Agent Down: Region Two Series Book Two, page 16
His shoulders squared, the way ours had as cadets in the presence of an Instructor or C.O. His voice held a richness, like he’d accessed some level that hadn’t been present before. “I have had the occasion over the years to observe many of the soldiers your army trained. You are among the finest I have encountered. It has been an honor to know and aid you, pequeña general.”
His head dipped in a nod-salute, strands of silver at his temples catching the light. “May I hold my cross as—”
I shot him in the heart before he finished.
I hung up my voicemail to Bruce letting him know I’d be late but that I’d be on my way home soon. Or soon-ish, not especially proud over my relief at him obviously being too engrossed in dinner prep or yelling at someone other than me to pick up his phone. I patted the SUV’s dash in thanks for its four-wheel drive, since we had left anything close to civilization behind half an hour ago.
Now it was only me, the desert, and the body in the passenger seat.
Said body’s finger twitched. Then its hand. Okay, the hand not cuffed to the door. Metal rattled and plastic gave an ominous creak.
“Please don’t jerk the armrest off—or the entire door. Those are hard to replace or explain.” Quickly, I added, “It’s only a blindfold.”
“Victoria?” Stavros sounded out of it from the sedative. I’d tripled the Lab recommended dose. Stavros’ lectures on vampire physiology and fighting tips had come in handy.
“Yeah, it’s me. I’d also appreciate if you didn’t express your displeasure at still being in the land of the living, also known as BFE nowhere, in a violent physical manner. If I wreck out here? No roadside assistance.”
A very nonverbal noise filled the truck. Pretty sure I’d just discovered vampires, or at least my vampire, ground their teeth exactly like Liv when someone, also known as me, went rogue.
“Victoria.” The temperature in the truck dropped.
Guess the loopy phase had worn off. “Might as well take the blindfold off. It was only to get you out here without leaving a visual trail back to base. I mean, you can undoubtedly figure out where it is, if you don’t already know, but why make it easy, right? Plus, no blindfold will make it easier to use this.” I fished the handcuff key out of the cup holder in the console, and tossed it to land in his lap.
“We spoke of this, of you not faltering.”
“No, you spoke.”
“Vict—”
“Be. Silent.” I used his high-handed order on him. “I get to talk now. You told me to uphold my values, to be moral. So, I am. I’m telling B—my friend, I mean—what I’ve done. All of it. I’m not keeping any secrets from him. Then, I’m going to find some way to plant the idea of virus DNA and cancer and the whole treatment concept in a medical agent’s ear. Or their files. Haven’t completely worked the details out yet.”
We, Bruce and I, were figuring out a way to help all those people we’d met during his treatments.
I practically felt Stavros readying a counter-argument, and preempted him. “I’m not done. Don’t say one word. When, because it will happen eventually, the Company decodes how to replicate what saved my friend, the hunt for vampires will be a modern extinction event. You should take all this as your god’s plan—me, you, a new war on vampires. A long game one, but whatever.”
“Then by your reasoning, I am already dead. Thus you lose nothing by speeding up my inevitable demise now.”
My turn to grind teeth. But, the guy was predictable. I’d planned for this too.
“Sorry,” I said. “That would be betraying my ideals. We help good people, and no, I don’t have a ton of centuries of gathering data, but I’m trained to trust a mix of my instincts and my reasoning. They tell me that whatever you may be, you aren’t a demon. You haven’t done anything a few more all day prayers and those Hail Mary things won’t take care of.”
I snapped my fingers before I forgot. “Oh, your cross is in your right thigh pocket, while I’m thinking of it.” I got back on track, i.e. convincing Stavros. “Although, I haven’t seen or heard you do anything apology-prayer worthy. You should look into trying out a minor bad habit. Just one. But not like littering or jaywalking. Something fun. Which leads me to point three. Point four? ”
I hurried to finish before Stavros quit acting relatively patient and obliging. “The point is, don’t condemn yourself to a joyless existence. You can be a soldier and still live. Maybe—maybe if you work hard on those emotional memory things you talked about? They could become real again.”
