Undercover Magic (9 page)

"Being a man makes him...vulnerable," she said, scowling.

"We all dream of finding that vulnerability someday. All but you, Maggie."

She dreamed of it, though not in a way he'd ever understand. "She's not capable of
being bonded. She can't feel what Cooper feels. What will that do to him? To the Clan?
As a human—"

"If she is."

Margaret's heart seemed to catch in her throat. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Just the prodding of a flawed male's instincts." He turned away from her
and studied the house where Addison and Cooper were enjoying their current rendezvous.

"The world's a new place, Maggie. We become new with it, or we die. The only thing
that never changes is truth."

He settled more comfortably on the roof and gazed across the ruined remains of a neighborhood
playground toward the safe house. "But you're right. Sometimes things are exactly
as they appear to be. Though usually not."

*  *  *

The morning sun streamed in through the safe house window and I snuggled deeper into
Cooper's chest. It had been a great night.

"Safe house six in two days?" he said, his voice rumbling through his chest.

"I might even be early."

He pulled me closer. "Now that I'm temporarily kicked out of the Bureau, I can admit
something. I was hoping that you'd break into the school."

"Yeah. I figured that."

"I'll make contact with Laswell."

"I'll flush him out. You alert the FBI anonymously."

"It's Clan business now."

I pulled away from him so that I could see his face. "No, you're trying to protect
me again."

"If Laswell's guilty, the Weres working for him have overstepped the line. I have
to address that."

"Your job is to keep from getting killed. I have resources. I'll be fine."

His expression closed down. Going blank in a way I hadn't seen since before we were
dating. "Resources. Like Bellmonte?"

"What does it matter?"

"He wants you," he growled and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

I ignored them and gave him an equally fierce look. "Tough. He can't have me."

"Which won't stop him. You know that."

"You're such an idiot." I pushed away from him and got out of the bed. I didn't have
time for jealousy-crazed Weres. "Getting me to come willingly is the game he's playing.
He won't spoil that for himself by forcing me."

"You can push him too far. If you do, he's capable of anything."

"Stay away from Laswell's, Cooper. I'll handle it. And back off on the big protective
male shit. It's pissing me off."

I collected my clothes from the floor. Turning my back, I pulled on my underwear and
shrugged into my bra. In a blur of movement, Cooper left the bed and landed in front
of me.

His hands wrapped around my upper arms and he tensed like he wanted to shake sense
into me. "I will protect you, Addison. Like it or not."

"I don't." I slammed my heel down on his instep and pulled out of his grip. I hated
being smothered. He knew that and yet here he was getting all overbearing on me.

"I hate your luck," he said, pulling me into his arms. "I'll do everything I can to
keep you safe." He smelled like woods and lust and male, and I started to cave.

"If I see you near Laswell's tonight, I'll shoot you," I said, telling myself to stand
tough.

His soft lips brushed across mine and I pushed against the muscles of his chest, though
not with as much conviction as I should have. He smiled and I had a moment to catch
my breath before he swooped in and devoured me.

His kiss sank into my senses and heat bloomed in my belly, sweeping over me in a tidal
wave of love and longing. I couldn't help myself. I melted against him.

After a moment, the guilt of giving in so easily managed to claw its way past all
the yummy feelings and I jerked out of his arms. He gave me a triumphant grin and
I gave him the finger.

Muttering insults while he laughed, I yanked on the rest of my clothes, glaring at
him here and there for good measure. "I was taking care of myself before you came
along, you know. I can take care of myself after you're gone," I reminded him.

Cooper swallowed down his amusement, though barely, and hunted down his pants. "There,
you see? That's the flaw in your reasoning." He tugged on his jeans. "I'm not going
anywhere."

I strapped on my gun. "Maybe you'll get yourself killed. Maybe you just won't show
up. It doesn't matter. The result's the same. Everyone leaves eventually. Life always
plays out that way."

Cooper's gaze hit me, his silver-green eyes intense. He seemed about to move toward
me, but then he turned away and focused on finishing getting dressed.

Grief flickered through me. Why did I always push him away?

I bit down on my regret and finished securing my weapons. When I was sure everything
was where it should be and in easy access, I headed for the window.

"I'll see you in two days," I said, unable to look at him. I felt his gaze though,
heating through my back and into my heart as I swung my legs over the sill and escaped.

CHAPTER NINE

Falcon and I crouched at the edge of the woods that had once been an upper middle
class neighborhood.  Through a pair of night vision binoculars, I scanned the farmland
sweeping from the forest to a wall that we knew would be buzzing with defensive magic.
Beyond the wall, was the property once known as Duke Mansion, now the home of Jacob
Laswell.

Pristine white and classically majestic, the house was palatial in scope. I could
see why Laswell had snapped it up while the fighting was still hot and heavy and Charlotte's
frightened human leaders were desperate for funding. He'd then cleverly made sure
that stealing a state treasure caused no bad feelings by setting the estate up as
a practitioner garrison during the war. Once the unsavory paranormal elements were
defeated, he renovated the property back to its original condition and made it his
private residence.

