Whisper of Shadows (The Diamond City Magic Novels) (15 page)

Dalton had reported back to him, of course. I couldn’t even pretend to be surprised. Vernon must have been waiting on us, knowing we’d walk past here eventually.

“I have some information that may interest you.”

“What’s in it for you?” Taylor asked.

He ignored that. “The FBI is not the only party with an interest in your friend, Clayton Price. Others have watched to see if his talent would reawaken.”

How many people knew about Price’s talent? Apparently he and I were among the few who’d been in the dark.

I shook my head. “I don’t get it. What’s the big deal? Lots of people have destructive talents.”

“That is true, but his may be of particular value.”

“Why?”

“It depends on what his talent actually is.”

“You’re dodging the question.”

“I am,” he agreed. “But for good reason. You haven’t yet encountered his talent. It might be better if you don’t have any preconceived notions about it. What I believe it might be is just an educated guess and that based on limited information.”

“You know the story of his kidnapping,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve kept abreast of the case. We make a point of tracking powerful talents when they crop up on the radar. He may prove a powerful weapon. Or he may become an enemy.”

“We?” Taylor pounced on the pronoun. “Who is
we
?”

“Interested parties.”

“How very vague of you,” she said.

“Now isn’t the time,” he replied.

“That’s right. Just like mushrooms. Keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit,” I said.

His mouth thinned. Obviously, he didn’t find my comment amusing. It did, however, hit the nail on the head, and he knew it.

“I have come out of hiding to tell you all you need to know. All that is
safe
to know,” he amended.

I stopped suddenly and faced my father. My heart thudded against my ribs. God, it hurt to look at him. I had loved him so much. But everything I felt, everything I remembered, might all be fiction. Probably was. I think that hurt the worst. I’d practically hero-worshipped him. I now second-guessed every memory. And even if they were all real and true, I knew now that his kind-father routine hid a much darker man, one capable of killing his daughter rather than letting her reveal her secrets. I couldn’t reconcile that cold, brutal man with the loving father I remembered.

“So get on with it. Say what you want to say and then leave us alone.”

He examined my face, his blue eyes darkening with emotion. It might have been pain, or regret, or maybe he was just hungry. I refused to care.

“Very well. In a nutshell, others are interested in Clayton Price and his talent and they will be coming for him now that the FBI has made a move. They won’t want to risk losing him to insanity. You are watched as well, Riley. Soon, someone will come for you, too.”

Vernon dug in his pocket and pulled out a brass key. He held it out to me. I didn’t take it.

“What’s that for?”

“Use it when you need me. I’ll send help.”

“Or you’ll track me wherever I go.”

“There’s no active magic. You can tell. Look at it.”

He was right. It was harmless. For now. “That doesn’t mean it does what you say it does.”

“True.” He dropped the key into my pocket. “Use it or not, it’s up to you. But I
will
come to you if you activate it.”

I was tempted to throw it back at him, but I didn’t. I couldn’t even say why. Maybe it was just the residue of how much I’d loved and trusted him. I could always throw it away later.

“Is that all?”

“No. Be careful, Riley. Clayton Price was dangerous before and he’s likely to be more so. His experience with the FBI might leave him unstable, or worse.”

The idea sent razors spinning through my gut. My lips twisted. “Been there, done that. Thanks to you.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “If that’s all you’ve got, then you can leave now.”

He gave a faint shake of his head. “Oh no. We’ll never be done. The two of you are my daughters, and whatever you think of me, I will always look after you.” A smile softened the harshness of his expression. “You have both grown into strong, exceptional, talented women.”

“No thanks to you,” Taylor said.

“Of course it’s thanks to me,” he said. “Without me you wouldn’t have the skills, the strength, or the knowledge you do.”

“I guess Mom was nothing more than Kleenex,” Taylor shot back.

His answering smile sent a chill down my spine. “Mel is and always will be brilliant and brave.” Even so, he gave her no credit for raising us.

