Personal Demon (24 page)

While Paige had the insight to pack overnight bags and print out the flight schedule after Karl’s call, it was still late in the day by the time our plane crossed the Florida border.

A trip to Miami is never something I undertake lightly. It is the seat of the Cortez Cabal, and when I am there, I cannot forget who I am.

It’s not that I consider Cabals evil entities. I wish I could. Early life conditions us for a fairy-tale world of good and evil, of wicked witches and beautiful princesses, hideous trolls and stalwart knights. You are good or you are evil and there’s no in-between, no “extenuating circumstances.”

We don’t like extenuating circumstances. They make things messy. We want evil to hide behind a dark mask—cold and faceless. If the villain is not evil, how do you hate him?

If your father is not evil, how do you hate him?

I grew up in a world where the Cabals were clearly on the side of virtue. My family founded the first Cabal in Spain, after the Inquisition. We saw our people—supernaturals—persecuted by a society that didn’t understand that we were
not
evil, and we gave them a place where they could be safe, and raise their children in safety, and freely use their powers and prosper from them. We didn’t just give them jobs; we gave them a way of life.

I grew up believing in that family mythos. When my father led me through his offices, I saw happy people who smiled and bowed to him as if he was a beneficent king. I was a prince—petted and pampered. Outside those walls, though, I was the son of an unwed schoolteacher, living in a modest home up the Florida coast, where the name Cortez only meant I was “another damn Mexican.” Is it any wonder I clung to the fantasy as long as I did?

Right into high school, to the summer I went to work for my father and walked in on him dictating execution writs as casually as if he were ordering more toner for the copy machines.

I could have plugged my ears and told myself I’d misheard. But my father raised me to never turn my back on a question until it was answered. So I did my due diligence, and found that my palace was built on the bones of the dead. And those happy, smiling faces I’d seen since childhood? I’d play the smiling, happy employee for my boss too, if crossing him meant he’d send fire demons to burn my family alive.

The truth had seemed clear. Cabals were evil. Cabals must be destroyed.

I made a vow, that I’d do whatever it took to bring the Cabals down. A foolish, arrogant vow that only a sixteen-year-old could make, based on a clear division of good and evil that only a sixteen-year-old can see. I delved ever deeper into Cabal culture and counterculture, no longer a prince but an outsider. Instead of galvanizing me to action, the distance only brought the picture into sharper focus. And with sharper focus, I began to see the gradients of black and white.

Cabals do provide scores of supernaturals with a world in which they belong. One cannot underestimate the importance of that for people who otherwise spend their lives hiding. People who have to look at their bleeding child and evaluate the risk of taking him to the doctor. Of those people who smile and nod at my father every day, 90

percent are truly grateful and free of fear.

If they betray the Cabal, the punishment will be execution—horrible execution—but they have no intention of doing so. Yes, they’ve heard stories of families being murdered, but those are other Cabals. Yes, they’ve also heard of Cortez Cabal employees being killed after leaving the organization, but that is the price you pay for reaping the benefits. One of those benefits is security, and if the Cabal must kill a former employee to safeguard its secrets, so be it.

So is a Cabal evil? No. Is there evil within a Cabal? Absolutely. That’s what I fight—the greed and the corruption that arises from an environment where all you have to do is cry “security issue” and you can get away with murder. Yet the world still looks for black and white. In me, supernaturals want to see a meddler or a savior. I am neither, so I disappoint.

I refuse to work for the corporation or take part in Cabal life, and yet I maintain a relationship with the CEO. By naming me heir, my father offers me the chance to take over the Cabal itself, to institute my reforms from within, and yet I refuse. Simple things, one would think. Simple decisions. If you hate the institution, turn your back on it completely. If you want to change it, take it over. Black and white.

Even by coming here today, I’ll displease both sides. To some, I’ll be meddling in Cabal affairs, without even a client as my excuse. To others, I’ll be letting my father sweep me into his world again, on the pretext of helping manage a crisis, as he had with the Edward and Natasha problem four years ago. I’ve learned long ago that this is what I should expect anytime my path crosses my father’s in a professional capacity. It can’t be helped. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

PAIGE AND I
walked into the terminal. I carried two overnight bags; she had her laptop case.

