Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (26 page)

Desperately, Ashe looked to Bus, but the old man just held up his hands. “Don’t think you’ll get me to argue with her,” he said, stepping around her to start after the girl. “I’d be coming too if she hadn’t asked me to stay.”

Ashe stared after them and then flinched when Lily made a small sound. Glancing to the little girl, she hesitated and then shifted the bag around onto her shoulder and followed them.

“You’re wasting your time, you know.”

At the sound of Cole’s voice, she froze, barely having made it three steps. Shivers ran through her, fueled by the overwhelming urge to just stop the boy from being a problem once and for all.

“Cole,” she warned without turning around. “Don’t.”

Debris crunching beneath his feet, he gave her wide berth as he circled her.

“What?” he replied. “I’m just saying. My grandparents won’t be in Washington anymore. Things didn’t go too well when Lily and I were there, and they’re not exactly the calm type. Minute they picked up the pieces, they’d have hit the road.”

Her gaze slid over to him, and the shivering grew stronger at the innocent look in his eyes. “And where would they have gone?”

“As far from Washington as they could get,” he said like it was obvious. “
If
they’re even still in the States, they’re probably hidden away in Florida by now.”

She paused. “So you’re saying we should go there,” she stated flatly.

He shrugged. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t rush off. Aren’t there other wizards you could contact? Maybe you could send them down south, see if they find anything. I mean, you don’t want to just go hauling Lily across the country unnecessarily, right?”

Expressionless, she regarded him, wondering if he actually thought she was gullible enough to believe he suddenly wanted to help.

“We’ll start in Washington,” she said.

Pulling Lily with her, she strode past him, trying to ignore the worried look the girl gave Cole as she went.

“You’re making a mistake,” he called.

Trembling with rage, she didn’t answer as she yanked open the door.

Bus and Spider were talking quietly halfway across the room. As Ashe and Lily emerged from the hall, Spider glanced over and then, with a final look to Bus, she turned and disappeared into the shadows.

With a sigh, the old man waited for them both and then led the way toward the stairs.

The lower level was silent, and the blue glow of the light did little to alleviate the gloom. Crouching, she braced herself on the platform ledge and then dropped to the tracks. Eyeing the pitch-black shadows that guarded the maintenance room and resisting the impulse to let her defensive magic rise, she helped Lily down and then turned, her skin crawling as she followed Spider and Bus toward the tunnel’s opposite end.

Minutes passed, their monotony broken only by the infrequent lights revealing layer upon layer of graffiti above the train tracks. Old cigarettes peppered the broken concrete beneath their feet, and years of garbage bordered the wall, filling the air with the stench of decay.

And finally, a hint of daylight thinned the shadows as the tunnel began to climb.

On some unspoken signal, Spider and Bus slowed. Reaching into his pocket, the old man drew out a set of keys and then handed them to the girl.

“Third one on the left, yeah?” she asked.

He nodded.

Spider hesitated, and then echoed the motion. Briefly, her gaze went back to the shadowy tunnel, hurt flickering through her eyes.

“Take care of him for me,” she said quietly.

Bus smiled. “You know I will.”

Spider drew a breath, forcing her expression to clear, and she nodded again. Adjusting the bag on her shoulder, she gave him a small grin and then started up the slope.

The old man glanced over as Ashe followed. “Now don’t you go keeping all the fun to yourself,” he ordered. “You need anything…”

Ashe hesitated. “Thanks, Bus.”

He chuckled, patting her shoulder. “See you when you get back, kiddo.”

She nodded, hoping it would be true. Hanging onto Lily’s hand, she continued after Spider.

“Bye, Bus,” Lily said shyly as they passed.

The rushing sounds of traffic filtered down the tunnel as they climbed, and after a dozen yards, the tracks abruptly came to an end. An overgrown gate lay ahead, its base entrenched by mounds of garbage and dead leaves. Twitching the kudzu aside, Spider scanned the street, and then flipped around the keys to unfasten a heavy padlock and chain lashed around the gate. Sliding the chain through the bars, she checked the street again and then pulled one side of the fence back slightly.

“Hurry,” she said and then slipped through the opening.

