Dancing on the Wind (8 page)

arm lightly. “Tell me you know how to bake one and I’ll marry you this very day!”

“I do, but let’s forego the marriage until you see if my cooking is any good or not,”

she warned.

“You’re a Georgia woman and you’re Celtic,” he said. “You were born to cook.”

Keenan laughed. “Then what time should I reserve the reception hall for?”

Her teasing seemed to please him and he grinned around the gob of food in his

mouth. His eyes were sparkling, assessing her with an intensity she found both

complimentary and a bit unsettling. She had to look away from his handsome face for

heat was climbing into her cheeks.

“He’s not a bad guy, but he’s gonna give you as much grief as you’ll allow him to,”

Groves said, and she looked back around.

“Who?”

“Misha,” Groves answered. “He can be a mean son of a bitch.”

It took her a moment to realize he meant Mikhail Fallon. “Is his mother Russian?”

she asked.

35

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Groves nodded. “Yeah. I guess with a nickname like that it was fairly obvious.” He

scraped the last of his eggs onto a piece of bacon then popped them into his mouth. “He

never knew his father. All he was ever told about him was that his last name was Fallon

and he’d been a hit man for the I.R.A.”

“Are his parents still alive?”

“Mother is. Father was murdered before Misha was born. Mom was married to a

captain in the Spetsnaz unit of the MVD when she had her little fling with Fallon. Word

is his stepfather was a truly evil son of a bitch. Rumor has it he was responsible for

Fallon’s death. He used to beat the holy hell out of Misha—kept it up until the day

Misha put the bastard down hard, nearly killed him actually. Misha was put in a special

detention center for the next seven years of his life so there has never been any love lost

between the two. I hear when they are in the same room together, Misha and the

Russkie can’t keep their hands off each other’s throats.”

“Ouch,” Keenan observed. “Must make family reunions a real blast.”

“He rarely sees his mom for that very reason,” Groves told her. “Though he calls

her every Sunday when he’s not on assignment.”

“That almost makes him sound human.”

Groves chuckled and reached for his orange juice. “I know he isn’t happy about this

Extension thing, so he’s gonna push the limits with you. Just go with the flow and he’ll

eventually lose interest in annoying you if he realizes it won’t make you crazy. He’s

more bark than bite unless you really piss him off, but since you’re a woman, he’ll use

the venom of that wicked tongue of his instead of those meaty fists to get his point

across.”

“I’m not happy about the Extension either, but I don’t guess either of us has a

choice,” she said.

“You work for the Exchange, you do what they tell you,” he said. “That’s the

downside of our employment. May I give you a piece of advice about Misha?”

“Please.”

“He’s very good at hiding his thoughts. The mental block that man has developed

is like trying to pry the lid off Ft. Knox. You won’t be able to read him—even sense

him—unless he allows it, so my advice would be to keep your own thoughts carefully

hidden as well. He’s bad about using other people’s feelings against them.”

“That’s encouraging,” she said, her shoulders slumping.

He leaned forward. “I tell you what—you’re gonna be bone-tired by the time

evening rolls around. How ’bout letting me take you to supper? There’s a neat little

barbeque place over in Altoona and I’m friends with the owner. We can go over and pig

out—pardon the pun—and swill down good sweetened tea with lemon.”

“Southern-style sweet tea?” she asked.

He nodded. “I taught him how to make it and the bastard was hooked from the first

taste.”

36

Dancing on the Wind

“What time?”

“Seven?”

“You’ve got a date!”

* * * * *

When Keenan was shown into the Supervisor’s office at exactly 7:30, Fallon was

already there as Groves had predicted. He didn’t even look over at her when she was

told to take the chair beside his. He was clutching a sheaf of papers, apparently

absorbed with whatever he was reading.

“I trust you had a good night’s rest, Keenan,” the Supervisor said from the

windows where he stood with his back to the room, hands clasped loosely behind him.

