Renegade (5 page)

Behind her came Griff’s second-in-command, tall, blond historian and archaeologist Will Davis. Will was also the Collegium’s assistant loremaster and like a brother to Griff. Marc closed the door as he left.

“Not many Mundanes we can trust.” Stefan glanced at the closed door, then at Griff. “It was a lucky day for all of us when Marc found you wounded by the road and brought you here.”

“Not many Mundanes who would believe us, anyway.” Griff nodded a greeting to the new arrivals. “You know, it’s weird how easily Marc accepts all this, but I’m not complaining.”

Hettie might listen, too. She already suspected.

Lorelei glanced at the burning candle, one she’d probably supplied Stefan with. “I brought another if you need it. Just made a batch for the shop.”

“That one should do it,” Stefan said, “but thanks.”

She set her tote on the desk, with a clunk that confirmed it held her crossbow, and perched by it. She peered at Griff. “You look better than I’d feared, pal.”

He mustered a grin. “Better than I expected, too.”

Will dropped onto the floor beside the air mattress. “I haven’t had time to do much digging on the things Stefan brought me. I have ideas, but I’d rather wait until I’ve done some research.”

“Dire ideas, judging by that frown.” Griff glanced from Will to Lorelei. Lorelei lived in Savannah, and Will lived at the Collegium, in the coastal marshes north of Brunswick. Yet they’d arrived together. “So if you two have nothing to report, why are you both here? To be sure I’m breathing?”

“More or less.” Lorelei smiled at him. “Since Dan was out of town, I talked Will into being my arm candy for the River Street Vendors dinner. It was winding down when Stefan called Will.”

Will sighed. “I had to wear a necktie, but the food was decent. Just remember, when I need a date for some godawful boring thing, you owe me.”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t just whistle up the woman of the moment,” Lorelei said, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t take them to boring dinners. It would spoil my image. So you owe me, and so does your honey. Being a Mundane doesn’t mean Dan can’t—”

Grim-faced, Marc slipped inside and shut the door behind him. He carried Griff’s laptop under one arm.

The anger in his eyes had Griff’s gut knotting. “What is it? Collegium?”

“No, thank God. But Banning’s gone.”

“What?” Griff stiffened. Shit, had she changed her mind about hearing him out?

Marc continued, “With downloads of your files.” He snapped the computer open and handed it to Griff.

A document filled the screen.
Since you’re unwell, I’ve copied your evidence. You’d best hope it supports your story. If not, you have a head start, with my gratitude, and we’re even.

You owe the reverend for a blank CD.

“No signature,” he noted. Nothing to tie her to the note. Smart of her. At least she’d bothered to leave a message, but she was gone, with enough information, if she chose to use it, to hunt him and his friends down and kill them all.

V
al’s blue Mustang ate ground when she wanted it to, but tonight she kept it a few miles under the speed limit. With her eyes still less than a hundred percent, caution was the order of the day.

Lucky thing the shelter was just a few blocks from the Goddess’s Hearth Café, where she’d parked her car before the clash with ghouls that had led to her capture and Griffin’s rescue. So much had happened since yesterday’s dinner, it seemed a lifetime ago. A bit of magic to retrieve the magnetic box holding the spare key under the frame, and she’d hit the road.

The fifty or so miles from Wayfarer to the Collegium took about an hour to drive at this speed. She glanced at the dashboard clock. She’d been driving about forty-five minutes. Soon she’d be home, could see whether Dare’s info had any value.

Until then, she should stop thinking about him. Stop thinking about the way he moved, stop remembering the heat in those blues eyes while he stared at her legs, the gentle grip of his big, strong hands.
Just stop, damn it.

But she’d noticed, even though she hadn’t realized it at the time, how good that long, lean body of his felt in her arms, the way he’d fitted so snugly against her, when he covered her for those few seconds after the attack.

Heat bubbled low in her belly. She swore silently and tried not to fidget. Her wounds still ached, and her eyes stung.

Running out on him felt cowardly, but what if his claims didn’t hold up? Would she have to fight him? Her mind shied from that. Better to look at the evidence for herself before hearing what he had to say. Of course, the
Caudex Magi
, the code of laws that governed mages, counted his courage and compassion as evidence, too.

She would never forget what he’d risked for that homeless child. No matter what he’d once done, or why he’d done it, such a man would never betray his own kind. That didn’t make his actions six years ago right, though.

And here she was thinking about him again. Scowling, Val shoved him out of her mind.

The headlights struck the side of a familiar stone gateway ahead. Val turned into the Collegium compound driveway, under the archway that read
GEORGIA INSTITUTE FOR PARANORMAL RESEARCH
, the cover that hid the mages from their Mundane neighbors. The mage guarding the wrought-iron gates, a slim, dark figure in the night, waved the car through.

Ahead lay the four-story, ivy-covered walls of the Collegium’s main building. It held the administrative offices, classrooms, and dormitories, as well as quarters for department heads and Council members.

Val’s heart lifted. She was finally home, back to the place she’d grown up. Safe.

