Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series) (5 page)

"I
'm handling it." Cormac started to circle around me and I moved with him, so he had to either step over me or stop. "Do you know anything or not?"

Yep, and there was Cormac pissing a circle all around me. For someone who was looking cozy with my best friend, he sure did like to mark me as his territory. I wondered if he did this with all the people that worked with him. It was starting to piss me off, pun intended.

"Vitor, we think this guy is bad news. We know he was mixed up in what went down on the mountain," I interjected, trying to bring the focus back to me.

"If he
's been going back and forth from my planet, how has he been getting over here without you knowing?" Vitor asked Cormac, throwing a jibe back.

"I don
't know. Maybe he had some help." Cormac left little doubt about who he thought might have helped him. I knew he didn't believe it; he was just antagonizing Vitor.

"Are you accusing me of something?" Vitor took a step closer and I thought I
'd get smushed between the two of them.

"Can the two of you play nice for a couple of minutes?" I said
, at about my wits' end. "I'm the only one that got close to this guy and I'm telling you, he's bad. Every cell in my body is screaming it. You guys need to get along, at least until we figure out who he is."

They both backed up slightly.

Cormac spoke first. "None of the operators recognized him coming through the portals. Either someone is lying or he had one hell of a disguise."

"I
'll see what I can come up with," Vitor relented.

"When I was in the mountain with Tracker, he said that their race kept a history of all of the races. Is there any way to get access to that?"

Cormac shot me a look. I knew he was annoyed this was the first he'd heard of this. Geez, it isn't like I do it on purpose, but reporting back every single word ever said is a new thing for me and I'm not really into it.

"They don
't give anyone access to anything they don't have to. Plus, after Tracker's disappearance, neither you or Cormac are on the list of people they feel like helping out. Rumor has it that if they didn't need Keepers, they'd be picking you all off as quick as they could. Watch your back." That last little bit was said directly to me. I got the impression he'd be in front of the line to pick off Cormac if he thought it was feasible. It was becoming all to obvious that the only people Cormac played nice with were his own.

"We
'll be in touch. In the meantime, keep this quiet," Cormac ordered.

"Of course," Vitor said, insulted.

Cormac pushed me to the exit and I pushed back, annoyed at his high handedness but continued out anyway. I didn't want to give these two and excuse to start tussling.

By time we got back in the car, I was exhausted. I wasn
't sure if it was from worrying about who the hell the senator was or the tension of diffusing Cormac and Vitor.

"What
's the deal with you two? Has it always been like this?" I asked as I leaned back in the car.

"Like what?" Cormac asked as we drove along back into the city.

"Is that a joke?" Please tell me he's kidding and that this isn't what he views as normal interaction.

He cracked a smile. "Yes. We
've never clicked but he's just getting on my nerves more often lately."

About twenty minutes later we turned off the Strip down a darkened road that wasn
't much more than an alleyway, sandwiched by two brick faced buildings both about four or five stories tall. The road was narrow but looked like it had been paved recently.

"Where are we?" I asked as I looked around. I followed him out of the car. A kid
of no more than eighteen, who must have been lingering in the shadows, came forward and Cormac tossed him his keys.

"We
're at The Cave." He waited until I caught up to him. "Stay close to me. This place can be a bit unsavory," he said and he put a hand on the small of my back as we walked toward a solid steel door that swung open as we neared it. A strange girl with purple streaked hair stood by the door but didn't speak as she closed it after us.

"What is this place?"
My first impression, or what I could see of it as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, was that it was a complete dump. The second was that we were sorely out of place; every pair of eyes landed on us, and they weren't friendly either.

"It
's where the Fae and the wolves hang out when they are on our side and don't want to be near humans. I'm sure you'll recognize a lot of them."

As I scanned the room, I
realized I did. "Should we be here, after what Vitor said?"

"This is my town. Nobody tells me where I can go." His hand on my back pushed me forward.

I nearly gagged on my first breath of heavy smoke filled the air. It didn't smell like pot, but it wasn't cigarettes either. Men and women lounged about as a weird song I'd never heard played loudly,  thumping bass vibrating the floor. The men outnumbered the women by about two to one, and the females that were present all seemed to be coupled up. No little pockets of two or three girls grouped, like you'd expect to see in normal club.

"Why are there no single women?" I asked. I
'd always gotten a chauvinist vibe from the wolves and I was feeling vindicated and annoyed all at once.

"They only come here with men," he replied, having no idea how that would irritate me.

"Why? They can't be without a man?" My voice started to rise.

"Maybe at some point you can go over there and start a women
's lib. Right now, I've got bigger concerns. That's my guy, in the corner."

I looked across the smoke filled room to the corner where a weird little man sat. "It figures you wouldn
't care. You and your people, that's all you worry about."

His arm tightened around me as we changed direction suddenly. He yanked me into a dark nook
and his body blocked out the room.

"This isn
't the place." His words were serious but I refused to be put off.

"Easy for you to…"

"Stop and listen to me; half of the men in here would like to tear you from limb to limb for what you did to Tracker. They'd like to kill me for allowing it."

I knew he was right. I had
also started to feel a sense of security when I was with him. No one ever messed with him, so if he was really concerned about that, he wouldn't have brought me here. "Why did you even bring me here?" I asked, as I realized there had to be another intent.