“No, sir, not really, but thank you for asking,” she answered, and since she was

looking past Fallon to her boss, she saw her fellow agent’s lips quirk with what could

only be amusement. She didn’t think it was his reading material that had caused the

smirk.

“Strange that neither of you slept well last evening,” the Supervisor commented,

turning around to face his agents. “Must have been something you ate, eh, Fallon?”

Fallon raised his head and swiveled it toward Keenan. “Guess so,” he replied, his

gaze raking down Keenan in such a way she ached to lash out and slap the half grin

from his chiseled lips.

“Well, let’s get down to business,” the Supervisor stated, and came around his desk

to perch on one end of it. “Tell me what you know about
drochtáirs
, Keenan.”

Keenan blinked. “
Drochtáirs
?” she repeated, her brows drawing together before

they shot up, her eyes widening. “I’ve been sensing something, but
drochtáirs
? They are

mythological creatures.” She felt Fallon staring avidly at her.

“One of our mediums believes seven of them are already here,” the Supervisor

answered.

“Does she have any proof
drochtáirs
are real though?” Keenan challenged.

“Madame Gregorovich has a very keen understanding of the preternatural world

and she assures me they are,” the Supervisor said, throwing Fallon a quelling look. “She

believes the
drochtáirs
were on Earth long ago but were destroyed in the Great Flood.

Now she believes they have come back to colonize again and that we cannot allow.” He

lifted a hand and pointed to the papers Fallon was holding. “Those are her notes to us

on the matter.”

Fallon held the papers out to Keenan. “Not a romance novel but a fairly

entertaining read,” he quipped.

Keenan snatched the papers from him with a glare from her narrowed eyes. “I want

my bloody book back, Fallon,” she snapped under her breath, low enough she hoped

the Supervisor hadn’t heard her.

37

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“Haven’t finished reading it yet,” Fallon said. “I’m on the part where Rogue is

fingering Sharyn while they are…”

“That’s enough!” Keenan hissed, her face flaming. She glanced at the Supervisor

who was looking at her with a bland expression on his lined face. She lowered her head,

embarrassment flooding her very soul.

“Do you have something that belongs to her, Fallon?” the Supervisor inquired.

Fallon shrugged. “A trashy romance novel.”

“Give it back.”

Another fatalistic shrug and Fallon peeled himself out of the chair, stood then

reached behind him to the pocket of his jeans where he had stuck the book. He tugged it

out and extended it to Keenan.

Loath to touch something the odious man had been sitting on, Keenan nevertheless

took it then opened her shoulder bag and dropped it inside without a word of thanks.

“You’re welcome,” Fallon said as he took his seat again.

“Don’t filch anything else of hers,” the Supervisor ordered. “Is that clear?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Fallon agreed, and shot his long legs out in front of him,

threaded his fingers together over his belly and laid his head on the back of the chair.

“You were going to tell me what you know about
drochtáirs
, Keenan,” the

Supervisor encouraged.

“Well, if I remember what I read about them, they are a species of blood fiends. A

bite from their serrated fangs will make you one of them since they inject you with

some kind of venom when they attack. Bite victims will in turn infect others. The

creatures completely drain the blood from their victims until the body is nothing more

than a decimated husk. They spend the daylight hours in the ground and can only

move around after sunset. Wherever the corpses of their victims are buried, nothing

will grow around the site. The land will be barren and scorched for a hundred feet or

so. The same holds true concerning any land over which the creatures move. It is

believed the destruction of plant life is due to the poisons given off by the
drochtáirs
.

According to what I’ve read, they leave a noxious slime in their wake that is particularly

vile.” She shifted in her chair. “They live in lairs deep beneath the ground in viper

shape. When they emerge, they slither swiftly across the landscape in that form, but

when they are ready to attack, they assume an animal shape. What kind of animal

hasn’t been recorded, but whatever it is has to be big enough to overpower a full-grown

man.”

