Natural Consequences (64 page)

The system beeped. The door unlatched. Keeley’s hand moved to the handle, but then it stopped. He refused.

He couldn’t know how much strength and courage it took to assert himself even that much. He only thought, over and over, that he couldn’t do this.

Rough, impatient hands shoved him aside. Unferth pushed past him and threw the door open. Keeley slumped against the doorframe, opening his mouth to cry out a warning, but all he could let out was noiseless breath.

Down the hall, Frank stood from his desk. “Forget somethin’?” he asked.

Moving with practiced skill and unnatural speed, Unferth drew one of the thin throwing axes from his belt and hurled it down the hall. With a sickening crunch, the blade of the axe landed inches deep in
Frank’s forehead.

Keeley watched him fall dead at his station as the vampires pushed past. His mind cried out an objection that his voice couldn’t carry. Strong, familiar hands hoisted him up from beside the doorstep. “Come on, Paul,” said Rosario, “
keep it together. We might still need you.”

“No,” he whispered. She didn’t hear him, which let him escape punishment. It also gave him the courage to say it again: “No.”

* * *

It wasn’t all about magic. Sometimes it was simply about body language and
paying attention to who stood with whom. The magic certainly helped, though. Without it, Onyx could never have kept track of so many naturally stealthy creatures in a dark, rainy parkland.

The rain, though, had more to do with Molly. Working the weather like this was only a pipe dream a month ago. Now
if Molly wanted fog, she brought it up from the lake. She wanted rain, and so she convinced the clouds to let go. Magic like that took serious concentration, though, so everything else fell to Onyx.

She had to maintain their spells of stealth, holding that power in the raven’s feathers and opals
wrapped in bay leaves clenched in her left hand. She served as the pair’s eyes and ears. Molly’s preoccupation also left Onyx relying on her own judgment as the vampires and werewolves came to the exterior of the building, spread out and then sent some of their own inside.

The pair remained hidden by virtue of the tree and the unnaturally large rhododendron bush. Onyx
watched and learned, noticing the way the wolves and those who walked with them shied away from the vampires. They seemed impatient to Onyx, too, but animals were Molly’s thing. Werewolves were far from natural, but that still meant that Onyx was no expert.

Yet she could read people just fine. Sometimes she could read small groups.
The group of vampires clustered at the edge of the parking lot returned to the spot close to the witches’ hiding place as several others guided their apparent captive to the side entrance and then inside.

Onyx wished desperately that she could do something for
that poor guy the vampires had grabbed, but had to let it go. He was simply out of her reach. Any overt display of magic would only get her killed, and none of her subtler tricks seemed likely to work, either.

Given a few moments to hide, watch and think,
Onyx hit on something practical. She fumbled in her pocket for a small plastic bag of ground black pepper and poppy seed. She murmured words in Greek, opening the bag to insert the tip of her ebony wand and then twisted it thrice. Onyx pulled her wand out and pointed it at the vampire in the suit and hat.

He looked around strangely, his head turning as if unsure of his surroundings or perhaps hearing things that weren’t there. The vampire scratched his head and stepped back from his spot, looking to those around him with a questioning posture. He soon recovered—at least, outwardly—for he took on a confident posture and met those who came to him with strength and poise.

Onyx took what she could get. A leader with a clouded mind had to count against the group somehow. She watched the group for more opportunities, listened for trouble coming her way, and hoped she and all her friends would live to see the sunrise.

* * *

“Carlisle is in the janitor storage closet on the… third floor on the… on the corner.” The words came from Keeley’s mouth slowly and painfully. He tried to keep them in, but his mouth wouldn’t do what he wanted. Thinking became harder and harder.

Unferth snatched the keys from Keeley’s hands. “Which ones?” he
hissed.

“Marked them,” Keeley mumbled. “Red for the vampire. Green for… for the kid. No.” The last word fell out so softly that no one heard it, even pressed together in the dark hallway. “No.”

