Bayou Born, page 29
Maggie would lose everything. No. Maggie had already lost everything.
Portia was offering a means of giving it back. All I had to do was sign away three years of her life.
“This is all my fault.” I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked. “She never would have been targeted if not for her friendship with me.”
“We’re almost out of time,” Portia murmured. “You have to decide.”
The vibration in my back pocket gave me an out, and coward that I was, I took it. “Boudreau.”
“I’m a father.” Rixton’s joy soured my mouth. “I’m holding seven pounds and eight ounces of Annette Marjoram Rixton.”
“Congratulations.” A veil of tears curtained my vision. “How’s Sherry?”
“Tired. Gorgeous. Snoring.” Pride beat at me across the line. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Annette?”
“No.” He got choked up on his next breath. “My wife.”
A sob broke free of my chest, a reminder the cycle of birth and death were intertwined, and I wiped my cheeks dry. “Call me when you’re ready for visitors, okay?”
Lost to the cooing sighs of his brand-new baby girl, he didn’t find my sniffles odd or notice the catch in my voice.
“You can be the first non-relative to hold her,” he promised. “I’ll save you a spot in line.”
On a watery laugh, I signed off before the sorrow arrowing through my chest pierced his bubble of perfect happiness. Maggie and I should have been fighting over dibs with a mean hand of paper, rock, scissors. But I would never lose to her again. Unless . . .
Portia could save Maggie’s life, give her a future. She could wind back the hands on the clock. Make things like they used to be. Almost. But wasn’t almost better than nothing?
Hating my weakness, knowing what I did next was an act of pure selfishness, I croaked out, “Do it.” I wobbled to my feet, unable to sit there and watch. “Save her.”
In my haste to escape what I had done, I backed into a warm wall of muscle. Cole. I turned in his arms and pressed my face against his chest. Santiago had been right about me. Thom too. I broke the people I loved. I ruined them. I couldn’t seem to help it. And worst of all, I was too weak to let them go, to force them to let me go too.
Cole didn’t yell at me or absolve me. He didn’t tell me I’d done the wrong thing or the right one. He held me to keep me from flying apart, and he shielded me from the scene playing out behind me. His strength anchored me, and I leaned on him as I faced Portia and the consequences of my actions.
“Miller and Santiago dispatched the other members of War’s coterie. Nineteen in all. She must have laid a clutch and waited for them to hatch as part of her preparations. That explains the delay in her confronting you.” And the reason why we had heard Miller’s bellows, but he had never materialized. “Santiago’s wounds were reopened in the skirmish, but Miller walked away unscathed.”
“And War?” I hadn’t seen where Thanases had gone. “Did she get away?”
“Portia arrived in time to intercept her, but War tugged on her bond with Thanases before she sustained much damage. He bolted from the living room before I could finish what he started. Miller’s already gone. He carried Santiago back to our base while Portia stayed with Maggie.”
“What about Mrs. Upton?” Hers had been the only corpse missing from among the lower demons.
“Miller” was all he needed to say.
“Can you get Portia and Maggie to your base?” I couldn’t bear looking at Cole. I was too afraid he would condemn me for the choice I had made. “Shit’s about to hit the fan. You guys need to be gone before that happens.”
“Luce.”
“Please don’t.” I sucked in a shuddering breath. “I can’t deal with you hating me right now.”
“Hate comes easy.” He traced my jaw with his fingertip. “This doesn’t feel easy.”
“You should go.” I withdrew from his touch. “Get somewhere safe and stay there.”
“You really have changed,” he murmured before shifting into his sleek dragon form and lifting the women in his gentle claws.
Before tonight I might have crowed my victory in establishing my own identity with him, but grief had tightened my throat, and I didn’t feel like talking anymore. War had landed some deep blows that might not heal as fast as the bruising on my ribs. She had called me a shell, believed that enough pressure would shatter my human façade, and as much as I wanted to call her a liar, tonight . . . tonight might have given me my first cracks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I didn’t bother standing to open the door when the authorities arrived to secure the scene. I was sitting in Dad’s recliner, what was left of it, kicking off the floor with the tips of my boots. When the knock came, I called, “It’s open” and waited for the swarm to descend. Except that’s not what happened. Not at all.
“I was hoping to hear from you,” Special Agent Kapoor drawled as he strolled into the living room, “but I was thinking we’d start slow. With coffee. Maybe a muffin.” He surveyed the room. “Even if this is what it took to get you pick up the phone, I’m glad you called.”
I peered around him, first at the decapitated corpses and then up the stairs where Martin snored under the influence of Thom’s bite. “You are?”
“Do you mind if I sit?” He gestured toward the couch, which had survived the ordeal unscathed. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Knock yourself out.” I kept rocking, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Forgive me if I’m too tired to stand on formalities tonight.”
Not that we did in this house even on good days. And this was decidedly not one of those.
“Ms. Boudreau, let me begin by saying I’ve followed your life with great interest.”
My foot hesitated above the floor, and I shoved into an upright position. “How’s that?”
