Move Me (18 page)

To her dismay, Resurrection, NY wasn’t what
she’d been led to believe when she’d looked it up on the
internet.

She stood on the crest of a weedy hill
outside the metropolis, her presence hidden by the deeper shadow of
a highway overpass. She’d been expecting a down-on-its-luck
backwater. Storefronts stuck in the seventies. Maybe a real town
square and a civil war battlefield. Instead, she found an actual
cityscape. The skyline wasn’t Manhattan tall, more like Kansas
City. Few buildings looked brand new, but many were substantial.
They formed a grid of streets and parkland whose core had to
encompass at least five miles. This was definitely more than a
backwater. Resurrection reminded her of city photos from the early
decades of the last century, when
skyscraper
meant something
exciting. What could have been a twin to the Chrysler Building
stuck up from the center of downtown, reigning over its
brethren.

Finding the Eunuch among all that was going
to take some doing.

You have to find him
, she told her
sinking stomach. If she didn’t, she and her very small gang of
peeps would be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their
lives. At twenty-six and thankfully still counting, Ari had endured
more than enough hiding. She was stronger now. She’d been
practicing
. Henry Blackwater, aka, the Eunuch, wouldn’t know
what hit him.

“Right,” she said sarcastically to herself.
She’d be lucky if she got out of here alive.

But faint heart never vanquished fair
villain. Ari knew she’d been born the way she was for a reason.
Maybe here, maybe soon, she’d find out what that reason was.

NO
one messed with people who belonged
to Adam Santini. Unless, of course, the person messing with the
person was also Adam’s relative.

“You. Ate. My. Beignets.” To emphasize his
point, Adam’s irate cousin, Tony Lupone, was bashing his brother’s
head against the squad room floor.

Since Rick’s skull was made of sterner stuff
than the linoleum, he laughed between winces. “What sort of cop -
ow
- eats beignets anyway?”

“Your faggot brother cop, that’s who. Your
pink-shirted faggot brother cop who’s whupping your butt right
now.”

Amused by their exchange, Adam leaned back
against Tony’s cluttered desk. The precinct’s squad room was a
semi-bunker in the basement. A mix of ancient file cabinets and
desks were balanced by some very revved-up technology. Grimy
electrum grates on the windows protected them, more or less, from
things that went bump in the night outside. The hodgepodge suited
the men who manned it better than most workplaces could.
Rough-edged but smart was the werewolf way. At the moment, Tony was
so rough-edged his eyes glowed amber in his flushed face. His big
brother could have defended himself better than he was, if it
weren’t for his rule against hitting his siblings.

“Ow! Lou!” he complained to Adam. “You’re
supposed to be my best friend. Aren’t you going to call off this
squirt?”

“You’re the one who ate his fancy
donuts.”

“All dozen of them!” Tony snarled, his
grievance renewed. “I brought them in to share.”

“Shit,” said long-haired Nate Rivera, Adam’s
other cousin, once removed. “Now
I
want to whup you.”

Considering even-tempered Nate was growling,
Adam judged it time to end the wrestling match. “All right, you
two. Enough. Rick, I’m docking your next paycheck for the price of
his beignets. Dana, if you’d be so kind, raid the coffee fund and
pick up another batch for tomorrow night.”

“None of which you’re going to enjoy, Mister
Pig!” Panting from the exertion of trying to give his brother a
concussion, Tony rose and pointed angrily down at him. “You can
choke on your damned donuts.”

Wisely, Rick remained where he was while his
little brother stalked back to the break room, where his heinous
crime had been discovered. The dress code for the detectives was
casual. Rick’s gray RPD T-shirt was rucked way up his six-pack abs.
His concave stomach didn’t betray his gluttony. His fast werewolf
metabolism saw to that.

“My head,” Rick moaned, still laughing. “Come
on, cuz. Give your beta a hand up.”

Adam sighed and obliged. None of his wolves
were small, but Rick was six four and all muscle. Even with supe
strength, Adam grunted to haul him up. “Some second you are. You
had to know this would cause trouble.”

“I couldn’t help myself. The box smelled so
good. Plus, he was totally obnoxious about bringing them in for
everyone.”

