Wrong Side Of Dead (28 page)

Phin pressed his palm flat against the Plexiglas window of the first cell, shoulders tense. “Joseph,” he said.

The wrinkled, ancient Coni lay facing us, one bony arm stretched out toward the Plexiglas window. His thin chest rose and fell, and a small puddle of drool had formed on the floor by his open mouth. A bloodstained white bandage was taped to his temple—the source of the blood we’d found at the country house, I’d bet. The sight constricted my chest and settled a ball of hot anger deep in my guts.

The cell wall had a rectangular line that framed the window much like a door, but there was no handle or indication of how the damned thing opened. While Phin continued inspecting the cells I smashed the butt of my gun against the Plexiglas, and the impact shook my wrist without making a dent.

“Leah de Loew, Lynn Neil, Dawn Jenner,” Phin said as he spotted each person.

With every name, the heavy weight on my heart lifted just a little. I followed him down the line, glancing at each person, horrified to find each one as naked and unconscious as Joseph. God, what had Thackery been doing to them?

Phin stopped at the last cell and stared. Aurora and Ava had to be in that one. His silence ratcheted up my pulse. I stepped to his side and glanced in, braced to see a helpless child asleep on the floor.

All I saw was an empty cell. Two more windows stretched past us. I checked each one; neither was occupied. “Goddammit!” I said.

A metallic bang echoed from the far end of the corridor. I didn’t wait; I just ran. Past other doors that led to unused engines and storage rooms, past newer-looking doors that probably hid whatever horrors Thackery had
been conducting down here these last few months. Or maybe years. The lit bulbs thinned out to every third or fourth, and the air took on a slightly danker feel. We were moving out of the used portion of this deck, toward the bow of the ferry, which meant—

“He has a way out,” Phin said, keeping pace behind me.

A lot of snarky retorts—
no shit, ya think?
—died before they made it past my lips. I wasn’t angry at Phin. I was angry that Aurora and Ava were still missing, and that Thackery had a head start on us. Assuming he was on board in the first place.

The corridor ended at a T junction. To the right was a hatch marked Buoyancy Tank, and to the left another heavy door. Probably a stairwell. I had only a vague idea that a buoyancy tank wouldn’t make a good escape route, but the stairwell should take us back up to the sundeck and navigation. If Thackery was getting off the boat, it was from above.

We thundered up the stairs, once again in pitch dark. Light sprinkled down briefly from two decks above, and an upper door banged shut. The narrow, twisty stairwell made it impossible for Phin to fly straight up, and I didn’t have the concentration to attempt another teleport—not with zero idea of what to expect on the sundeck.

I burst out into bright sunlight, heedless of how stupid a move it was. We faced west, over the river, nearly at the bow of the ferry. Behind us was a slightly elevated platform and the wheel room. The deck was warped with age and covered in piles of dried bird shit.

Movement to the north caught my attention.

Walter Thackery stood on the sundeck of the next ferry, drawing the last corner of a plank of wood over to his side. Tall, lean, and movie-star handsome, he looked a bit like a wannabe spy preparing a hasty getaway. Too bad he wasn’t the hero in this little adventure. A good
ten feet of water and a three-story drop separated him from me. But not from Phin.

Phin snarled. Thackery raised his right hand. We both dove to the nasty deck as Thackery fired. The shot pinged off the metal door. I lurched to my knees and returned fire. Thackery ducked and shot back. White fire grazed my shoulder. I didn’t stop, just peppered the deck all around him.

Taking advantage of my distraction, Phin dropped his Coni blade and his pants, shifted into a smaller target, and flew across to the next boat. Hovered. I stopped shooting, having run out of bullets. He shifted in midair as he dropped right down on top of Thackery with a rage-fueled battle cry.

“Stone!”

I didn’t stop to identify the person calling my name. A fourth teleport so soon after the others was going to hurt like hell, but I grabbed the blade and did it anyway. My tether to the Break was wide open, sharp and agonizing. My wounded shoulder shrieked in agony as I fell apart and came back together on the deck of the other ferry. Everything tilted and spun, and I crashed to my knees.