He turned his head slightly, and it was like a cloud lifted. I suddenly caught a glimpse of the real man. He might look mild-mannered and intellectual, like a college history professor, but beneath that veneer he was terrifying. Worse than Touray, who scared the shit out of me most of the time.

Price’s brother was ruthless and brutal, but at least I understood him. He was driven by the need to protect his own. Underneath everything, Touray really cared. But where he was motivated by passion and the urge to protect, this man—Vernon Brussard, the stranger who was my father—was cold-blooded and calculating. To him, people were nothing more than pieces on a chessboard, even his own family. He’d tried to keep my talent from falling into the ‘wrong’ hands by killing me. In that split second, I saw the merciless savagery hiding behind the smile in his eyes and the jut of his jaw. This man wouldn’t hesitate to use me or Taylor. A leopard didn’t change his spots. He’d do or say anything to manipulate us. The fact that we were his daughters only cemented his belief that he had a right to use us. He’d made us; we belonged to him to do with as he pleased.

Or so he thought. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. I stepped back. “Stay the hell away from us.”

“I don’t think so. But I will say good-bye for now. Do be careful.” He started to turn away. His limo had pulled up behind him. He looked back over his shoulder.

“While you’re in the compound, you should visit section nine. You might find it interesting. Oh, and Riley, should you help Agent Arnow with her problem, be prepared. The stakes are much higher in that game.” He touched his fingers to his hat in a little salute and then stepped inside the car. His two minions followed, and a moment later they drove away.

I looked at Taylor. She looked spitting mad. White dents framed her nostrils, and her mouth was a thin white line.

“We should go,” I said. The hangar was only another couple of blocks. I started walking, my chest tight. Taylor caught up with me in a few steps.

“Of all the gall,” she said. “He thinks he’s going to get daddy privileges now that he’s decided to return from the dead?”

“It’s worse than that.”

She frowned at me, clearly expecting a different response. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that he has plans for us.”

“What do you mean? What kinds of plans?”

“I don’t know, but everything he’s done—he’s like a farmer planting seeds and waiting for harvest. I think we’re getting ripe for his needs.”

“That’s—” Taylor couldn’t find the words. “What needs?”

“Nothing that ends well for us.”

She digested that. “It’s you he wants.”

“Maybe it was a long time ago, but I think he’s got his eye on you now, too. And Leo and Jamie and maybe Mel, too. All of you have talents and skills. I’m sure he’s got uses for you.”

She didn’t answer as she considered what I’d said. Finally, as we turned into the driveway and approached the door of the hangar, she glanced at me. “What are you going to do with the key?”

“Keep it.”

“Why?”

“Do you remember that fable about the frog and the scorpion? Where the scorpion needs to cross the river and the frog refuses because the scorpion will kill him, and the scorpion argues that that is stupid because if he kills the frog, he’ll die too. So the frog gives him a ride and then in the middle of the river, the scorpion stings the frog and they both drown.”

“What’s that got to do with Dad and the key?”

“As he’s dying, the frog asks why he did it. The scorpion says, ‘it’s in my nature. I can’t help it.’ Vernon is a scorpion. He’s going to use us. It’s his nature. We can count on it. It’s as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The key will protect his property. Keep us from falling into the wrong hands. So we can trust that when we need him, he’ll show up because he doesn’t want anybody else to have us.”

“I can see that. But you know, just because we want help, it doesn’t mean he’ll do it in a way that we like. He might rescue us from a burning building, but he’d leave everybody else we care about to cook.”

“We won’t let that happen,” I said.

“How are we going to stop it?”

“We’re going to play his game better than he does. And we’re going to win.”

If only it would be that easy.

Chapter 11

WE MADE THE FLIGHT up to Honigstock Peak without any hitches. It was on the southeast side of Diamond City. Getting there was weirdly silent, with no engine or rotor sounds whatsoever. All I heard was the whistle of the wind around us and the clicks and adjustments as Taylor took care of business. Usually we used headsets just to be able to hear ourselves think.