“So you knew you were stealing food from my
mouth?” Nate interjected, not looking up from his paperwork. “Not
cool.”

“He’s sucking up. Ever since he came out,
he’s been -” Rick snapped his muzzle shut, but it was too late.

“Uh-huh,” Nate said in his dry laid back way.
He’d spun around in his squeaky rolling chair to face Rick. “Ever
since he came out, your brother stopped being a butch-ass prick. In
fact, ever since he came out, he’s been the nicest wolf around
here. You don’t like that ’cause you’re used to being everyone’s
favorite.”

“Crap.” The way Rick rubbed the back of his
neck said he knew he was in the wrong. Being Rick, he couldn’t stay
dejected long. A grin flashed across his handsome olive-skinned
face. “Can’t I still be everyone’s favorite? Do I have to turn gay
too?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said, returning to his
work. “So far only gay boys bring us good breakfasts.”

Seeing Rick’s private wince, Adam patted his
back and rubbed. Touchy-feely creatures that werewolves were, the
contact calmed both of them. He knew Rick was still working on
accepting his little brother’s big announcement. Werewolves were
some of the most macho supes in Resurrection, a city that had
plenty to choose from. Adam knew Rick loved his brother just as
much as before. He suspected Rick was mostly worried Tony would end
up hurt. Being responsible for policing America’s only
supernatural-friendly town made the wolves enough of a target.
Turning out to be gay on top of that was as good as taping a target
onto your back.

“Tony will be all right,” Adam assured his
friend. “Everyone here is adjusting to the new him.”

Rick rubbed his neck once more and let his
hand drop. Worry pinched his dark gold eyes when they met Adam’s.
“They’re pack. They have to love him.”

Adam didn’t believe this but wasn’t in the
mood to argue. Plenty of folks endowed being pack with mystical
benefits. Some were real of course, but as alpha, Adam wasn’t
comfortable relying on magic to cement his authority. He thought it
best to actually
be
a competent leader.

“Boss,” Dana their dispatcher said. The young
woman had her own corner of the squad room. Apart from its cubby
walls, it was open. Banks of sleek computers surrounded her, each
one monitoring different sectors of the city. The sole member of
the squad who wasn’t a relative, Dana was the most superstitious
wolf Adam had ever met. Anti-hex graffiti scrawled across her work
surfaces, the warding so thick he couldn’t tell one symbol from
another. How they worked like that was beyond him. Despite the
quirk, Adam took her instincts seriously. Right then, she didn’t
look happy. Her silver dreamcatcher earrings were trembling.

“Boss, we’ve got a suspected M without L in
the abandoned tire store on Twenty-Fourth.”

M without L
referred to the use of
magic without a license. Adam’s hackles rose. Jesus, he hated
those. “Who’s reporting the incident?”

“Gargoyle on the Hampton House Hotel.” She
touched her headset and listened. “He says it’s a Level Four.”

Adrenaline surged inside him, making his
palms tingle. Gargoyles were rarely wrong about magical
infractions. While the strength levels went up to eight, four was
nothing to sneeze at. Thumb and finger to his mouth, Adam blew a
piercing whistle to get his men’s attention.

“Suit up,” he said. “We’ve got a probable ML
on Twenty-Fourth.”

“Don’t forget your earpieces,” Dana added.
“I’ll help coordinate from here.”

Adam’s men were already loping to the weapons
room. “Load for bear,” he said as he followed them. “We don’t know
what we’re in for.”

~

Resurrection, New York couldn’t have existed
without the fae. For nearly two hundred years, it had sat on an
outfolded pocket of the fae’s other-dimensional homeland,
in
the human world but only visible to a special few.

Those who wandered in from Outside found it
less alien than might be expected. The founding faeries had used
the Manhattan of the 1800s as their architectural crib sheet. Since
then, the bigger apple had continued to provide inspiration.
Immigrants especially liked to recreate pieces of their native
land. Resurrection had its own Fifth Avenue and Macy’s, its own
subway and museums. Little Italy still flourished here, though -
sadly - its theater district was as moribund as its role model.
Adam was familiar with the theories that Resurrection was an
experiment, created to see if human and fae could live peaceably as
in days of old. Whether this was the reason for its existence, he
couldn’t say.