A thick carpet of kudzu choked the ditch beyond the tunnel, ending only inches from the sidewalk. Beat-up cars sagged next to old parking meters, waiting for their owners to return, while across the street, abandoned office buildings gaped. Barely giving Cole enough time to make it past the gate, Spider refastened the chain, and then tucked it into the vines before striding swiftly for the sidewalk. At an old bronze car three parking meters from the entrance to the tunnel, she unlocked the door and then reached around to pull the rear lock as well.

Ashe climbed into the back seat, her nose wrinkling at the musty smell of the overwhelmingly beige interior. Scooting to the far side of the vehicle, she unlocked the front and then bent over to help Lily tug the door closed with a screech of rusted hinges. As Lily eyed the dusty seatbelt, surrendering finally to buckling it over herself, Ashe turned, watching the street.

Police cars shot past an intersection a few blocks away, their sirens howling.

She swallowed and glanced to the front as Spider turned the key in the ignition, succeeding in starting the engine on the fourth try.

“Blackjack’s got to get better cars,” the girl muttered. Pulling down the gearshift, she winced as the car jerked, and then eased the vehicle out onto the potholed road.

“Well,” Spider said dryly. “Here we go.”

A block from the latest target, Harris pulled the rental car to a stop and sighed. Forty-eight hours had passed since the kids escaped the Blood in Banston, and in his opinion, the time had not gone well. Half of Jamison’s forces were tearing the city apart, while the rest were chasing any lead they could find. A few stragglers like himself were still being sent to other cities to take down any additional Merlin hiding places Tanya recalled, in case they were locations to which Ashley would retreat, and over Chaunessy, there hung a cloud of silence no one wanted to be the first to break.

Brogan looked like cold violence waiting to happen. Simeon hadn’t bothered and lashed out at anyone who crossed his path. Tanya was like a woman possessed, wracking her already questionably stable mind for any hideouts she might have forgotten, and Jamison hadn’t left his office in two days.

And meanwhile, Harris couldn’t get Cole’s words out of his head.

With a scowl, he shoved the gearshift into park and then turned off the engine. Glancing to the passenger seat, he eyed the paper sack of groceries dubiously, and then hefted it up and shifted it around till he could climb from the sedan without contorting himself into too much of a pretzel. The wide street was mostly quiet, with only a few midday drivers cruising the roads, but even the silence set him on edge. Hoisting the bag higher in his arms, he surveyed the neighborhood as casually as he could manage, and then headed for the cube of cracked stucco walls and cheap metal windows optimistically called the Beautiful Acres Apartments.

It was hard not to be tense. The Merlin had gotten craftier in recent weeks, once they’d figured out their hiding places were compromised. Apartments were booby-trapped as often as not, and in the past two days alone, every place he’d gone had proven to be a setup.

No one had gotten killed. Not yet, anyway. But the possibility of another trap left him edgy every time he walked into a building where Tanya said the Merlin had been.

With as pleasantly neutral an expression as he could muster, he pulled open the glass door and then strolled into the narrow hallway. Cracked tile popped beneath his feet, destroying any chance he had of approaching the apartments unnoticed, and through an open doorway, he spotted a young couple kissing goodbye before the man headed out.

He nodded to the guy as he passed and kept walking. It was a bit like the old days on the police force, running stealth reconnaissance like this. He got in, surveyed the area and then got out with the exact location of the targets in question. A squad would move in and subdue the threat, while he slipped off with none of the targets aware that the assumedly oblivious man who’d wandered by a few minutes before had actually given their position away.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same. Back on the force, he’d known pretty much where everyone stood on things.

Fighting off a grimace, he pushed the thought aside and doubled back toward the stairway. He didn’t know what had spooked Cole, but it wasn’t something he could worry about right now. Everything else aside, the Merlin had proven time and again to be a clear, violent threat with an utter lack of concern for whom they hurt. That was reality, and he needed to focus on it if he wanted to keep the wizards from knowing he could see them, and if he wanted to make it back to the car alive.

