Gray Dawn, page 8
“They’ll return soon.” He glanced over his shoulder as Mom entered the room. “They went to get food.”
“No surprise there.” I soaked up the sight of my parents crowding Colby. “Those two could eat the state of Texas out of beef. Or pork. Or chicken. Or really anything digestible.”
Probably a few things that weren’t too.
“Meg ate her burgers so rare, I swear they still mooed.” Mom shuddered. “I prefer my cow well done.”
“Sometimes Clay makes me eat rare at fancy restaurants so I don’t embarrass him in front of the chef.”
“I’ve never understood that.” Mom clucked her tongue. “Don’t they know you’ll enjoy what you’re eating more if it’s done to your satisfaction?”
“According to Clay, no.”
About five minutes later, Derry and Marita walked in with food…and Arden.
“You’re back.” I glanced past her shoulder. “Where’s Fergal?”
“He’s gone hunting.” Arden didn’t bat an eye. “He said we should go ahead. He’ll catch up in thirty.”
The blood, guts, and heartache of the last several days had worked wonders on what I originally worried might grow into an infatuation on Arden’s side. The hurt of losing Aedan, the wonder of this new world, and gaining a vampire mentor had left me concerned she might see Fergal as a Band-Aid for her broken heart.
Her quick dismissal of him hunting—a fellow human no less—stirred those worries again.
She was acclimating too quickly to her new reality. Maybe it was buried trauma from the Silver Stag copycat kidnapping her, scarring her. Maybe it was shock numbing her. Or determination fueling her.
Call it what you like, there was a therapist appointment with her name on it in the near future. With someone versed in counseling humans with paranormal affiliations, someone aware of the threats that came along with those relationships. To thrive in this world, she first had to be able to survive in it.
With Fergal absent, Asa climbed behind the wheel, and I claimed my seat beside him.
The Mayhews curled together in the cargo area, watching video clips on their phones.
Arden and Colby hung out on the bench, next to the Clay-shaped hole in our lives while Dad flew.
The trip was a short one, which did nothing to calm my nerves at the possibility of seeing Clay soon.
“A distillery.” I hummed low in my throat. “I wonder if Luca is shifting her focus.”
“We’re tracking Clay,” Asa reminded me, but he looked thoughtful. “Not Luca.”
The gentle rebuke pulled me up short, but it made so much sense for this to come back to her.
“She could add it to the mash,” Arden ventured then shrugged when I raised my eyebrows. “I have an aunt who dabbles.”
Plenty of folks in Samford tinkered with moonshine, but craft beer? “What goes in it?”
“Corn, sorghum, malted barley, rye, or wheat.” She scrunched up her face. “I think.”
“Luca would have better luck skipping the fermentation process and mixing the king killer into what’s already on tap,” Marita reasoned. “They could kill a lot more people with one batch of poison-laced beer than they could with their current method.”
“We’re here for Clay,” Asa warned again before we got too invested in the idea.
“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have fanned the flames of speculation.”
The slight possibility we might be on to something nudged me to text Isiforos, just to be sure.
>Any indication Luca is heading to Dallas?
>>The Kellies haven’t isolated any footage that pings on facial recognition software.
>>If she’s on the move, we’re not seeing it.
That didn’t mean much when magic was involved, but he could only do so much.
>Let me know if that changes.
“Colby?” I mined the recesses of my memories. “You and Clay have a facial recognition program, right?”
“Yeah. Well. It’s the Bureau’s proprietary software.” She stopped what she was doing to award me her full attention. “We’ve been tweaking it case by case to suit our needs.”
“Can you grab the airport footage in Boston, Charlotte, and Dallas, and feed it through?”
“Sure thing.” Her focus dipped back to the screen. “I’ll see what I come up with.”
“Let me know if I can help.” Arden meshed her fingers, twisting them. “I’m not a pro like you, but I took a few computer classes in school.”
“Clay and I always work better together.” She angled the screen toward Arden. “Scooch in.”