“Your army would never allow you to live for breaching the security of the main organization, nor of your fellows. This is treason of the highest order, and they will deal with you in the same manner as in my day. Swiftly and without mercy.”
I rolled my eyes. Pointless since he hadn’t removed the blindfold or cuff. “No one will ever be able to extract our secrets from you. Admit it. You’re unsettlingly torture-proof. You’ll happily die first.”
He turned his head away, like he could see out of the side window.
I called that my being right.
“Your plan is what?” He spoke to the window.
“Um, I thought that was self-explanatory. Drop you off out here in no man’s land so you can go your own way, to do your thing. Resume scourging and all. I also packed you a duffle with basics like a change of clothes and one of those luxurious sleeping bags. Only because you aren’t up to fighting strength yet. There are a ton of chupacabra out here to get you through until your next vampire meal and power-up. The rancher who owns all this would thank you for cleaning the dens out. If she knew.”
“You will not be dissuaded.” He didn’t make it a question.
“I—” A shape darted across the literal cattle trail in front of us. This really was chupacabra heaven, but…I slowed our already sedate speed.
Stars winked brighter and closer. Except even in a light-pollution free desert, they’d never appeared this close.
Or at head level.
The silver glow wasn’t starlight but vampire silver. The crimson of windigos appeared between the sets of vampires.
“Your machetes are in the floor.” I stomped on the gas as a growl rose from Stavros.
The truck bumped, hit rock, and went airborne.
The sharp pop of gunfire penetrated even through the SUV’s closed windows. The red-gold flash of the bullet came a millisecond later.
An explosive snap marked a tire going, rubber whapping against the undercarriage.
We came down hard, shocks bouncing my head into the ceiling, the truck listing sideways. Another pop and bullet, and another tire blew.
I stood on the brakes, stopping us before we rolled the truck.
The silver and red eyes of vampires and hunt-frenzied windigos formed a wall in front of us. Three deep, at least. I jerked my gaze to the rearview mirror.
Red and silver closed in a circle behind the taillights. Surrounding us.
Fabric split, Stavros tearing the blindfold off. I jerked the tranq gun from the holster with one hand. Shoving the seat back and going for my ankle knife with the other.
My door vanished in a shriek of metal. The pong of gas and windigo flowed in.
Something landed on the hood, crunching it in, the truck’s nose dipping like a bucking horse.
Through my opened doorway, claws flashed at my face. I fired, the report lost under Stavros’ bass growl. Deep enough to momentarily drown out the baying of windigos.
The roof sheared off, the baying rising to a mad wail. The signal a pack had found their prey.
The night erupted in snarls, gunshots, and the wet spray of blood.
Chapter 25
Bruce
Bruce paced the length of the house, from the garage breezeway entrance to the door leading to the walkway and outdoors.
As if that would somehow magically bring Vee sailing in one or the other. She wasn’t late.
Late was her text, which he’d missed while pulling the lamb out, and the promise she’d be in ASAP.
Late was eight-o-one, after he’d warned her not to be one second later than seven-fifty-nine.
Late was eight-forty-five, when the rack of lamb was officially over-fucking-cooked from resting too long.
Which Vee damn well knew, connoisseurs this bunch had become.
As he passed the common room for the latest in who knew how many times, Kimi sent Liv a look. One of those secret-code sister looks that they’d been born knowing, because he and Josh still hadn’t cracked the code.
Bruce kept going, and grabbed his tumbler of tea, filled with the new black tea blend Vee had picked out. The same tea she’d left on the kitchen’s bar, in too big a rush this morning to notice him naked and wet in their shower.
She’d damn well seen him tonight. He knew she had, that he hadn’t imagined her wide-eyed surprise.
She’d know from that one look, even if the lamb hadn’t registered, that this wasn’t simply a routine dinner. He and Vee read each other, constantly, more nuanced than even the unspoken shorthand she, Kimi, and Liv used.
