Authors: Kelley Armstrong
“There’s a conference call,” Paige said. “Trouble with the Boyds. We’d like Adam to help explain a few things.”
“It’ll be under the tent,” Lucas said. Then to Paige. “I should—”
“Good idea.”
They exchanged a look, and he walked away, ramrod straight. I felt like I was fifteen again, caught letting a guy in the house while they were out. From Paige, I’d gotten a long talk about personal safety and the expectations that could be raised by inviting a guy into an empty house. From Lucas? Silence. Disappointment, I think, but confusion, too, as if he really had expected better of me. Smarter of me.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Adam said to Paige when Lucas was gone. “I’m really sorry.”
Paige had her arms crossed, but she didn’t look angry.
“That was stupid,” Adam said. “Really stupid.”
“Not arguing,” she said.
I stepped forward. “It was just a hug.”
“Oh, that’s not the issue,” Paige said. She jerked her thumb at Adam. “He knows the issue.”
Adam glanced at me. “I should have told them about us. Responsibility fail. Big responsibility fail.”
“Again, not arguing,” Paige said.
“I could have told you guys, too,” I said.
Adam shook his head. “This one should have come from me.” He looked at Paige. “I
am
sorry. Savannah and I talked, and we agreed you should know. We just … with everything … we hadn’t gotten to it. I know you’re not going to be happy about the whole thing—”
“I never said that. He’s the one who’s not going to be happy.” She gestured at Lucas, now disappearing into the tent. “I told him it was coming. He thought I was ‘misreading the situation.’
Pfft.
After eight years, you think he’d know enough to trust me on that sort of thing, and to accept that as brilliant as he is, he has absolutely no emotion-reading skills whatsoever.”
She smiled at Adam’s expression. “What, you didn’t think I’d figured it out? How long have I known you? I can even tell you when things changed. Last year. After Savannah saved your butt on that that demi-demon case in Ohio. Am I right?”
“Um, yeah.”
“So you knew and didn’t tell
me,
” I said to Paige.
“Of course I didn’t tell you. I figured it would happen when you were both ready. If that took a few years, well, given the
age difference, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. This is fine, though. The maturity gap isn’t that big.”
“Thanks,” Adam muttered.
She grinned at him. “You’re welcome. You’re still in deep shit with Lucas, and I’m not fixing that for you. This isn’t the time to fix it, but making a start wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“Got it.”
He loped off.
Paige put her arm around my waist as we followed. “Happy?”
“Very.”
She squeezed me. “Good.”
I glanced over. “Lucas is not so happy.”
“He’s just worried you’ll get hurt. Adam doesn’t have a good track record—or any track record—at committed relationships. But I know Adam wouldn’t start this if he didn’t plan to give it his best shot. He wouldn’t dare.”
“Too much to lose. Friendships, his job …”
“Sure. But he also knows I have developed a very nice repertoire of spells. All of which I’ll use to kick his ass if you get hurt.”
I laughed, and we walked toward the tent.
SLAM’s compound was some kind of old bomb shelter, surrounded on all sides by a couple of hundred feet of rocky, fallow ground. Beyond that? Cornfields. Thousands of acres of cornfields owned, as Adam said, by some conglomerate that largely seemed content to just let it grow. And had also been content, I guess, to sell or lease the shelter and the surrounding patch of land.
All this meant that we had no obvious way of getting in. There was a road … which ended at a twelve-foot electrified fence. The fence had a gate, but since we’d started monitoring, it had only opened twice. Once when a van left the garage, another when one arrived. Young guys with machine guns had met the
vehicles, made everyone get out for a search, then let them go inside the garage. Presumably, the bomb shelter entrance was under it, but there was no way of getting close enough to use heat scanners and see how many people were guarding the entrance.
So infiltration was proving problematic for the Cortezes. The fact that the Cortezes insisted on infiltration, rather than attack, was proving problematic for the Boyds. Hence the teleconference when everyone really had better things to do.
I could see the Boyds’ point. We’d found ground zero for this movement. The leader was inside, along with presumably everyone capable of disseminating that virus. There were no human observers for miles. So why the hell weren’t we storming the place, killing the guards, and piping deadly gas into the hole? Oh, right, there was a kidnapped woman down there. One woman. A small price to pay to contain this virus.