“The organization I work for specializes in the neutralization of charun insurgents.” He held up a hand when I balked at his job description. “Our department has watched over you since news of Edward Boudreau’s discovery hit the national papers. We’re impressed, Ms. Boudreau, not only by your service record but by your commitment to protect and serve humanity.” He shared a conspiratorial smile with me. “We are well versed in your origins, and we have been made aware of your situation. We are familiar with your siblings as well, including the woman formerly known as Jane Doe.”
“How did you know?” I doubted my coterie had cozied up to him. “I only found out days ago.”
“You are not the first Otillian to climb the rungs and set your cap at Earth. Others have come before you. More will come after you, I’m sure. Always in sets of four. Always endowed with a set of complementary skills.” He treated demon invasion as casually as I handled drunks after a football game. “Charun strong enough to survive the dissolution of their coterie, those who uphold our laws and conform to our way of life, are allowed to remain as long as they submit to close monitoring and sterilization. As we have no means to return them, those unwilling or unable to conform are destroyed.”
The harshness of his proclamation stunned me, but after meeting War and her coterie, what choice did humanity have except protecting itself using all available resources?
“How did you know who I was based on a news article?” I had copies of most, if not all of them, and I had found no such magic key to unlocking my identity.
“The markings on your arms. A tech noticed the rings and flagged your file. Later, we were able to recover photographs taken in a hospital environment documenting your sleeves. It was the first time we had ever seen the entire rukav. We integrated that information into our program and used it to track other possible Otillians, including Jane Doe.” He treated the violation of my privacy with an air of apologetic necessity. “We have a team dedicated to researching peculiar incidents in the media, which is how you were singled out in the first place.”
“Rukav.” I trailed a finger over the ribbed texture of my arm. “I didn’t know the bands had a name.”
“All our information on you and your kind comes direct from the source.”
Meaning they had a demon, he hinted an Otillian, on the payroll who could help me understand my heritage, my purpose, my past, and how to keep history from repeating. “What’s the catch?”
“We want to recruit you.” For the first time since arriving, he spared a glance for the bodies. “This case will gain you even more exposure. That’s a dangerous prospect for a demoness of your reputation, considering you can’t access your powers.”
“You’re offering me protection in exchange for my cooperation.” Why did that sound so familiar? Considering the trail of destruction left in my wake the past few days, it was a better offer than I might have expected, and it came from the lesser of two evils. “What about my coterie?”
“Given the bonds you’ve formed with them, and your ignorance as to the depths of those bonds or their origins, we are willing to extend immunity to them.” The hard cast to his features gave away his agitation. “The creatures you brought here with you are lethal. Had they not proven loyal to you, we would have put them down. We will still neutralize them if there comes a point where you can no longer control them. Miller, in particular, is a concern of ours.”
Tempted as I was to ask him what the deal was with Miller, I wanted Miller to trust me with the truth more than I wanted a clinical explanation from this guy.
“The government is recruiting a demon army.” Somehow that didn’t shock me as much as I expected. “To what end?”
“We prefer to think of it as a taskforce,” he corrected me. “And the answer to your other question is—to no end. That’s the whole point. You’re here to destroy this world.” He spread his hands. “We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen by using any means necessary.”
Even if that meant recruiting the very beings who had painted a bullseye on Earth in the first place.
“What about all this?” I gestured around the carnage. “Does this go away too?”
“Yes and no.” His lips quirked into an almost smile. “Every case receives two official sets of paperwork. One we release to FBI headquarters, and one we keep in our personal files. The first will outline in detail how Robert Martin kidnapped Angel Claremont using his position at the school as a gateway to selecting victims. The Uptons and Ida Bell will be painted as his accomplices. Given other disappearances reported in the area, the story will be spun with a sex trafficking angle. Maggie is older and doesn’t fit the profile of the other girls. As far as anyone needs to know, she was taken after asking too many questions of the wrong people.”
“It fits.” I had to agree. “It’s close enough to the truth to be believable.”
“We’ve been doing this a long time.” For the first time, he sounded tired. “We’ve had a lot of practice.”
“You can sweep the hospital surveillance footage and Martin’s garage incident under the rug too?”
“Already done.” He lifted one shoulder then let it fall. “Humans aren’t ready to know about the charun yet, so we do our part to conceal their more unlawful activities.”
“How have you hidden from my coterie this long?” They considered him a thorn in their sides, but they must not be fully aware of how deeply he was imbedded in their lives. “I don’t know them all well yet, but they’re good at what they do.”
“They are, but so are we. Plus, we had the advantage in knowing who and what they are, what to guard against. We took measures to protect our interests from being discovered prematurely.”
“I’m sure there’s more I ought to be asking, but this has not been my best week,” I admitted. “I’m still trying to make sense of it all.”
“We have councilors available if you feel that might help.” He linked his hands in his lap and rubbed his thumbs together. “I see one regularly, have since I joined.” He shrugged off the vulnerable moment. “Our brains aren’t meant to perceive these creatures. We aren’t equipped to handle the actuality of them without fracturing our reality.”
