Department 57: Bloody Crystal (22 page)

“That sounds good to me.”

Dawn was filtering across the sky now, and since they hadn’t bothered closing the curtains, a dim light began to creep through the room. She lost her powers, her fangs tucking themselves away for another day. She watched as the same thing happened to him. But he still looked immensely powerful to her, a haven and her man. Hers.

“Always,” he murmured. She spread her hand over his chest, feeling those solid slabs of muscle.

“I guess we’d better get a good day’s sleep.”

“That’s another thing,” he told her. He reached across her for the remote, and she heard the curtains swish across the windows, but she didn’t bother to look. The increasing depth of darkness told her the drapes were thick, probably with blackouts. “While this operation is on and the danger has increased, Cristos is likely to order us to live by night. It will increase our safety and maximize our effectiveness.
My
effectiveness,” he reminded her.

“You’re talking to a girl who spent most of her adult life on night shift,” she murmured, cuddling up close.

* * *

As night began to curl its rosy tendrils around the skyscrapers, the car arrived to take Rhodri and Cerys to work. She felt miles better. A long sleep, longer bouts of lovemaking, and some good food—as well as blood from Kai—had improved her condition back to normal. Rhodri looked merely hot instead of scorching, having taken much the same route to recovery. The recuperative powers of Talents put them back on form, and now all she wanted was to stop Wilkinson making any more money off the backs of Talents.

But there was one more shock left in store for her.

In an ordinary-looking conference room with a black ash table, blue upholstered chairs, and a wood floor, she met the others in the core team. She’d met most of them before. The dragon Domenici, lounging in a chair too small for him, the mermen, grim-faced Bryn and smiling Kai, who sat together, exuding an air of easy familiarity. Cerys remembered Kai telling her he’d had a different relationship before his current partners and wondered if one of them could have been Bryn. She couldn’t imagine it, and then she could, and the breath left her body as a vision of the dark merman and the silver-haired one flashed before her, their bodies entwined, tails curled around each other, kissing in the depths of the ocean, lazy bubbles rising to break on the surface far above.

No, oh no. Not here.

Cristos sat in, and she found him as intimidating in his way as Will Grady. Not as massively built, but with the same kind of charisma and air of effortless command, as if he didn’t know he was doing it.

Fabrice sat at his side, not in a business suit this time, but a pair of khakis and a polo shirt. Rhodri had told her he worked in advertising, and she couldn’t think of a better career for a persuasive Sorcerer.

One person was absent. Esti. Cristos explained that. “Esti is still undercover now. She’s persuaded Wilkinson that she’s on his side, but we officially know about her, so she can’t come back until the job’s done. It was touch and go, getting him to trust her even that far. Worse to tell him she’d still be of use.” His fine mouth firmed. “She couldn’t use her Talent on him—he’d have known—so she had to use other methods.”

Cerys found she didn’t want to know exactly what Esti had done to keep her position in Wilkinson’s organization.

Cristos flicked a glance at her and continued to talk. “We can’t leave her there too long. Wilkinson will sniff her out eventually.”

Something released inside Cerys. Not that she had a particular fondness for Esti, but she’d sensed that the Sorcerer was on the level, the type of person who didn’t lie. If Esti had lied to her all along, she couldn’t have trusted her judgment any more. She’d let the woman deep inside her, and who knew what she might have planted?

“They’ve moved the Chicago unit, obviously. Cleared out the night you escaped and sent people to pack the valuables later. We were already there, of course, but the people were only sent to pack and put the items in storage. They had no idea where the unit had moved to. Thanks to Rhodri, we have him marked now.”

She shot a glance at Rhodri. Had he been holding out on her? He grimaced. “I did my best. I managed to get something under his skin, that nanomarker you sent me.” He glanced around. “New tech. It barely breaks the skin, but it works its way deep into the system. A hell of a thing. It should take him a while to track it down once he realizes he has something. Esti’s bug is working fine. Listen, I don’t want Cerys put in danger. She’s a civilian, but she wants to train.”

“Is there something I can do?”

Bryn nodded. “We can always use someone to monitor. We need eyes here, people who can locate plans of buildings, of the terrain, and patch it through.”