Things had been ass-over-teakettle the last year, sure. But the two of them had never had any trouble communicating, not verbally, not with touch, not with sex.
Except every evening for months had consisted of one missed connection after another.
He took a swallow of cold tea, gone bitter from sitting so long. Attempting to drown out the insidious little voice.
Vee knew something special was on for tonight.
Now, she was four hours late.
Vee, observant, intuitive, detail-oriented Vee was late.
That voice upped its volume. She’d looked at him, looked at tonight’s menu, and put the pieces together. She had guessed that he was proposing tonight. Then she’d bolted, unable to deal with the idea.
Tempered safety glass creaked, jarring him. He looked down at the phone he didn’t recall picking back up, the screen now spider-webbed with cracks. He’d texted. Texted again. Called twice, more demanding with each, and gotten no answer.
Fuck this. He threw the mug in the sink, steel rolling to a rattling stop, and strode into the common room. Kimi, Liv, and Josh’s attention snapped his way.
“Has Vee texted or called any of you? Answered any of your texts?” He planted himself in front of Josh, the most inept liar of the bunch, using him as the canary in the coal mine, while waiting for answers from all three.
“None of us have heard from here,” Liv said.
Bruce’s gut pitched like right after a treatment. Even if she was freaked or pissed at him, she wouldn’t ignore her sisters. Hell, they were all each other’s go-to.
“Call her. Right now.”
Instead of arguing or hesitating, Liv hit Vee’s number, her speed telling him as clearly as a confession that Liv wasn’t okay with Vee’s vanishing act tonight either.
The phone rang then went to voice mail. Liv hung up and dialed again with the same results. She texted nine-one-one, the all-hell-is-breaking-loose code that no agent ever, ever ignored. With zero response.
“She took the SUV.” Josh was on his feet and at Bruce’s elbow in one lunge.
Liv unfurled from the couch and swept by them both. They spun and followed her, Kimi veering off.
Liv threw open the office door and slid her laptop over and open in one compact move. Keys danced under her touch.
A monochrome gray and black map came up. Liv had pulled up the tracker Company vehicles contained. He pushed close, checking where in Scottsdale Vee was.
The map blipped and shrank. Searching, not finding the target, and expanding to Phoenix. Expanding again, and again.
Josh swore, nearly as creatively as Bruce.
Kimi elbowed in, one of her tablets open, doing a different search on her own. Kimi tapped the screen and Liv looked from her map to the scrolling list of numbers Kimi pointed at.
“Why has she been there?” Liv muttered, and left off the map, finger swiping over Kimi’s screen. Sending another long damn list whirling across the screen.
Bruce picked out that they were scanning abbreviations for Company holdings, including bases. Only one repeated, for a base, but damned if he knew which one. The same destination every other day or better.
The map chimed its success, and Liv jerked her laptop closer. It resolved into—
“The desert out by our ranch asset? What the fuck?” Going for a closer look, Josh leaned over their heads, like he doubted his own conclusion.
The green dot representing the SUV was well past the edge of the rancher’s property, the hell and away from a town, the rancher’s house, any roads. If Bruce was reading it correctly—the truck hadn’t moved in an hour.
“Gear up.” Liv turned to Bruce. “We’ll call you once we find out what’s going on.”
Whatever was at the end of their search, he was going to be there when he discovered what or who it was.
When the team finished preparing and filed into the garage off the annex, Bruce was already in Liv’s truck’s passenger seat.
“I’m treating this as a mission.” Liv braced in her open driver’s door, head poked inside. “Agents only due to assumed cryptid presence.
“One of you can physically drag me out of this truck, but then I’ll get in my damn car and follow you.”
Liv motioned, and her brother and sister climbed into the back. Josh dropped one of the kitbags that held extra weapons between their seats, then angled his sniper case in.
“Clear us a path,” Liv said.
The glow of one of Kimi’s screens cast the rear of the truck in a sickly wash of blue as she activated Company assets or agents—local LEO, State, Homeland, who the fuck knew—so they wouldn’t be stopped. Emergency lights activated on the outside of Liv’s truck, giving them legitimacy.