She parked behind the big stone building and hurried inside, up the stairs and across the marble-floored atrium lobby. Her rank merited a large suite on the ground floor. She could dig into Dare’s files in comfort and privacy.

“Val?” someone called behind her.

She winced. Pasting a smile on her face, she turned to greet her chief deputy, Sybil Harrison. “Hey, Syb. Wow, you look great. Special date?”

“Not as much as I’d hoped, no.” Sybil’s blond hair, free of her habitual ponytail, lay soft and fluffy on her shoulders and across the spaghetti straps of a green silk sheath. Her brown eyes narrowed as she scanned Val, taking in the boots, man’s cutoffs and chambray shirt, the plastic bag of medical supplies, and the sword Val carried instead of wearing.

“I’d say I hope your date was hot,” Sybil said, “since you’re wearing his clothes. But if he’s the cause of your bandages, I figure he’s dead. What happened?”

A friend did not involve a friend in illegal secrets. Val shrugged, managing not to flinch. “Had a little trouble with ghouls. The clothes belong to the guy who helped me out of it.”

Sybil grinned. “So I repeat, was he hot?”

Extremely, but that was better not considered. “I didn’t notice. We had other things on our minds.”

“You look beat, but I want to hear all about this.”

“Tomorrow. I promise.”

“Well, okay.” Sybil hesitated. “There’s been some fallout while you were gone. The Council had some complaints about the problems on that last raid.”

Val bit down on a surge of anger, then let out a deep breath before she could trust her voice. “Since when is wiping out a ghoul nest a problem?”

“It’s the informant’s disappearance that’s the problem. Plus the fact the raid put some people on the disabled list.” Frowning, Sybil added, “We can go over all that later. Do you need help with anything?”

“No. Thanks. I’m going to crash.” Any other reply, and she’d have to ask Sybil in to chat. Val couldn’t sleep until she checked out Dare’s information.

Val and Sybil said good night, and Val hurried down the corridor to her own quarters. Fatigue thrummed in her bones, beat in her blood. Yet the memory of Dare’s ravaged chest haunted her.

She couldn’t let sympathy sway her opinion of him, but her heart softened at the memory of Griffin lying in the truck’s bed, jaw set against the pain. She’d liked the way he’d kept his warm, strong fingers entwined with hers.

With the goal of playing on her sympathy, maybe.

Well, that was a no-go. Once she saw what information he had, she would decide whether to listen further or drag his ass out of that shelter for a reckoning.

She palmed the lock-plate scanner, and the door to her one-bedroom suite clicked open. As she entered, the bed beckoned, its smooth sheets and soft, forest-green quilt a haven. The idea of a shower also felt tempting, but that would mean balm and clean bandages and a lot of fuss. She had work to do.

She turned on the computer, which sat on its rosewood desk by the window, and let it boot while she started coffee.

Rubbing her stinging, weary eyes, she fed the CD into the drive. She clicked on a file at random, enlarging the view to reduce the strain, and started to read.

At first glance, it looked like just another report, a description of a raid on a ghoul breeding nest, the one that’d been mysteriously destroyed outside Jacksonville, Florida, last year. But this wasn’t the official report. And he had data on nests she didn’t know about.

How did Dare know about these ghoul nests that weren’t on her maps? Why wasn’t the intel and recon division of the shire reeve’s office spotting them? She would check them out, of course, but his data looked solid.

If he had detailed info, why the hell didn’t she?

Her eyes burned. She should rest them, but she had to know what else was in his files. Scrolling down, she noticed Dare—or someone else—had inserted comments in red, notes detailing suspicions about a possible traitor, indicating where the various councilors had been, as well as how much they’d probably known. There were cross-matches of different data files on the ghoul nests, on mage raids that failed.

He suspected a current councilor was the traitor. But how could that be? Councilors went through testing that made the CIA’s look like a college mixer. Yet his notes were too logical to dismiss.

It could be a lie, a setup created to distract her. The sheer volume of the files argued against that, though. How had he gotten so much info on the councilors, anyway?

He had to have help inside the Collegium. Under her nose.
Damn it.
If he’d spotted these inconsistencies, why hadn’t she?

Feeling sick, Val pushed away from the table. Coffee wouldn’t help her aching body, but it would keep her brain going, at least for a while. Her vacation officially ended in two days. By then, she needed to cover everything on that disk.

Early the next morning, the phone jolted her awake. She grabbed it. “Banning.”

“Tia Corbett, ma’am, officer of the day. We have a situation.”

“Go ahead.” If Corbett thought this was worth interrupting the last of Val’s official leave, the
situation
was grim.

“Daniel Goodwin, son of the Northeast Shire high councilor, was kidnapped from a bar parking lot in Milledgeville by ghouls. He seems to have been intoxicated. His girlfriend, who’s also a mage, Lucy Jones, escaped but pursued in his vehicle. Ghouls drove a Ford F-150, green, didn’t get the tag. She lost them just west of Milledgeville, off Georgia 212, near Lake Sinclair, when her car skidded off the road. No serious injuries to her.”

“Okay. Stand by a sec.” Val glanced at the map on the wall above her desk. There was no ghoul nest marked in that area, but Dare’s files had noted one. She used the search function to bring it up.