She wasn’t sure about that, never having operated anything more complicated than a laptop. “I’ll do anything I can. I can’t just wait.”

“Cerys is deeply involved in this case,” Cristos put in. “We discovered something recently, or rather, Will did in London.” His expression softened, his eyes losing their steely look. If anything, that made him scarier. But Cerys met his gaze and waited. “Wilkinson, or one of his agents, found out about you years ago. Around five years ago, to be exact. They watched and waited. Your job made it easier to put people in place.” Yes, she could see that, with the peripatetic staff that Dave had employed. Thinking of Dave reminded her she had a score to settle with Wilkinson too. From what Rhodri had told her, everyone in this room had a personal grudge against him. “So some of them were watching me?”

Cristos nodded. “And one of them killed the manager of the bar. We think whoever killed him did it rather than let him alert you that you were being watched. Those men who attacked you the night Rhodri found you? They were sent to bring you in. One ingested enough drugs to bring you down, or so they thought, and that was the one that died.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Dave was like a big brother. He looked after me, gave me a job. He wasn’t the hugging type, but he did take care of me.”

Cristos nodded. “That’s often the worst part of operations like this. They call it collateral damage. I call it a tragedy. We will stop Wilkinson, and make no mistake, he will die. Eventually. I want to strip him first, get the locations of all his laboratories, and records of his discoveries. Before I leave you to plan your attack, one more thing. I have another agent working for Wilkinson as a tech. It’s taken nearly a year to get her in place. Her job is to disable all the computer self-destruct mechanisms. I want the hard drives of all his computers almost as much as I want the man himself.” He got to his feet. “Let me know what you’re planning, and I’ll provide backup for you and anything else you need.” He paused at the door. “But make it fast. I want him captured, and I want that operation closed down. We’ve lost too many people already. I don’t want to lose anybody else.”

* * *

Rhodri would far rather have gone into this place, taken Geoffrey fucking Wilkinson by the throat, and throttled him slowly, for Cerys, and for what he’d done to her, but he had to be fair. He wasn’t the only person who wanted to do that. Wilkinson had done his best to kill Bryn’s wife, Crystal, and Kai’s spouses. He’d imprisoned Domenici and his wife, Nicole, who, with Crystal, was currently ensconced in a room near the one he occupied with Cerys, under close guard for their own safety. Tyler, Kai’s husband, had taken their wife, Zoe, to a safe location. None of them liked the disruption, but Wilkinson had to know they were closing in on him, and mad dogs were even more vicious when cornered.

This was the endgame. It had to be. His only consolation was that he’d left Cerys in safety, watching from the monitors, directing the teams when they needed to know which way to go. While they didn’t have a plan of this building, they could trace Talents once the primary team had found and closed the jamming devices.

So he had to do that. Find the control center, secure the computers, and close the jamming devices. Easy. He glanced at Kai. His spouses wouldn’t recognize him now. His hair was tied tightly back, he wore all black—like Rhodri—and he had knives strapped to his hips. The firearm he preferred wasn’t big, but it would do the job.

Rhodri didn’t go in for big-ass weapons for the sake of them either. A few throwing stars, a couple of blades, and a Beretta 9000 fit snugly into his grip, to which he added a backup, a HK45. Not to mention a few little surprises stowed about his person. They hadn’t bothered with the beanie hats and the face camouflage. Overdoing it, since once they went in, they were made. And Rhodri wanted everyone to know exactly who was taking them over. They had small cameras fastened to their foreheads with sweatbands. Not a look he was particularly fond of.

Bryn and Domenici stood on the other side of the building. Plan was that they’d meet in the middle. Once they’d opened the place, other Talents would follow them.