Lucas could have played the sympathy card. This wasn’t just a woman, she was a valued ally, a friend who’d stuck around to help the cause, knowing she was in danger, a pregnant woman whose husband now lay at death’s door.
He could have played the political card. This woman was a member of the werewolf Pack. Mated to a Pack brother. Carrying his child. The Pack had fought at the Cabals’ side since the beginning of the crisis and to tell them that this woman was not worth any extra effort would be … unwise.
But Lucas knew which arguments would work. Fear and self-interest. This woman? She’s the daughter of Lucifer. She’s carrying his grandchild, quite possibly the first he’s ever had. Did they really want to kill her? Kill her child? Had they already forgotten what Balaam did to Thomas Nast for merely arresting his grandchild? Demons didn’t do well with disrespect.
Finally the Boyds agreed it was best to examine all other avenues first. We had the exit road covered by covert ops teams,
so it wasn’t as if the folks stuck in the bunker could escape.
Nast troops—Sean’s men—would be arriving soon. A contingent of St. Cloud security and espionage agents were on their way, too. A rare show of cross-Cabal support. Fat lot of good it would do, as Clay muttered. I silently seconded him.
It didn’t matter how many fighters we had. A brute show of force wouldn’t get us into the compound. It just meant we’d have a hundred or more armed men milling about, bored and spoiling for a fight. The rival Cabals could start scrapping at any moment.
Lucas and Paige left to consult with the ops guys. Jeremy and Clay went with them. Adam and I didn’t. Group strategizing wasn’t really our thing. Besides, they didn’t invite us.
So we blew off some steam. No private sessions. We’d learned our lesson on that one. Instead we ran a circuit in the corn.
“I think we could do it with spells,” I said. “Cause a distraction, then Lucas, Paige, and I go in under blur and cover spells.”
“It’d have to be a distraction that didn’t scream ‘you’re surrounded by SWAT teams.’?”
“True.”
Adam went quiet.
“What’s up?” I said as we jogged around the far bend of our improvised track.
“I know you won’t appreciate the reminder, but … your spells aren’t up to it, Savannah. They aren’t reliable enough. Lucas and Paige could cover you, but …”
“If they have to cover me, they might as well take in someone more useful. Like you or Clay.”
“Hey, no, I never said—”
“But it’s true. You and Clay have unique talents. Right now, Paige and Lucas are the better spellcasters. I wouldn’t bring anything new to the table.”
He shook his head. “You said you wanted to let Aratron play this out, but I think we need to try summoning him. Get your powers back.”
We jogged past the base. Tactical officers stood in clusters, some checking me out, some glowering at us, as if we were showing them up by making use of our downtime.
I waited until we were in the cornfield again, then said, “Is it even possible to summon a eudemon?”
“I’ve seen rites in the old books.” He paused. “Rites that take a week to prepare, use ingredients I’ve never heard of and have never actually been proven to work.”
I glowered at him. “Helpful.”
“I don’t think we need that. If Aratron’s watching over you, he can’t be far. I say we try a basic summoning—”
“It won’t work,” called a voice behind us.
We stopped and turned to see one of the officers—a dark-haired man in his thirties—gingerly making his way through the corn.
“Eavesdropping?”
He smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, barely an expression of amusement at all, but I recognized it.
“Aratron,” I said. “Well, that was easy.”
“You know who I am then? Good. The cloak of mystery had its charms at first, but it was getting tiresome.” He waved for us to follow. “Come, children. We need to talk.”
As we headed deeper into the cornfield, I said, “I know you have some master plan for me, and I’ve gone along with it so far, but I need my spells back. We have to get into that compound. Gilles de Rais is going to—”
“—summon Lucifer using his daughter.” He peered over in the direction of the ruined farmhouse. “Jaime Vegas is here, is she not?”
“Yes, but—”
“We met once.”
“Yeah, she told us, but—”
“It was when she discovered those humans learning magic. A precursor to this whole debacle. Hope Adams was with her at the time. I’d expressed an interest in meeting Hope. That never came to pass.”