We had waited until darkness fell, then lifted off. We rose into the sky and shot west across the caldera. On the other side, we’d bank and come around on course. Taylor flew the Eurocraft with a deft touch. She wore a set of goggles that I assumed gave her night vision. I sat in the front seat beside her, watching the lights of Diamond City grow smaller. Heat blasted into the cabin space, fighting the exterior cold as snow began to swirl thick through the air. It was like flying inside of a snow globe.

“I can’t believe it’s so quiet,” I said as we rose higher into the night.

“It’s magic tech I commissioned awhile back. I can charge more for the flight tours and I’ve had movie people wanting to use my service. Got it installed a month or so ago, but I haven’t really had a chance to use it. The nice thing is that it doesn’t take a lot of power. The spells loop into one another and I only need a recharge every few weeks or so. It cost just about as much as the helicopter did, but it’s totally worth it.”

“Handy for tonight, anyway.”

Taylor grinned. “Ain’t it?”

She’d also shut off the helicopter’s transponder and slapped a fake registration number over the real number. Even if we were seen, nobody would connect it to Taylor or me or Price.

As we climbed over the western rim of the caldera, the wind buffeted us, and we shimmied and bounced despite Taylor’s expert handling of the stick.

As the snow turned blinding, I wondered how we were going to land. I figured GPS would get us to the right coordinates, but that wasn’t going to get us safely down to the ground. Steep mountain ground with trees and snow. My foot pressed down on my invisible brakes. I made myself relax. Taylor had flown in wars, and she often flew rescues in the mountains in far worse conditions than this. She knew what she was doing.

I wasn’t ready for when we abruptly started to descend after about a half-hour flight. I gasped as we seemed to rocket downward at a steep angle. The silence of the whole thing made it worse.

“Nervous?” Taylor flashed a grin at me. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.” She was in her element.

She leveled off, and we slowed so that we were almost hovering. I could see patches of dark and light below that had to be trees and snow on the mountain. They spread outward and up and down on the left side of the helicopter.

“Bugs Bunny, this is Roadrunner,” Taylor said into headset. “Go for coyote action.”

Taylor watched the ground below out her window, the helicopter bouncing and swinging on the wind. All of a sudden we started dropping. My stomach rose into my throat, and my hands clenched on the sides of the seat.

We turned and spiraled down a ways, and then we dropped down to land. We jolted and scraped over the landing site, and the helicopter settled at an angle. Taylor began shutting it down, and I heaved a sigh, forcing myself to release my fingers from their death grip on the seat.

“Good flying,” I said. “What was that Bugs Bunny business?”

“I had Jamie and Leo set off a couple of flares and drop them in my landing zone near the cave tunnel we’re using. The heat was enough to show me where to land.” She tapped the sides of her goggles. “Thermal imaging. I can see heat signatures with these.”

Just then my door was pulled open. Jamie stood there.

“About time,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I unbuckled my harness and slid out. He steadied me until I found my footing and then guided me across the clearing. Our landing zone was a semiflat shelf surrounded by trees on one side and a steep escarpment on the other. Buried boulders shouldered up through the snow. The helicopter sat slightly tip-tilted, rocking slightly. The skids settled unevenly across rocks and lumpy snow.

Taylor, Leo, and Dalton were busy installing three ground cleats to stabilize the craft. Dalton and Leo each carried one end of the first of three steel rods from where they lay on one side of the clearing. They were five feet long and about four inches in diameter.

Taylor indicated where she wanted it placed, and the rod sank down into the dirt and rock. When only a foot remained, the top flattened and formed two ears. Dalton and Leo fetched another while Taylor fastened down the rope she’d secured to one of the skids. They repeated the process twice more until Taylor was satisfied the Eurocraft wasn’t going anywhere.

“I used quick release knots,” she said as we pulled our gear out of the helicopter. “But all the same, keep a sharp knife handy in case. The knots might freeze, and if we’re in a hurry, I want to be able to lift off quick.”

The cave entrance was really a burrow, a couple feet across and less than that high. More than a little aware that everyone was watching me, I crawled inside, pushing my backpack ahead of me. No one could see my stomach clenching so hard it hurt, or the way my knees shook, or the sweat that broke out all over my body.

