Natural Consequences (31 page)

Whatever her argument, Colleen put it aside with a shake of her head. “Anyway, we’ve got bigger concerns. They’re getting text messages. Urgent ones.” She looked to Matt, who produced a pair of cell phones from his pocket for Hauser to see.

The lead agent
scowled. “Jesus Christ, I can’t read that teenage texting bullshit. What the hell does this mean?”

“Cohen keeps asking both of these guys if they’re still at the party and if they’re okay. No reason why, just says he’s urgent.
He might know better than to put anything incriminating into a text message,” Matt added.

“So if something went wrong at the party for everyone else like it did for our two guests, he might be trying to
check on his friends,” Colleen finished. “Anyway, the last message says L is coming to pick them up. Maybe that means Lorelei? I don’t know. He says Amber’s with him, so presumably she’s okay, at least.”

Matt
lowered the phones. He and Colleen both looked at Hauser expectantly. “What do you want to do?” Colleen asked.

“We need more time,” Hauser said, “and we don’t know the capabilities of the people we’re dealing with. We don’t want them looking for these guys.
Lanier, can you respond to these messages? Are the phones password protected?”

The other agent traded wary glances with Colleen, but answered, “I could crack one of them in just a couple of minutes.”

“Do it. Then respond to say they’re staying at the party and having a good time. Maybe use only one and say the other guy lost his or something. Go back through the previous messages to make sure you’re using the same texting lingo these two use. You’re a tech nerd, you understand this stuff.”

He looked up quickly to see the door open again. Keeley appeared from within to give a thumbs-up. “We’re set. Let’s get this done,” Hauser said before moving off to one of the cars.

Colleen and Matt traded uncomfortable glances again. “Tech nerd?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, I know. He says more about my looks than he does about my work,” Colleen said. “Some people just can’t help being dicks.”

Her cellphone buzzed. So did Matt’s. They checked, looked at one another and then both looked up toward Hauser… who had clearly received the same message.

“Keeley,
” Hauser barked, “get the Treasury guys to help you move our suspects inside.” He quickly moved back toward the van and threw open the door. “Lanier, Nguyen, we’re headed for the bus tunnels,
now
!”

* * *

The message represented a serious risk, but she covered for it well. Neither of her companions questioned Amber when she muttered, “Can’t believe they could close off part of the bus tunnels like this. It’s not even posted anywhere!”

Jason shrugged, standing far enough away that he couldn’t see what she was really doing. “Money talks,” he said. “
Stories say vampires can get into peoples’ heads. Even without that, we’ve seen the money they can cough up.” He glanced up the staircase to Alex, who crouched just below its edge watching the street. “Guess they were more interested in revenge than we thought they’d be, huh?”

“Guess so,” Alex shrugged. He still had the rifle in his hands
and the sword in the belt of his bathrobe.

“You’ve gotta be freezing,” Jason said. “You sure you don’t want my jacket?”

“I’ve handled worse,” answered Alex.

Jason threw Amber a troubled look. “No, he hasn’t,” he mouthed silently. Then it hit him: she was dressed for much warmer weather, too. Her fatigue pants and web gear made for slightly better insulation than Alex’s lazy morning ensemble, but her tank top wasn’t made to keep out the cold. “What about you?” he asked. The leather jacket was
already off his shoulders before he finished speaking.

Amber quickly hit the last key to delete the text message she’d just sent to the task force
from her history. “No, Jason, you don’t have to…” Her voice trailed off as he put the jacket around her shoulders. She’d simply lumped her shivering in with all the other stress of the evening. The gesture meant more to her than the actual warmth. “Thanks.”

“We gotta have a talk later,” he said.

“Yeah, we do,” Amber nodded soberly. “You’ve got a lot to explain here.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Okay, straight to the point then: why would vampires and werewolves chase you and Alex?”

“We kinda killed a whole shitload of
vampires last month,” Jason shrugged. “I gotta say that doesn’t feel nearly as cool to tell a girl as I thought it would.”

“No?”

“No. Feels kinda douchey now that I’m in the moment.”

“Okay, well, putting aside the how…
why
did you kill a bunch of vampires last month?”

Jason’s eyes flicked up toward Alex, who wasn’t looking at them. His friend gave no sign of approval or disapproval. “They kidnapped Alex,” Jason said. “Which was embarrassing enough the first time, right? I mean, y’know, vampires. That’s lamer than Juggalos. But now it’s happened
to him twice, and—“

“Car,” Alex hissed, and then followed with, “it’s ours. Let’s go.” He waved his companions up, but held his position until they were beside him. The passenger side door to Lorelei’s Lexus opened
up, revealing her at the wheel. He paused and looked down the staircase, where the two men in police uniforms sat with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Both now sat upright and aware, but turned away. “We can’t leave them like that,” he said. “Give me the keys.”

Jason blinked, but put the keys in his hand. “You want me to cover you while you uncuff ‘em?”

“Not taking the chance,” Alex muttered, and then called down the stairs, “Hey! Assholes!” He tossed the keys down to them. “We’re leaving. Figure out how to unlock yourselves.” His harsh tone diminished as he said, “Get in the car. I’m in last.”

Jason moved first, venturing out of their cover ahead of Amber but waiting
at the door for her to enter. Amber tumbled into the backseat behind Lorelei and waited as Jason unceremoniously joined her. Alex came last, his gun up and ready to return fire from whatever corner might hold an ambush until he was in the passenger seat.

The car took off immediately, just shy of squealing out of its brief parking spot. “
Are any of you hurt?” Lorelei asked. She looked Alex over with a simple glance as her passengers grunted out their answers. “You must be freezing,” she observed evenly. She put the heater on full blast.

“Someone’s following us,” Alex noted.