"It's too quiet," I said, lowering the binoculars.

"I did a thorough investigation of Laswell's security," Falcon whispered. "There should
be three guards patrolling outside the gate right now. Five more on the grounds. Four
in the house—"

"Feels wrong." I sniffed the air. There was a metallic sharpness to it. "Smells wrong,
too."

"Nothing weird about you doing that or anything."

"I'm going in."

"We should ditch the plan. What if you're walking into a trap?" he said, worry in
his voice.

"Traps don't smell like blood."

"Depends on what you're trying to catch."

*  *  *

The Laswell palace had a gate that looked strong enough to withstand a siege. Good
thing I'd left my catapult and battering ram at home.

Singing off-key, I stumbled up to the wrought iron monstrosity like I was drunk. I
careened to a stop, surreptitiously noting the ominous, looping designs running through
the iron and their eerie similarity to the ones on the protective grates of Falcon's
shop.

"I need to pee," I said to the gate.

I swayed there for a moment and then stared up at the wall. "Hello? Don't you have,
like, forty bathrooms in there? I need to pee!"

Not a twitch of movement from any direction. Maybe no one was home.

Only one way to find out.

"Let me in!" I kicked with drunken clumsiness at the seam of the gate. Giving a low
creak, the two halves of the gate slowly swung open.

I gave one of them a tentative jab with my hand and it opened wider. I waited for
someone to call me on it. Nothing.

Something was definitely up.

Drawing my Browning, I inched forward and stopped inside the parameter. "Oh, crap."

The bodies of four guards lay scattered across the lawn leading up to the house, another
one sprawled half in, half out of the now bloody fountain in front of the entrance.
Some were naked with shredded, bloody clothes scattered near them. Others were killed
before they could shift.

I keyed my gun to vamp and moved through the carnage, alert and tense.

At the front steps, I picked my way around another body on the steps. One side of
the double front doors had been torn from its hinges and thrown down the stairs. The
other side hung tenaciously from its last hinge, banging against the house fitfully
in a stray breeze. Whoever had done this hadn't held back. They'd hit fast, viciously
and with purpose.

I slipped inside the doors, and the smell of death intensified. More bodies. More
blood. And signs of a fight.

I pulled out my iC and called Falcon. "They're all dead," I said when he answered.
"Smells like a butcher shop."

"Get out, Addison. Anyone who can take down a team of Were mercenaries is not someone
to mess with."

I focused on the quiet buzz of energy in the middle of my body and let my senses roam
through the house while I focused on my intuition, something I'd been secretly working
on since last summer when a rampaging god had nearly killed me. A glimmer of energy
from the fight still remained, stuck to the walls, the furniture, the bodies—I felt
purpose, brutality, a thread of triumph and a lot of fear.

I blinked and pulled in a long breath. "No. They got what they came for," I told him.
Crossing the foyer, I pushed a body over with my foot. It was stiff like hardened
clay. 

"They were hit at least three hours ago. Probably more," I said into the phone.

"A couple hours after sunset," Falcon concluded. "Before Laswell was due to leave
for the benefit party."

I headed up the curved, elegant staircase stained with blood.

"Addison, please get out," he said, his voice genuinely worried. I appreciated the
sentiment, but running wouldn't get the job done.

"Where did you say Laswell's office was?"

His sigh whispered through the phone. "Up the stairs, to the left. Down the hall.
First double doors on the right. Jeez you're stubborn."

"One of my finer qualities."

*  *  *

The double doors weren't locked and opened easily onto an immaculately appointed office
fit for a business mogul. I edged in, weapon ready. A quick sweep showed me that nothing
significant had been disturbed except the overturned executive's chair behind the
desk.

"Empty," I said into my iC.

The old-fashioned phone sitting on the desk rang.

"Is that a phone?" Falcon said in my ear.

I stared at the heavy black contraption. It rang again. "I'll call you back," I said
to Falcon.

"Wait! It could be rigged to—"

I hung up and pocketed my iC. Picking up the handset of the desk phone, I put it to
my ear. "Hello?"

A man's voice rasped over the line. "We have your brother."

"Who is this?"

"High Lord Navarro wanted you. But he's flexible." In the background, a man screamed
and chills fractured down my back.

"What do you want?" I asked the raspy voice.

"Secrets should be kept. Find a way to do that."

Secrets? What the hell? "How?"

"Be creative. But get Lord Bellmonte to back down or Laswell dies." He disconnected.

I stared at the receiver in my hand, my mind running over what I'd heard. A moment
later Falcon rushed into the office, sweaty and disheveled.

He waved a Browning outfitted like mine around like he expected the office to be full
of vampires. When he almost hit me in the face, I grabbed the gun and pulled it from
his sweaty grip. "Hey, hey, hey. It's not nice to point."

Relieved of the responsibility of having to shoot someone, Falcon braced a hand on
one of the guest chairs and sucked in air like a winded scarecrow. "Nothing...blew
up... That's good."

