Silver Bullet (19 page)

It was too dark for me to see far beyond the entrance. I stood on the brink and wrung my shirt out as much as I could. The splattering water echoed inside. “Is there a light switch?” I asked Yvette, knowing she couldn’t answer.

If I gave myself a few minutes to work on the spell, I might have been able to conjure up some kind of candlelight spell. It was considered one of the most basic spells that almost any witch could cast. But every second I stood in the wind was another second exposing the poor
huevos
to the chill, so I headed in blind.

The ground had been smoothed flat inside the mouth of the cave. I didn’t trip on anything as I shuffled along with one hand on the rock wall. Yvette lumbered behind me, slow and purposeful as she had been in the lake.

“Fritz?” I whispered.

No response.

I stretched out both hands and shuffled a little farther.

Something hard stopped me after two steps. I couldn’t see what, but it was broad and flat, so I assumed it was a wall. Weirdly, it felt like wood, not stone. I felt along until I found a doorknob.

It was unlocked. I pushed the door open.

There was a single light inside—a battery-powered camping lantern. It illuminated the room well enough for me to see that it was a pretty basic structure. Three walls were wooden planks. The fourth, in the back, was stone. There were a couple of cots on either wall and a bucket in the corner that was probably used as a toilet, judging by the smell.

And a man was slumped against the back wall.

Fritz.

I dropped to my knees next to him. Shook him gently.

“Hey,” I said. “You better not be dead, asshole.”

Fritz’s head lolled on his shoulders, but his eyes didn’t open. He was looking pretty bad, even in the limited light; he’d gotten a heck of a beating. The shoulder of his shirt was tacky with drying blood.

But there was a pulse at his throat.

Fritz was alive.

I bowed my head and took a minute to revel in the relief. The instant Fritz was awake and we had reception, I was going to have him call Lucrezia. He would clear everything up. We were going to be fine.

Fritz’s eyes finally cracked. Then he focused on me, and his eyes shot wide open, suddenly alert. “Cèsar, no!” he groaned, gripping my shirt in both hands. “You have to go!”

“Not without you,” I said, moving to pull his arm over my shoulder.

Someone else spoke. “Ah, Yvette. Thank our blessed Adam.”

I knew that voice.

So much for being fine.

I turned slowly, knowing whom I would see behind me. Cain stood in the doorway in all his naked werewolf glory, rimmed by faint moonlight. He was smiling at Yvette, who stood in the corner with her head flopped to the side and her arms limp. Guess it was dark enough that even he couldn’t tell that Yvette wasn’t at her best.

He brushed past her to look at me. Cain’s silvery eyes glowed in the darkness. It was only then that I realized he was carrying another piece of white stone under his arm like a football—not the decoy that Allyson and Bellamy had fabricated, but a genuine piece of ethereal ruin from the mines.

“Wow,” I said. “You must run really fast.”

Cain actually smiled. One corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other, making his whole face look slanted. “Werewolves have incredible powers of speed and strength.”

Apparently
. He must have run hundreds of miles in an hour. Impossible for any land mammal. Wondered if he was just fucking with me and had stolen an SUV or something.

I wanted to make a snarky quip at him, but I couldn’t think of any.

So instead I said, “Get him, Yvette.”

He wasn’t expecting to be attacked from the rear. He didn’t turn to defend himself in time.

The zombie jumped onto his back and wrapped her arms around his throat, slamming him into the wall with her momentum. He dropped the piece of ethereal gateway.

I didn’t wait to see how long it would take a werewolf to dismember a zombie—I doubted it would be long at all. I grabbed Fritz, dragged him to his feet, and hauled his semi-conscious body toward the mouth of the cave as quickly as possible.

But not fast enough.

Cain roared behind me. One of Yvette’s legs flew over my head, without any sign of the rest of her body.

Then he was on top of me.

My head slammed into the floor and bounced.

I blacked out.

I woke up with one hell of a migraine and a werewolf standing over me.

Not the best wake up call, let me tell you.

“Auntie Em? Uncle Henry?” I asked, squinting through the pain of my possible concussion to figure out where the hell I was.

Judging by the wooden walls and camping lantern, I was thinking I was still in the cave.

