Shadow Train (26 page)

“How?”

“Who knows?” he said, shrugging slightly and giving her a little smile. “Maybe I got too rich.” He leaned over and lightly pressed his lips to hers. “Or maybe I became too happy. With a Nephilim there doesn't have to be a reason. They despise us.”

“But what's the problem?” she asked. “If you can't die, how can he hurt you?”

“He can make the rest of my existence—many thousand more years—a living hell. He wants to arrest me and take me to trial in the Dark Territory.”

“Maybe a trial would be good,” she ventured. “I mean, if you didn't do anything. Maybe it's an opportunity for us to find out how to save your mortal soul.”

“Half soul,” he reminded her. “Even if there was a way and Azaziel knew it, he wouldn't tell me. And he doesn't have the authority to grant anyone's redemption. He's a cold, jealous Irin who hates all humans and all Nephilim.”

“Why does he hate humans?” she asked.

“Jealousy. Because Irin are banished from the light of the All, and humans are not,” he said. “It's that simple.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “All the more reason to go and find my mom. I don't think I ever told you but she studied angels for years—read everything she could get her hands on. She'll know what to do.”

“Aimee,” he was pleading now. “You have to listen to me. It's wonderful that you want to help me—but Azaziel is coming, and I cannot stay here. Don't you want to be with me, as we planned?”

“Of course I do,” she said—and she did. She didn't remember ever being as happy as Orias had made her. “Just call or text me when you get to wherever you're going, and I'll come to you. In the meantime, I'm going back to 1877 Middleburg and bringing my mother home.”

“No,” he said softly. “You're coming with me.” He took her in his arms and kissed her then, and his kiss was full of longing. So full, in fact, that she knew if she didn't get out of there she would give in to him.

* * *

And suddenly, Orias was holding only empty air. Aimee was gone.

He uttered a curse and sank into the easy chair to stare again into the dancing flames in his fireplace. He had to find her—but it would have to wait until after he had arranged his departure. And he would have to go soon. It wasn't death that frightened him. It was the kind of judgment Azaziel would pass on him.

Azaziel could add eons to his Nephilim curse. He could torture and mutilate Orias, make him so repulsive that no one would want to look at him, so that he would go through all those lifetimes completely and utterly alone. He could throw Orias into the Pit and keep him there indefinitely while Aimee grew old—and then release him on the eve of her death.

Orias knew he had to take evasive action. He had to stay a few steps ahead of Azaziel, to escape and hide until the Lord of the Prefects moved on to other business and forgot about him for a while.

There was only one thing he could do. An explosion would distract anyone who might be looking for him as he made his getaway. It had worked for him before, a couple of times. Orias had everything he needed to make the bomb—he'd been gathering it for a while, just in case, and he knew how to build it. It wouldn't kill Oberon, Azaziel or their minions, but if he was lucky it might slow them down a little and give him the precious time he needed to escape.

After he had placed it and set the timer, he would find Aimee and convince her to come away with him.

* * *

On Saturday morning, Agent Hackett lounged in a chair inside his room at the Solomon Motel on the outskirts of Middleburg, chewing on a plastic coffee stirring stick—a bad habit he'd picked up since he quit smoking. The remains of a fast-food lunch were scattered on the bed and his feet were propped up there too, atop a luridly colored duvet made from some kind of stiff synthetic fabric. Judge Judy was on TV, berating some young kid for failing to pay his child support. Hackett chuckled. No one could eviscerate people like ol' Judy.

His phone chirped then, and he was still grinning when he answered it. It took him a second or two to recognize the voice on the other end—it was the Darling kid.

“Weston. I thought you'd fallen off the face of the earth. What have you got for me?”

What he had, he said, was a piece of the ring. Finally.

“Good work,” Hackett said. “Sit tight. I'll send a car for you.”