Yep, there it was, near the Oconee National Forest and Milledgeville, a breeding center masked as a camp for recovering alcoholics. Addicted dark magic users, more like, but they’d probably taken the boy as a breeder. Well, not for long.

Trusting untried intel was risky but better than searching blind for a young mage about to be violated or killed. To be on the safe side, she’d take superior numbers.

“Corbett, scramble eight squads, full combat gear.” Forty mages should easily trump twenty-eight ghouls, especially with daylight on their side. Ghouls were weaker during the day. “Call up helos with a medical support team. I’ll be right down. I want us airborne in forty-five minutes.”

Val hung up and yanked her gear from the closet. This rescue couldn’t be put off, but she could’ve used some time to think. She had to talk to Dare, find out more about the information contained in his files.

Thinking about seeing him should not give her the warm fuzzies, blast it. She couldn’t fall for him. His certainty reminded her too much of her ex-fiancé, Drew Sampson, who’d constantly tried to steer her away from the dangerous parts of a deputy reeve’s job. He’d taken risks as a quick-reaction force fighter but wanted her to go into forensics, not enforcement. The conflict had eventually destroyed their relationship.

Once she’d straightened out the problems with her department’s intel and had time to think about a relationship, it wouldn’t be with a guy who had an agenda. A guy who didn’t know how to compromise.

Been there, done that. Getting involved with a renegade would be totally insane.

Even a brave one with hands that were both strong and gentle. And eyes that could heat her up with just one look. And the chivalry to catch her as they both fell, to take the brunt of the impact and then shelter her with his body.

Crap, crap, crap.
Lack of sleep was making her moony. She had to stop thinking this way.

Before leaving, she would hide the disk, just to be on the safe side. There would be time when she got back to worry about Griffin Dare.

Where the hell was Valeria? What was she doing? Seated at Marc’s desk, Griff shoved his cleaned breakfast plate away. He’d searched magically for a vision of her off and on throughout the night, with no luck. That probably meant she was within the Collegium’s screening wards, but doing what?

Surely she’d had time to see he had information worth discussing. He could give her more he hadn’t written down.

He shouldn’t feel so eager to see her again. Dumbass. She was a potential ally. She could never be anything else to him.

He ran a hand over his face. Waiting purely sucked.

His phone vibrated on the desk. He picked it up, checked the caller ID. Javier Ruiz, the wiry, dark-haired mage whose tax accountant business in Athens gave him the flexibility to chase ghouls.

Griff flipped the phone open. “Yeah, Javy?”

“Chuck and I caught a prisoner.” Javier’s tenor drawl held deep satisfaction. “Stopped him snacking on a paper delivery boy near the college campus.”

“Good on two counts.” Chuck Porter, former NFL wide receiver, security agency owner, and interim athletic director at Walmer Lawrence College, considered ghoul hunting almost as fun as football. His tall, burly frame and dark skin contrasted with Javier’s wiry build and olive complexion, but the two made an effective team. “Y’all learn anything?”

“Nothing useful.”

Hell.

Javier continued, “Chuck has football staff meetings coming up, what with the season starting, but I’ll keep looking.”

“Take someone with you. Hunt in pairs, Javy, always.”

“Except for you,” Javier said in a dry voice.

“Benefit of being in charge.” Anyone caught with Griff by the Collegium would receive a death sentence. He wouldn’t let anyone risk that for something as minor as trying to take a random ghoul captive. “Try Tasha Murdock. She’s between decorating jobs right now. Anything else?”

“Not so far. I’ll call Tasha. We’ll get something, boss, just might take us a while.”

They had little more than a week before the waning moon went dark and conditions became optimum for blood magic. “Okay. Watch your backs.”

They signed off. Brooding over ghoul mysteries, Griff took his breakfast tray to the kitchen and set it down without bothering the busy volunteers. He headed back to the office, although the wise play would be to leave, and soon. Until he spoke to Valeria he’d stay there, where she could find him easily. He knew it was risky but he was tired of running.

He had to figure out another way to reach her. Careful of his wounds, he leaned over the silver bowl on the desk. Infusing power into the pure springwater it held would make it show what he asked for, unless what he sought was hidden by magical screening. He wouldn’t be able to hear anything, but he might get some idea about Banning’s intentions this way.

A wave of his hand, a whiff of power, and the surface of the water gleamed. Turned foggy…
Yes!
He’d found her.

He set his hands on either side of the basin, leaning over it, and increased the power. The water’s surface turned misty white, thickening and solidifying until he could feel the connection in his bones, and then the surface slowly cleared.

The bowl’s center showed figures in dappled green mage camo crouched in a woodland glade of pine trees, oaks, and maples, the colors mirrored by the garments. There she was, at the front of the group.

So she hadn’t come after him. Griff smiled. Maybe trusting her wasn’t such a long shot after all.

He looked closer and squinted. Surely she wouldn’t have gone charging after one of the nests on his list. Not without detailed recon of her own. Unless this was field training—but wait. He could see her team in the scrying.