While the girls settled into their tasks, their collaboration giving me the warm and fuzzies every time, I tuned in to hear the plan. With me packing less firepower, we had to be smart about our approach.
The property itself was about an acre lot with five low-slung buildings. The nearest neighbor was about a mile away on either side. The trees would help muffle sound if things got heated, but the situation had the potential to go sideways fast. If that happened, the noise would be the least of our problems.
“Saint can handle aerial scouting.” Derry’s eyes brightened. “Marita and I will take the ground.”
“Locating Clay and determining whether he’s here alone or with the director is our top priority.” I wiped my palms down my jeans. “We’ll determine next steps after we know more.”
“What about me?” Arden leaned forward, putting her face in mine. “I want to help.”
“Put on your gloves.” I locked down my jittery pulse, indicating for Asa to get out and wait on me. “Then get behind the wheel.”
The pair of fingerless Tinkkit gloves Asa knitted her might allow Arden to turn her opponents’ strength against them, but she was still human and oh so very fragile.
“Drive if I can.” She climbed over the console. “Fight if I can’t.”
“Exactly.” I slid my attention to Colby. “Don’t let them get their hands on you.”
She might have slipped away from Clay once, which still didn’t jive with what I knew about him when he operated in that dead-eyed mode, but I wasn’t risking her a second time.
The Mayhews exited the SUV and initiated their changes while Dad began the dowsing process over the tablet Colby had zoomed in to frame our area. Sure enough, the crystal indicated the building to our left.
“Let’s do this.” I rocked forward only to bump into Dad. “What?”
“You’re not going.” His jaw was granite. “If Father is in there, you’re defenseless against him.”
Asa parted his lips then snapped his mouth shut without bringing my magic—or lack thereof—into this.
“I’m not standing out here, providing a free mosquito dinner buffet.”
Marita nudged my hand with her cold nose then jerked her head to indicate she and Derry were leaving.
“Be safe.” I scratched behind her ears. “Do not engage.”
Behind her, Derry chuffed in the next best thing to a promise from his wolf.
Once they padded off, Dad rolled his shoulders to shake out his wings. “Watch the girls.”
Being relegated to guard duty sucked. Realizing Asa was essentially on guard duty for the guard on duty? Yeah. Not my finest moment.
Ten minutes later, Asa couldn’t stop his eyes from crinkling. “You hate this.”
“You’ll have to define this.” I kicked the nearest tire. “There’s a lot to hate right now.”
“You’re used to being the one who solves everyone else’s problems.”
Power like mine altered a wielder’s outlook. Especially with a black magic amplifier like the Hunk making all things possible.
“That’s a charitable outlook on me.” I almost laughed. “I’m used to being a hammer in search of a nail.”
“But all the nails have turned into screws.”
“Yes.” A chuckle slipped through. “All the nails have turned into screws.”
A bolt of white-hot agony shot down my spine, turning my legs to jelly, and my knees buckled on me.
“Rue.” Asa gripped my arms to hold me upright. “What’s—?”
Flames engulfed him, and Blay emerged with a snarl that raised the hairs down my nape.
“Witch,” I panted, my limbs shaking.
“Blay smell.” He eased me to a seated position with the SUV’s wheel at my back. “Rue stay.”
Before I could fight through the trembling to reach for him, he was gone, and I was left a sitting duck.
As it hit me how thoroughly screwed I was, how helpless I was in a magical firefight, a kernel of searing light ignited in the center of my chest. The rising tide of heat spread through me, burning like pure sunlight injected into my veins.
A pounding noise on the glass drew my attention to the windows, but I couldn’t see through them.
I couldn’t see anything.
“I don’t understand.” I clutched my head in my hands. “What’s happening to me?”
Another round of knocks, this time in a familiar cadence, told me Colby was the one behind this.
As I turned my vision inward, I could sense a tendril of pure magic lighting me up from the inside out.