We waded through a throng of friends and relatives greeting arrivals. Twenty feet away, Karl sat reading a newspaper, alone on a bank of chairs. Despite the shouts and crying around him, he never even glanced up.

As we emerged from the crowd, he snapped the paper shut, rose and strode into the terminal…away from us. Paige arched her brows at me. Was Karl simply being cautious? Or did he suspect he’d been followed? After less than a dozen paces, he stopped, wheeled and shot us a “Well, are you coming?” glower. He barely let us catch up, then was off again.

“We should find someplace with a modicum of privacy,” I said. “I know several—”

“Here’s fine.”

He veered into a bar packed with commuters fortifying themselves for the flight—or the drive home. It hardly seemed the place to discuss matters of a supernatural nature, but a crowded public place was more secure than an empty one, where words could carry and neighbors might be bored enough to eavesdrop.

“Where’s Hope?” Paige asked as Karl pulled out her stool, the action seeming more reflex than courtesy.

“After the girl died, Benoit—the gang leader—called her in. He has them hunkered down at the club, planning their next move. No one leaves.”

That explained his brusqueness then. He was eager to get this over with so he could return. His haste was warranted. Should Hope push her panic alarm now, it would be a half-hour or more before he could respond.

Karl pulled a manila envelope from his folded newspaper and removed a sheaf of photos. Eight-by-ten shots, all grainy, the resolution poor.

“Hope used her cell phone to take pictures of the originals, then sent them to me,” he explained.

The top photograph was of two young men. Both sat bound to chairs, bowed forward, as if so exhausted that their bindings were all that was holding them upright. The dark-haired one bore an ugly cut across his cheekbone, his cheek coated with a layer of dried blood. The fair-haired young man had a black eye and a swollen lip.

“Jaz and Sonny, I presume?”

He nodded. “The original was left beside the girl’s body.”

“Was any note attached?”

“Three words on the back: more to come.”

That could mean anything from “more information forthcoming” to “more mistreatment of the prisoners”

to “more victims to follow.” Intentionally cryptic, leaving the recipient hoping for the best while imagining the worst.

“And her killer claimed to be delivering a message from my father, not only with the picture, but the young woman’s death? The Cortez Cabal rarely utilizes kidnapping. The outcome is fraught with uncertainty. If it fails, you must kill the victims. If it succeeds, you have living witnesses. If it succeeds
and
you kill the witnesses, your credibility as a negotiator is irrevocably damaged. To send such a blatant message, and leave evidence of his complicity…” I shook my head. “It’s not—”

“—your father.”

“No, I was going to say it isn’t my father’s style.”

Karl’s fingers drummed against the tabletop. “Same thing. The point is—”

“No, pardon the interruption, but it is not the same thing. If my father wishes to commit a criminal act that may later damage his reputation, he has been known to choose a method that is deliberately out of character.”

When Karl frowned, Paige explained, “So when he’s accused of it, even his enemies will say ‘that’s not Benicio Cortez’s style’…ergo, it couldn’t be Benicio Cortez.”

Most people would be shocked by such duplicity. Karl looked as if he was taking notes.

I said, “You may not wish to raise the possibility to Hope, but it’s very likely these young men are no longer alive. There’s nothing in the photograph to indicate when it was taken. Usually, if proving that a kidnap victim is alive, his captors—”

“Put a newspaper in the picture.”

Karl himself had been involved in a kidnapping—a brutal one of Clayton during his strike against the pack—and as he turned his gaze to watch passersby, I wondered whether there was a touch of discomfiture in his straying attention.

He flipped the photograph behind the stack. Next was a black-and-white security camera shot, showing a man walking down a hall.

When I saw the man’s face, my heart sank. As quick as I was to agree that my father could be involved in this, such assertions were born more of self-preservation than of conviction. Saying my father would never do such a thing was a direct route to humiliation.

“I take it you recognize him?” Karl said.

“Juan Ortega, head of the Cortez Cabal private security division.”

