Rite of Passage, page 15
Benny’s eyes grew wide, and he shot Alison a questioning look. She nodded to indicate his thinking was correct.
Niqi was lost in her memories, and she didn’t notice their movements. “While I was holding the disk and rubbing my thumb around its edge, I felt a tingle run across my fingers. The air in front of me started to flicker, kind of like it did when Mrs. Bowens opened a portal, but in slow motion. Almost like it was straining to reach the place it was trying to connect to. This ring of sparks grew in front of me, starting to form a doorway as they spun faster and faster. I remember being unable to breathe, like the air had been sucked out of the room, but I was so entranced by that portal that it didn’t worry me. Like my body was detached from my mind.
“Mrs. Bowens must have felt it on the air. The next thing I knew, she slapped me and snatched her disk out of my hand. I remember she yelled at me. It was the first time she so much as raised her voice to me, but she was practically screaming and frothing at the mouth with her anger. It’s all a blur in my memory, but I recall she said something about ripping fabric. It didn’t make sense at the time, but I guess it does now.”
She looked up at Alison, her eyes filled with trepidation. “I almost did it, didn’t I? I was opening a portal to a place that shouldn’t connect to our world.”
“You were trying,” Alison said. “It would have required much more power than the disk could have accessed, though.” Her eyes fell to the bronze disk but was stopped by the glass beads. She didn’t doubt the young woman had been wearing the bracelet that night. Could the portal have been drawing on the energy from two Relics? Worse, could that have been enough? She shuddered at the thought of what might have been unleashed.
“My daddy wants to do that,” Niqi said softly.
“Not exactly that, but something similar. Something worse.”
“Do we know what dimension he’s trying to reach?” Benny asked somberly. He was staring at Niqi, clearly understanding how bad her first use of the portal disk might have turned out.
Alison shook her head. “He may not even know. Or whoever he’s working for may not. It’s likely they just think reaching a new dimension would give them access to the power needed to achieve their goals, be it world conquest or incredible wealth. It’s almost certain they don’t fully understand the consequences, though.”
She shot both of them another glance, making sure they understood the importance of her next words. “Even if they failed to successfully open a portal to a new dimension, the wave of Chaos energy resulting from the attempt would cause widespread upheaval. Hurricanes, earthquakes, you name it and it’s possible.”
“And if they succeed?” Benny asked softly.
“Then we could be looking at anything from a shockwave that obliterates Atlanta to a mass extinction event that spells the end of the world as we know it.”
Chapter Twenty
Benny left the hotel room with a renewed sense of urgency, set on the task of gearing up to prepare for a worst-case scenario. Alison had split the cash she’d managed to pull from the ATM in the hotel lobby, thanks to a bit of Watchers banking magic that allowed their accounts to ignore daily withdrawal limits.
The other half of the money she kept for her own errands. She pulled her leather jacket on, watching Niqi as she stood up from the bed. “If you want to wait here until it’s over, no one will blame you.”
Niqi shook her head. “He’s my daddy, and if he’s going to do something so monumentally stupid then I’m going to be there to help stop him.” She stared at Alison with a flat expression, almost daring her to say no.
Alison smiled and reached out to tug on the hoodie. “I’ll be glad to have you along, but you’re going to have to agree to some conditions.”
The young woman bit her lip for a few moments. “What are they?”
“One, you stick with me and do what I say when I say.” Alison stared at her until she got a faint nod of consent. “Two, you’re going to have to hand over the portal disk.”
Niqi drew back, her hand clutching the bronze object in the pocket of her hoodie. There was a distrustful frown on her face. “Why would I have to do that?”
Alison sighed, taking a step back to perch on the edge of the hotel room’s desk. “I’m not trying to steal it from you, Niqi. But that Relic is pivotal to this ritual your father and his boss are trying to perform. We can’t risk it falling into their hands if we’re discovered.”
The young woman didn’t look convinced. Alison reached into the pocket of her jeans to extract the obsidian ring and hold it up. “This is a Relic, too. When I slip this ring over my finger, it gives me extra strength and also hardens my bones and skin.” She smiled wryly as she rubbed the spot on her chest that was still sore and lightly bruised from the gunshot in Houston. “It doesn’t make me bulletproof, but very close to it.”
Niqi stared at the ring. Alison examined her eyes closely, gratified not to see any traces of covetousness or desire to possess the item herself. The young woman passed a test in that moment.
“I’m telling you this, because it’s not mine. Relics like this one are held by the Shadow Archives, loaned out for use when requested and deemed appropriate. This is the fifth time I’ve requested the ring, and my request was only denied once. Only because it was in use by someone else at that time. Do you understand what that means?”
Niqi started to shake her head but stopped and chewed on her lip some more. “You trust them.”
“I do,” Alison said, slipping the ring back into her pocket. “The Watchers don’t exist to steal Relics from those who hold them. We just keep them out of the hands of people who use them for ill purpose. I told you that the Archives destroy a few Relics every year, but there is a ton of bureaucratic headache involved in the process to approve such a destruction. It’s a process never undertaken lightly.”
