Natural Consequences (54 page)

She watched his breath deepen and saw his eyes flutter, occasionally flicking down toward her cleavage and up to her gorgeous face again. His desires
distracted him from both the obvious holes in her story and the violations he was about to commit. “I’m not… supposed to let anyone in here,” he blinked.

“
Oh, it’ll be a quick in and out,” Lorelei assured him. “
No one needs to know
. What’s your name?”

“
I’m Dean,” he said. The little twitch of his eyes that followed told Lorelei he knew better than to share such information.

“Like I said, no one needs to know,” she whispered. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Dean’s common sense and professional responsibilities fought a losing battle with Lorelei’s smile and the cut of her coat. He gestured for her to step inside and closed the door behind her. Then he produced a small radio from his belt. “This is Dean,” he said. “We’re clear. Just someone scouting the building for a rental.” Dean winked at Lorelei and hissed, “Let’s make this quick.”

* * *

“You have Drew and Wade?” Alex asked, keeping his emotions in check.

“We do.”

“They’re here?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” scowled Hauser.

“I want to see them.”

“No way. Not without you showing a lot more cooperation.”

“What’s your name again?” Alex frowned. “Hauser? You want to show me you’re one of the good guys? Let me see my friends. Prove this isn’t all bullshit.”

“I’m not the one with something to prove, Alex. I’m not the one facing a couple centuries of prison time. You are.”

He has a point. Consider his perspective.

No
, Alex countered in his head.
Fuck that
. “You haul me outta class and chain me to a chair with this bullshit story about vampires and demons and fairies—“

“Oh, I didn’t say anything about fairies,” Hauser pounced. “There are fairies? Tell me about fairies.”

“Fuck if I know,” sneered Alex. “Anyway, you want me to start believing you? Step up with something other than pictures. Put my friends in front of me. Let me talk to them. Prove this isn’t all bullshit.”

“And that’ll get me what, exactly?”

“It’ll prove to me that you haven’t killed them. It’ll prove you haven’t hurt them. Because if you have, my silence is gonna be the least of your problems.”

Hauser leaned in, his eyes narrowing. “You’re making a lot of demands for a guy who has nothing to bargain with.”

Bridger’s eyes snapped open. “Something is here,” he declared in a murmur that could not fully disguise his fright.

* * *

“What did you say that was about, Dean?” asked one of the two uniformed men she found at the top of the stairwell. Both wore body armor and carried serious weaponry, but seemed calm and relaxed. “Something about wanting to rent the building?”

They saw
only Dean. “Yeah, some department from the college or something,” he grumbled. “They still questioning the suspect?”

“Yup. Been in there for a while now.”

The woman they did not see standing behind Dean murmured to him, “
Forget me. Be on your way.
”

Dean nodded. “Guess maybe I should stay downstairs, then.”

She slipped around Dean as he turned back, smoothly liberating his keys from his belt along the way. She was out before the stairwell door closed. Fully under her sway after a few minutes with her, Dean never even noticed.

Lorelei sensed the mystic wards on this floor as soon as
she came off the stairs. To her partial relief, she could tell they were not demonic in nature. Despite such fortune, the wards presented their own problem: she had no way to tell if she had fully evaded detection.

Her answer came when both uniformed guards raised their hands to their earpiece receivers. One
urgently moved to the staircase.

The succubus gently rested seductive fingers on the neck of the other. “
Relax
,” she whispered into his ear. “
Sleep
.”

Instantly, the first guard turned to her. His eyes went wide at the sight of his partner slumping over on his feet as if leaning on
an invisible friend before falling to the floor. Suddenly the remaining guard felt himself kissed fully on the mouth.

Stunned and swept away by the instant ecstasy, the guard only blinked once before
he, too, heard an undeniable instruction to take a nap.

Lorelei stepped away, knowing she couldn’t remain.
Dean said there were only a handful of people present, but the uniforms and gear on display attested to their general discipline and vigilance. At any second, she would have company, from upstairs or perhaps down the hallway—

--and then she jumped back from the
stairwell door. “Fuck, finally, there you are,” Rachel blurted, and then looked down at her feet. “You—! Oh. No. You didn’t. Okay,” she sighed in relief. “I was afraid you were gonna start whacking people.”

The succubus frowned. She turned and walked down the hallway to the left, figuring it was as good as any.

Rachel followed. “Lorelei, talk to me,” she urged.

The succubus merely
placed one finger over her lips and kept walking.

“Oh, c’mon, talking without being noticed is just a little more effort! Dammit, fine, whatever,” Rachel rolled her eyes. “Okay, yes I knew Amber was fucking five-oh, but I couldn’t
say
anything. You know that, right?”

Lorelei turned to her with a quizzical expression. “Five-oh?” she signed with her fingers.

“Yes! Five-oh! The heat! You know, undercover cop, pig in a blanket?” the angel made several hand motions to go along with her strange slang. Lorelei just shook her head and continued on. Rachel chased after her. “Lorelei, seriously, I didn’t want this clusterfuck to happen. I did everything I could to stop it, which I grant amounted to a paper sack of piss, but I tried. You know my hands are tied over mortal affairs. Believe me, I was all over Amber’s guardian angel’s ass like a bad case of hemorrhoids.” Lorelei paused and made another face of obvious distaste. “It was all I could do!”

The succubus made a broad gesture with her hands and mouthed the words, “Where is he?”

Rachel gave a pained expression. “I can’t. If I could, I’d bust him out myself. I’m sorry.” She walked with Lorelei. “Are you mad at me? You’re wearing your poker face again. I can’t tell if it’s because you’re just focused on the job or because you get all quiet and inscrutable when you’re about to murderface some poor fuckers or if you just don’t want to talk to me ‘cause you’re pissed.”