“Stay here,” Unferth told the others, keeping his voice low. “I’ll be faster and quieter alone.”

“Wait, Unferth,” Rosario urged. “We’re just supposed to scout and report back, and only grab your brother if it look
s easy.”

“And I shall do that,” he said, pushing past.

“Then why did you ask about—dammit!” she fumed as he rushed down the hallway. She turned her eyes to the other vampires in the hallway intersection. “He’s gonna fuck up everything, ain’t he?”

“Would you like to tell him no?” asked one of her companions. Francois had been one of Cornelius’s favorites. Rosario had no clue why. He seemed like
a reject from some Goth-wannabe version of the Three Musketeers, complete with frilly and lacy poet’s shirt and black cloak. At least he didn’t have a stupid hat.

“A little late now,” shrugged another vampire. His English accent, pencil-thin mustache and beret did little to impress her, but his World War II fatigues and his old-fashioned machinegun denoted a certain level of competence. At least he seemed to understand how to work in a team.

Rosario let out a little sigh. Every one of these fucks was much older than her, but Wentworth decided she was in charge. Some shit about being the last scion of Cornelius or something. She could never tell if he was actually trying to show respect or if he just wanted to passive-aggressively bust her ass.

She shook her head and tried to take control of the situation again. “Okay, we gotta wait Unferth out a bit an’ see if he can find his bro on his own, I guess. Maybe we need to get out of sight?”

“No one has appeared so far,” noted Francois.

“We shouldn’t be too worried. They
have the demon locked up. How many of these blokes are there?”  asked the soldier. He nudged the dead guard on the floor.

“Yeah, I guess,” Rosario frowned. “I mean, you said there’s the four guys, the demon an’ your five FBI guys, right?
” she asked Keeley. “So how many does that leave with this asshole dead? Four more pigs?”

“No,” said the trembling man nearby. He winced as if he’d said something he didn’t mean to say. “I… can’t… no.”

Rosario’s brow knit as she caught on. “Wait, are you tryin’ to hide somethin’ from me?” she asked, stepping forward. She saw his fear as she drew close. “Four other agents, right? Is that all? Who else is there?”

“T… tac… no…”

“C’mon,” she said, tracing her sharp nails against his neck as a warning. “Who else? Tac what?”

“Tactical… s-s-squad for sup… support. Security.”

Rosario’s eyes widened. “Oh, what the fuck? Seriously?” she asked. Her hand tightened around his neck. “How many of those? Are they like this guy? They’re well-armed, right? How fucking many,
puto
?”

“S-s-suh six,” Keeley mumbled. A tear welled up in his eye. “Six. Five now,” he added, gesturing weakly
to Frank on the floor.

“Aw, shit,” Rosario winced. “We should warn the others.”

“Should I go?” asked Francois.

“No,” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. “I got it.” She called up the screen and her messaging program.

Keeley looked down at her, and her phone, and his gun sticking out of her waistband just in reach. She didn’t seem to notice him anymore. Standing still so as to be left ignored, his eyes went from her to Frank. Keeley barely knew more about him than his name. Now he was dead.

Keeley would be dead soon, too. Dead, like all his friends, because he couldn’t think. Couldn’t say no in anything more than a whisper. Couldn’t fight back.

His eyes turned back to Rosario, and her phone, and his gun in her waistband.

His trembling hand reached up, slowly, to the gun. His muscles felt weak. Just moving like this took such effort, as if fighting against some invisible resistance that he knew was actually his own body and his own mind—

No. Not his own mind.

He’d die at least owning that.

Keeley’s hand found the gun. His finger hooked the trigger before Rosario noticed. He managed two shots, sending bullets through her upper leg. Her femur snapped just below the hip joint before she fell. “Aagh! Fuck!” she screamed.

The gun stayed in his hand. It felt heavy, too heavy to turn and use, but also like salvation. His strength seemed to return in the form of the gun in his hand.