Alison stepped forward to put her hands on the young woman’s stiff shoulders. “What I’m saying is that you can trust them. You can trust me, when I promise that you’ll get the disk back when this is all over. Okay?”
Niqi met her gaze for long seconds before finally nodding. “Okay,” she said softly.
“Good. I’ll make the call while we walk.” Alison extracted her cell phone as she turned to lead the way out of the room. Both of them walked down the long hallway toward the bank of elevators. “Now, how well do you know this part of Atlanta?”
“Well enough, I guess. I only lived here for a few months, but I didn’t have a lot to do when I wasn’t at daddy’s club.”
“Good, because we need to buy a car and then you can tell me how to get to Cowrie’s club.”
There was a used car lot only a few blocks away. While they walked there, Alison called in to the Shadow Archives to request a courier. She didn’t have a location to give for a meeting, but she trusted the local outpost to be able to find her.
“There’s a nicer dealership lot, but it’s a mile away.” Niqi and Alison stood just outside the small car lot, looking over the couple of dozen cars available. Most of them were in less than desirable condition, but the prices were reasonable.
“This will work just fine,” Alison said, eyeing an older model sedan. It was well-kept enough to not draw much attention in nicer parts of town, but old enough to fit in almost anywhere else. The price marked on the windshield in big white letters was less than the cash she carried, too, which was a big plus.
After a little haggling, they drove off the lot in the sedan. The salesman who approached them also happened to be the owner of the small used car dealership, and the greed was visible in his eyes when Alison proposed paying five hundred over asking if he would skip the registration paperwork. That wouldn’t work for a long-term purchase, but she fully expected to drop the car off somewhere and walk away from it in a few days. If she was still around to do so.
Niqi eyed her with a small grin as they drove through crowded streets. “You sure know a lot of ways to get around the law.”
“That’s because my cover job is with the U.S. Marshals. I get paid to track down people who break the law, which means I know all the ways they screw up and get caught.”
The young woman’s eyebrows climbed her forehead. “For real? You’re police?”
“Federal,” Alison clarified. She might spend less than half her time working the job, but she still had enough pride in her role to make sure people didn’t stir her in with local law enforcement. “It’s our job to pursue felons and oversee the Witness Relocation program. The first half of that makes for a great cover for my Watcher job, since that often involves chasing Relic holders or Nox who break the Covenants.”
Niqi snorted and shook her head. “Lady, half the things that come out of your mouth sound like fairy tales to me. When does it start to feel real?”
Alison laughed, thinking once again that she liked this young woman. “Sometimes, it still feels like I’ve fallen into some old movie. You deal with half a dozen cases, though, and it gets easier to accept things that would have seemed impossible beforehand.”
Niqi grunted in response, turning to look through the passenger window. She directed Alison through a few turns as they headed toward her father’s club several suburbs northeast of where they started. It was clear her thoughts were focused on something else, though. She finally voiced them after a few miles. “How does someone join these Watchers?”
“We often recruit those who become aware of the supernatural world through chance or malicious design. After all, it’s a lot easier to train people when they’re not constantly questioning every nugget of information you give them.”
“So, they don’t have to have a lot of schooling or nothing?”
Alison pressed her lips together to keep from grinning. “They do not. If the Watchers feel a recruit requires additional education, we arrange it through our own programs.”
Niqi nodded, sucking on her lips as her eyes stared sightlessly through the window. It took her a while to work up to what she really wanted to ask. “Does that mean I could join? When this is all over, I mean.”
“If someone asks you to join, yes. An organization like ours can’t exactly accept applications, but we pursue those who show promise.” Alison reached out to squeeze the young woman’s shoulder. “Between you and me, I think you’d qualify.”
“Cool,” Niqi said, trying to sound casual. “I was just wondering, you understand. Just curious.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t restrain the smile any longer, and let it rest on her lips as they moved through the suburbs.
It took most of an hour after leaving the car lot to reach the club that Niqi’s father owned and operated out of. They drove past twice, slowing just enough to scan the parking lot of the club and surrounding buildings.
“I don’t see daddy’s car, but he doesn’t always drive himself.” Niqi turned to look through the rear window as they passed the club the second time. “He was usually at the club already by the time I arrived, but I only saw his car maybe half of those times.”
“You didn’t stay with him while you were in town?”
Niqi shook her head and blew air through her lips. “Nah, he said his place wasn’t equipped for guests. He put me up in a hotel, instead. One that was so far away I felt like he was trying to hide me at first.”
“Ah,” Alison said, one of her questions explained. “The one you opened the portal to when we left Mississippi.”
“Yeah, it was the only place I knew well enough in Atlanta. Aside from daddy’s club, anyway, and I was pretty sure we didn’t want to go there.”
“No, we certainly did not,” Alison said. “At least, not directly. I saw a couple of strip malls not far down the street from his club. Do you know if your father’s security extends that far?”
Niqi shrugged uncertainly. “I know he had cameras around the club and his parking lot. Some of them might be positioned to see that far away, but I don’t know if his people pay attention to anything beyond the club’s grounds.”
