Thicker Than Blood (12 page)

“How do I get into the cell?” I asked Salazar, ignoring Kira.

“I’ll get you a passkey. It’s a room, technically, not a barred cell. I would tell you the number right now, but I have to look up the exact one in the system. Doing so will flag me, but fortunately bureaucracy being what it is, I won’t be questioned until long after we’ve escaped.”

“We could try to hack in now and find out,” Cora said. She cracked her knuckles.

“Internal system. No way to hack from the ouside,” Salazar said.

“Damn,” Alma said.

“How are you guys going to get out?” I asked.

“In a blaze of teeth and glory!” Cora said. They both started giggling again.

“We’ll worry about that,” Kira said with a quelling look at the twins. “You just do whatever you have to do. The Archivist says your father will get you out.”

“He will, if Jade can convince him to help her,” Noah said from his post against the wall near the door.

“Okay, final question,” I said after I’d drained the last of my coffee. “How do we get there? Isn’t South Dakota, like, a day of driving away? Also, covered in winter?”

“Leave that to me,” Jaq said.

“We can drive there in less than four hours,” Kira said. She smiled at me, all teeth.

“How, exactly?” I set my coffee mug down and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Magic,” she said.

I took another shower and gathered my few things. This was it. All the worrying and planning was more or less over. In a few hours, I’d have answers. At least, I hoped.

Someone knocked on the door as I was getting dressed. I finished tugging on a clean-ish long-sleeved shirt and called out for whoever it was to come in. It was the Archivist, which surprised me. He hadn’t been the knocking type up until now. Maybe he’d known I hadn’t been fully clothed yet, which sort of defeated the politeness of his knock, since I couldn’t think of an explanation for how he’d know I was half naked that wasn’t more awkward than walking in on me.

“They ready?” I asked Noah as he entered.

“Yes,” he said. He closed the door behind him and stood with his hands behind his back, almost like I imagined a formal butler would stand. “There is a box of the things you asked for in the vehicle, along with the book and the scroll. I’d like those back, by the way.”

“I don’t plan on taking them with me. I’ll leave them in the RV and tell Kira to return them. Good enough?”

“That will do,” he said. He brought his hands out from behind his back, revealing a sheathed dagger in them. “This is yours.”

“I meant like a pocket knife or something,” I said, not understanding. My ingredient and spell component list hadn’t had a dagger on it.

Then I looked more closely at the knife, taking it in my hand. I nearly dropped it when I realized what it was. Samir’s dagger, only somewhat changed.

“I traded this to you,” I said. “Why are you giving it back?” He didn’t seem like the charity type.

“I have a feeling you might need it,” he said cryptically. “These are blades of prophecy, which you might find useful.”

“Blades of prophecy? That sounds not at all ominous,” I muttered. I pulled the dagger from its sheath. It was changed from when I’d had it. The blade was silver on one side now, black on the other. Marks ran down the blade, runes and symbols in a myriad of languages, the least ancient of which was Greek. Alpha and Omega. Each symbol pretty much meant the same thing. Beginning and end.

“The blade is joined together again. It will not leave you like before. Be careful with it. It is a knife of ending. It can kill almost anything.” Noah’s gaze was so intense it made me uncomfortable.

“Almost anything?” I peered at it. Looked like a knife to me. It had acted pretty strangely when I’d had it, though. I had no problem believing it was magical. “What would happen if I were to stab Samir with it?”

“I have no idea,” Noah said. “I do not like guessing, but I imagine it would destroy his flesh, at the least.”

“Leaving his heart?” I guessed. Guessing was like my middle name lately. “So, again, why you giving this to me?”

“Prophecies,” Noah said with a smile. “We’ll call it a hunch.”

“I thought you didn’t like guesses?”

“Instinct is not the same as supposition,” he said with one of his deliberate, creepy shrugs.

“Fine,” I said, re-sheathing the blade. “But can you hand it to me again, and this time say, ‘It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this’?”

“No,” the vampire said, his smile disappearing. “Follow me.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” I muttered as I shoved the dagger into my backpack and followed him out.

“There are a few rules of van club,” Jaq said. He stood in the doorway between the driver’s section of the RV and the living room section.

“Rule one: you don’t talk about van club?” I guessed.

It got me a giggle from the twins at least. They were seated on a narrow couch to one side, canes leaning between their legs. Apparently they could walk, but Cora had told me they preferred the chair due to their twisted hips. Kira, Salazar, and I were crammed on another bench behind in a narrow table.

“Sure,” Jaq said. “Actual rules. Don’t come up here or bother me while I’m driving, for any reason. You are spurting blood out your neck, there’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Any reason. I mean it. Next rule: do not open the windows or pull back the curtains until I tell you it is safe to do so. Do not try to exit the vehicle. If you hear something weird outside, ignore the shit out of it. Clear?”

“Crystal,” I said. “What is going to happen, exactly?”

“I’m going to drive,” Jaq said. “The roads I’m taking aren’t really meant for mortals, so we go fast and hope nothing notices.”

“What if something notices?” I had an image of Cthulhu in my head the way he was talking. Waking old ones or whatever. There was definitely a vast amount about this world I had no knowledge of. It made me feel very small.

“We die,” he said. “But don’t worry; I’ve never had that happen. I’m good at what I do.”

“Let’s go,” Kira said. “We are on a clock, after all.”

All the curtains were closed and Jaq went into the front, shutting a sliding door behind him.