“According to the gang, this is the same man who beat and robbed the kidnapped boys,” Karl said. “He’s the one whose home they were going to break into last night, before the boys disappeared.”

“Could he be moonlighting for someone else?” Paige asked.

“Unlikely. If he was caught, he’d be executed. An employee who is willing to work for an outside interest might be persuaded to sell information to that interest.”

“What if he wanted to leave the Cabal and this was his way to do it?”

“Blackmail? Let me leave or I’ll kill these boys and pin it on you? My father would agree, wait until the danger had passed, then devote all his excess manpower to hunting Ortega, whereupon he’d be tortured as a lesson to others. Ortega would know that.” I pushed the photo back to Karl. “I’m not saying Ortega’s involvement proves my father is behind this, but it lends credence to the theory.”

Karl flipped to the next photo. A tall light-haired man with a scar by his mouth. My heart dipped a little more.

“Andrew Mullins,” I said before Karl could ask. “He’s in security too, under Ortega. I don’t know him as well. I’m presuming this is the second gunman?”

Karl nodded.

“Then leave these with me and go back to Hope. I’ll call when I know something.”

HOPE: FEAR AND LOATHING

T
he room blurred. The gun barrel flashed under the harsh light. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the gun kept rising. The finger moved on the trigger. The gun flared. Bianca’s eyes widened in horror. The bullet—

Goddamn it, stop!

Guy had bustled me from the war room while they planned the strike against the Cabal. I presumed that meant he didn’t trust me yet, but I’d be naive if I wasn’t considering the possibility that they knew I was a spy.

If he suspected, though, he wasn’t doing a very good job of imprisoning me. Max hadn’t activated the storeroom lock. I’d detected only a security spell across the doorway, which would warn them if I left.

As for why Guy picked this room, I wondered whether he knew more about Expisco half-demons than he’d let on. Being here, with such a strong source of chaos nearby, prevented me from listening in to their distant thoughts and conversation.

I’d now watched Bianca die twenty-one times, and no matter how hard I fought, the ending was always the same. The bullet hit and I gasped, struck by a bolt of indescribably delicious chaos.

This last time, the gasp was more a mewl, my overstimulated nerves protesting, my body shaking with exhaustion. But that didn’t block the charge of pleasure—or the wave of self-loathing. And, finally the questions.

I’d known she was in trouble and hurried into the back hall to help. Had I tried hard enough? Had I run fast enough? I’d seen her killer raise the gun and I’d stopped running, hit by the chaos wave. As the scene replayed, that split-second of inaction seemed to stretch into long minutes, during which I stood in that hall, doing nothing, overwhelmed by the chaos.

“—need to strike at—” Tony’s voice in my head, penetrating the chaos fog.

I strained to hear more. I needed to focus on finding out what they were planning so I could warn Benicio.

But
should
I warn him? It looked as if he’d kidnapped Jaz and Sonny, and had Bianca killed. What obligation did I have to tell him anything? I didn’t have enough information, didn’t know who was really the aggressor and who the defender. That’s why Karl had insisted on letting Lucas decide our next move. Whatever allegiance Lucas felt to his family, his allegiance to truth was greater.

“—I just don’t think—”

“—then walk away—”

I strained to pick up more, but the chaos ebbed and surged as the gang members’ moods veered between grief-fueled outrage and anxiety over whatever they were planning.

“—get past security—”

“—trust me—”

Were they going to break in somewhere?

“—will be the toughest—”

“—once in, though—-”

The room wobbled, then went black. The gun rose—

Not now! I pressed my hands against my eyes, but the images kept flashing. I couldn’t stay here. If I was going to figure out what was happening, I needed to—

As the bullet struck Bianca, my cell phone beeped, warning me of an incoming message. Had I not been clutching it, I’d never have noticed.

I fumbled with the phone and let out a whoosh of relief as I saw Karl’s number. It was a simple “I’m back”

message. I responded by sending the one I’d pretyped, explaining the situation in the most succinct, least alarming language.

Ten seconds later, my phone rang.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Karl blasted before I could say hello. “Get out of that room now, Hope. Goddamn it, I can’t believe you’re sitting there—”