Fritz groaned. He was lying on his side next to me, bleeding on the ground in quantities that didn’t look safe or healthy. His hands were tied in front of him with bungee cords.

Yep. Still in the cave.

And, judging by the fact that my immobile wrists ached behind my back, I was also tied up. Now Cain had two hostages instead of one. Better and better.

“I thought you were supposed to be at the Silverton Mine,” I said.

Cain paced in front of me. Couldn’t he put some clothes on? His junk was swaying just a few inches away from my face and that was a lot more werewolf than I wanted to get acquainted with. I don’t have a problem with old guys blow-drying their balls at the gym, but shoving hairy wolf nuts
in my face when I’m nursing a migraine? No thanks.

A guy’s got to have his limits.

“I finished my errands there,” he said. “I took what I wanted and left my men to slaughter the remaining personnel.”

“Didn’t take long for you to dig out the rest of the gate.”

“I didn’t bother digging out the rest. This is all I took.” Cain tossed that piece of glistening white rock the size of his hand in the air then caught it on the way down.

“It doesn’t matter if you stole the rest of the ruins anyway,” I said. “We have the first piece on lockdown somewhere. You will never get it from us. You will never build the gate.”

“You’re an idiot,” Cain said, throwing and catching the stone again. “I don’t want to build the gate. I only need to destroy a single piece to ensure that nobody manages to open it.”

I frowned. My eyes darted to the dark lumps in the back of the room, which I thought used to be Yvette, now slightly dismembered. “But the Apple—”

“They’re idiots, too. Pawns in a bigger war. I have to keep them motivated and focused. As long as they want something, and they think I can give it to them, they are pliant. If they get what they want and liberate Adam, then they won’t be useful to me anymore.”

He wasn’t just a megalomaniacal cult leader. He was a
lying
megalomaniacal cult leader. What a charmer.

But seriously, he was a charmer. His smile radiated charisma. Easy to see why a cult would follow him. I wanted to trust him and this guy had clubbed me.

“You probably shouldn’t be telling me this,” I said. “I’m going to arrest you, and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” I didn’t actually have to give perps the Miranda warning, but it seemed like a good time to remind him that I worked for the government and all.

“I can tell you whatever I want. I haven’t had anyone to be honest with in months. It’s helpful to have a sounding board for my plans. What do you think?”

“I think…” I blinked. “Wait, I’m a sounding board? Does that mean we’re friends now?”

“No.”

“Damn,” I said. “I’m feeling like we could be friends. And, you know, friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Friends also don’t murder each other. We should be friends.”

I was babbling. This was bad. I needed to shut my fucking mouth before I made it worse.

How is that possible? What’s worse than getting killed by a werewolf, Cèsar?

Aside from Barry Manilow, that is.

Lord, even my thoughts are babbling
.

Cain crouched beside us. “We don’t have to be friends for you to be useful to me. And I think you’ll be extremely useful.” He ruffled Fritz’s hair, not gently. “Protein alleviates a new wolf’s transitional discomforts.”

Fritz met my gaze as best he could through his swollen, bloody eye sockets. I suddenly understood why he was bleeding so much.

One of the Union zombies had said something about Fritz waiting for the full moon…hadn’t he?

My boss had been bitten by a werewolf.

Oh shit
.

Cain straightened and backed toward the door. “I need to figure out how to destroy this,” he said, tossing the fragment of ethereal stone in the air again. “I’ll be back for Fritz in the morning, once he’s human again.” He glanced out the door to the mouth of the cave and the sky beyond. “We change very late at night the first time. I’d say you have almost an hour to kiss your butt goodbye.”

And with that, he slammed the door, leaving me alone with Fritz.

The guy whose ability to call the Union was the only thing saving me from Lucrezia de Angelis’s vengeance.

The guy who might be about to shapeshift into a man-eating wolf.

I SQUIRMED IN MY bindings, inching away from Fritz.

“Friends also don’t eat friends,” I said. “Just, uh, pointing that out.”

I only kind of meant that as a joke. Fortunately, my boss laughed. The sound was dry and rasping and awful. He must have been even more injured than he looked.

“I’ll keep that in mind while I’m howling at the moon.” He flinched and groaned, spine bowing. I strained away from him but didn’t make it very far, tied up as I was. Fortunately, he didn’t turn into a werewolf right at that moment. “Your rescue plan seems to have gone awry.”

