Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) (2 page)

“Because you’re twins?” Thea asked.

“Please,” said Alecto, and for a second Thea saw a flash of pain in her eyes, quickly extinguished. “We’re not twins. We’re not even family anymore. But we’re both women of business.”

“If you say so.” Privately, Thea thought that was pretty flimsy protection. But maybe Alecto was right. If all Megaira wanted was her own colony to run, it was not in her best interests to start a war when they were still getting their footing.

Megaira and Philip came out of the yoga room a minute later, but neither of them stopped. Philip was already on his phone, striding out of the office. Megaira walked to the conference room door, gesturing as she went for Alecto and Thea to follow.

“This room has the bigger monitor,” Megaira said. “We’ll need it.”

“For what?” Alecto asked.

“I have something to show you. It should shed some light on our respective… footing.”

Thea did not like the sound of that at all. Judging by her face, Alecto didn’t either. But they followed Megaira anyway.

An enormous wide-screen TV filled one wall, at the end of a long conference table. Megaira sat down and tapped some keys on a laptop that had been set up there. The screen flickered to life, at first just a wall of solid blue. A logo faded in, a wing that ended in a dagger rather than a talon, with the words
Fury Unlimited
beneath it.

Megaira pressed the same key several times, scrolling through presentation slides too fast for Thea to read them, although she caught quite a few corporate sales buzzwords.

“We can dispense with most of this,” Megaira said as she tapped through it. “It’s for a client meeting we have on Thursday. What I want to show you will be at the end. There we are.”

The slide she stopped on wasn’t really a slide at all, but an embedded video. It was, for the moment, nothing but a solid black rectangle with a play button in the middle.

“This was meant to be a live feed for them,” Megaira went on. “But we’ve decided to do it today instead, so you’d have a chance to see it, and then show them a recording when they come.”

“Do w—” Alecto began.

She was interrupted by a loud buzz from a speaker Thea couldn’t see. The noise seemed to come from all around them at once, and combined with her growing sense of gathering doom, it was all Thea could do not to jump under the table and throw her arms over her head. So much for getting too strong.

“Ah, perfect timing,” Megaira said, and pushed the play button.

The video showed a residential street. Thea didn’t doubt that Megaira was telling the truth, and it was a live feed of a real neighborhood somewhere, but it might as well have been a movie set for the number of peaceful suburban clichés it embodied.

The sun was shining, the sky blue—so blue that Thea suspected that wherever it was, it was closer to Hexing House’s part of the country than where they were now, a suspicion supported by the trees and bushes—and there were several young children playing together at the end of a cul-de-sac. They ran and laughed, their bikes and scooters lying forgotten nearby.

Their mothers were all gathered in the driveway of a neat red brick house with an impeccably landscaped lawn and garden. Some of them stood, others sat in folding chairs. They were chatting and laughing, glancing occasionally at the children, or down the street, presumably for approaching cars. One of them held two leashes, which ended in two well-groomed terriers lounging on the pavement.

“What the hell is this?” Alecto asked.

But Thea had the feeling she knew.

“Megaira, stop it,” Thea said. “Don’t do this.”

It was already too late.

Although there was no sound on the video, one of the women looked like she was shouting. She jumped out of her chair and put her hands around her nearest companion’s throat.

Ignoring her fighting neighbors, the woman with the dogs picked one of them up and started kissing it. Passionately. On the mouth.

It only got worse from there.

Hemlock Heights. That was what the neighborhood was called. As she flew toward whatever awaited them there, Thea couldn’t help but wonder if whoever had done the location scouting for the superhex demonstration had chosen the place specifically for its poetic name. Or for the fact that its initials matched those of Hexing House.

Megaira, much to Thea’s initial surprise, had given them the name quite willingly. She’d even had Philip get the coordinates for them to put into their navigators, which would produce something like a fury’s natural homing signal, to guide them there at their top flight speed.

Which, Thea supposed, almost certainly meant a trap awaited them there.

It was back on the other coast. Only maybe an hour by car away from Hexing House, in fact. Another reason to choose it? Did Megaira want to blame this on her rival colony?

Thea didn’t have much chance to ponder the questions, nor even what, exactly, they would do when they got there. The flight was a fast and taxing one, and there was no time to talk or make plans.

But Thea had some experience with hex removal, and with the superhex itself. Alecto had called Langdon as they rushed out of Fury Unlimited and instructed him to meet them there. At least between them, Thea and the colony physician might be able to do more for the victims than the human paramedics could.

Nobody noticed them as they landed in the shadows of an abandoned yard. The street that had looked so serene when it first appeared on Megaira’s monitor was mayhem, a confusion of sirens, running people, screams, emergency vehicles, cries, and acrid smells.

The neat red brick house where the mothers had been gathered was partly collapsed. Someone had apparently rammed an oversized SUV straight into it. At high speed, judging by the condition of the SUV. Two houses at the other end of the street were on fire.

In the grass near Thea’s feet, one of the terriers lay dead. The little pink bandana it wore around its neck was slick with blood.

But the chaos was the kind you’d expect after a disaster, no more. Thea didn’t see anyone who was obviously manifesting an artificial excess of sin.

In other words, they were too late. The latest iteration of the superhex was still short-lived, it seemed, and it had passed.

Alecto gestured at Thea and flew between two houses, where Langdon was crouching, half-concealed by a hedge.

“I came right away, but there wasn’t much to be done,” he said.

“You came alone?” Thea asked.

