Raising Innocence (23 page)

Not exactly what I was hoping for, but better than a poke in the eye with a fork.

Pamela put her hands on her hips and glared at the Druid. “You know what, I’m glad you aren’t going. You just showed me what you Druids are really like. Even if you tried to take me to your stupid Druids, I wouldn’t go. You’re a coward.”

My eyebrows shot into my hairline. The witch was a spitfire, I’d give her that.

With a flounce in her step, she moved to my side. “I’ll come with you.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, let’s go. Will?” His eyes met mine and I held his gaze. “Make it snappy.”

“You got it.”

Alex whimpered. “Alex wants to go with Rylee and Evie and Pamie.” His tail thumped weakly on the floor and he put his front paws together, begging. “Please.”

I crouched down, lifted up one of his floppy ears, and did a stage whisper into it, making sure Will heard me. “You need to keep an eye on the kitty and the Druid for me. Okay? Make sure they don’t do anything wrong.”

Before I let go of his ear, he was nodding, and then he wrinkled his lips up over his teeth in a ridiculous grin that made my heart squeeze. Gods, what would I do without Alex? What a horrible, boring, stale life I would lead.

Pamela and I headed out first to the police station. For once, the seemingly incessant rain had eased. Perfect for flying out in. Well, maybe not perfect, but better than being pelted with fat rain hundreds of feet in the air.

We nodded at the two officers who stepped in behind to follow us; I felt their footsteps stutter when Will, Deanna and Alex came out of the suite and headed toward the car.

Decisions, decisions.

I draped an arm across Pamela’s shoulders. “When we get to the police station, your job is to pin anyone who tries to stop us to the wall. Just hold them there. Can you do that?”

She smiled. “Yes. And now I can tie off the spell so I don’t have to be in the room to hold them.”

This kid was way beyond what I expected in talent. Giselle and her predictions; who knew that even in her madness she was trying to help?

“When did you have time to practice?”

“When I was sitting in the tree. I started pinning the bugs up so they wouldn’t crawl on me.”

Laughing, we walked into the police station. The looks we got from the officers ranged from outright disgust—I suppose a child hacking off zombie limbs would do that—to fear, to curiosity, right down to anger.

Of course, the anger was coming from one Dr. Daniels limping toward us. “There she is! She attacked me and sent me to the hospital with a sword wound! I have the hospital paperwork to prove it. I am taking the child away from her right—”

Dr. Daniels was picked up and slammed against the far wall. Pamela glowered at her. “I’m staying with Rylee.”

Then, of course, everything sort of hit the fan. Officers rushed to help the doctor; officers rushed us. Pamela did an admirable job pinning up people. Like flies on sticky tape they hung anywhere from three feet to seven feet up the wall. Some she hung upside down, sideways and diagonal.

Agent Valley came out of the main office, spluttering with rage. But it was the twinkle in his eyes and the quirk to his lips that told me I’d once again been played. I figured it out in the heartbeat before Pamela picked him up and pinned him to the ceiling.

He wanted me to do this, wanted me to break the rules. That way it wasn’t on the FBI’s shoulders if it went wrong.

The greasy little manipulator!

Well, we’d just see how smart everyone thought he was.

“Agent Valley, thank you for clearing the path for us. As always, it’s a pleasure doing business with the FBI. But next time, my fees will be double.”

His whole body spasmed against the ceiling and when he opened his mouth, Pamela gagged him.

“How did you know?” I asked as we sauntered through the building to the stairwell leading up to the roof.

“I thought he was going to say something mean to you again. And I didn’t want him to.”

Her words were an eerie echo of Alex. The two of them both wanted to protect me, and all I wanted was to make sure they were safe. A dark premonition trickled along my senses, making my gut twist. There would come a day when their loyalty would get them killed. Before that happened, I would have to send them on their way.

We ran up the stairs, but I was lost in my thoughts. I knew why Jack was alone. There was so much danger involved with being a Tracker. And for some stupid reason we inspired loyalty in those we were supposed to be protecting.

Bursting out the top door onto the roof, I heard shouting below.