The skin-on-skin sounds of two men wrestling kept me from pitching into a serious faint. I inhaled several deep breaths, and exhaled hard through my mouth. Sometimes the physical price of magic sucked.

“Where are they?” Phin snarled.

I blinked the pair into focus. Thackery was on his stomach, both arms twisted behind his back and up so high that I half expected one to pop out of its socket. Phin straddled Thackery’s waist and held his wrists tight between his shoulder blades, Phin’s own weight keeping the man facedown on a rough bed of sun-baked bird shit. His black-streaked wings stood up high, arched, looking as angry as the rest of the warrior.

“Stone!”

Tybalt’s voice. He and Paul stood on the other ferry, watching us with weapons drawn, clothes speckled with blood.

“They’re on the bottom level, near the engines,” I said.

Paul nodded, then turned and bolted.

“Where are they?” Phin asked again, pulling harder on Thackery’s wrists.

Thackery grunted.

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. The last time I’d been this close to Thackery, I was strapped to a table having my left pinkie hacked off in the name of science. I held out my hand, a sight both familiar and foreign—four digits instead of five, a healed bump instead of a joint. Bastard did that to me.

I inched closer and extended the Coni blade toward Thackery’s face. His eyes latched on and followed the twin blades, nearly crossing as I pressed one sharp tip against his cheekbone. “You owe me a finger,” I said.

Utter fury blinked across his face. “The vampires you protect owe me a wife and son,” he replied.

“One vampire killed your wife, not the entire race. Not the people you infected today.”

“They aren’t human.”

“Neither am I,” Phin said. “But which one of us is a cold-blooded killer?”

“By my own hands, I’ve never murdered a human.”

I pressed the blade until a bead of red formed on the ridge of his cheekbone. “They don’t have to be human for it to be murder.”

“What of the human Rhys Willemy?” Phin asked.

Thackery grunted. “His death was at the hands of my protégé. I merely assisted in carrying out his vision.”

“An accomplice to murder still makes you guilty.”

“In your book.”

“And your supposed friend Bastian Spence?”

Something dark flickered across Thackery’s face. “What of him?”

“You set your hybrids and hounds loose at Boot Camp. He was still on-site. Do you feel no responsibility for his death?”

Clearly that wasn’t the answer Thackery was expecting, and the barest hint of grief peeked through his cold façade. “I told him to leave.”

Thackery was officially insane. Six years spent plotting his revenge against vampires had warped his idea of right and wrong, cause and effect. He didn’t even see the world in terms of black-and-white. It was simply his way and our way—and according to his way, his hands were clean of all the deaths he’d left in his wake, including a man he’d once considered a friend.

“Bastian saved my life,” I said, feeling no pride in it. “I bet that makes you all kinds of happy.”

He glared.

“Just like it probably makes you happy to hear that I stabbed your protégé through the throat not long after,” I said.

Fury flashed in his eyes. Oh, he didn’t like jabs at his precious werewolves? Too fucking bad.

“We killed three more of your precious protégés earlier today, too,” I added. “And let me guess. You didn’t murder Michael Jenner, either?”

“Of course not. Why waste the blood?”

Phin pressed his weight down hard. Thackery groaned.

“What about all the half-Bloods you’ve made?” I asked. “You were an accomplice to their deaths the minute they were infected.”

“The lesser of two evils, child.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means you’re too young and ignorant to truly understand the scope of my vision. But you will see part of it come to fruition.”

Ignorant my ass. “Not if you’re in custody, pal.”

“The wheels are in motion. Capturing me now doesn’t stop what is to come.”

Oh joy
.

“The Coni female and her child were not with the others belowdecks,” Phin said. “Where are they?”

“Alive, for now,” he replied.

“Where?”

“Come now, shape-shifter, I never put all my leverage in one place. By the way, you might want to tell your cohorts to begin abandoning ship.”

“Why is that?”

A distant rumble of thunder caught my attention. I glanced at the sky and saw only cloudless blue. Then a groan of metal joined the thunder. Across the slice of water, on the opposite ferry, Tybalt braced himself on the deck rail with his right hand and was gazing at his feet. He looked up, puzzled. Then concerned.

“Because it’s about to sink,” Thackery said.

