The Dragon Conspiracy (4 page)

Ian gave him an easy and relaxed smile. “You can use my phone just as soon as I’m finished. Don’t worry; we’re going to take care of you.”

The smile reassured Ben Sadler.

The smile creeped me the hell out.

One, I’d never seen Ian do anything easy and relaxed, especially not smile at a time like this. And two, I’d seen what Ben had done to that harpy, plus gotten myself a free sample, and I knew that in SPI speak, “take care of” could very well mean a cell, an interrogation room back at headquarters, or both. Fortunately, Ben Sadler was still too freaked-out by being attacked by harpies and threatened by the owner of the diamonds his employer was in the running to auction off to take Ian’s words at anything other than face value.

“Thank you,” the appraiser said. “I believe I could use some assistance.”

Ian spoke into his headset. “Mobile Six, we have three for extraction. Request pickup at the west entrance.”

Ben’s baby blues went even wider than when he’d first laid eyes on those harpies. “Mobile Six?
Extraction?
Who are you people?”

“Take it easy, sir.” Ian knelt and quickly placed a steadying hand on Ben’s wrist.

The diamond appraiser instantly relaxed.

Way too relaxed, far too fast.

I quickly leaned forward. “What did you—”

Ian flipped his hand open toward me. I saw a flash of a tiny needle.

5

“A
needle? You drugged him?” My voice started rising. Anger does that to me. “You can’t just kidnap a man from a thousand-buck-a-head gala.”

Ian was patting Ben down for weapons, and found none. “It’s not kidnapping.” He gripped Ben’s arm above the elbow and hauled him halfway to his feet. “It’s protective custody.” He lowered his shoulder to Ben’s midsection and, with no discernible effort, hoisted the Christie’s appraiser up into a fireman’s carry. “Let’s go.”

Just because Viktor Kain was on the other side of a reinforced fire door, didn’t mean I couldn’t still feel his menace clear down to my bones. I scurried on bare feet to catch up with Ian’s long strides, realizing that my shoes were still somewhere in the Sackler Wing. High-heeled pumps were death traps; they could stay there.

“Protective custody from Viktor Kain,” I conceded. “Okay, I can see that. But did you have to—”

Ian indicated my arm. “He did that?”

I looked where he was looking. My forearm was red and starting to swell. “Yes, but he didn’t mean to hurt me. I scared him.”

Ian raised an eyebrow.

“I can scare people,” I said indignantly.

He glanced at my hair. “Must have been the shrimp.” He keyed his mike. “Mobile Six, I need confirmation on that extraction. We have a probable Code Three.” He listened for a moment. “Roger that. We’ll be there in ten.”

I’d been with SPI for nearly a year, but I’d never heard that one before. “Code Three?”

“Rogue talent.”

“Rogue?”

“Untrained, untested, unpredictable. Dangerous to himself and everyone else. And after what this guy did, it’s not going to take long for a line of people and not-people to form wanting to chat with him. Right now it doesn’t matter if he’s new to his magic, or if he’s just stupid enough to throw it around in public. Viktor Kain isn’t the only one wanting to talk to him. This place is about to be overrun with cops and feds, and our boy wonder doesn’t need to talk to any of them.”

Ian didn’t need to explain. Cops meant questions. Questions signaled evasive maneuvers, either verbal, physical, or both.

Most of the witnesses had been too busy watching what their eyes and common sense had told them couldn’t be real. But once the cops got hold of the surveillance tape, they’d be able to zoom right in on me and Ben. We needed to make ourselves scarce before the NYPD took that choice way from us. A guy new to his power and who’d literally been smacked upside the head with the reality of the supernatural world did not want to be in a police or FBI interrogation room.

“Until we find out who and what he is,” Ian said, “and who he works for, unconscious equals cooperative. That stunt he pulled affected every supernatural being and magic sensitive in the room.”

“You mean that electrified-Mexican-jumping-bean-shock-wave thingie?”

“You felt it?”

My belly button and ears were still buzzing from it. “Oh yeah.”

“Makes sense. As a seer, you qualify as a sensitive.”

“By the way, his name’s Ben Sadler,” I told Ian. “He’s a diamond appraiser at Christie’s.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Of course. Who else would—” I stopped and did a mental head smack. How hard was it to give a fake name and job title, Mac? Just because a man has big blue eyes and can act innocent doesn’t mean you aren’t being played. Now that I didn’t have my imminent death hanging over my head and could think straight, it sounded like ninety percent of my dates.