“One theory is they merge with whatever animal they come into contact with so

there is no one specific shape,” Fallon put in. “They don’t shape-shift but rather invade.

They can’t tolerate heat. Forty degrees to them is like a hundred to humans.”

Keenan shuffled through the papers she held, reading quickly through the

paragraphs. “And the only way to kill them is by incineration,” Keenan said. “Their

victims too.”

38

Dancing on the Wind

“Burning is the only sure-fire way to destroy pure evil,” Fallon stated. He stared

into her eyes. “Could you use your pyrokinetics to obliterate a human target,
leanabh
?”

“What does
leanabh
mean?” Keenan demanded, thinking he was insulting her.

“It is baby in Scots Gaelic,” the Supervisor replied. He gave Fallon a hard look.

“Stop calling her that. It is disrespectful.”

Fallon sighed loudly and the Supervisor moved from his desk to the windows. “In

the papers Madame Gregorovich suggests
drochtáirs
are the seed from which Raphian,

the Destroyer of Men’s Souls, sprang.” He clasped his hands behind him once more as

he looked out across the landscape. “That will make this enemy you are to seek out and

put down a very formidable foe.”

“I’ve fought minions of Raphian in the past,” Fallon said. “They went down easy

enough, but she didn’t answer my question. Is she going to be able to wiggle her little

finger or her nose or whatever else she wiggles and burn up an infected civilian?”

“Yes,” Keenan said.

“How many kills do you have to your credit?”

“My share,” she stated.

Fallon snorted at her answer, shaking his head as though he didn’t believe her

capable of such a thing.

Keenan ignored him, concentrating instead on finishing her perusal of the notes

from Madame Gregorovich. “It says here, she believes the creatures have gone to

ground somewhere in a cold region where they will hibernate until winter.”

“We believe that means Canada,” the Supervisor said. “That is supposedly where

they were before the Great Flood, so they’ll most likely return to the original site.”

“Well, that sure as hell covers a lot of ground,” Fallon scoffed. “Do we just climb

aboard a couple of dog sleds and start sectioning off each province?”

“I should be able to detect them easily enough. We look for contaminated land,”

Keenan suggested. “It’s just a matter of where to start looking.”

“My idea was to have Fallon pilot a chopper over specific grids across the

provinces, working your way east to west over the entire expanse. Any place that

strikes you as being a potential lair can be marked from the air and then reconnoitered

on foot later.”

“I could eliminate it from the air,” Keenan stated. “It’s just a matter of concentrating

fire at their lair.”

“And take out a few innocent fuzzy-wuzzy little beasties in the bargain,” Fallon

said with a snort. “We’ll go in to reconnoiter before you start frying defenseless little

creatures that never hurt anyone.”

Keenan turned her gaze on her new partner to give him a narrowed look. “I would

never hurt an animal just for the hell of it.”

“But you’d fire bomb their little condos without a second thought,” he countered.

39

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“I would not! That’s not what I…”

“We’ll go down and scope out the burrows. If there’s a blood fiend there, you can

blast away ’til your heart is content,” he told her. “I won’t even try to stop you.”

“And what if one of those blood fiends decides to a take a bite out of us, Fallon?”

she snapped.

“I’ll bite him first,” he said with a nasty grin that grew wider when he allowed his

fangs to erupt.

Keenan nearly broke her ankle springing from the chair and putting distance

between her and her new partner. Her face drained of color, her eyes were huge as she

stared at the double rows of viciousness that filled Fallon’s mouth.

“You’re a…” She put up a defensive hand to keep him at bay. “You’re a…” She

couldn’t get the word out.

“He’s a Reaper,” the Supervisor said.

“I prefer the term hell hound,” Fallon quipped with a wag of his brows.

“I…” She shook her head as though to clear it of the sight of those wicked teeth.

“Those fangs can’t be real!”

“They are very real, Keenan,” the Supervisor assured her. “And quite lethal.” He