“The spell must have worn off.” Pamela frowned. “I’m sorry, I thought it would last longer.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I looked around for something to jam the door with. Eve could be tricky to wake up and if her head jammed under her wing was any indication, she was deep in sleep. Which meant I needed a little more time. The roof was littered with garbage pipe, leftovers from some renovation or another. I grabbed the closest piece that was about four feet long and jammed it under the door handle, burying the end in the loose gravel of the roof.

“Eve,” I shouted from where I was. “I need you to wake up. We’ve got problems!”

The Harpy grumbled in her sleep and lifted her head. “Rylee?”

“Yeah, we’ve got—”

The door thumped from the other side, the weight of a few officers behind it.

“You awake enough to take me and Pamela for a fly about?”

Eve ruffled her wings. She’d only gotten a few hours sleep and I knew I was asking a lot of her. Now I was glad she’d come, though I had been less than grateful when she’d first landed.

With a beak-clacking yawn, she nodded. “Yes, I can take you two.”

I pushed Pamela ahead of me and we ran to Eve’s side. We skidded to a stop and I was in the middle of boosting Pamela up when the door banged open. Agent Valley was at the front of the pack.

“ADAMSON!”

I gave him a wave, and then blew him a kiss. “You got it, boss. I’m on the case, just like you said!”

Leaping up behind Pamela, I wrapped my arms around her and buried my hands in Eve’s feathers. The Harpy launched straight up, her powerful wings sweeping out around us in a gust of wind and dust. When I looked down, the rooftop crawled with people. Denning had finally shown up, though he’d been MIA since before the zombie attack. By the looks of things as we banked to the south, Denning and Valley were arguing. At least, Valley took a swing at Denning just before we lost them from sight.

“Just head south, Eve. And stay high enough that we can’t be seen from the ground.”

“Not a problem,” she said.

Pamela shivered and I tightened my arms around her. Though in some ways she reminded me of Berget, in others she was completely opposite. Her coloring, of course, her age was close to what Berget would be now, and her loyalty. But Berget had never had a feisty bone in her; in that, Pamela was so different. I had to believe that whoever had taken Berget had treated her well, because I doubted she would have survived otherwise. Pamela, on the other hand, would survive with or without me. She was, in some ways, more like me than I’d thought at first.

Already, she was growing and changing, her acceptance of this new world she’d been introduced to as natural as if she’d been born to it. A blessing and curse all rolled into a tidy little package, one that she would have her entire life, however long that would end up being.

I Tracked the kids and sat bolt upright. Fuck, the Necromancer had moved them! I felt the pull as strongly as before, a tether that circled around and pulled me in the opposite direction of where we were headed.

“Eve, swing around. The kids have been moved.”

Pamela sucked in a breath. “How will Alex and Deanna and Will find us?”

I grit my teeth as Eve banked hard to the left, her body slicing through the skim of clouds around us.

“They won’t.”

M
illy had him standing with his nose pressed into the corner of her hotel room, like he was some ill-behaved child. He could hear and smell, but that was it. The witch’s perfume was overwhelming, the scent of roses so heavy it felt like he was suffocating in it.

The vampire was back, which was what had precipitated O’Shea’s current position.

“I’m telling you, I have complete control over him,” Milly snapped.

“Witch. I wasn’t asking.” There was the sound of a slap, and while O’Shea wasn’t overly fond of the vampire, he wished he could have seen Milly get smacked around.

“You bastard, I’ll make you pay for that,” she screeched. “Liam, kill him!”

He spun and leapt at the vampire, toppling him to the ground. For once, he agreed with the command Milly gave him, and it made all the difference. His body unleashed all the pent up frustration and need to kill, and teeth and claws ripped through flesh as he pummeled the vampire with everything he had. That lasted all of twenty seconds before Faris put an end to it.

Faris laughed, his hands shooting out toward Liam, clamping the agent’s arms flat to his sides, effectively stopping O’Shea from moving. As if he were a child.

“Oh, wolf, if only you knew the power you carried, you’d be a formidable opponent. One worthy of my time and efforts.” The vampire shifted his head to one side. “As it is, you are a royal pain in my ass— and until Rylee realizes you aren’t coming back, I think it’s safe to say you are very much in my way.”