A loud pop rang out beside me, and metal screamed in my ears. I wobbled to my feet to find a grenade coated in spikes and putrid magic stuck in the door panel. I didn’t think. I grabbed it, shredding my hand, and yanked until I fell back in the dirt on my back with the explosive skewering my palm.
“I’m sorry for this,” Dad rasped from above my head, his wings stirring my hair.
Tipping back my head, I found him hovering with his hand outstretched toward me. I lifted my arm, let him rip out the grenade—along with copious amounts of my skin and blood—and vanish into the night sky. I sat there, crimson dripping through my fingers, lost in a haze where my eyes didn’t quite focus.
An explosion rang out from the direction Dad had flown, and I hoped he had escaped the blast radius.
Ribbons of magic filled my vision in darting patterns as I tried to focus, and I understood with a gasp.
I was seeing magic. Spells. How was this possible? I had no access to my magic.
Colby.
She was reversing our familiar bond, sending me a torrent of her power for my use. Had I been less terrified as I realized that Dad’s spell had frayed enough to allow it, I might have been more grateful.
A woman with dark-green hair slipped from behind the building, her gaze fixed on me.
“Luca was right.” Her stride was confident as she ate up the ground between us. Meanwhile, I struggled with reacclimating to having magic that was both foreign and familiar. “She said you would come.”
Goddess bless, what a mess.
We hadn’t located Clay, as far as I knew. No word on the director either. Now Luca was here?
Had we actually been right? She was hunting the director? Okay. Fine. Then why had the director chosen a distillery manned with black witches under Luca’s control? One had led the other here, but which?
“Who are you supposed to be?” I rubbed my eyes until my vision cleared enough to let me watch her stalk me. “Her lackeys all blend together after a while. Kind of hard to tell you apart, know what I mean?”
“I’m Fain.” Her lips pinched until they turned white. “Hertzog witches aren’t lackeys.”
“And yet, here you are, doing Luca’s bidding.” I shrugged. “Kind of feels like what a lackey would do.”
A blur of motion behind her kicked my heart into high gear, but as pale fingers closed around Fain’s neck with punishing force, ripping her away from me, I recognized my savior.
“I apologize for my tardiness.” Fergal wrestled her arms down by her sides. “I shouldn’t have ordered an appetizer.” He caught my look and chuckled. “Vampire humor.”
“Okay, Fain.” Now that I had backup, I shifted into interrogation mode. “Where’s your boss?”
“Luca isn’t my boss.” She jerked up her chin. “What I do, I do for the cause.”
A shudder tripped down my spine as I wondered if Moran was hearing—or giving—similar speeches.
“Oh, goddess.” I leaned back against the SUV. “This should be good.”
“Yes.” Fergal’s voice dripped with disdain. “Tell us about this righteous cause you serve.”
“For too long, humans have held the upper hand. We have been forced to live in shadow while they—”
With a practiced twist of his wrists, Fergal snapped her neck, and she hit the dirt in a pile of limbs.
“There’s no reasoning with the indoctrinated,” he explained, then went rigid with vampire stillness.
“You killed her,” Arden whispered through the window she must have cracked during the fight.
The otdrels we had killed fell easily into the category of creature rather than human.
Witches weren’t human, black witches especially, but we sure looked like them.
Shuttering his expression, Fergal nodded once to me. He crept back into the shadows to hunt for more witches as Arden raised her window and slumped out of sight.
Just as I was crouching to search the body, a tall man burst from the shadows and aimed his wand at the SUV. I didn’t think. I threw out my arm toward him, expecting an arc of deadly magic to shoot from my hand and strike him dead. But that trick belonged to the Hunk, not me, and nothing happened.
Except for me looking deranged for the split-second before old reflexes kicked in.
My one advantage was he had to touch the SUV to damage it. That suited me just fine. Since I had to make contact too, either through my wand or my hand, he was doing half the work for me by coming to me. All I had to do was make sure I tagged him before he contacted the metal.