“I’m going to grab a nap, if that’s all right?” Salazar said to Kira.

“We’ll show you to a bunk,” Cora said. The twins heaved themselves up, leaning heavily on their canes. “Then we’re gonna sleep too, I think. It’s easier to make this kind of trip if you aren’t awake.”

That left Kira and I sitting in silence at the table. The engine started and we rolled out of the garage. Kira pulled out a gun and started taking it apart, her message that she wasn’t interested in small talk loud and clear.

I moved to the couch and tried to close my eyes. All my worries were waiting there for me. Could I work the spell? Was Harper still alive? Would Alek ever forgive me for abandoning them? Sleep was so not a thing I was going to be able to do. I opened my eyes again as the RV went over what felt like a speedbump. The road noise died, leaving behind only engine sounds as though the tires were no longer on a hard surface. It was eerie.

Kira was bent over her gun, wiping down parts carefully with a soft cloth before fitting them back together again. She looked so much like Alek in that moment. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. She looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

“So,” I said. I couldn’t talk about Alek—that seemed like a hot button from hell for her—so I went with the only other topic we had in common. “What kind of games do you play?”

“What makes you think I play games?” she said.

“Your tee-shirt? Things you’ve said? It’s pretty obvious.” I fought not to glare at her. She made it damn hard to crack her icy exterior.

Kira looked down at herself. She was wearing black cargo pants and a grey teeshirt that said “Frag the Weak” on it.

“
Counterstrike
,” she said. “Though I play other things, especially any kind of horror game. You?” she added in a tone that made me think she might actually want an answer. Maybe the ice was cracking.

“RPGs mostly. You’re good with guns, I bet, like…” I stopped. Shit. It was too damn tough not to mention Alek. I missed him like hell.

“Like my brother?” she said. She slammed the clip home in the gun.

“Sorry,” I said. “The twins said he executed a friend of yours? As Justice?” Fuck it. If we were going to talk about him, I figured we could talk about all of it.

“He didn’t tell you?” Kira put the gun into a holster and set it aside, which made me feel marginally less nervous.

“No. He doesn’t talk about family much.” I shook my head.

“My friend’s daughter was slain by a group of human scum. We shifters don’t have children often, or easily.”

I nodded, not daring to interrupt.

“We were hunting them down, but my friend got to them first. He went a little mad—understandably, mind you,” she went on. “He killed the three men who had taken his child, but he went further than that. He killed their families.” She looked down at her hands on the table and took a deep breath. “It was bad, I know. But he was so lost in hurt and grief. Human law enforcement was up in arms about the killings and it was going to be tough to keep it quiet. I think that’s why the Council sent a Justice.”

“Alek,” I said.
Damn
.

“He passed judgment, as he does. It didn’t matter that the humans had wronged Daniel first. The only sentence he knows how to deliver is death. He executed Daniel right in front of me. I wasn’t strong enough to stop him. We haven’t spoken since.” Her mouth pressed into a tight pink line and her eyes were cold enough to slow global warming.

I tried to think of anything to say, but my brain came up with dust kittens and platitudes.

“So,” Kira said after an awkward, tense moment. She unclenched her fists. “He still have a stick up his ass?”

“Guess how we met?” I said. “He walked into my game shop and accused me of murder.” My laugh was more nerves than humor.

Her face cracked in a smile and she shook her head. In a blink the ice seemed to melt and I saw care and longing in her eyes, emotions I recognized easily. She might be angry with Alek for what he had done, but it was crystal clear in that moment that Kira also still loved him and missed her brother.

“Sounds like Aleksei,” she said. “And now you are mated.”

“We worked it out,” I said. I tried for a safer topic. “Why don’t you have an accent? He does.”

“Because I don’t want one, so I worked hard to lose it,” Kira said. “I’m a six-foot-three muscular woman with a short temper. Getting work is already a bitch. Being a giant Russian as well? Not really something that would put my very American clients at ease.”

“Murica,” I said.

“Fuck yeah,” she finished.

“I know that the Archivist is paying you, but I really do appreciate you all risking your lives to help me,” I said. We were on more solid ground now and I felt like the tension was fading. A truce had at least been called.

“It’s what we do,” she said. Then she tilted her head to one side in a very feline gesture. “Why isn’t Aleksei here with you? He’s almost as good a shot as I am, and his tiger is stronger. My brother has his faults, but leaving his mate to face danger doesn’t seem his style.”

Did I say solid ground? I meant hot lava. Awesomesauce.

“I left him. Without magic I can’t protect him and I’ve got a giant target on my back. It’s me that Samir wants to kill, in the end.” I folded my arms across my chest.

“So you don’t trust my brother?” she said.

“I trust him. I just don’t want him hurt.” I pulled my legs up, wrapping my arms around them. It was a super-defensive posture, but I didn’t care.

“Not enough to let him make his own decision about risks?”

We were definitely back in “I want to punch Kira” land.

“I watched him die,” I said. It felt weird to say it aloud. I’d told Yosemite the bare details, but nothing specific. There hadn’t been time even if I’d wanted to. “I was barely able to bring him back. I can’t go through that again. I’ll do anything to keep him safe.”

“So your feelings matter more than his?” Kira said with an infuriatingly smug look on her face.

“You don’t care about your friends? Want to keep them safe? Would you deliberately put them in danger if you knew it might kill them?” I said instead of answering directly. I could fight fire with fire.