Then the butt of a rifle slammed into his head. A sword stabbed through his chest. Keeley fell to the floor beside Rosario, who roared in anger and reflexively went for the nearest source of fresh blood. This time, her kiss and her fangs were not kind.

He hadn’t the strength to aim his weapon at anyone, but his gun was loud. It would at least warn his friends. It would disrupt his enemy. Paul Keeley died pulling the trigger of his gun until there were no bullets left. The flash of his muzzle lit the darkness with each shot.

He died fighting.

Sleeping alone felt strange.

Alex lay in his cot under a pair of old, stiff Army blankets. The room was too cold to sleep without his shoes on, but he figured he could manage. Something about the blankets and the cot
felt familiar. He’d slept like this before, in another life, or maybe in more than one. For once, the thought didn’t bother him. He’d made his peace with all that yesterday, and last night.

T
wo women he adored helped set his head straight last night, and then invited him into their bed. Were it not for his interest in them—and his ridiculous and completely unnecessary effort to find an icebreaker—he wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t have Rachel and Lorelei in his life.

He wouldn’t be lying here, thinking that it suddenly felt strange to sleep alone when he’d done exactly that for all but the last five or six weeks of his life.

He wondered if Lorelei would sleep tonight. He wondered where they kept her and when he might see her again. That brought unpleasant, unbidden thoughts.

You
know what she looks like now. What she truly looks like.

She’s a murderer. A monster. She’s led you on for all this time.

Alex stared at the darkness above him, wishing he could silence the unwelcome voice in his head. He accepted Lorelei’s past. He knew she had things to hide from him. If she wanted to hide her scars, was that wrong? Were they his business?

Life with Lorelei was nothing short of amazing.

She only wants to corrupt. She uses you. This fantasy life of easy sex and luxury is all distraction and manipulation. What does she do when you aren’t looking?

She’ll want other men. She’ll whore around behind your back, if she hasn’t already. You think you indulge her, but she fucks other men and laughs at you.

Alex scowled and rolled over on his side. That was a stupid thought. They’d had that conversation, and inevitably would again when the time came. The notion of Lorelei getting with other guys didn’t turn him on. The idea that they would both live honestly and freely together meant the world to him. Jealousy seemed like more of a burden than a right.

This isn’t right. It isn’t natural, and you know it. Living with Rachel isn’t natural or right, either. She’s mad. You can see she’s mad.

What
angel
would allow all of this?

That seemed dumb, too. Alex
only remembered tiny fragments, but Rachel answered to her peers for everything. She went before them, with Alex and Lorelei, and the other angels allowed it.

More broken memories. How much of
your mind can you lose? How much can you let them steal? Demons and witches and lunatic angels?

What if Hauser is right?

Ugly feelings churned in his stomach. Not Hauser. Fuck that guy. He didn’t have to hurt Lorelei like that. And the guys—

He hurt Lorelei with holy power.
Righteous power of good. What does that say about him? About her?

If Rachel loves you so much, where has she
been since then?

His frown deepened into a scowl.
Why were all these dumb thoughts coming to him now? Rachel had so much more to deal with than Alex and his problems, regardless of how bad they got. Alex took a long, deep breath, trying to calm himself and silence his worries.

Then he heard the
pops of a gun.

He held still, eyes open to the darkness as he listened.
Two shots, then a pause, then a sustained series of shots from a semi-automatic. Nothing more came. He was on the third floor of the building, and to his impression that put him far from any of the other improvised cells. The noise might have come from a different floor, or perhaps he just heard the echo… but those had to be gunshots.

He heard hurried footsteps, too. Alex pushed the blankets away and sat up as he heard keys jingle. One of them went into the lock on his door, and then the door opened.

Hauser stood there with his gun drawn, wary for any ambush from within the room. “Turn around and put your hands behind your head,” Hauser ordered quietly.

“Did you hear that?” Alex hissed.