Again, Lorelei stopped, this time to hold one finger up over Rachel’s lips. The angel fell silent.

Footsteps resounded through the hall behind them. “Jacobsen! Gutierrez! Can you hear me? Hauser, we’ve got men down. They’re alive and I can’t tell if they’re hurt, but they’re unconscious.”

The succubus glared. The angel pleaded silently. They both moved on.

* * *

Alex watched Hauser receive reports over his earpiece. “Get everyone moving and sweep the whole floor,” ordered Hauser. “Guns out. Take this seriously.” He turned his attention back to
Bridger again. “Talk to me.”

The other agent shook his head. “I can’t get a sense of anything other than the fact that there’s a presence here.”

“Only one?” Hauser demanded.

“Stealthy. I wouldn’t even be sure, unless…” he frowned. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Hauser,” spoke up Nguyen, who thus far had been silent, “we still don’t have Maddox yet with her suspect.”

“Shit,” Hauser grimaced. “Call her.” He looked to
Bridger. “Can you find Maddox with your magic or whatever?”

Bridger
let out a frustrated breath and shook himself from his trance. “Yeah,” he muttered, flexing his fingers, “yeah, I can try.”

Hauser put his finger to his earpiece again. “Dammit, we’ve got men down.” He rose out of his seat.

“Let me talk to her,” Alex spoke up.

Hauser stopped. He glared at Alex. “You know what’s happening? Who is it? Who is ‘her’ that you want to talk to? Is it Lorelei? Rachel?”

Chained as he was, Alex gave what little of a shrug he could. “I can think of about five different women it
might
be. One of them isn’t my friend at all, and if it’s her, she’s probably going to kill people unless I can stop her.” He paused. “She might kill me, too, so it’s not like she’s here to do me any favors if it’s that one. But I won’t know until I find her.”

They heard people rush past the door. Someone shouted outside.

“You won’t try to get away?” Hauser asked.

“I don’t want to live on the run, no,” scowled Alex. Hauser moved over toward him, handcuff keys in hand. “But after this, you let me see my friends. Otherwise I ain’t doing a damn thing to help with the
next
person that comes looking for me.”

Hauser hesitated, but let out a grumbling breath. “Fine.”

* * *

Abandoned offices stood as a silent testament to government inefficiency. Lorelei found old yet perfectly useful desks, chairs and even office equipment left behind almost every door. She suspected that the office had been repurposed more than once since the Navy ended operations in the building, but even those later occupants left much behind.

She moved through the hallways swiftly and silently. Rather than invest the time in picking locks—Lorelei had to admit to herself that she was a bit out of practice—she noted the doors she could not open and continued her sweep through the building. Better to get a sense of her surroundings and eliminate the larger spaces first and then narrow down the more complicated tasks. She needed to know how many agents and guards occupied the site, their capabilities and their priorities. She also needed to maintain as much of her stealth as possible.

Uniformed men
with body armor and drawn weapons moved in pairs, hoping to locate her. To her relief, her powers of stealth seemed more than adequate for the task. They knew she was here, but could not actually spot her. The demon let patrols pass without disruption.

The occasional guardian angel with said mortals, however, was another matter. “Rachel,” demanded one, “what is the meaning of this?”

“Oh, un-wad your fuckin’ panties, Jerome,” Rachel snapped. “I got this shit. She didn’t kill the other dudes, she’s not here to hurt anyone else, okay?”

“You mean to chaperone her, then?” the other angel frowned skeptically. His charge, and the mortal partnered with him, continued on down the hall. Jerome stayed behind as they passed the unseen intruders.

“What the—Jerome,
when
have I not been cool with you? Has there been a single moment since I took over where I let this city backslide?”

Lorelei shook her head and moved on. Rachel and Jerome continued to bicker as they trailed behind her. It was a distraction that Lorelei could ignore, but apparently not something that Rachel could simply shut down.

She rounded a corner, heard a door open around the next and pressed herself against the nearest doorway. With at least one sorcerer at work among these mortals, ordinary practices of stealth meant as much as her supernatural abilities. She paused and listened.

“Aw, fucking seriously?” complained a familiar voice down the hall. Lorelei recognized the sound of handcuffs being fastened.

“You aren’t getting out of my sight or out of my hands,” said another. “You take off running and I will shoot you like any other fleeing felon, got me? Let’s go.”

Lorelei waited. She watched as Alex came around the corner and toward her, his hands restrained at his back. He was flanked by two uniformed guards and a husky, fit blond man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a loosened tie. Her love looked irritated, of course, but unharmed.

“So what’s your plan?” asked the agent behind Alex.

“Walk out into the open and hope I can talk everyone down,” Alex answered. “You got anything better?”

“Hauser,” said someone back from the group, “Bridger thinks he’s got a bead.”

“Go,” grunted the blond man. Whomever he spoke to
rushed back the way they came.

Lorelei watched. The group passed her by. She fell in behind them. As she suspected, Hauser had his pistol out, but it was pointed straight up rather than into her lover’s back. Hauser’s other hand stayed firmly clamped
in a control hold between Alex’s handcuffs.

“Well?” demanded Hauser.

Alex sighed. She knew that tilt of his head; he was rolling his eyes. “Hello?” he called out loudly. The tinge of sarcasm in his voice almost made her grin. “If you’re there, it’s Alex! I’m here and I’m okay! Please don’t break the FBI!”

“That’s it?” demanded Hauser. “That’s your fucking plan?” The two guards looked this way and that, ready to shoot.