The only fae he knew were exceptionally
tight-lipped.

Whatever their motives, Resurrection had
become a haven for humans with a trait or two extra. Shapechangers
of every ilk thrived here. Vamps were tolerated as long as they
behaved themselves. The same was true of demons and other Dims:
visitors from alternate dimensions who entered through the portals.
If a being could get along, it could stay. If it couldn’t, it had
to go. And if the visitors didn’t want to go, Adam and the rest of
the RPD were just the folks to make sure they went anyway.

The job fit Adam better than his combat
boots, and those boots fit him pretty good. He loved keeping order,
protecting the vulnerable, kicking butt and cracking skulls as
required. The only duty he didn’t like was apprehending rogue
Talents. Sorcerers were trained at least, and demons who went dark
side were generally predictable. Talents were the wild cards in an
already dangerous deck. Their power was raw, depending not on
spells but on how much energy they could channel. That amount could
be a trickle or a mother-effing hell of a lot.

The previous year, a Level Seven Talent who’d
gotten stoned on faerie-laced angel dust had taken down the
six-lane Washington Street Bridge. Just popped it off its piers and
let it drop in the North River. If the bridge’s gargoyles hadn’t
swooped in to save what cars they could, the loss of life would
have been astronomical. Adam still had nightmares about talking the
tripping Talent into surrendering. If tonight’s incident ran along
similar lines, he might need a vacation.

Along with the rest of his team, Adam
clutched the leather sway-strap above his head. Nate was driving
the black response van because no one else dared claim the wheel
from the ponytailed Latino. They all wore body armor and helmets,
plus an assortment of protective charms. Their rifles leaned
against the long side benches between their knees. The guns could
fire a range of ammo, both conventional and spelled. Rick, who had
a knack for effective prayer, was quietly calling on the precinct’s
personal guardian angel. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it
didn’t, but even the atheists among them figured better safe than
sorry.

“God,” Tony said, tapping the back of his
head against the van’s rattling wall. “I hope this isn’t another
thing like the bridge.”

“Amen,” Carmine agreed. The stocky were was
the oldest member of their squad, the only one who was married, and
- yes - another of Adam’s cousins.

Before he could smile, Adam’s earpiece
beeped.

“You’re four blocks out,” Dana said. “The
gargoyle is reporting another series of power flares. Still nothing
higher than a Four.”

That was good news. Unless, of course, the
Talent was warming up.

“Okay, people,” Adam said. “Watch your
tempers once we get inside. Be safe but no killing unless you have
no choice.”

He didn’t warn them against hesitating. Given
their inbred hair-trigger werewolf nature, hesitating wasn’t an
issue.

~

The defunct tire store sat on a small parking
lot between a very well locked print shop and a transient hotel.
Apart from the hotel, which wasn’t exactly bustling, the area
wasn’t residential. A cheap liquor outlet on the corner drew a few
customers, but the main business done here after dark was drugs.
Most of the product filtered in from the human world. Since this
was Resurrection, some was also exotic. If you knew who to ask, you
could score adulterated vamp blood or coke cut with faerie dust.
Demon manufactured Get-Hard was popular, though it tended to cause
more harmful side effects than Viagra. Every EMT Adam knew had
asked why they couldn’t get GH off the street. All Adam could
answer was that they were doing the best they could.

Policing Resurrection couldn’t be about
stamping out Evil. It had to be about making sure Good didn’t get
swallowed.

The reminder braced him as he and his team
ran soundlessly from the van onto the buckled and trash-strewn
asphalt of the parking lot. His scalp prickled half a second before
a soft gold light flared around the edges of the boarded-up back
windows.

Adam had answered previous calls to this
location. The rear section of the tire store was where vehicles had
been cranked up on lifts for servicing. Fortunately, there was
plenty of cover for slipping in. Unfortunately, lots of flammables
were inside. Adam took the anti-burn charm that hung around his
neck and whispered a word to it. That precaution seen to, he
hand-signaled Rick and Tony to split off and block escape from the
front exit.

This left Adam, Carmine and Nate to ghost in
the back.