Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series) (8 page)

"Warts and all." I wasn't even sure why I asked. I already knew the answer.

"Then yes, I think it was to get at you."

I had expected the truth from him. He wasn't a sugar coater.

"But why? Because I kicked him into a wormhole? He made it out fine. He said I, we, turned on him, but I never even knew him." Him was still several cars in front of us.

"I don't know. If I've learned one thing in this world, I don't ignore my gut feelings. And my gut is screaming that this - whatever he is - we haven't even seen the beginning of what he's capable of."

I watched him open the Ferrari up as we headed off the main part of the strip.  I knew he was trying to release some of the energy he had pent up inside. I knew he was as angry as I was
, but I wasn't sure if it was for the same reasons. After he'd been shot by the sniper, he'd seemed concentrated but not this angry.

As far as Rick went, I suspected Cormac had killed his fair share of people. Hell, he
'd tried to kill me. This anger wasn't just about Rick either.

"Don
't get too close to him! He'll spot us."

"I know a little bit about this."

I leaned back in my seat as we hit the desert and tried to clear my mind. "Rick never would have shot himself, ever. He was tough. But what kind of thing could make him do that?"

"I believe you. I
've seen people lose it. He wasn't on the edge. His movements, even right up to the end, didn't show any strain."

My head snapped in his direction. "How long were you there?"

"Does it matter?" He didn't bother looking at me.

"Yes. It
's creepy." How could he not know that?

"I wasn
't just watching you two, I was watching the senator watch you."

My skin crawled at the thought of the
senator watching us as well. "Thanks. That just upped the creepy factor another notch."

"And I thought we agreed we were working as a team on this?"

Now he looked at me. I guess this he deemed important. I wondered when he'd get to that.

"I needed to do this solo."

"Why?"

"Because I did. Look, I
've never done a team effort before, on anything, so you are going to have to cut me some slack here and there." I hoped that was going to be good enough because I wasn't going to elaborate any further.

He turned his full attention back to the road and didn
't say anything else.

"Why would he be heading to California
?" I asked as I saw the sign quickly approaching.

The tires screeched and I banged into the side of the door as Cormac jerked the wheel and we skidded and swung around.

"What's wrong?" The car finally came to a stop on the opposite shoulder, facing the other direction. I thanked god there hadn't been any other cars.

"What the hell is wrong with you? You say we have to follow him, and sell me on all this hero shit, and now we
're losing him?" I watched the senator's car shrink from a dot on the horizon to nothing. I knew he was right. We had to get the bastard or who knew what would come next. Even if I wasn't ready for a full blown confrontation, I still wanted to know where he was going. We needed information and Cormac had stopped in the middle of the best tail we'd had?

He grabbed the key from the ignition and stepped out of the car
, holding his phone.

"Cormac! What the hell are you doing! We don
't have time for a phone call," I screamed, as I followed him out.

He held up a finger in a motion for me to give him a minute. I eyed the keys in his hand but I knew I didn
't have a shot at getting them from him. Then I eyed the car. In my teens, I'd hotwired a car or two. Okay, maybe more like a couple of hundred, and I wondered if I still had the skills, if cars were still wired the same.

I walked back to the car as casually as I could
, while he talked to whoever was so goddamn important that we were losing the senator. I was a foot away when he swooped in quicker than I'd ever seen him move and shut the doors, the lock sounding as I looked on. I would've taken a swing at him, I was so pissed, but he was already ten feet away, still on the phone.

"I don
't want to be partnered with you anymore!" I yelled in his direction. "You suck at this!"

Aggravated beyond words, I started walking in the direction of California. I knew it was stupid. I knew I wasn
't going to be able to catch the senator on foot but with having no other option, I couldn't stop the compulsion of at least moving in the right direction.

I
'd taken only three steps before I found myself dangling over Cormac's shoulder as we both retreated from the border.

I tried to punch him in the kidneys but it didn
't even slow him as the jerk still talked on the phone. "No, keep looking. It's in there. Ow! That hurt," he said, as I grabbed a fistful of his hair. "No, I'm not talking to you. Just keep looking."

"What are you doing?" I demanded. I took another shot at his back.

"Okay, now look at line six. You've got to undo that," he said, ignoring the blows I rained upon him.

He dropped me onto the ground about twenty feet away, just as I got a good bite at his left tricep.

"Don't move," he said.

Ignoring him, I both stood and moved. When I moved right, so did he. Same thing when I went left.

"It's done? Good." He shoved his phone back in his pocket and then stepped out of my way.

"You better tell me what is going on right now,
partner
." I squinted my eyes and took the most threatening pose I could.

"I
'd prefer not to," he responded, unfazed by my scary posture. He strolled back to the car and leaned against it.

"Tell me anyway," I said as I followed him.

"We should talk about this on the way back."

I crossed my arms and shook my head. "Tell me now."

"You're not going to like it." He grimaced a little. "Remember the first contract you signed?"