But for the addition of an old woman sweeping her doorstep, the second story was identical to the one below. Narrow brown doors bearing tarnished brass numbers lined either side of the corridor, ending in a permanently sealed window that overlooked the parking lot. The door shut behind him as the old woman returned to her apartment and at the end of the hall, he could hear a television playing cartoons.

Confusion hit him, followed by a rush of recognition for the eye-crossing feeling he’d come to know so well. He forced his feet to keep moving. There were four doors on each side of the hallway, but to his right, his gaze was hell-bent on sliding past one.

Breathing slowly, he strolled past the magic to the last apartment and knocked.

The noise of the television clicked abruptly off. A few child-like voices protested, only to fall silent at a sharp reprimand, and then the door crept open.

“Yes?” a weathered-looking young woman asked, eyeing him from behind the security chain.

Harris smiled. “Hi, I’m from North Falls Presbyterian,” he said, pulling from memory the name of a church he’d passed on the way here. “One of our members put down your family for a gift from our food pantry and I’m just coming by to drop it off.”

The woman hesitated. “Who gave you our name?”

His smile took on a rueful cast. “I’m not really allowed to say.”

“Are there cookies?” came a little boy’s voice from inside the apartment.

“Stay in there!” the woman snapped without looking fully away from Harris. For a moment longer, she paused, and then she twitched her chin toward the floor. “Okay, just leave it by the door.”

He didn’t let the smile flicker as he set the bag down. “Have a nice day,” he said as he straightened again.

“You too,” she offered cautiously as he walked off.

No sound emanated from the other apartment as he passed it on his way back to the stairs. His eyes slipped over it, his expression blankly pleasant, and his heart picked up speed as he spotted shadows moving behind the peephole.

He kept going. The clatter of his footsteps on the stairs felt deafening and, by the time he finished sweeping the third floor, his heart was drumming fit to choke him. Jogging back down the steps, he headed out onto the street, fighting the urge to look back at the second story all the while. Continuing across the road, he thumbed the key fob for the rental and then slid into the driver’s seat before finally allowing himself to survey the building.

Nothing moved. He pulled out his cell phone.

“Second floor, north side, halfway down the hall in apartment six,” he said when Brogan picked up. “But we have a problem. There’s people all around them. Kids too.”

The wizard paused. “Understood. Head for the airport. We’ll be there shortly.”

Silence replaced the faint hiss of the phone call.

Harris set the cell aside. His gaze returned to the building as he started the car.

The fact he’d made it back meant that, like every place before it, Ashley probably wasn’t in there, though other equally vicious wizards could be. But Brogan and the rest knew what they were dealing with when it came to the Merlin, if only by the number of people they’d lost fighting them. Meanwhile, however, he was sitting here when he needed to drive, because if any of the Merlin survived, spotted him elsewhere, and then remembered he’d been gawking at their window right before the Blood showed up, he’d really be screwed.

He grimaced and pulled the car away from the curb.

Why would Cole think his dad didn’t want to help a kid?

He flipped on the radio in exasperation. Jamison made clear when they first met that the little girl’s safety was as important as Cole’s own. At the police station, Brogan had indicated much the same thing.

And people never lied.

He came to a stop at a red light and rubbed his face, a familiar ache beginning to throb in his temples. The Blood wanted to stop Ashley and everyone like her. They’d taken apart the ones who’d occupied Chaunessy before them solely to keep those wizards from ever hurting anyone again, and they were damn close to doing the same to Ashley’s people. And beyond that, he really didn’t care. Someone had to protect the innocent from her kind, and since no one in the so-called human world even believed wizards existed, the Blood were the best chance anyone had.

So why the hell hadn’t Cole seen it that way?

A horn honked and he flinched, realizing the light had long since turned green. Exhaling in frustration, he waved apologetically as he glanced to the rearview mirror.

He froze. Above the apartment building, black smoke billowed into the sky.

A curse escaped him. Hitting the accelerator, he cranked the wheel around, spinning the car through a tight turn and leaving the drivers of the other vehicles staring. His hand reached for a siren before he remembered it wasn’t there and then the next stoplight was behind him, with traffic screeching to a halt in his wake. A turn came and went as he raced the car onto the apartment building’s street, and when he hit the brakes, the rental careened onto the curb before reaching a stop.