Letting Thackery out of my sight, even in the capable hands of Phineas in full-on protector mode, took a little effort. I trusted Phin to keep a handle on him, but I didn’t trust Thackery. He was slippery, and we could not allow him to get away again.

But knowing that others needed me more had me back on the lowest level of the ferry, searching frantically for a way to open those damned Plexiglas cells. Cold water already swam around our ankles, as whatever backup plan Thackery had rigged allowed the river inside the slowly sinking ferry. It wasn’t deep enough to sink completely, just enough to submerge this entire level—and probably the parking level, too. We had to get the Therians out.

They were still unconscious, although Leah showed signs of waking. Water oozed up through cracks in the floor’s metal plates at a slower rate than in the corridor. At least an inch deep already, the water would either snap everyone awake or quickly drown them.

Baylor, Paul, and bear-Shelby prowled the corridor, looking for a control panel. Shelby even tried throwing his weight against the doors, with no results. We couldn’t risk shooting at the Plexi, for fear of a ricochet killing someone, and I had no doubt it was bulletproof anyway.
Thackery built the thing to contain Therians able to shift into bears and large cats.

Others were farther down the corridor inspecting the laboratories, gathering anything they could save. I left them to it, intent on those cells and the lives trapped behind their slick, impenetrable walls.

Impenetrable to everything but me. I pressed my palm against the cool Plexiglas of Joseph’s cell. Goddamn, this was going to hurt a lot.

“Stone?” Baylor asked, coming up next to me. “What are you thinking?”

I looked up at him, forcing a smile. “I’m thinking I’ll be lucky if my brain doesn’t start leaking out of my ears by the time I’m done down here.”

“Huh?”

“I can get them out.”

It took him a moment to catch on. He hadn’t seen me teleport others with me, but I’m sure he’d heard stories. I’d already teleported too many times today. My head ached continuously, and the pain would only increase. Using the magic of the Break often used humans right back. Our bodies were not physically capable of handling the full force of its power. I’d gotten nosebleeds and migraines from it before.

This was going to be a doozy. If it didn’t kill me.

Slowly, Baylor nodded. “We’ll keep looking for a release mechanism.”

“You do that.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath, trying to calm my unraveling nerves. The Break snapped and crackled close by, eager to be used and yet still playing the bashful virgin. I pulled it in and it danced away. I tugged harder, drawing on everything in my arsenal to power it with loneliness—Wyatt drifting away from me, Alex dying, my Triad life gone and taking all my security and acceptance.

I slipped in and through the wall. White lightning struck between my eyes. I materialized in front of Joseph, and before I had time to reconsider, I crouched, looped my arms around his narrow, bony chest, and fell into the Break again. We reappeared in a tangled heap in eight inches of water that stank of river rot. My chest ached and my head throbbed. I let strong arms take Joseph away.

Baylor helped me sit upright. “You gonna make three more?”

A canine bark startled me. Kyle bounded through the water, shifting from dingo to human even as he ran. He skidded to a hard stop in front of Lynn’s cell. Someone else’s blood covered his hands, chest, and face, and through the gore, love and need shone through.

“Yeah,” I said, “I can.”

Tremors rocked the ferry. A blast of cold water ran in from somewhere down the corridor. Voices bounced and echoed on the low metal walls, only adding to the confusion, panic, and awful noise. The water level in the corridor rose to knee height quickly; in the cells, it was dangerously close to the mouths of those still unconscious.

I got Lynn next, then Dawn. They were civilians, so they got to go first. I was moving on automatic, exhausted, nauseated. My head hurt so badly I could barely see past the red haze over my vision. Teleporting while so disoriented was stupidly dangerous, but I had no choice. No mechanism had been found to open the cells, and the Therians had to come out.

Without my healing ability, I’d have surely passed out. Or simply keeled over dead from the shock of it all. As it was, I’m pretty sure Baylor carried me over to the last cell and put me down as close to the wall as possible. The water was up to my chest while sitting, and the cold shock of it cleared my mind just enough to concentrate.

Had to get Leah, and then I was done. Could rest for a bit. Maybe pass out for a few hours. That sounded nice.