Inside, a covered lantern provided a light. Several duffel bags sat in a heap on one side of the narrow cavern. It was about eight feet across and went about twenty feet or so before darkness swallowed it. It smelled musty and earthy. Animal bones and bits of fur and feathers covered the floor, along with a thick mat of leaves and grass. If I had to guess, this was a bear house. I wondered where the residents were. Hopefully somewhere else and fast asleep.

“How did you get all this stuff in through that hole?” I asked.

“We didn’t. We parked our vehicles a few miles away and came down a branch of this tunnel. Gives us two ways out in case we need it,” Leo said.

Jamie crawled through last, dusting himself off. “I let Mel know we’re on our way. We’ve got an hour before she and Agent Arnow go in.”

“Better hurry, then,” Leo said.

Dalton remained weirdly quiet, like a vulture watching us. I eyed him. I wondered if he knew Vernon had intercepted Taylor and me. I wondered just how much Dalton new about Vernon and his plans. One thing I was certain of, asking wasn’t going to get me anywhere. He gave me a little nod. I had no idea what it meant. I turned away.

The three men hoisted the duffels over their shoulders. Leo led the way, with Taylor following, then me, Dalton, and Jamie bringing up the rear. Both my brothers trailed fingers along the walls. The sound gave me chills, like fingernails on a blackboard. It was about as bad. Both of them wore gloves made of what looked like chain mail, only very fine. At least the sound of metal scraping rock distracted me from my claustrophobia. I wasn’t sure which I preferred. Either way, I was a basket case by the time we arrived at our destination.

It took us more than a half hour to get there. Mostly the passage through the mountain was natural. Jamie started on one of his geological treatises, and I didn’t listen. I knew he was trying to distract me, and I was grateful, but I didn’t really care about tectonics or rock solubility or anything else he was nattering on about.

We dropped downward. The cave system narrowed and widened with little warning. At one point, we had to elbow-crawl through on our stomachs. Taylor helped me stand after I came through, then patted my back as I leaned on my knees to catch my breath. One day I’d get over my claustrophobia, I promised myself.

The exit from our cave had been newly created. It wasn’t that big, maybe three foot by three foot and narrower at the bottom than the top.

“It’s the best we could do in the time frame we had,” Jamie said apologetically. “The basalt is damned hard to break up.”

I knew the technique. They’d push metal into the faults and cracks and then expand it, slowly powdering the rock and creating more faults and fissures until eventually they chewed it away. It was similar to the way that water wore at rock, but much faster. It was lucky that the big mine owners hadn’t discovered what Jamie and Leo could do. They’d have pulled my brothers into their mining operations, whether they wanted to be miners or not.

Just like me.

I glanced at them. I wasn’t the only member of my family whose talent put them at risk for kidnapping and modern-day slavery. Mel, too. Helping Price was going to lose her the protection of the FBI. She’d be a plum ripe for the picking.

Realization struck me like a fist. My family needed protection. My friends needed protection. Not just from Vernon or Savannah Morrell or the FBI. It wasn’t until that moment that I truly understood Touray. His father had created his organization to protect his own, starting with his sons and stretching out to include all the innocent people in Diamond City. Now Price’s brother was following in his father’s footsteps. It was like an old-time lawman putting on the sheriff’s star to protect a town from all the wild gangs of outlaws. He did what he did in the name of protecting his own. In that moment, I understood that I was going to have to do the same thing if I wanted to keep my own little tribe safe. Starting with Price and then Touray.

My laugh caught in my throat.

I’d just adopted Touray into my tribe. Whether he knew it or not, I’d just made him my responsibility. He was so going to hate that. Then again, I hated that in order to protect my family and friends, I was asking them to risk their lives. No, not asking. They’d volunteered. Because I wasn’t the only one who wanted to protect the people I loved. I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t have a right to stop them. How the hell did I protect them when they were walking straight into danger? The fact was, all I could do was my part, trust them to do theirs, and hope to hell the plan worked.