With a quick flick, Faris removed the torc while Milly screamed.

O’Shea scrambled back from him, his hands going involuntarily to his throat. “Why would you help me?”

Laughing, Faris smiled down at him. “Is that what you think I did?”

Before he could say anything else, O’Shea felt it, the pressure that had been unleashed. Milly had made sure the wolf was buried—the wolf and whatever else lay inside of him.

With a pained howl, he grabbed his head, the force of the wolf building until his skin split and the beast roared forward, all sense of humanity fleeing.

Faris continued his lecture. “You see, wolf, when you stop the natural progression of something, particularly in our world, it builds. Like an avalanche growing as it scours a mountainside. And if you unleash it after all that time building.” He made a popping sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

The witch lifted her hand and Faris was suddenly on her, his face inches from hers. “If you want my continued protection, Milly, I suggest you re-think your next action.”

Sniffling, she managed to speak. “It’s been too long, the torc shouldn’t have come off.”

The vampire continued to smile. “I know.”

“Why don’t you just kill him then?”

Faris tsked. “The only reason I don’t kill him now is that I want Rylee to trust me. She can’t do that if I kill the man she loves, can she?”

He turned his face back to Liam. “Happy hunting, wolf. Just so you know, there will be no coming back for you.”

O’Shea’s entire world crumbled as the wolf took full control, wiping out his humanity in one fell swoop. Though he tried to hang on, O’Shea and everything he was got pushed back, deep into the recesses of his mind.

His last human thought was of her. The girl with the tri-colored eyes, the girl whose name had already fled but the scent and image, the touch and feel of her was burned into his soul so deep that even the wolf couldn’t extinguish her. She was his mate, forever, his all, his heart.

Hope flickered.

She would come for him.

*-*-*-*

It felt like a nasty case of déjà vu with a slight twist.

Pamela and I were crouched on the rooftop of an older four-story home in the countryside, the Necromancer below us inside the confines of the home. Now that I knew who she was and had seen her picture, I could Track her as well as the kids. Her mind was a jumble of emotions fighting to be heard, clamouring overtop of one another. I blocked her and focussed on the kids.

“What now?” Pamela asked, her hand gripping the handle of the long knife I’d given her. I pulled my crossbow off my back and set a bolt in the channel.

“We go in quietly, see if we can’t knock her out and get the opal on her. It’ll be the only way without Deanna here to help.”

Pamela nodded. “And there’ll be zombies, won’t there?”

“Yes. But they’re slow. Let me go first, I’ll clear the way. You finish off any that I wound. Okay? But no magic unless you absolutely have to.”

“All right.”

Eve had already headed south, though she’d argued with me about it. Finally, though, she’d agreed when I’d pointed out that Alex, Will, and Deanna had no idea where we were, and there was no way we had to contact them.

Setting the butt of the crossbow tight into my shoulder, I crept forward. The rooftop was mainly an open solarium, half-dead plants wilting in their pots, tile set into the roof for footing and even a few garden statues.

We moved quickly, looking for the way down into the house. Pamela found it after a few minutes of looking, partially buried under a large pot filled with dirt and a withered stick that maybe at one point had been a tree or bush.

“Here, we’ll lift it together,” I said, gripping the edge of the old copper flowerpot.

With a heave, we rolled it sideways with almost no sound. So far so good.

I crouched and slid one hand over the rusted latch. Jaw tight, I pulled it as slowly as I could, praying for a silent mechanism. There was a muffled screech of metal on rusted metal. Wincing, I gave up the subtlety, wrenched the latch open, and jerked the trap door upward.

It gave way, the hinges mercifully silent, though I wasn’t sure how much that would help us now. I peered down into the blackness of what appeared to be the attic. Maybe no one had heard the noise? I Tracked the kids; they were all still here, only a floor or two below us.

“Leave the door open and wait for me to give you the okay,” I said, swinging the crossbow onto my back and then lowering myself through the trap door.

Dropping to the floor below, I waited in a perfectly still crouch. The darkness seemed benign for once.

“Pamela.”

“Coming,” she whispered, lowering herself to hang from the lip of the trap door and then dropping to land beside me.