He rallied his team, and on the way to the police station, he felt more energized than he had in days. When he was first assigned this mission, the prospect of bringing in a high-level target like Feng Xu had him salivating, and the particulars of the case were interesting. Hell—Feng Xu wasn't just high level, he was almost legendary in the counterespionage field.

Mounting his head in my trophy room,
Hackett had thought,
will make my career.
He would be able to write a ticket to whatever cushy, high-level job he wanted. But as the Middleburg mission wore on, he grew increasingly frustrated. He'd kept the recon team on point—they had half the town wired up for surveillance by now—but the surveillance had turned up nothing. He had some ideas for flushing Feng Xu out of hiding, but every time he called his superior in Washington, his orders were the same.
Be patient. Sit tight and wait. Let the target make the first move.
Well, Hackett was getting sick of waiting. There was only so much fast food and daytime TV a man could endure.

Today, however, all that had changed. The Darling kid had finally turned something up. And he learned when he got to the station, there had been another development.

“Agent Hackett, you need to see this,” the desk officer on duty said as he handed Hackett a file.

“Thanks, Johnny.” Hackett scanned the documents inside and then looked up at the officer. “Anyone check this out?”

“I did,” Johnny said. “There wasn't much to see except a broken window, but look at the description of the perps—two Asian men with black hats and daggers.”

Hackett was already nodding,

“And the only thing missing was the ring shards. These are our guys,” Johnny finished.

Hackett gave the report back to Johnny. “Make copies of this for everyone on the team. Is there any surveillance footage for that area for the time frame?”

“Already looking into it, sir,” Johnny assured him.

“Good. The snake has slithered out of his hole. It's time to find it.”

That's when Weston Darling entered, with his cute little Chinese girlfriend at his side. Hackett glared at Li, then at Weston.

“This is how you keep a mission secret? You bring your girlfriend along?” he demanded.

“But I never would have gotten the shard without her help,” Weston protested.

Hackett cursed and grumbled for a moment before finally letting the matter drop. The younger Darling would never be half the man his father was, but that wasn't Hackett's concern. All that mattered was the glistening piece of crystal the boy was now pulling out of his pants pocket.

Hackett put a thick rubber glove on before examining the ring fragment. If it generated as much power as everyone claimed, there was no way in hell he was going to touch it bare-handed. God only knew what kind of radiation might be coming off the thing.

When he was finished he called in his science officer, Rom Blipton, who placed it in a lead-lined box and walked away with it.

“Where's he taking it?” Weston asked.

“We've got a mobile lab set up out back,” Hackett said dismissively. “Come on, let's sit down over here. I want to go over this list with you one more time.”

He led the kids into a back room and sat down with them. He took a document out of the file and handed it to Weston. “This is the list you gave me—of people who might have a piece of that crystal ring.”

“Yeah?” Weston said.

“Take another look. Is there anyone else you can get to? To try to find pieces?”

Weston scanned the list. “I don't think so,” he said. “We got lucky with this one. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We don't have many opportunities to go wandering around in other people's houses, you know.”

“I guess that's true.” A plan was fast taking shape in Hackett's mind, and he wanted to make sure he had his facts straight before he took any action. If the Order of the Black Snake was planning to go around breaking into houses and collecting ring shards, he might be able to work it so that they would play right into his hands.

The plan was simple: Hackett and his men would collect the ring shards from all the kids who lived in the Flats. If they resisted, his men would ransack their homes until they found what they were looking for. That was one of the perks of being a Black-Ops agent—normal rules didn't apply. Once Hackett had all the shards from the Flats kids, the Snakes' only option would be to get the rest from the kids in Hilltop Haven—and that was where Hackett would catch them. It was gated, guarded, and already outfitted with a top-of-the-line video surveillance system, and he'd already found a vacant house where he could set up his command center. The minute the Snakes set foot in Hilltop Haven, he'd clamp down on them like a bear trap. All he had to do was catch one of their foot soldiers. Hackett was confident he could make him spill his guts about where Feng Xu was hiding. That was another perk of being off the books. He didn't have to worry about pesky things like human rights violations. And torture was a tactic that Agent Hackett rather enjoyed.