"Because I needed them to see you are off limits." He angled closer and I didn
't know myself what he was about to do. His hand cupped the side of my head. The light bulb went off then. He was making it look like I wasn't just with him, I was
with
him. I just wish it felt as fake as it was supposed to be, instead of the close contact sending my hormones all into a tizzy.

I wanted him to lean closer at the same time I was afraid he
'd do just that. In my nervousness, I started to blather, "Don't you guys have a news letter or some other means of getting the word out?"

"No, and even if we did," he leaned in close enough that I could feel the stubble on his face graze my neck, "it wouldn
't be nearly as much fun as this."

Did he just nibble on my ear lobe?

He leaned his head back but his body still hovered close to mine. His eyes spoke volumes. This was quickly turning from a sham display into the real thing.

"So what else are we doing here?" I said, as I tried to steer this back into a safer zone. I was a touch disappointed when it worked and I saw his face grow serious again.

"The guy in the corner runs this place. He might have some answers."

He looked concerned. He had the same hunch I did
: whoever this senator was, he was bad news. He finally stepped back and we headed over to the owner.

He was an odd little man with almost black hair, but not quite. Even in the dim light, a strange greenish highlight shimmered.

"Burrom," Cormac greeted the stumpy little man. Burrom simply nodded in the direction of a hallway off the back of the main room. He stood up from his stool, proving just how short he was. He was smoking a pipe with whatever strange tobacco was filling this place with a weird odor. It trailed behind as we followed him into a room that was surprisingly clean, compared to the club. Inside was a monitor, displaying a picture of the hallway and also several different vantage points of the club . A rustic looking table that appeared to serve as a desk sat in the corner with a single chair. It appeared he didn't do much entertaining in here.

"You know you
're going to get me in hot water," Burrom finally spoke. His voice sounded surprisingly deep and mismatched for his size. "I don't get involved and I don't take sides."

"And you know you don
't want to piss me off. Now, what do you know? And don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about," Cormac said in his scary voice. At least I'd think it was his scary voice if I were Burrom.

"I don
't know much. Just that he's not right. He only came in here once, with Tracker." He did a little hop to get himself seated upon the table.

"You know more than that." Cormac declared.

"It's only a hunch."

"Tell me." He took a step closer to
Burrom. Cormac might have been trying to bully information out of him but I had the strange feeling he liked this small Fae.

"He
's not one of us. And by that, I mean neither Fae or Werewolf."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

Burrom hesitated for only a couple of seconds before he tried to explain. "When I met him, Tracker said he was one of them, which I knew for a lie. I knew he wasn't pure Wolf but I figured he was some sort of relation and it was simply a stretch on the truth. We don't normally shake hands, that's a human thing, but he extended his hand to me. I thought he'd assimilated, but something niggled at me, so I threw up a blocker when I grasped his hand." He paused and looked directly to me, "It stops an inflow of energy," he explained and then continued, "I felt something odd. It wasn't a spell, but it sure as hell wasn't human or Wolf either. He was trying to do something to me."

"What?" I asked.

"I've got no idea." He shook his head and looked as frustrated by the lack of information as we were. You could tell he wasn't used to being in the dark on anything.

"Any guess what he might be?" I asked.

"No."

"You see him again or hear anything, you call me immediately,"
Cormac said.

Burrom nodded
. We left his office and we headed out through the club. When the fresh night air hit my lungs, I couldn't take a breath deep enough to cleanse myself of the smog we'd just left. I watched Cormac's Ferrari pull up; the kid threw him his keys and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

I was just about to walk around to my side of the car when Cormac bum rushed me and tackled me to the ground. My body hit the pavement as I felt the burn of flesh as it was shaved off my body as I slid along the rough surface with two hundred plus pounds sliding on top of me. My first thought was to start yelling that just because I could take a beating didn
't mean they should think it was okay to rough me up all the time. Before I could say anything, bullets whizzed past my head and ricocheted through the alley answering the question. His entire weight crushed down upon me.

"Cormac?" I asked, hoping the dead weight didn
't mean what I thought.

Nothing.

"Cormac!" My voice sounded slightly hysterical to even me.

I didn
't hear anymore bullets and I needed to get him out of there. From what I did know, Alchemists could take a beating, I knew that from personal experience. What I didn't know was how much of one. There were limits. Cormac had reminded me on several occasions that we could be killed.

As I felt the sticky warmth between our bodies, I knew that even with our capabilities, you still needed blood. If he bled out, it would be game over. I pushed at him with a strength I didn
't know I had and rolled out from underneath him. I didn't wait even a second before I grabbed his arms and started to drag all six feet plus of him toward the passenger side of the car. If I hadn't had so much adrenaline pumping, I'm not sure I would have made it, but I had to get him out of the open. The car was the nearest cover in an alley where we were caught like fish in a barrel. When nothing shot at us again, I assumed the shooter had taken off.

I should
've looked around, but I didn't, so intent on dragging his lifeless body to the car. I was in pure reaction mode. Until a bullet whizzed so close to me I felt it move a lock of hair away from my face.

Then I saw him. The
senator stood in the alley, about ten feet from me. Silver temples, accented dark hair. He was impeccably dressed in an expensive suit with cuff links that peaked out of the sleeves and shoes that gleamed. But no gun.