Once the compound gate opened, speed limits and stoplights meant nothing to Liv.
The metallic hiss of Josh unzipping the bag was background noise as a mechanical voice announced, “I’ve alerted HQ and the med chopper is on active standby.”
Bruce flinched, not at the text to voice program Kimi used to speak while in the dark and with Josh and Liv occupied with tasks they couldn’t look away from, but at the assumption Vee was injured. And the subtext, that those injuries were more than Kimi and the compound med bay could handle.
Josh snapped his fingers at Bruce, and butt first, held out a compact nine mil and shoulder harness.
Arizona didn’t require classes or permits but drilled by Josh, Bruce had practiced enough to satisfy the agent. Bruce still hated the damn gun and all it represented.
He accepted the harness, shrugging into and adjusting it, then took and holstered the weapon.
Miles and county line signs blew past in a blur. His Star of David dug into Bruce’s closed palm and a prayer in Hebrew flowed on a non-stop loop in his head. He blocked out everything else, putting his intent into the plea.
Kimi giving directions, Liv barely slowed once blacktop gave way to packed dirt and sand, the truck bouncing and swerving, Liv avoiding rocks and cactus revealed in the truck’s halogen headlights at the last minute.
“A thousand yards and closing, northeast,” Kimi reported.
Liv jounced them over a rise, the shocks protesting. The headlights shone over desert scrub. Halogen glare reflecting back from glass ahead of the truck.
Liv jerked the wheel at the same time she hit the brakes.
The truck slewed to a stop, dust plume blowing, the individual grains suspend in the light like gold dust.
The headlights also spotlighted the SUV in high-definition clarity.
The vehicle tilted sideways, only wheel rims left on one side. Glass littered the ground around the SUV, winking back like diamonds, the back windows shattered out.
Driver and passenger doors gone, lost somewhere in the dark, leaving empty black caverns into the truck.
He was out of the truck and moving before the dust motes settled. Kimi and Liv passed him, guns out. Splitting and each taking a side.
A weight jerked Bruce to a stop. He rounded on Josh, fists flying.
The agent ducked and shook Bruce like a terrier with a rat. “Don’t cross my sight line. We can’t work like this, because if you get hurt it’ll slow us finding Vee,” he yelled.
Only because he couldn’t shake the heavier man off, Bruce nodded. He whirled back to the wrecked mess, adrenalin flooding his system, demanding he move, get to Vee.
Glass and sand crunched under boot soles, the only sound other than the wind. The air flow brought the stink of windigo, mixed with the sickly-sweet punch of perforated stomachs and spilled intestines.
Just windigos. Gutted windigos, not Vee. He kept the mantra going on a loop in his head. Like that magical thinking would make it true.
“Clear,” Liv barked. With Josh guarding their backs, Bruce ran.
Despite its after market reinforcements and bullet proof glass, the SUV looked worse close-up. The hood crumpled, roof gone. Gouges and claw marks raked down the sides, the rear bumper broken in half.
He grabbed the frame where the driver’s door should’ve been, jagged metal cutting his hands.
“Vee!” He crawled inside. Seats squishy, knees scooting through wet-tacky upholstery.
He slithered through the middle, then the rear. As if Vee could be hiding somewhere between the rows of seats. Safety glass ground into his palms and knees.
Pulse hammering a primal warning in his ears, he kept going, half falling out of the open back.
He spun in place. “Vee! Answer me damn it!”
Getting no answer he sprinted, circling the truck. Venturing further and further out with each circuit.
Hands locked onto both of his wrists. He jerked and fought whatever was keeping him from Vee.
He only stopped when eyes so damn like Vee’s materialized, inches from his face. They resolved into Liv, face to face with him, her hands fanned along either side of his head like blinders. Her voice raised from trying to get through to him. “Bruce. Stop. You have to stop. Listen to me.”
In the moment her voice was also enough like Vee’s that his body automatically responded.