“It doesn’t help that there are members of the Apple in the Union. They tried to kill me as soon as my back was turned,” I said. “By the way, on a related note—there are members of a fucking cult in the Union. Did you know about that?”

“I might have.”

Of course he did. “That’s why you formed this team, isn’t it?”

“A primary motivator, yes,” Fritz said. “Who was it?”

“One of them was some guy named Ricky. I don’t know who the other one was.”

“Ricky.” He rolled the name around on his tongue. “I don’t recognize that name. This is worse than I thought. I never anticipated encountering the Apple before you and Agent Takeuchi were trained to handle them. Coming to Reno was a mistake.”

“We’ll be all right. Suzy’s on her way.” I tried to sound upbeat about it, and not like “oh God Cain is going to eat my partner as soon as she gets here.”

“Hopefully she arrives within the hour,” Fritz said dryly.

I twisted around to look at my pocket. It still bulged where I expected to find his cell phone. Too bad I couldn’t get it out. “We could call her,” I said, “if we can reach your BlackBerry.”

His eyes sharpened, even through the blood and pain. “You have my BlackBerry? You
moron
.”

“Yeah, thanks. I get that now,” I said. “Would have been helpful to know in advance that calling for pizza on your phone would be a death sentence. So can you reach it?”

Fritz rolled onto his back. The movement made his face crumple. “Just a moment.”

How high was the moon outside? “Not to hurry you or anything, but…”

“Yes, I said just a moment!” Fritz snapped.

“Newborn werewolves are so grumpy,” a silken voice said from the shadows. A voice that didn’t belong to anyone that should have been the cave. The darkness swirled and coalesced into a tall, slender human figure with sharp shoulders and greasy yellow hair.

The glow of a lighter splashed over David Nicholas’s skeletal face. He touched the flame to the tip of his cigarette, inhaling deeply, making the tobacco glow crimson.

I groaned and kicked my feet against the ground, pushing myself toward the opposite corner—the one he wasn’t standing in. David Nicholas tucked the lighter away and blew smoke out his nostrils, unimpressed by my pathetic attempts to escape.

“Look at what we have here.” He sauntered over to Fritz and planted a booted foot on his chest. “Great Grandbaby Friederling with bungee cords around his ankles and… Are you wearing a
suit and tie?
A Friederling in a suit and tie!” Apparently this was hilarious, even though I’d never seen my boss wearing anything else. The nightmare’s laughter was more like coughing.

“Get your foot off of me,” croaked Fritz.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” David Nicholas knelt, pressing more weight on his chest. “This is sweet. Just too damn sweet. Let me treasure this moment.”

“What do you want?” I asked. I was kind of shocked to be able to speak. David Nicholas didn’t seem to have brought his thrall with him.

“I want what Cain has, and what you buggers have,” David Nicholas said. “The Night Hag is waking up because she wants the ethereal ruins, and I aim to give them to her.”

“You and this Night Hag are going to have to get in line,” I said. “Everybody wants them.”

“That’s because there’s power in those rocks. Lots of it. More than you’d know what to do with. We, on the other hand, know how to make the ruins work for us. Keep us safe. Understand?”

“Nope.”

David Nicholas’s eyes glinted with annoyance. “The Reno-Sacramento territory’s safe from remote viewing because of the ethereal ruins. And as long as the Night Hag possesses them, it’ll be easy to drive away competitors.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Too bad the Night Hag doesn’t possess them anymore. Guess you should have moved faster to kill Cain.”

He sucked hard on the cigarette. Blew out more smoke. “It’s not too late yet.”

The first glimmer of hope stirred in my heart. Weird reaction to being in the room with a nightmare.

“You’re going to kill Cain?” I asked.

David Nicholas reached over to me and plucked the BlackBerry out of my pocket before I could react. “Depends on you,” he said. “We’re going to steal the ruins from Cain and whatever’s left in the Silverton Mines. That’s not a problem. But there’s still a piece missing—a piece you assholes took out of town.” The piece that was currently being studied in Los Angeles. “Bring it back to me, then fuck off. In return, I’ll let both of you escape this cave. Fair?”