“Margot and Darnell were with me, but I sent them back. I only stayed to wait for you,” Langdon said. “There was nothing for them to do, not by the time we got here. I was able to remove the hex from two young children. At least, I think I removed it, or helped it along. But it was fading by then anyway.” He glanced at Alecto. “I don’t know how well they’ll remember me, but there were no adults with them.”

“Meaning nobody will believe a purple dragon came to help them,” Thea said. “Are we starting the cover-up already?”

“There’s nothing to cover up,” Alecto said. “This wasn’t us.” She looked back at the street, where a mother was holding her limp daughter—whether the girl was dead or merely unconscious, Thea couldn’t tell—and wailing. “We should go.”

“Are you kidding me?” Thea asked. “We’re just going to turn our backs on this? Why did we come if it wasn’t to help?”

“What do you want us to do?” Alecto asked. “The hex has obviously dissipated. And the last thing we need is for anyone to see furies here right now.”

“So you are covering it up. I—”

Thea stopped speaking and frowned up at the ruined brick house. Something had caught her eye. Movement, high up.

“Shit,” she muttered, and flew away from Alecto and Langdon without explaining herself further.

Through the collapsed and crumbled wall, Thea saw a boy of maybe seven or eight. The roof had caved in over most of his bedroom and the hallway beyond, and the stairs were gone. The corner he was trapped in was still intact, but only barely, and who knew for how long. Thea didn’t have a good grasp of physics, but she was guessing the floor he stood on wasn’t all that stable.

The boy, it seemed, had reached the same conclusion. He was staring through an opening in the rubble at the ground below, clearly considering jumping.

Nobody had noticed his cries. It was too noisy, and most of the emergency crews, and the crowd, were focused on the fires.

Thea rushed forward and picked him up just as he stretched one leg out into the open air.

“I’ve got you,” she said as she flew back to the ground. He clung to her neck, his cheek hot and sticky against hers. He didn’t seem afraid of her.

“Are you hurt?” Thea asked.

The boy shook his head, although he was bleeding from one ear.

“They came back,” he said.

“Who did?” Thea set him down on the lawn behind his house and crouched down to put her hands on his shoulders. “Who came back? Furies like me?”

He shook his head again. “The monsters.”

“Which monsters? Are you sure they weren’t like me? Purple, and with wings?”

“No. They were Daddy’s monsters. And Mommy’s, too, and Miss Wanda’s.”

Thea had no idea what he was talking about, but there was a good chance he didn’t, either. His pupils were two different sizes.

“Thea.” It was Alecto.

Langdon bent in front of the boy. “He has a head injury. You need to let him go.”

“What’s your name?” Thea asked the boy. “Do you know it?”

He had enough of his wits about him to look offended, which she took to be a good sign. “Course I know my own name. It’s Talbott.”

“Come on then, Talbott,” Thea said. “We’ll get you some help. Do you know where your parents are?”

She started to reach for his hand, but Alecto took her arm.

Langdon put a hand on Talbott’s shoulder and turned him to face the bit of the street that was visible between the houses. “Do you see the ambulance over there?” he asked.

Talbott nodded.

“Good. I want you to walk over to that, okay?”

He nodded again and stumbled forward.

Thea reached out to help him, but Alecto stayed her again. Thea’s claws came out.

“You’re going to send this little kid off on his own?” Thea asked, and not very quietly. “Seriously?”

Alecto actually rolled her eyes. It made Thea want to cut her.

“It’s
right over there
,” Alecto said. “We’ll watch and make sure he gets to it.”

So the three of them watched, while Talbott approached the ambulance, and a paramedic came to help him. As he was walking, two vans marked
Coroner’s Office
came up the road.

Talbott disappeared into the back of the ambulance. Another kid, this one in his teens, came running up beside it, bleeding so badly that Thea couldn’t even tell where the blood was coming from. He was holding the hand of a chubby little girl, half-dragging her as she screamed. Her other arm was hanging at a very bad angle.

Thea felt sick. “He was talking about monsters,” she said.

A shout came from somewhere nearby, and Alecto pulled Thea farther into the shadow of the ruined house, Langdon quickly following.

“You mean the boy?” Langdon asked Thea.

“Yeah,” Thea said. “He said the monsters were
back
.”

“So what?” said Alecto. “I’m sure Megaira had some furies out here setting up her little demo.”

“No.” Thea shook her head. “He specifically said they weren’t like me. I asked him. Twice.”

“He probably had no idea what he was saying,” Langdon said. “He might even have been hallucinating.”

“He said his parents had monsters, and that someone named Miss Wanda did too,” said Thea. “And that the monsters had come back.”

“That is odd,” agreed Alecto. “I don’t know if it means anything for us or not, but this is not the time to discuss it. We can’t be seen here.”

“But we should be discussing it with
them
,” said Thea, gesturing at the street in general. “We could wait until the police and paramedics leave, then interview whoever is willing to talk to us. We need to—”

More shouts, these ones closer. And more clear.

“I swear I saw somebody
flying
over here,” a woman was saying. “I did
not
imagine it. It was after… things got normal again. It wasn’t part of whatever hallucinations we were having.”

The voices came closer still. The three furies shrank into the rubble, then froze as the humans went past, toward the yard next door.

“What we need to do is go,” Alecto whispered.

“Agreed,” said Langdon.

“But—” Thea began.

Alecto held up her hand for silence and snapped open her wings. “Enough. We’re going home. Now. That’s an order.”

Thea considered defying that order, although she couldn’t have said why. Maybe it was just frustration at arriving too late. She wanted to stay and help. She wanted to stay and
fight
. She needed some outlet for her rage at Megaira.

But there was none.

So Thea followed the others, putting Hemlock Heights behind her, leaving it to its fate.

Or so she thought.