It was Alison’s turn to chew on her lip while she considered the situation. They knew Niqi’s father had been a part of the Circle before he left to work with someone else. An old friend from ‘the south’, wherever that might be. If she were in his shoes, her security would still be on high alert looking for retaliation from the Circle. Especially now that things were settling down for that organization under new leadership.
At the same time, she couldn’t assume Cowrie’s people would be so paranoid as to watch parking lots a block or two away. If their focus was that wide, it would lead to gaps in their watch over the club itself. She felt the odds of being detected were incredibly low, and the information they could gain was worth the risk.
“You said your father was almost always at the club when you arrived. Do you know what time he usually gets there?”
Niqi laughed, a bright sound that seemed out of place after her long silences and sober expressions. “I would swear daddy lived at that club if I didn’t know better. I’m sure he’s already in there, working on something or other before the club opens to the public tonight.”
That was exactly what they needed. The confirmation of seeing his car would have been nice, but Alison felt she could comfortably predict the man she was interested in was already inside the building. With luck, he might even go for a drive that afternoon, showing his face and letting them follow. With the favor of the gods, that drive would take them to wherever he was keeping all the Relics that had been stolen.
She circled around the area a third time, pulling into the parking lot of a strip mall two blocks from the club. They parked in a spot that provided excellent sight lines on the building and its parking lot. The rear door of the club was obscured, but that would have been the case anywhere.
Alison rolled her window down before shutting off the engine and leaning back to get comfortable. “I hope you don’t get bored easily,” she told Niqi. “I have a feeling this stakeout is going to be a long one.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The team from Savannah called about an hour into the stakeout, letting her know they’d arrived in Atlanta. Even better, they had driven over instead of flying and brought along enough weaponry and tactical gear to go up against a small army. Alison hoped they didn’t face opposition that stiff, but she was glad to have the protection just in case. She had them coordinate with Benny, since many of the things he’d gone out to try and purchase might no longer be needed.
Niqi started shifting around impatiently not long after the call. There was a long series of sighs, yawns, and grunts from that half of the car, all of which spoke to her increasing boredom. “We could be watching an empty building,” she said finally.
“It’s possible,” Alison said. “I normally would have left Benny here to watch the club while we checked Cowrie’s house, but you said you don’t know where your father lives.”
“I don’t,” she admitted with a deep sigh. “That probably should have been my first warning sign, right? When he wouldn’t take me to his house and put me up in a hotel a couple miles away instead.”
“It’s easy to miss things like that when everything seems to be going right,” Alison said, reaching out to squeeze the young woman’s hand. “I can’t imagine you ever thought you’d get to meet your father.”
“No, I didn’t. He was always this nebulous figure to me for so many years. The foster families who took me in showed me too often how little a daddy could be worth, but there were also the good ones who proved just how valuable one could be. Those were the years when I wished I could have met mine, at least once.”
Niqi looked at the club, but her eyes were glazed like she was seeing something else. “When Mrs. Bowens took me in, she told me what she knew about him from things momma had told her. None of it was very good, but I couldn’t help thinking there had to be a reason she stayed with him for so long before running away. I think in my daydreams, he was just waiting for his little girl to come back into his life and change things around.”
Alison glanced at the young woman, noting the strained expression on her face. She had the feeling that Niqi had been holding in a lot of fear, anger, and despair for too long. “You never told us what happened after your father and his people took Mrs. Bowens. Where did you go?”
“Here,” Niqi said, nodding toward the club. “Since I couldn’t open a portal to her cabin, I wasn’t sure what to do. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay at her house in case daddy or his people came back. I was so afraid I didn’t even take the time to pack a bag.
“I knew that if he was in Hattiesburg, then daddy’s club would be the safest place for me. The people who knew he’d tried to kill me were with him in Mississippi, so I felt comfortable coming back to the club. It was early enough in the day that I knew it would be closed, too. The hardest part was getting the disk to open a portal. It took me half an hour to make one that didn’t close the moment I took a step forward.” Niqi laughed over her failures.
“The portal opened right in daddy’s office. The same place I’d been standing when he told me he was going to kill me. I’m ashamed to say I cried for a while before I could move from that spot.”
Alison squeezed her hand again, trying to impart as much reassurance as possible. She didn’t blame the young woman for breaking down when confronted with such a traumatic memory.
“When I stopped crying, though, I realized the kind of opportunity I had. I was in daddy’s office, and no one was around to stop me from snooping. He wouldn’t be back until late, even if he left Hattiesburg at the same time I did, and no one else would dare to set foot into his office without his permission.”
Niqi turned a grin on her, her eyes shining fiercely. “It took a couple of hours, but I finally found enough information to piece together things I’d overheard during my couple of months here. Mostly from papers and files inside his drawers, once I got past the locks. Daddy was always sending this weird guy out to track down certain people, and I could never understand why. But one of the files in his desk included pages with a list of names, some of which I’d overheard them discussing. Next to each name, an item was listed with either a check mark or an angry X.”