“Shut up, turn around and assume the position, kid,” Hauser snapped. Even with his temper flaring, he kept his voice low. “You’re the key to all of this. I’m not letting you out of my sight or letting you pull any tricks. And if somehow you do get away, I swear to God I’ll have you on the most wanted list so fast your head will spin. Now turn around!”

Holding his own anger, Alex did as he was instructed. It wasn’t until Hauser had the cuffs on him that they heard the angry roar of multiple guns downstairs.

* * *

Everyone in the break room went for their weapons at the first sounds of gunfire in the hallway. Amber and the other two plainclothes agents carried only pistols. The trio of
tac guys at the table closest to the door had considerably more on hand. The tactical team leader—he’d introduced himself before, but Amber could only remember his first name was Miguel—snatched his MP-5 off the table as he rose from his chair. He glanced toward Amber and the other agents and gave a couple of hand signals: Wait. Check the window.

Amber and the others crouched low while Miguel turned out the lights. By then the gunfire outside ended. Nine shots in quick succession and then nothing. She looked to Nguyen and Lanier but found her fellow plainclothes agents inclined to follow Miguel’s lead.

Pistol in hand, Lanier slipped up to the window and risked a peek outside. “Shit,” he hissed, jerking his head back down. He promptly reached for the old, heavy drapes and pulled them shut. “There’s gotta be two dozen people creeping around out there!”

“We can’t stay in here,” said Nguyen. Open laptop computers at the tables offered some ambient illumination, but with the overheads out and the curtains drawn the room was dominated by shadows.

The tactical guys pressed themselves up on either side of the door. Miguel took the lead, his weapon at the ready. He checked his men, threw a readying look to Nguyen and her agents, and put his hand on the doorknob. It opened inward, which didn’t allow for Miguel to use it as cover, but the tac leader moved like he knew what he was doing.

Within a single breath, Miguel’s MP-5 went off at whatever he spotted down the hall. Sudden urgency filled his eyes as he fired,
 as if trying to hit something too fast to pin down. It all happened too quickly for anyone to help or react. One second he stood in the doorway shooting, and the next he had a rapier through his chest.

At first all Amber saw was a black shape, a sword, and a staggered comrade. The attacker moved with incredible speed and power, shoving Miguel against the wall and then tearing his blade free in a torrent of blood. He spun back to face the room, fangs bared and his black frock coat swaying dramatically.

Then the vampire spotted the other people around him. “Aw, shit,” Francois blinked as five fingers squeezed their triggers. The vampire was fast, but not fast enough to outrun bullets.

Flying lead ripped through him from hip to shoulder. Flung against the wall as gunfire pulverized bones and shredded muscles, Francois held his mind together just long enough to wish he’d stayed on the other side of the room. He slumped against the wall, knowing well enough to play dead until his undead flesh mended.

Amber knew better. She took careful aim at his head from only a few yards away and fired—and then fired again and again until there was hardly anything left.

With the threat down, the other two
tac officers swung around the doorway, one high and one low, fully prepared to fire on another threat. They had a target, but they also had a small, round object flying through the air at them—and then it exploded before landing. The tac officers barely got off a shot before the grenade blast sent both men tumbling to the floor.

Though shaken by the blast, Amber caught none of its shrapnel. Nguyen and Lanier were both down, too, though she couldn’t see blood or other obvious injury. In the darkened room, she couldn’t even tell if they might be moving. Amber shrugged off the fog in her head and the throbbing in her ears to scramble forward, staying low with her weapon at the ready. She moved off to the right, hoping to ambush anyone who came in the room.

Too much blood and gore covered the tac officers to hold out any hope for them. Their bodies still carried much better equipment than anything the agents had. Amber reached for Miguel’s tac vest, pulling open a Velcro pouch soaked with blood from his savaged chest.

Then the automatic gunfire started again, this time right over her head. The new threat came around the door to sweep the room with bullets. With every one of her comrades down, Amber had little time to think or plan. She simply acted. Amber raised her weapon and fired at point blank range, putting bullets into the gunman’s chest. He staggered and fell against the wall, still moving but momentarily stunned.