Crap. “Still too trusting, aren’t I?”

“Trust isn’t bad, but people often are. You just need to make room in your trust to allow for that. We can check his wallet once we get him out of here.”

“I still don’t think he lied. He’d have to be the best actor on the planet to fake that reaction. I thought he was in shock after seeing those harpies. Too bad he had to snap out of it, get gutsy—”

“Get stupid.”

I’d give Ian that one. “Okay, get stupid, and attack that harpy.” I paused. “What
did
he do? After that light show, I was blind as a bat.” My arm was beginning to seriously throb. “Was that him or the harpy that made those diamonds flash?”

“Harpies don’t have magic of their own.”

“So Ben did it.”

“That’s what I saw—me and a lot of other people.”

“So what kind of magic is that?”

“It could be any number of things; none of them are anything a beginner should be able to do.”

The hallway ended in another door.

Ian hitched Ben up farther on his shoulders. “Time to mingle with the crowd. Stay close.”

The door opened on the wide corridor just outside the Sackler Wing. The only civilians remaining inside were the same ones you’d find gawking around any other violent crime scene where there were dismembered and disemboweled bodies. You’d think people had never seen intestines before.

A man up ahead was flagging us down. I tensed until I recognized Eddie Laughlin, our security consultant. Three harpies had been one hell of a security breach. I bet Eddie was grateful that the diamonds’ actual security hadn’t been his responsibility. And even for a supernatural security consultant, a statue of three harpies coming to life couldn’t have been on his “be on guard against” list. That still didn’t mean that Vivienne Sagadraco was going to be happy with him.

Eddie fought his way through the crowd. He looked at Ben. “This the guy?” he asked when he got next to us.

“Yep,” Ian replied.

“I can have a car here in five minutes,” he offered.

“Thanks, but we’ve got Yasha picking us up.”

“Headquarters?” Eddie asked.

“No, safe house on the next block.”

“You sure you don’t need any help?”

“We’ve got it.”

Eddie listened to someone on his earpiece. “I’ll be right there,” he said to whoever was on the other end. “Good luck, man,” he told Ian. He turned and vanished into the crowd, making his way back to the Sackler Wing.

There was ample chaos and no one gave a second look, or even a first one, at two people carrying a third bloody person away from the scene of the crime and out of the museum. In fact, out was the preferred direction, all we had to do was insert ourselves into the stream of frightened humanity, and let ourselves be swept along. It also helped that all of the men were wearing tuxedos. Unconscious, tuxedo clad, with his head down, no one could identify Ben as the maniac who’d attacked the harpies, and my involvement consisted of a low tackle, out of sight for most people whose eyes were locked on three jewel-thieving harpies.

Running against the tide were at least a dozen of the NYPD’s finest.

Ian quickly turned his face away from them, giving me a not-so-subtle clue that he didn’t want the boys and girls in blue to see him. Three years ago, Ian had left the NYPD for SPI. He’d been with them for five years, so there was a very real possibility that one or more of that group of cops would have recognized him.

We’d be hearing soon enough what the other witnesses had to say. In SPI training, I’d learned that when people had supernatural experiences, they’d go through all kinds of mental convolutions to find not only a logical explanation, but one that they could personally deal with. The human mind knew how to protect itself, and realized it was in its best interest to keep episodes of catatonic mumbling or hysterics to a lifetime minimum.

The brain could be pretty danged creative when it came to explaining the unexplainable.

Plastic surgeons weren’t going to be the only medical professionals with new patients and/or appointments on Monday morning. Manhattan’s psychiatric community was about to see an influx of new clients, or old clients with new problems.

I stayed next to Ian. Once clear of the exhibition, the crowd ran across the vast marble-floored Great Hall, out the glass-and-bronze front doors, and down to Fifth Avenue.

“This way.” Ian had to shout to be heard over the crowd. “Yasha will be at the end of the block.”

With all the mayhem of panicked people running, gridlocked cabs and police cars, flashing lights and sirens, even Yasha would have trouble getting anywhere near the museum.

Then I saw him. To be more exact, I spotted the tricked-out Suburban he thought of as his baby.

