going to happen, but I shivered anyway.
He was too far down the corridor. I needed a better angle. Heart pounding, I quietly wedged myself out past the grate and rolled onto the floor. Flat on my stomach, I closed my eyes and whispered, “You’re going to have a hard time with that from jail.”
“I could do it from jail.” His voice was introspective, casual. “I’d rather do it myself, though. The pleasure. You know.”
“Rache!” Jenks shouted, and I rolled, invoking a circle as the shot echoed in the tunnel. The gold of my aura glowed in the dark. Smut crawled over it like a living patina, dimpled where the bullet had ricocheted off. Through the haze, I saw Eloy by the faint light of my circle. He was crouched with his gun pointed at me, a young man overflowing with fear, hate, and misplaced zeal. The smell of gunpowder hit me. Behind him, Jenks was white faced and struggling, stuck to the floor.
“Son of a bastard,” I breathed, scared for Jenks. Arms out, I shifted the angle of my gun and pulled the trigger. I rolled as the pellet hit my circle and broke the amber wash. My heart pounded in the new darkness, but I heard only a disgusted grunt.
“
Noli me tangere,
bitch,” Eloy said, and my teeth clenched.
Don’t touch me? Had I missed?
“Anticharm gear. You think I’d do this without it? Your magic is useless.”
“You know some Latin,” I said, my eyes searching for the barest hint of a glow, a glint. Anticharm gear wouldn’t stand up to repeated abuse. “I’m surprised they teach you that in the bunkers.”
Eloy chuckled, and I shifted my aim higher. If I hit his face or hands, he’d go down for sure. “I didn’t grow up in a camp,” he said, and I adjusted my grip on my gun, beginning to sweat. “I’m from a very well-respected family. Most of us are. I went to the best schools, better than you. That’s why you’re going to fail. We’re smarter than you. You can’t help it.”
His shoes scuffed, and I shot at the sound, rolling as his gun popped again. Little bits of concrete peppered me, and I clenched my teeth, not wanting to set a circle and light the tunnel again. Jenks was still down and vulnerable. Where the hell was everyone? Weren’t they looking for Eloy? Fingers moving, I reached to turn the radio back on to call for help. There was nothing. It was dead, and I thought of the two men running the radio. Had they been beaters or receivers? Had they left Glenn now that Eloy was on the run, planning on acquiring him themselves? They weren’t HAPA, were they? Damn it back to the Turn, it would explain a lot.
“We are everywhere, at every level,” Eloy gloated, cementing the idea in my head.
“You know what they say. Book smart, street stupid,” I said, one hand letting go of the gun, my fingers reaching inside my boot for the charm to paralyze someone. “How’s your elven?”
“Jenks! Light him up!” I yelled, then put the butt of the pin between my teeth.
It was a huge risk, but Jenks dusted, and in the faint glow, I found Eloy’s eyes. “Look at me, you bastard!” I said between my clenched teeth—then yanked the amulet to pull the pin.
I was still connected to the line, and I sucked in my breath as something alien reached through me, pulling the line like a wind-whipped ribbon over my synapses with the sound of wicked, chiming laughter. It coated me in fear, and I fixed on Eloy’s eyes, hoping, praying, that Trent had done this right and I hadn’t just given Jenks’s location away.
Eloy blinked, his expression going slack. And then he slowly collapsed, falling facedown on the cold cement.
It worked!
Adrenaline washed through me, and I waited, hardly breathing, my gun pointed at him, afraid to look away to see how Jenks was. Hot damn, it had worked, and he was down!
I took a tense step forward, intentionally scuffing my shoes. Eloy didn’t move, slumped on the floor with his arm twisted at an awkward angle half under him. “Jenks?”
“I’m okay! He’s down,” he said in disgust, and I flicked my gaze to him then back to Eloy. “His aura went passive. God-blessed mother moss wipe of a pixy. Flew right into it. It’s not sticky silk, Rache. It’s worse. I’m stuck to the floor like a troll booger on the underside of a bridge.”
Gun pointed at Eloy, I edged closer, bending to reach for a zip strip from my boot. “You need some help?”
“I need half a fairy farting brain!” he snarled. “No. You’ll rip my wings off. I’ve almost got it. Zip-strip him before he wakes up, will you?”
He subsided into half-heard swearing as the glow from his fitfully moving wings lit the slumped shape of Eloy, his back rising and falling as he breathed. Trent’s charm had worked.
In the distance, I could hear voices echoing in the dark. They could be thirty feet, or three hundred with the way sound traveled. “We’re over here!” I shouted and, gun pointed, I wedged a foot under Eloy to roll him over.
“Rache! No!” Jenks shouted, still stuck to the floor.
His eyes were open. The spell had played itself out that fast.
“Crap!” I exclaimed, pulling the trigger, but he was faster, and his foot swung out, connecting with my ankle. I fell, my foot going numb. My arms flailed, and my head hit the side of the cement tube as he shoved me.
Stars were born and died underground, and I felt myself falling, my side scraping on the rough walls of the tunnel. Idiot! I should have double-tapped him!