“Thanks, Weston. We appreciate your help,” Hackett said. He shook the boy's hand and then looked at the lovely young girl there with him. “And you too, miss. Thanks.”

Hackett reached for the girl's delicate hand, but she was momentarily distracted, glancing out the back window of the station, where Blipton was standing on the steps of the mobile lab, talking on his cell phone.

It was only for an instant, though, and then the girl's sharp eyes flicked back to Hackett. She took his hand and squeezed it and her strength surprised him.

“I'm Li, nice to meet you,” she said and smiled.

* * *

Saturday morning Zhai was in the basement of the Shao house. He had just run through some attack sequences on his
Mook Jong
in preparation for his battle with Rick that night and had finished his cool down. Now he was anxious to get to his violin. Master Chin would have advised him to spend the day of a fight in silent, relaxed meditation—or better yet, trying to find a way to avert the battle. He missed his sifu's wise counsel, and as the appointed time of the confrontation drew nearer, Zhai felt increasingly nervous. It wasn't his own abilities that worried him. He was confident that he could, if not defeat Rick outright, at least survive the fight and teach his former second-in-command a lesson in humility. He wasn't worried that his honor or his body would receive injury today. He was concerned that the feeling with which Shen was filling him—a jittery, buzzing sensation of uncontainable electricity—meant what it did when he'd felt it before: major events would soon come to pass in Middleburg. Last time he'd felt this way, his
sidai
Raphael had disappeared. Zhai wondered if tonight it might be his turn.

There was another possibility, too. What if Rick didn't show? He and Bran had been suspended from school for the last three days, and no one had seen them outside of school, either. But Rick never missed an opportunity for a fight. Zhai was sure that, wherever he was, he would make it back in time for their face-off.

He picked up his violin, took a few deep, relaxing breaths and began to play, eager to lose himself in the music. He'd only managed a few bars when his father entered.

“I'm sorry to interrupt, Zhai,” he said, and Zhai noticed that he was more subdued than ever. “I heard you playing. Would you be so kind as to honor a request?
Brahms concerto in D major?
”

Zhai eyed his father warily. “It's such a sad piece. Are you sure?”

“If you please.”

“Of course, Father.”

He began, the bow slithering across the strings as smoothly as a feather moving across a tabletop. It was a gentle, serene melody, and Zhai felt his apprehension, his anger, and his nervousness drifting away on the wings of the glorious, soaring strains.

When he was finished, he let the violin slip from beneath his chin. His father was smiling warmly at him, and in the simplicity of his happiness, he almost seemed childlike. The sight gave Zhai pause. He'd never once seen his father shrug off the black mantle of tension and rectitude he wrapped himself in day and night. Now, he seemed utterly fallible, flawed, human, and Zhai wondered if the fact that he knew about the tattoo over his father's heart, and hence his mortality, had made the revelation possible.

“Lovely,” his father pronounced. “Such a sweet, calming piece. Thank you. It was just what I needed.”

Zhai smiled. “I'm glad, Father.” He started putting the instrument away.

“And . . . I have another request,” his father said. “Li wants to go down to Macomb Lake this afternoon, to meet with some friends from school. Something about selecting a site for the spring break party. Bob is driving Lotus today. Will you take her?”

“Sure,” Zhai said. “But I can't stay too long. I have plans later.”

“Ah . . . Kate?” his father asked. The inflection of his words betrayed interest, but his face remained passive.

“No,” Zhai said truthfully. “With Rick.”

His father nodded. “Well, I'll tell Li you'll take her.” He turned to leave but paused in the doorway and turned back. “It has come to my attention that there are people staying in the guesthouse. Some of your friends, I believe.”

Zhai felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. He'd known it was only a matter of time before his father and Lotus found out.