“I’m sure Jaime did her best. Now—”
“Oh, that wasn’t a complaint. There is no way for Jaime to contact me even if she’d been so inclined. I was merely making an observation. Musing on how things have come full circle it seems. From Hope Adams to Hope Adams. Interesting, don’t you think?”
No, I did not. I suspected that Hope—captive in that subterranean vipers’ nest, thinking her husband was dead, and that she and their daughter would shortly follow—wouldn’t find this delay all that interesting either. I decided I liked Aratron better when his visits were short and cryptic.
“If we can arrange a meeting with Hope later, we’ll do that for you,” Adam said. “As for getting in, we were thinking—”
“I heard what you were thinking,” Aratron said. “Discussing actually. I said it wouldn’t work.”
“You can’t give me back my spells?” I said.
“Of course I can. And I will. When you get inside that compound. But magic will not get you into it. The exterior is warded against them. Once inside, you can cast. But you cannot use spells to get inside.”
“Okay, so—”
The sound of someone crashing through the cornstalks cut me short. Troy strode into the field. No—not Troy. I didn’t even need to see those blazing green eyes to tell me that.
I shook my head. “You know, Asmondai, Benicio’s going to start getting a little pissed if you keep possessing his bodyguard like that.”
He ignored me, bearing down on Aratron. “You have interfered once too often, spirit. Did you think I wouldn’t learn of your meddling? Taking the girl’s powers so she cannot protect my son?”
“Um, I’m not exactly helpless,” Adam said.
“You have crossed a line that you should not have crossed,” Asmondai said to Aratron.
Aratron only lifted his brows. “Is that a threat, demon? Please, do tell me how you plan to carry it through. Your kind have no dominion over mine. In fact, if I recall correctly, it is the other way around. Not that we have invoked that power in millennia—you do get so resentful—but a reminder might be in order.”
“Don’t threaten me, spirit.”
“Then save the bluster. It suits Balaam better.” He turned to us. “There is another way into that pit. Gilles de Rais is waiting for someone. A necromancer whose assistance could make the difference between success and failure. Gordon Scott. Have you heard of him?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Class-A dirtbag who fancies himself a zombie master? The council has tangled with him a few times. He seems to think the antislavery laws don’t apply to dead people. So he’s mixed up in this? Why am I not surprised?”
If we’d had time to compile lists of supernaturals who might be involved, Scott would have been on it. Not only was he an opportunist, but it was rumored he’d been allied with the group that took my mother and me captive all those years ago. Using an underground compound was probably his idea, based on that experience.
“He’s been de Rais’s best hope of summoning Lucifer,” Aratron said. “He’s the one who set them on Walter Alston.”
“This spirit is misleading you,” Asmondai said. “Scott parted ways with de Rais two days ago.”
“Yes,” Aratron said. “Which is why de Rais waits. He has sent a message telling Scott that he now has Lucifer’s child, which is the route the necromancer himself suggested after their failure with Walter Alston. De Rais hopes Scott will return.”
“Ah-ha,” I said. “So if we can find Scott and hitch a ride in with him …”
“Impossible, I fear. He is, at this moment, one of those empty shells he once exploited.”
“He’s dead? Well, he can’t have been dead long, so if you know where his body is, we’ll have Jaime give him a taste of his own medicine. Resurrect him—”
“He isn’t merely dead. He’s quite dead.”
“Quite dead?”
“Flayed.”
“Oh. What’d he do? Piss off a lord demon?”
“No, it was a group of your garden variety demonic underlings. He thought he might be able to contact Lucifer himself if he summoned enough of his foot soldiers. He was mistaken.”
“Well, we can’t work with flayed. He’d need skin.” I looked at Adam, who confirmed that with a nod.
Asmondai appealed to Adam. “Are you really listening to this spirit, my son? You are brighter than that. You have studied your histories of his kind. Have they ever helped mortals?”
“They’ve been known to help restore balance,” Adam said.
“Tell Balaam’s grandchild when they last did that. And how they achieved it.”
Adam looked at me. “Eudemons are said to have been responsible for several plagues.”
“Which solved serious issues of urban overcrowding,” Aratron said. “And led to many of the scientific advances in hygiene, medicine, and disease control that allow you to live such long and healthy lives today.”