Run
, said a voice in her head with all the speed of thought.
You can’t defend your friends alone, but you might lead the enemy away from them. Run.

Amber heeded the advice, believing it to be her own idea. She pushed herself up and toward the door, coming to it just as another foe appeared. In a flash of memory, she recognized her as the sugar skull girl from the Halloween party, but that hardly mattered.

She didn’t feel her guardian angel’s hand on hers. She didn’t think about how quickly she moved, or that the vampire seemed ready for her. She simply pointed her weapon and fired. The bullet went straight through Rosario’s cheek, disorienting her and giving Amber the chance to shove her way past.

Rosario collapsed to her hands and knees on the floor. Her companion shook off the last effects of Amber’s shots, lurched back toward the doorway and over Rosario. He made it just in time for Amber’s flash bang grenade to land at his feet with a blinding white light and a deafening boom.

Amber ran for the stairs at the other end of the hall without looking back.

The effects of the grenade wore of faster on the undead than they would on the living. “Bloody hell,” the Englishman sputtered as he rubbed his eyes. “What was that thing?”

“I’mma fucking
eat
that bitch,” Rorsario seethed. She picked herself up off the floor and gave her companion a shove. “See if any of these assholes are alive and get ‘em back to Wentworth if they are. I want fucking blood.”

* * *

“Where the hell is your girlfriend?”

“Probably wherever you put her, douche.
Look, uncuff me and I’ll help!”

Hauser ignored the offer. “Not her. The other one.
How do you summon her? Is there a prayer or a spell or something like that? Do you just call out her name?”

Pushed along down the hallway by the agent behind him, Alex turned his head over his shoulder to throw a sour look. “Yeah, I point my magic sword in the air and
I call out, ‘The power of Christ compels thee.’ Are you nuts?”

“Is it just straight-up danger?” demanded Hauser. “Is that it?” He shoved Alex toward an open doorway leading to a broad, old office. Long-abandoned desks and old chairs occupied the room, along with rolodexes, desktop phones and computer monitors that had been obsolete when Alex was in grade school. Along the far wall stretched a wide bay of windows.

“Hauser, people are in trouble down there!” Alex argued. “What the hell are we still doing up here? We’ve gotta help!”

“I am helping!” Hauser growled. “I have a plan!” He pressed up against the wall beside the window and looked out at the grounds below. “They’re all here. All the vampires hunting you. And now all we need is for your angel to show up and take them
out for good.”

Alex looked at him like he’d grown another head. “Are you out of your fuckin’ mind? Did you
want
this?”

“How does it work? Dammit, tell me! Do you have to get hurt?” he fairly snarled, drawing back his gun as if to pistol-whip his captive. Alex made ready to
kick Hauser away, but then Hauser stopped. “No, she’d probably just come after me, right? Stupid.” He looked around the forgotten office, then out the window again, and came to a frantic decision.

Hauser fired a shot through the glass, then smashed the rest out with his pistol and pointed down at the grounds. Dark shapes ran here and there, some human and some not. Hauser took only a second to draw a bead before he fired.

Return fire crashed through the rest of the window a second later. Hauser knew to duck in time. He looked at Alex expectantly, but the younger man just watched Hauser in shock.

“Where is she?” Hauser shouted at him. “She could
destroy them all!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Alex snapped back. He jerked free of Hauser’s grasp, backing away as best he could without stumbling. The more he saw and heard from the frantic agent, the surer he was that Hauser had somehow lost his mind. Alex reached for any way to reason with him, or some other plan to deal with Hauser
.

Alex tripped over a large, heavy lump on the floor behind him. He rolled to his knees and came face to face with one of the tactical support officers—Alex thought his name was Theo—who lay with his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. The man’s M4 lay next to him, but with Alex’s hands bound behind his back the carbine would do him no good. “Oh, shit,” Alex breathed. B
efore he could act, a pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders.