Silver Bullet (18 page)

“I’ll stay and help Agent Hawke search,” she said. Goody for me.

Suzy slammed the door, but didn’t immediately pull out. She rolled down the window. It looked like she wanted to say something to me. Her mouth opened, and then closed. She shook her head. “I’ll see you back at the penthouse,” Suzy said.

She pulled out, following the line of departing SUVs and leaving me alone with Ann and the kopides.

Within minutes, it was like the Union had never been there at all. The roads were dark and empty. The beach was silent except for the slop of water over the sand. I stepped up to the edge to watch the last light recede—the search boat on the opposite shore was leaving, too.

Wait. Why would the Union boat be leaving us? It couldn’t reach the mine. It should have been coming to the beach to help conduct the search for Fritz.

Unless…the Union hadn’t ordered anyone to stay and search for Fritz.

Something was wrong. I felt it deep in my bones, sudden and certain.

I heard a shifting sound behind me.

In the water’s reflection, shining in the moonlight, I saw a rippling image of the two Union kopides. I realized belatedly that I didn’t know either of their names, and couldn’t remember having seen them at the mine. They weren’t part of Zettel’s unit.

I flashed back to my almost-execution in the desert outside Los Angeles, back during my last case. How the kopides had forced me to my knees and been about to shoot me in the back of the head. It had only happened a week earlier and the memory was still painfully fresh.

It was probably paranoia, not intuition, that said that these kopides had just aimed their guns at my skull.

But paranoia had been treating me pretty nicely lately.

I threw myself to the sand.

My belly hadn’t even hit the ground before I heard twin gunshots, one right on top of the other.

The man to the left shouted above me. “Motherfucker!”

The other kopis hit the ground next to me, gushing blood and brains from his shattered forehead. He wasn’t dead yet but I’d be surprised if he lasted longer than a few more heartbeats. He couldn’t even lift his gun again, though he tried.

Not my problem anymore.

I didn’t take time to think. I just reacted. I kicked out both feet and slammed them into the standing kopis’s shins, knocking him to the ground.

He tried to bring the gun to bear on me. I kicked again, snapping it out of his hands, sending it skittering into the water.

The kopis lunged. He rode me down, slamming his fists into my head and shoulders. He was as strong as every other demon hunter that had ever pummeled me, unfortunately—it was like taking Allyson’s jackhammer to the face.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked between blows, trying to shield my face with my forearms. “Who sent you?”

His answer was to shove me a few inches back, press a hand to my cheek, and force my head into the water.

The cold lake rushed over me to the chin. Ice water slopped into my mouth and into my sinuses.

It numbed immediately. I tried to inhale on instinct and got a lungful of it. My chest hitched and I gurgled, struggling to expel the water, struggling to breathe.

The kopis’s hand was a ten-ton lead weight. He drove my head back into the sand.

The wave receded, giving me a moment of oxygen. Then it crashed over me again even harder than before. Water soaked my shirt. Sand and grit scraped at my tongue. There was a faint taste of blood—the waves were lapping at the dead kopis, too, and now I was drinking his blood.
Gross
.

Black lights danced in my vision.

Can’t breathe. Have to get up.

Through the veil of rippling water, I could see that the attacking kopis wasn’t smiling or glaring or…anything. There was no emotion in his face as he forced me down deeper and deeper into the cold black lake.

This was business. Not personal.

Either motivation could kill me just as easily.

I had tossed back a couple of strength potions before heading down with Ann and Yvette, but my strength was still insignificant next to the kopis’s, and waning fast as oxygen left me. Every time the water sloshed into my nose, I couldn’t help but expel air trying not to swallow it down.

I beat at his arms, weaker and weaker. My vision blurred. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard that I saw stars.

Then his weight was suddenly gone.

I sat up with a deep gasp that roared through my chest, sucking down air hard. It hurt to breathe in. I gagged and barfed half of Lake Tahoe all over the sand.

What had happened? Who had saved me?

Through tearful, blurry eyes, I saw a slouchy teenage girl raise a stone scepter and bring it crashing down on the back of the kopis’s head again. The Yvette zombie was holding him down with supernatural strength so that Ann could beat the shit out of him. The necromancer pummeled him again and again, eyes gleaming in the moonlight as she pulverized his skull.

He screamed as she beat him. It wasn’t a quick death, like the kopis that had been shot by accident. It was agonizingly slow. Horrible to watch. I couldn’t have done it to him.

But Ann did.

The first sight of his gray matter only seemed to spur her to hit harder.

I finally got to my feet. “Ann—stop!”

She didn’t seem to hear me. She kept beating. She kept
grinning
. I seized the girl by the shoulders, and she kicked at me as I dragged her away. Blood gloved her forearm.

She was laughing.

“Jesus,” I groaned, shoving her away from the attacker, away from me. I was going to throw up again.

It was too late for her victim. He was dead now. Beyond dead. And Yvette still held him down, waiting for her next order.

Ann had always given me the willies, but I hadn’t thought of her as dangerous. She was smaller and weaker than me. Guess I’d expected to be able to fight her off easily if she attacked. I never would have given thought to what her zombies could do to me.

Tears streaked Ann’s cheeks as she kept laughing, clutching the scepter to her breast. She didn’t care that it was caked in gore.

“Are you okay?” I asked when I regained enough composure to speak. Ann kept laughing. I grabbed her shoulders again. “Listen to me! Are you okay?” I probably shouldn’t have bothered asking. I already knew the answer was a resounding “absolutely not.”

Her laughter suddenly cut off. She stood straight and tall. The tears quivered on her jaw, but she didn’t shed another.

“I’m fine, Agent Cèsar Hawke,” Ann said. “How are you?”

Jesus almighty.

“I’m alive because of you,” I said, feeling sick all over. “You saved me. I don’t…” I swallowed hard. I could still taste the water of Lake Tahoe mingling with the first dead kopis’s blood. When I spoke again, my voice was raspy. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

She had saved my life. Did I have any right to get angry about how she had done it? Wasn’t it selfish to be so fucking freaked out by the brutality of it?

I was alive because of her.

My thoughts kept circling back to that, and I couldn’t manage to feel grateful for it.

I think I’m going to be sick again
.

Sinking to a crouch, I braced my hands on my knees and struggled against the urge to vomit.

Ann had protected me. Who would protect me from Ann if she ordered Yvette to kill me next?

Focus, Cèsar
.

I turned to look at the bodies. The gunshot that had killed the first kopis wasn’t clean. The shooter had been going for my head and missed when I dodged. Ann’s insanity aside, two Union kopides had just tried to kill me. Again. The question was, why? Were these Lucrezia’s men, or was this something else entirely?

I approached the bodies, pulled open their shirts, searching the bare skin under all the blood.

“What are you doing?” Ann asked.

“Trying to figure out why they want me dead,” I said.

I found the tattoo on the first man’s back. It was a large bleeding apple, done in a similar style as Cain’s, although the ink was older and blurring around the edges. I didn’t need to find the tattoo on the other guy, but I did just to confirm my suspicions. It was between his shoulder blades.

Relief escaped me in a sigh. This wasn’t a message from Lucrezia. It was just a couple of Union kopides that also happened to serve Cain’s cult. Or else a couple members of Cain’s cult that had stolen Union gear and somehow infiltrated our investigation unnoticed.

No big deal.

When I was done handling them, I washed my hands in the lake’s water and turned my Bluetooth earpiece on. I kept Ann in the corner of my eye as I said, “Suzy?”

“I’m here, Cèsar,” my partner said after a moment. “What’s up?”

“I just got attacked by two members of the Apple.”

Her voice sharpened. “Are you okay? And the necromancer?”

“We’re fine.”
More or less.
Ann was still smiling an unsettling smile as she gazed up at Yvette, as if enraptured by her face. I wasn’t sure I’d call that “fine,” but we were both alive for the moment. “I think this means I was getting close to something. I’m going to look for Fritz.”

“Wait for backup,” she said. “I’m coming back.”

I disconnected without telling her that I couldn’t wait. It was getting late. The moon was high in the sky. If Fritz didn’t contact Lucrezia soon, I’d be in big trouble.

We were out of time.

“Shit,” I said. “Shit, shit,
shit
.” At least one of these dead bodies had to know where Cain’s lake hideout was, assuming he had one. But they were both dead now. That information was lost to me. Searching on foot was going to take forever.

Ann cocked her head to the side. “Problem?”

“I was just wishing that Isobel were here so I could ask these guys where Cain’s hideout is.”

“Oh,” she said. “I can help you with that.” Her giggle was high-pitched and just as strange as her smile. “So much death here tonight. I can work
wonders
with that.”

More death magic? I wasn’t sure I wanted Ann to do anything of the sort. But my feet felt glued to the sand, and I watched in numb shock as she worked her magic.

Cords of power lifted from the depths of the earth, locked around the stone scepter in Ann’s hand. My eyes watered and my lungs constricted as both men began to stir, rolling over, lifting their cracked skulls from the sand so that clumps of brain dribbled over their foreheads.

They both stood, steady and tall. Aside from the giant holes in their skulls, they looked passably alive.

I was feeling sick all over again.

Ann pressed the scepter against the first man. The magic between them brightened. She fed off of both of their deaths and shoved it into him. “Why did you just try to kill Agent Hawke, Ricky?” she asked. His name came to her easily, as if she had known his name all along. She must have learned it from the magic.

“He escorted Yvette and possesses the fragment of ethereal ruin. Cain wanted both. He didn’t order us to kill Agent Hawke, but it seemed like a convenient way to take possession of them.” Ricky said it so calmly. Killing me was “convenient.” Nice.

“Where is Cain hiding?” Ann asked.

“He hides in many places. He moves all the time so that nobody can find him.” That was almost exactly what Yvette had said. When Ricky spoke, a vein in the remnants of his forehead bulged and squirted blood into his skull cavity. I clapped a hand over my mouth.

Once I had control over my urge to vomit again, I rephrased the question. “Where does Cain hide when he’s at Lake Tahoe?”

The zombie didn’t respond to me. Ann had to repeat the question before Ricky would answer. “There’s a cave a mile up that way, with the entrance in the water. You have to swim to reach it.” He lifted an arm and pointed north with a limp hand.

“Is that where the hostage is?” Ann asked.

“Yes. That’s where the hostage waits for the moon.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “‘Waits for the moon?’”

The zombie stared at nothing. He was reanimated well enough to speak, but not to do much else, it seemed. The color was still draining out of him as his blood slowed to a stop.

Man, that gave me the willies.

I stepped out into the water ankle-deep and looked for an outcropping of rocks. I couldn’t see it in the dark. I was going to have to head up there blind. Glancing over my shoulder at Ann and her zombies—now numbering three—I wondered if I’d be safer with them coming with me as protection, or going into a cult’s hideout alone.

I remembered the delight in Ann’s eyes as she attacked the kopis, and I decided I didn’t want her anywhere near me.

“Can I borrow Yvette to protect me?” I asked.

“Sure,” Ann said. She turned to the female zombie. “Follow Agent Cèsar Hawke. Do anything he asks.”

Yvette lumbered into the water after me. I gave Ann a look that might have been a smile or a grimace. Even I wasn’t certain. “Thanks.”

Together, the zombie and I went to save Fritz.

YOU DON’T KNOW COLD until you’ve been waist-deep in Lake Tahoe when it’s filled with snowmelt.

Not that I had time to check, but I was pretty sure that my testicles clawed their way into my stomach within twenty seconds of submerging myself. And that was only the beginning of the horrifying chill. My teeth chattered as I sloshed through the water, fighting to reach the next bank of rocks before I lost all ability to move below the waist.

Yvette, meanwhile, looked entirely unbothered by the temperature. She was much shorter than me and the water got all the way up to her chin in some places.

Guess dead people didn’t care much about the cold.

I warmed myself with the thought that Fritz was just around the next little peninsula of rough, slippery stones, or the next one. Always the next one. I couldn’t find the damn beach that Ricky had mentioned.

Finally, long after I could no longer see the beach where I’d left Ann and her two new kopis-zombies, I found the mouth of the cave. Trees grew on top of it in twisted spirals, reaching toward the sky with brown pine needles encrusted in ice.

The entrance was tall enough that I didn’t have to duck when I dredged myself out of the water, but just barely. The stacked-rock walls did a great job sheltering me from the frigid breeze.