"They have Laswell. Turns out he also has a sister."

"W-who...does?" he asked.

"Someone unpleasant."

"Someone unpleasant has a sister?"

"You're not making any sense. Breath deeper." I waited a moment to make sure he'd
gotten enough oxygen to his brain. "If whoever has Laswell kills him, we lose our
best shot at clearing Cooper's name and finding the missing kids. I'm not letting
that happen."

"He could...be anywhere. Charlotte's a big area."

"Happily, there's only one place where ferry boats are still running this time of
night."

Falcon pulled in one more deep breath and stood up. "Lake Norman's a big lake, Addison."

"But only one place on it is big enough and deserted enough to give off the echo I
heard when Laswell screamed."

"They've taken him to the new hoverbus terminal that he's building?"

"Better than even odds," I said.

"A mysterious enemy that's extremely deadly and has a sense of irony. I don't have
a chance of stopping you from trying to rescue him, do I?"

"Not a one."

*  *  *

The gigantic, half-constructed hoverbus terminal was a sight to behold, but not in
a good way. The half exposed skeleton of raw beams stuck out from one end.  At the
other end was an enclosed section that looked like an upside-down punch bowl with
rows of windows around the top. The architect's drawing on the splashy, happy sign
looked futuristic and lavish, but at this stage? ...I wasn't seeing it. 

I crept up to the forty foot para-fence barricading the construction site. Aiming
my upgraded deluxe remote control at it, I pressed HDMI. The remote sparked and I
almost threw it down and ran, but then the air around the fence shimmered. When the
remote didn't explode, I counted to thirty as instructed while the faintly glowing
barricade sputtered, flickered and finally went dull.

I pocked the gadget and started climbing.

Ten minutes and a few locked doors later, I was sneaking along a catwalk eighteen
feet above the envisioned terminal floor. A fancy tile design was underway in one
corner, but I still had trouble seeing anything but construction flotsam and nonsense.
Then again, who was I to judge?

Below, in the pool of light cast by several portable lanterns, Jacob Laswell slumped,
tied to a sturdy-looking wooden chair. The middle-aged, sharp-featured man had a PRC
clamped around his neck and appeared to be unconscious.

Two average-sized vampires stood at ease on either side of him, as motionless as statues.
I aimed my gun—

—And was hit by what felt like a train dropping from the ceiling. Adrenaline shot
through me as I went down under a third vamp. My reflexes took over and I got off
two shots directly into his neck as he went for mine. He immediately went limp and
I rolled him off of me.

Having lost the element of surprise, I sprang to my feet and swung over the railing
of the catwalk.  I landed solidly on the floor. The other vamp guards were gone. Not
good.

I raced for cover and one of the thugs slammed into me from the side. My gun went
sliding across the floor and the bastard slugged me in the side of my neck and a little
toward the front.

*  *  *

I came to from the faint the vamp had induced in a chair next to Laswell, my wrists
bound together with duct tape as well as my ankles. At least my feet weren't taped
to the chair. They'd either been in a hurry or didn't think I was much of a threat.
Probably both.

Laswell watched me from his chair, his expression dazed. His custom-made shirt had
been ripped to expose his shoulder. From where I sat, I could see at least five bite
marks. They'd fed on him, filling his blood stream with their venom. Great.

"You are not my sister," he said, slurring his words like the drugged up man he was.

I tested the strength of the duct tape binding my wrists while scoping the area for
our captors. "Who's Navarro?" I asked.

"They'll want you to give him a message."

I made a few test moves with my chair, first rocking it and then taking an experimental
hop. "I'll need to know who he is first, don't you think?"

"Lord Bellmonte. A message for Lord Bell...monte," he slurred.

"Should not be surprised to hear that. He's been popular lately."

From the left, the vampire guards approached us, seeming to emerge out of the darkness
just beyond the ragged circle of light. Typical vamp drama used for centuries to intimidate
intended victims. So scary. Not.

The first vamp, a big guy with a shaved head looked down at me for a moment and then
slapped the hell out of me. Pain exploded across my jaw and cheek and my eyes watered.
He hadn't hit me hard enough to knock me unconscious again, but it was definitely
enough to make me good and mad. He just didn't realize it.

"It's your lucky night," the bald twit said. "You're useful to High Lord Navarro."

As soon as he spoke, I realized this was the guy who'd called Laswell's place. I narrowed
my eyes at him and then spit blood on the floor at his feet.

Both vampires' expressions tightened with hunger. Bald Twit bent over me.

"I'm gonna bite you and you're gonna like it," he hissed in my face. "When you wake
up outside your master's penthouse, tell him the High Lord Navarro knows what he wants."

"Spearmint gum for every minion?" I ventured. He raised his hand like he was going
to hit me again and I stared at him defiantly.

The vamp gave a cruel parody of a smile and lowered his arm. "Tell him the High Lord
also knows what he fears."

He straightened up. Behind him, the second vampire, a nasty looking guy with sandy-colored
hair and a crooked nose, let his fangs drop down. His face began to distort as his
excitement built.