"Yes," I said as I thought back to it. "It only stated that I couldn
't repeat anything."

"But I told you that you couldn
't leave the area."

I shook my head. "That wasn
't on the contract. I remember every line. It was only about repeating things."

"Just because you didn
't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't on there. I told you specifically that you couldn't leave the area." He said it in a manner that laid the blame for this mishap on me. "The state line served as the boundary."

"What would have happened if I
'd have crossed the border into California?" I took a couple steps in that direction to accent my point and because I was getting so angry it was hard to stand still.

He rubbed he shadow on his jaw. "It would
've been pretty painful."

"Would it have killed me?"

"No, it just would've hurt like hell."

I marched up to him, mad as hell and letting it show in every step I took. "I want those papers destroyed when we get back
." I shoved his shoulder. Or tried, it didn't actually budge him.

"Not all things are reversible."

"What's that mean?"

"It means that some of the things can
't be taken back."

"Just how screwed am I?"

"Don't talk to humans and alls good. For the most part."

"I wan
t everything that can be undone destroyed by today."

He nodded. "Done. I will
undo everything I can."

He turned and opened the car door for me and waited for me to get in. I paused by the door, and thought that he
'd relented to easily.

"I
'll do it," he said again.

I nodded and got in the car. We started to drive back, the
senator long gone.

Now that the chase was over, Rick
's image floated into my head again. When someone says that something is burned into their brain, it's not far from the truth. The mind isn't like a computer, with a fixed anatomy, but changes throughout our life. Seeing Rick die today had changed a part of my brain. That image would be with me forever.

"If we are going to take this thing down, we need to know what it is," I said with a new conviction.

"Agreed."

"We need information, and the only place
I've heard of there being records is with the wolves. We need it."

"They aren
't going to just hand it over."

"Then we take it."

Chapter Six

"Sure you
're ready?" Cormac asked as he eyed my sneakers. He had told me to wear hiking boots but I drew the line at tennis shoes.

"Cormac, how many times are you going to ask me that?" I went on the offensive before he commented on my jeans.

"The air is going to be thinner."

"You told me."

"And it's darker."

"Whatever, it is doesn
't matter because we aren't going to be there long." I hoped.

"Dodd, Buzz…give us a minute." They
'd been lingering in the back of the room, waiting to see us off.

I watched as they both left the portal room.

Cormac stood, hovering slightly, dressed all in black. "You aren't taking this seriously. It can get rough over there very quickly. On this side, there is at least the pretention of civility. Over there, in the wolves' territory at least," he pointed to where the wormhole would open, "you piss them off and they just kill you."

I laughed a little. "Yes, that
's so much different to what I've experienced here," I said making an obvious reference to them trying to kill me.

Cormac didn
't laugh. "Take this seriously or I'll take Dodd instead."

"Relax, I get it. Let
's just get on with it already." I knew he wouldn't go without me but I didn't feel like spending the next twenty minutes arguing about it.

"You think you
're tough, but you don't know what's out there."

"I think I
've got an idea."

He shook his head. "You stay by me the whole time. You don
't leave unless I say so. And if I do tell you to leave, you do exactly as I say."

"Who made you boss? I thought we were partners?"

"That's the only reason I'm even letting you come." He took a couple of steps toward the door to call back Buzz and Dodd.

"That and I
'm probably the only one that can open a wormhole up from the other side in a hurry," I said.

That stopped him in his tracks as he looked back to me. "Goddam
n it, Buzz can't keep his mouth shut." He sighed audibly and opened the door as the guys walked back in.

"What?" Buzz asked as Cormac shot him a look.

"Must you repeat everything to her?" he asked, still scowling.

"It
's not my fault. She said I owed her. It was either tell her or she was going to hit me over the head when I least expected it."

I covered my mouth with my hand to hide my smile, not wanting to gloat.

"Forget it. We're going in. I'll open, then you guys shut it behind us," Cormac said as he walked away from Dodd.

I stood back and watched as Cormac opened up a portal. I wasn
't sure if it was because he was older and more experienced or because he was strong, but it was flawless. He opened it just large enough for two people to walk through and the edges didn't fluctuate even a smidge. That might sound like nothing, but we were talking about warping the space time fabric of our very existence. That's some heavy shit to be able to pull off seamlessly.

He looked toward me and held out his hand. "You ready?"

"Yes." The adrenaline pumped through my veins as I moved toward him. In less than a minute, I'd be on a different planet. How many people could say that? Actually, I wasn't even going to be able to say that. Damn contract took all the fun out of things. Half the joy of doing some stuff is being able to talk about it after.

Oh well, this was still the coolest thing I
'd ever done in my life. It was scary as hell, but cool. I was going to travel through a wormhole to steal documents from a group of werewolf aliens. I felt like a live wire as energy pumped through me. Maybe I was made for this hero stuff. Maybe this was what I was meant to do. Maybe I should keep the hero thoughts to myself until I made it back in one piece.