Figuring it didn’t hurt to try, I pressed, “Can I have time to consider your offer?”
“No can do, sorry.” He shook his head. “How you answer determines how we spin this incident.”
“I figured.” People had died, had had their lives changed forever, and justice would be served. Kapoor was leaving it up to me if my head would be dished up on the platter next to Martin, Ida and the Uptons or not. “Either I’m the new recruit with a kill and a capture under her belt, or I’m a cop who went vigilante after her best friend was kidnapped and hacked up the two people responsible in her living room?”
“Your timing did save me a lot of effort drafting a recruitment speech.”
“In that case, count me in.” I slumped back in the recliner. “I doubt I’ll have a job after today anyway. The chief is pissed at having his dirty laundry aired.”
“Chief Timmons is facing harassment charges,” Kapoor told me. “The media he’s so fond of is about to crucify him, and you handed them the nails. He won’t be chief much longer.”
I perked up at that. “What does that mean for me?”
“It means we’ll leave you embedded in the CPD to weather the storm for at least the next thirty days. You need time to acclimate to your new worldview and to get your affairs in order, and we can’t afford for you to drop off the face of the earth after this. Not yet. Once the brass gives us the thumbs-up, you’ll resign from the CPD and enroll in our academy. That way you’ll fall under our auspices, and we can better protect you and yours.” His hesitation raised all kinds of red flags, but he barreled forward. “All charun are required to spend one month at a medical facility of our choosing where you will be expected to give blood, tissue and bone marrow samples.”
One month. Thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours. For medical testing.
All my nightmares, it seemed, had chosen to manifest on the same night. But I had glimpsed beneath War’s mask in this room, and I had beheld Thanases’s honed brutality. I had witnessed the cruelty her coterie was capable of—and I had two sisters yet to meet.
Embrace my heritage or cling to my humanity with every ounce of strength left in me. I was a weapon, and studying me would help this shadow organization arm themselves for who and what came next. Even if what came next was . . . me.
The answer was easy in the end.
“Normally, we’d ask you to submit to a hysterectomy as well, but Otillians are bred to spread their genetic markers throughout their conquered lands. Your reproductive organs would regenerate over time. So we’re asking you to agree to the insertion of an IUD that will be calibrated to your unique physiology.”
Given how War reproduced at will, I almost thanked him for ensuring that even if Conquest reemerged, she would be bound to my morals regarding the use of offspring as weapons for as long as Kapoor remained in the picture.
“I can’t believe you guys run a spay and neuter program for demons.” I might have laughed, but I seemed to have forgotten how for the moment. “Bet that’s not on your official business cards.”
“No.” He chuckled softly more to humor me than because he found me amusing. “It’s not.
“The other members of your coterie will be evaluated as well, and the best course of action will be determined upon a review of their medical records.”
“That’s their choice.” I dared him to challenge me with a look. “Their bodies, their choice.”
I would find a way to protect them whatever decisions they made, the same as they had protected me.
“You’ll have to take that up with management. What you’re asking is above my paygrade.”
At the reprieve, I let my eyes shut and expelled a slow breath. “What happens next?”
“Next I make this all go away.” Kapoor stood, crossed to me and offered his hand. “Welcome to the team, Luce Boudreau.”
“Thanks,” I said, shaking his firm grip, “but I was thinking in more immediate terms.”
“Give me a quick and dirty statement. I’ll fill out the paperwork this time.” He pulled out a slim, black device and rattled off the date, time, our names and location before pausing the recorder. “After this, you’re free to go.”
Words tumbled out of me in a semi-cohesive ramble that Kapoor would have fun untangling later. Good as his word, he let me leave after that. I passed four black-clad agents on my way out and spotted movement in the tree line that suggested more remained hidden. I didn’t care. I hopped in my Bronco and roared out of the driveway headed for the White Horse bunkhouse.
Used to flying Air Cole, I got turned around more times than pride allowed me to admit. The pitch darkness and lack of street lights didn’t help matters but, after a few false starts, I retraced the twisting single-lane roads I’d driven a grand total of once until I snugged my Bronco among the fleet of SUVs.
The house stood silent and dark, and I had about made up my mind to come back in the morning when movement in the water drew me to the edge of the pier. Santiago leveraged himself onto the wood and sat there panting a moment while he recovered from his exertion.
“Should you be swimming?” I folded my arms across my chest, ready to haul him to his room. Though how I would scale the wall, I had no idea. “Does anyone know you’re out here alone?”
Rather than snap at me, he patted the plank next to him. Figuring I might not get a second offer, I joined him. “I doubt you saved my life,” he began, “but you did stuff me like a turkey with my own entrails, and that means something to me.”
I read between the lines. The print was small and difficult to parse, but it was there. “You’re welcome.”
“Portia is still out cold in case you came to see them,” he offered. “She said they’re going to leave for a while.”
Part of me exhaled with relief that I could escape facing what I’d done for that much longer while the rest called me a coward. Maybe I could get Santiago’s help painting a yellow stripe down my back. That seemed like something he’d enjoy.