During the day, the sidewalks near the museum played host to food carts and vendors. Tonight the massive black SUV had claimed a big chunk of concrete real estate for its own.

Yasha Kazakov was an accomplished urban off-road driver.

The Russian agent was one of SPI’s drivers and trackers. In a city where there were more supernatural baddies than available parking spaces, having a drop-off and pick-up guy you could count on to be there when you needed him was a must-have. The big brush guard mounted on the Suburban’s grill had never been used against brush, but saw plenty of action against charging monsters. And Yasha was always willing to take the fight beyond the driver’s seat—just not during the full moon.

Yasha Kazakov was a werewolf.

Like most supernatural beings, Yasha used small magics to hide his werewolf form from the public. My seer vision let me see Yasha’s large, furry, and red-haired aura. I was grateful this wasn’t the full moon. If it had been, Yasha wouldn’t have been in any condition to drive.

Older werewolves could change when they wanted to, but all werewolves, regardless of age, changed on the night of the full moon. Werewolves at SPI automatically got three days a month off: the day before, the day of, and the day after a full moon. Though some missions went better and got resolved faster when you had an irate werewolf on your team. Most supernatural bad guys surrendered on the spot to keep from having a full moon–crazed werewolf, who could do zero to sixty in six strides, turned loose on them.

Between Ian and me, we got Ben in the SUV and securely buckled into the third-row seat. Yasha stayed right where he was, prepared to do his job—get us the hell out of here.

“Go!” Ian shouted, before he even had the door closed.

Yasha proceeded to whip the Suburban into the fastest three-point turn I’d ever had the displeasure to be in a vehicle for. That it was done on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue half a block from the Metropolitan Museum of Art merely bumped the terror factor up by ten.

I squeezed my eyes shut, winced, cringed, and fully expected a crushing impact any second. We accelerated with only squealing tires, no crashes, thumps, or bumps.

“Still there is no trust in my driving,” Yasha said in his thick Russian accent from the driver’s seat. Yasha Kazakov was ninety-six years old. Most people would have their driver’s license taken away by that age; but as a werewolf, Yasha didn’t look any older than thirty-five and was just getting started.

The jury was still out on whether he should have a driver’s license.

I opened my eyes all the way. “It’s not your driving,” I kind of lied. “It’s everything else.” My hands kept a double death grip on the back of the seat in front of me.

We passed a big network news truck, the kind with its own satellite. I groaned inwardly and thunked my head against the window. I should check YouTube and Twitter, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t do anything about it, so I’d leave it to SPI’s damage control people. Their own contributions would be up soon, though they were probably there already.

One of SPI’s largest departments was Media and Public Relations. I’d always thought a better name for them would be fire stompers; though in corporate speak, it would be crisis management. Our media and PR department existed with the purpose of dealing with a problem
before
it became a crisis. Proactive “R” Us. They specialized in working behind the scenes to explain the unexplainable, turning actual encounters and sightings into simple hoaxes by those looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, or exposing them as elaborate cover-ups by any number of shadowy government agencies that were ripe for the blaming. No direct accusations, of course, more like the often used “a source close to the investigation speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.”

And not all the people on SPI’s media and PR department worked from headquarters. They had people in the highest levels at TV networks, cable news, all across/over/throughout the web, and even in the increasingly archaic print media. Influence had been bought, paid for, and was being well used.

It seemed like everyone had smartphones, and everyplace had security or surveillance cameras. Now not only was Big Brother watching; so was Big Sister and the whole damned family. Yeah, technology gave anyone the ability to photograph a mermaid in New York Harbor, but that same technology gave us endless ways to explain how that photo could have been hoaxed. Privacy was gone; information was there for the spreading—but so was misinformation—and no one could slather it on thicker or to greater effect than our media and PR department.

So as soon as the harpy postings started to go live from the Met, our folks would jump in and throw fistfuls of doubt and disdain at any aspiring photo journalist who thought they had the next
National Geographic
wildlife cover.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that within ten minutes of the robbery, they had a team in the ceiling above the Sackler Wing installing wires for the investigators to find to explain how those harpies could fly. As for a statue coming to life, Disney World had people dressed and made up completely in white who suddenly moved and scared the bejesus out of kids. And if Cirque du Soleil could make people appear to fly and disappear, so could the thieves. Then there was the ever-popular publicity stunt explanation.