Easy. He’d done this a time or three before. But this time, as the saying went, it was personal. He’d get great pleasure in taking out Wilkinson’s kneecaps if he so much as twitched once they found him. And he was in here. They’d tracked him to a lonely farmhouse in Montana, then over to Seattle and back to Chicago again. Doubling up, but not returning to the same place. This one was in the north, in an area that had seen better days, mostly old warehouses and run-down apartment blocks. Not dangerous, though, not close to the area around Englewood, or farther north, around the tracks. Clever choice. Nobody would concern themselves with the comings and goings here. This was a relatively modern building, set in the plot left from something else, rubble filling the space between the wire fence and the warehouse. Three stories max, one of those places that looked as if it wouldn’t last long. But he’d bet anything that inside, there were steel reinforcements. That building was a shell, concealing what was probably more like a fortress.

A few vehicles stood outside, but none held anything of interest. They’d scanned them and sent the reports back. They’d get rid of them, or the follow-up team would.

Adrenaline surged through his blood, but this didn’t feel the same. This time weariness edged his eagerness. When would it end? When could they admit to society at large that they existed, that Talents wanted to be an open part of society? Then the authorities would deal with this. The FBI would be here, perhaps enhanced by Talents. Once, the Department had operated under the shelter of the FBI, but now they used any government agency that would sanction their activities in return for favors. All very black ops, very gray ops, whatever. No color. He was sick of it. He wanted white.

They had communicators in their ears, sensitive mics attached, but they’d use telepathy when they could. All the Crystal team had it down and deep. Nobody could track them except their loved ones, and they were safely ensconced in a secure spot five miles away. With a helicopter on the roof, ready to take off at the first threat.

Not that there’d be one. No more.

Bryn’s voice sounded in his ear. “Countdown, five, four, three, two, one… Go!”

Rhodri and Kai headed for the fence, bolt cutters in hand. They had two minutes, tops, before someone fixed the electricity Bryn had just shorted.

It took one minute, ten seconds before they had a gap large enough to get through. They dropped the cutters and headed for the main building.

Alarms were already sounding, disturbing the grudging peace of the night. Barely ten, a time too early for drunks, too late for families. A good time for a raid. Especially since dark had fallen and Rhodri had fed. The alarms shrieked at them until Rhodri, tired of the noise, took one out with a well-aimed shot. Kai gave him a droll glance. “We’ll be inside soon enough.”

They knew better than to try the door, and as they watched, steel shutters slid down to seal the windows. Why did people always forget the walls?

Kai could hot-wire an engine faster than anyone Rhodri knew, and he barely had time to stand back before a scuffed old black van screeched on takeoff, flashed past, and rammed into the wall between two windows. A satisfying crunch, followed by tapping as masonry came loose and hit the wrecked vehicle. Rhodri couldn’t help it. He laughed. Every man, however old, had a bit of the small boy in him, and watching vans hit walls was usually good for a laugh.

Kai backed the van out, a shower of loose concrete and powder showering around it. He exited the van by the back doors, catapulting out, grinning. “Dented the front doors a tad.” They climbed over the debris to get into the building. Bryn was probably crashing in through the doors at the back. With Domenici partially shifted, they wouldn’t have much of a problem. Rhodri sent a brief message to Bryn and the rest of the team.
“We’re in.”

They hadn’t sensed any living things behind that wall, and they’d been right. They’d broken into some kind of storeroom, bandages and other medical supplies tumbling off the shelves to land on the dusty paintwork of the van. They plowed through them, and Rhodri kicked the door open. “Always easier to break out than break in,” he commented laconically.

They found themselves in a featureless corridor. Featureless, that was, except for four guards bearing down on them with weapons. Certainly not the kind of guards a casual visitor might expect. Navy clad, bearing heavy-duty weapons, carbines, maybe. He didn’t stop to ID them.

With a single blast of psi, he froze all four just long enough to take his two out. Two neat shots behind him told him Kai had followed suit.

A disembodied voice sounded in their heads.
“Left.”

Even though he could only hear instructions, her voice warmed him and kept him on the right track.

They raced to the end of the hallway and followed instructions. They heard staccato gunfire, followed by Bryn’s terse assurance that they were okay, and headed for the center of the floor. He and Kai were to head for the stairs and take the upper floor. Then they’d do the top floor together, with the backup team sweeping for hostiles.

Esti had sent them Wilkinson’s psi signature, the one thing he couldn’t change when he morphed into another form. And he had Esti to contend with. She’d make sure they could find him.