“You are one tough bitch,” Eloy was saying as he stood over me, and I groaned when he kicked my middle, my air huffing out as I clenched in pain. “Anyone else I’d kill right now, but I’ll be back for you in about a week. Count on it.” Crouching, he pulled my head up by my hair. “A lifetime of rest and relaxation wait for you, madam cow. Your blood is going to wipe the scourge from the world and make it clean again.”
“You bastard . . .” I gasped, still clenched over my middle. “This is our world, too.”
“And the monkeys and the donkeys, but we don’t let them live in penthouse suites.” He dropped my head, and my face hit the cement. My head throbbed, and my ankle felt like it was on fire as he yanked my arms behind my back and zip-stripped me with my own zip strip. The line energy I had stored washed out of me and my connection to it died. I was on my own.
“Cute,” he said as he picked up my splat gun. I clenched my eyes shut, expecting him to shoot me, but they flashed open when I heard him run for the air shaft instead. Wiggling, I rolled over, finally getting a good breath of air. Voices echoed in my head, real or imagined, I couldn’t tell.
“You chickenshit fairy flop!” Jenks shouted, his wings going like mad as he tried to unstick himself from the floor, finally taking his boot off and darting almost to the ceiling before dropping back down and trying to free his sword. “You’re the one who’s going to get the lobotomy. I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you!”
By the light of Jenks’s dust, I blearily watched Eloy standing under the upper air shaft, shooting up into it with that can of spray. It looked like silly string, spreading out to make a thick net falling out of the ceiling. Tucking the can in his back pocket, he quickly gathered the strands into a thicker rope. The smell of propellant drifted to me, and I hoped I wouldn’t sneeze. My head hurt, and I was afraid I was going to vomit.
My fingers pushed against the cold floor and, panting, I levered my upper body up. “Eloy!” I croaked, but he didn’t even look as he reached over his head and started climbing. His feet swung wildly until finding the walls, and he was gone, my splat gun shoved at the small of his back.
“This is exactly why I don’t like weapons,” I whispered, licking my lip to find it swollen. “They can always be used against you.” Pissed, I sat, my back to the wall, cursing myself as I felt my ribs, and Eloy’s noise diminished.
“Rache. You okay?”
“Yes.” I went to rise, but my ankle gave way and I fell back, my breath hissing out. “No.”
“Maybe we’re getting too old for this,” he said, and I leaned forward so he could reach the zip strip.
“Just break it, will you?” There was a thump from the tunnel, and I grimaced.
“So call Glenn already,” he said, and I felt a light pressure on my wrists as he wedged his sword into the fastening clamp. “No shame in asking for help.”
“Radio is dead,” I said, and Jenks swore.
“Those mother moss wipes with the fancy equipment are not working for the FIB,” he said, then swore again, blaming Tink, the sun, and the stars all in one long breath.
My hands were suddenly free, and I pulled my arms to my front. I reached for a line, relishing the scintillating energy as it ran like a chattering stream through my neural network, washing away my slight headache. “Oh, that feels good. Thanks, Jenks.”
“I broke my Tink-blasted sword!” he said in disgust, and I realized why the elaborate swearing as he came around front. “Look at it! Snapped it clean through.”
“I think I sprained my ankle,” I said, nauseated as I put a hand to the wall and slowly stood. “He’s got my gun, too.”
Jenks hovered before me, a green tint to his dust as he looked at his best garden sword, the pixy steel snapped at the hilt. I eased my weight to my injured ankle, and hissed, jerking it up again. “You want to call it?” Jenks said, and I glanced at the mouth of the tunnel.
The memory surfaced of Winona fighting Gerald as he stripped her, and Chris dancing in delight as the curse made with my blood twisted her into a monstrosity. Eloy’s slurs and misplaced superiority made my eyes crinkle in renewed anger. My pulse hammered. I wanted him. I wanted him bad.
“Hell no,” I said, and Jenks threw his broken sword at the wall. It made a sliding ting as it hit and fell, and I felt bad for him even as he darted to the mouth of the upward-facing tunnel, more determined yet. Hobbling, I managed the few steps to the shaft and looked up into the dark. The end of Eloy’s makeshift rope dangled, looking too thin to support my weight. “He climbed that?” I said, and Jenks went up and down like an impatient yo-yo.
“It’s only five feet. Then it goes at an angle.”
Five feet. Straight up. My upper-body strength wasn’t that bad, and I reached for the makeshift rope. The sticky lacework clung to me, and I started to feel a little better. The slimy rat had kicked me when I was down. Took my gun. Tied me up with my own zip strip. Made Jenks break his sword. It was enough to make me wish that Trent had given me a charm to turn people inside out.
I could hear thumps from the shaft, and knowing no one—not even the mysterious alpha or beta teams—would be guarding the other end of the air shaft, I tensed my arms and started up. “Move it, witch!” Jenks shouted, and I swung my body weight, trying to get my good leg up to help support my mass.
Jenks was right, and I found the other end of the weird rope stuck to the wall of the shaft where it made a sixty-degree angle and sloped upward. My ankle wasn’t hurting as badly, and panting, I wiggled my way up, hitting my shoulder on the wall as I struggled.