“It’s Molly and Onyx,” Lorelei replied. “We haven’t seen Drew or Wade.”

“
I got a text from them a couple minutes ago,” Jason announced. “They’re okay, but they don’t seem to know anything’s wrong.”

“If you can warn them subtly, do so,” Lorelei told him, keeping her eyes on the road, “but put nothing in the open. We do not know how closely we’ve been watched.”

“Way ahead of you,” Jason said, typing out another message.

Alex let out a long, shuddering breath, lean
ing forward to put his face in his hands. His forehead rested on the dashboard. The sounds that accompanied his breathing were somewhere between loud shivers and sobs.

Lorelei reached out to touch the back of his neck with
one hand. “You are safe, love,” she said. Her eyes flicked to the mirror. “Has Alex acted strangely?”

“He kinda had an ass-whuppin’ freak-out, yeah,” Jason said. “
Didn’t always speak English. Got madder than I’ve ever seen anyone. He saved our necks, too, but still.”

It was all Lorelei needed to hear. “Alex, you are with me, and you are safe,” she told him again. “We are in a car headed home in Seattle. Let
your sorrows go. They are not yours to bear.” She kept one hand on the wheel and the other on him, lightly rubbing his neck and passing her fingertips through the hair on the back of his head.

Amber watched all of this with uneasy interest. For all the stress of the moment, Lorelei seemed perfectly calm. She took
everything seriously, but Amber saw no worry or fear. Lorelei seemed completely confident in the face of vengeful supernaturals and a boyfriend going through a mental meltdown.

“You
must stay with us tonight,” Lorelei said, breaking Amber from her thoughts, “at least until sunrise. We have space. You are much safer with us than home alone.”

“No argument,” answered Jason. Amber just gave a shrug and a nod.

“Did they say who they were?” Lorelei asked. “Or what they wanted?”

“There were a few dozen of ‘em,” Jason said. “I think the ones in charge were a guy from New York and another one in a toga, said he was from LA.”

“Cornelius?”

“You know them?” asked Amber.

“I’ve had my share of unpleasant encounters. He is quite dangerous.”

“
Oh,” said Jason. “Well, Alex goaded him into a swordfight and killed him.”

Lorelei’s head tilted slightly. “Splendid.”

* * *

“Website says this station was closed as of today, just after eight,” said Lanier. He rode in the back of the van with his laptop open. Nguyen’s driving made for some tricky work on the keyboard, but he was getting used to that. “I’d have to dig to see how far back this goes or when it was planned.”

“I’m betting it wasn’t at all,” said Hauser. He sat in the front seat, strapping a black Kevlar vest over his chest. White letters emblazoned on both sides marked the piece as Bureau property. “Get your body armor on and lock and load. We don’t have time to soft-shoe this one.”

Lanier obeyed, closing up his laptop without objection. The
Bureau van offered a pair of shotguns and an M4 carbine, the latter of which Lanier handed off to Hauser. Long experience had taught the task force not to go lightly when it came to firepower.

“Just park on the street, Nguyen,” Hauser instructed. “We’ll commandeer whatever local police turn up as soon as they arrive, but let’s not call them ahead of time. We need
to get the first look at the scene.”

Nguyen pulled around the last corner and did just that. They saw nothing out of the ordinary. The street was quiet, with the occasional car passing by and a Metro entrance under a department store façade blocked off by orange traffic cones and yellow emergency tape. “Doesn’t look like anything blew up here,” Nguyen observed. “No smoke, no crowd, nothing.”

She pulled up onto the curb as she spoke. Hauser was out of the passenger side door as soon as she stopped. Lanier followed quickly with his shotgun at the ready. They crept up to the entrance in smooth, trained movements. Nguyen hurried into her vest and grabbed the other shotgun, catching up before her teammates began their descent down the stairs.

They found a completely darkened tunnel and the smell of smoke, but no clouds to match. All three agents turned on the flashlights attached to their weapons and swept the hallway before moving in.

“Wow,” murmured Lanier. The whole structure remained steady and firm, but signs of fire were evident a short distance down the broad hallway. Soot covered everything from floor to ceiling. The remains of burned and fallen chandeliers littered the floor. Here and there the agents saw smoldering piles of clothes and ash. Large fuming lumps of things that might have been large dogs or wolves could be found among the remains.

Two sets of footprints trailed through the soot, leading from the entrance on down toward the green ticketing booth at the end of the hall. From the wide spacing
between each print, it seemed clear that the pair had been running. The field of soot ended well before the booth. It was difficult to see which way the runners went from that point.

Hauser held up one hand to halt his comrades. Then he reached into his pants pocket to pull out a simple, ordinary set of rosary beads. With his right hand still filled by the grip of his carbine, Hauser had to wind the beads around the fingers of his left hand with a swirling motion.

Nguyen watched him curiously. In her few years on the task force, Hauser had never struck her as the religious sort. She also knew just as well as her boss that the vampires had no special aversion to holy symbols. Yet as soon as Hauser had the beads wrapped up, with the cross on the rosary beads dangling from his palm, he brought his left hand back under the barrel of his carbine and got moving again.

“What the hell kind of fire burns like this but gives off hardly any smoke?” Lanier asked quietly. Nguyen just shook her head. The two followed Hauser.

He walked carefully and stealthily, sweeping back and forth with the light from under his weapon’s barrel and taking in his surroundings. He paused briefly, tilting his head as if listening to something, and then turned off to the left, ignoring the trail of footprints. The other agents followed wordlessly.

At the landing of a nearby staircase, they found the body. The man lay face down on the stairs, clad in a leather jacket, jeans and boots. Blond hair spilled out on the floor all around his head. Hauser motioned for the agents to spread out as they approached. All three kept their weapons at the ready.