As I drew on Colby’s power, letting it burn through me as I fought for control of it, the witch in front of me lunged. I didn’t see what happened next. Everything went loud and white and then black and silent.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After I regained consciousness, the only reason I didn’t ground Colby for the rest of her life was because she had burned herself out helping me. I was still toying with the idea of banning her from Super Mystics during release week when Asa touched my arm.
Reflex tightened my fingers where I cradled an unconscious Colby across my blistered palms.
“She’ll recover.” He tucked her blanket around her. “She just needs rest.”
Asa had carried me to the SUV and laid me across the bench seat after I blacked out mid-fight. I was sitting up now, mostly under my own power, but my brave little moth girl hadn’t woken yet.
“How do you feel?” Dad stood beside Asa in the doorway. “You smell…”
“Crispy,” Asa supplied. “Your hair is fried at the ends, and your nailbeds are scorched black.”
“I taste barbecue every time I swallow.” I had flakes on my tongue too. “Pretty sure the barbecue is me.”
“Your familiar’s magic is pure, but mine isn’t. She was burning through it—through you—to help you.” A thoughtful expression settled across Dad’s features. “Perhaps that explains how she reached you. There’s a possibility her ambient magic is eroding the bindings I placed on you.”
If her power had been bashing against the block from her side, trying to get through, it could have done catastrophic damage to Dad’s spell. Especially now that it had been breached once.
“That’s…not great.” I shut my eyes, hating how my earlier thoughts aligned with his. “That means the Hunk could break through at any moment.” I hated to ask, but I didn’t see another way. “Can you bind me again?”
“Not without undoing the original spell.” Dad shook his head. “We can’t risk it.”
“The Hunk needs only seconds to devour you.” Asa, for once, agreed with Dad. “It’s too dangerous.”
“We might not have a choice.” I blinked away the sting of tears. “Eventually, I mean.”
“We’re clear.” Marita opened the door opposite me. “No more witches on the ground.”
“Luca,” I gasped, tumbling into a coughing fit. “I forgot to tell you—”
“I relayed what I overheard the witch telling you.” Fergal, who I had just noticed, was keeping a slight distance from the SUV, and from Arden. “Luca wasn’t here. Neither was Clay, or the director.”
“How is that possible?” I couldn’t believe this was a total bust. “Could the tablet be the problem?”
I had never heard of a witch dowsing over one. Everyone I knew used paper maps. But I was old school.
“He was here.” Dad left no room for argument. “The Mayhews didn’t pick up his scent, so he didn’t get out. He must have been surveilling the distillery from a parked vehicle on the access road we passed on the way in.”
“That,” Asa added, “could explain his quick exit when things got heated.”
“If Clay saw what went down,” I reasoned, “and that’s why he left, he won’t be back.”
“He won’t.” Asa returned his focus to me. “But Luca might.”
“We’re already here.” I bobbed a shoulder. “It won’t hurt to hang around and see what shakes out.”
“Might as well.” Marita parked her naked butt beside me. “This group, man. They’re whackadoodle.”
“What do you mean?” I ignored the sounds of Derry shifting in a patch of darkness. “Who are they?”
“Word has spread about Luca and her rogue black witches.” Fergal sounded closer. “This coven has no affiliation with Black Hat that the Kellies can find. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but it’s buried deep.”
Once other paras noticed what she was doing, we were bound to reach a point where newer supporters of her cause had heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend and so on. It was inevitable. Too many paras thought the way she did and would be glad to side with her to help bring forth a new world order.
“They’re extremists,” Derry panted, climbing to his feet. “They want paranormals to walk in the light, enslave humanity, become the gods of man, blah, blah, blah. The usual. I doubt Luca would have bothered allying with them, except they also own a local beer label. This one. Luca was coming here to finalize her plans and seal a bargain with them, or so they claimed during questioning, ceding control of Dallas to their coven after paras go mainstream.”
