Witch Hunt (8 page)

There were no animal skins in sight this afternoon. Stonecrow wore cutoff shorts and a baggy pullover. The only reason I could identify her at that distance was that she had feathers woven into her hair, like a faint echo of the elaborate headdress she had been wearing early that morning.

For a second, I thought Stonecrow had been clued in to my presence and was trying to sneak away. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was leaning around the corner of the RV to peer at something else.

I followed her gaze to see a black SUV parked on the other side of her vehicle. It had flashing lights set into the grille and dark-tinted windows.

A pair of men in black suits stepped out. They were big guys, so much broader than me that they made me look like a skinny-assed nerd. Their necks were thick as tree trunks. Every move looked deliberate, choreographed. Only one type of person moved like that: kopides. Super-powered demon hunters.

The Union had found Stonecrow.

Wild thoughts whirled through my skull. Had Suzy reported our findings to her superiors, even knowing that I was going to the same place? Maybe she’d thought that they could get to Stonecrow first. Take away my primary incentive for remaining in town. No way she’d deliberately attempted to fuck up my day.

Whether or not it was what she had planned, that was definitely the outcome.

Stonecrow jumped into the shadows behind the next SUV, which was rocking on its suspension, like there was a dance party inside. Or some other kind of party. Then she jumped behind the next. The same one that I was hiding behind.

That was when she saw me. Horror flashed in her eyes.

Yeah, she recognized the blisters.

“
You
,” she hissed.

I lifted her bracelet. “Got something for you.”

She snatched it out of my hand then turned to bolt.

I grabbed her by the upper arm. Stonecrow twisted and just about melted out of my grip again. I was ready for her this time. Seizing both of her wrists, I shoved her back against the brick wall, giving her no room to pull off ninja maneuvers.

“Your bosses can’t have me,” Stonecrow spat. “I’d rather bury myself alive.”

“I’m not taking you to anyone else. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Doubt flickered through her eyes. They were dark brown, the color of rain-moistened grave dirt. “You’re not with them?”

“Yeah, right, glad we’re on the same page. We gotta get out of here before they see us,” I whispered. “Can you climb the fence?”

“I could if I had use of my hands.” She wasn’t fighting me anymore. I relaxed my grip on her.

Stonecrow kneed me between the legs.

It was like having a hot poker shoved into the middle of my intestines and then twisted. Nausea spread over my skin, from the tips of my hair to my fingernails, and I momentarily entertained the mental image of vomiting in her face.

My grunt of surprise was louder than I intended. By the time Stonecrow grabbed the brick wall and hefted her body halfway up, the Union suits were breaking past the line of RVs, searching for the source of the noise.

Eyes fell on me.

I realized that I recognized these guys. They weren’t just any random, anonymous Union apes; they were Joey and Eduardo, Suzy’s drinking buddies. Nice couple of young guys. Both of them had more muscles than brains and twice the strength of normal human men. Any doubts I’d had about Suzy tipping off her superiors were gone.

They ran at me as fast as they could sprint, which was, unfortunately, way too fast. Super strength comes with super speed. Not like the Flash or Superman, but a hell of a lot faster than me.

Eduardo grabbed for the back of the necrocognitive’s sweater and missed. He caught her hair instead, jerking her to the ground, pulling out a fistful of her glossy black locks as he did it. I didn’t think that was in the Union playbook.

“Hey!” I protested, just as Joey punched me in the gut. It was a little too close to where Stonecrow had hit. I crumpled. Even a big tough guy starts crying for Mama when the
juevos
take a double tap. Low blow from another dude, especially one who’d been buying me shots of tequila the other night.
Real
low blow.

“What do we do with this…thing?” Joey asked.

Eduardo shrugged. “Tie him up, toss him somewhere dark? Wait.” He peered closely at my face then began to laugh. “Oh, that’s too fucking good. Joe, check him out. Suzy was right.”

Now they were both laughing. After a second, I worked up a halfhearted smile, trying to chuckle along. I probably would have laughed at them if they got dusted in the face, too. “Yeah, it’s me. Suzy sent you this way to pick me up?”

“No, just Stonecrow,” Eduardo said. “None of us thought you’d be dumb enough to show up too.”

Guess I was that dumb. “You want to untie me now?”

Joey punched me in the stomach again. I fell to my knees.

“Guess not,” I gasped.

“So?” Joey asked.

After a moment of silent deliberation, Eduardo seemed to come to a decision. “We’ll just take care of both of them. Lucky day, Joey, lucky day.”

I tried to feel satisfied at the sight of Stonecrow’s wrists zip tied and her petite form hauled toward the black SUVs, but even though it was her fault that I was in custody, I couldn’t work up the satisfaction. This was
my
necrocognitive. Not the Union’s. And I didn’t like it when any woman got treated like a piece of meat, even if she’d worked hard at deserving it.

“Come on, guys,” I said. “You’re asking for about six different citations with this behavior.”

“Shut up, Hawke,” Joey said. He pushed my wrists together and zip tied them.

My heart climbed into my throat, thudding with panic, as Joey opened the back door of the SUV and I came face to face with the yawning maw of its interior.

Briefly, I pitied everyone we’d ever made disappear into one of these black cars.

Then I was inside and the door slammed behind me.

NOTE TO SELF: BEING arrested by the Union sucks.

As it turned out, our guys were crazy fucking drivers. When Eduardo wasn’t hitting the brakes so hard that my head nearly snapped off my neck, he seemed to be veering around to catch every pothole under his tires.

“Hope you’re not too fond of the suspension,” I called to the front. I got one sunglassed glare over Eduardo’s shoulder.

Neither of them seemed interested in anything I had to say. Joey was talking into a cell phone too quietly for me to hear, and Eduardo was keeping up with his shitty driving.

It was guys like him that made my morning commute a joy.

“What are you doing talking back?” Stonecrow asked in a low whisper. “You want to make this worse?”

Worse? My face looked like ground fucking beef, I was under arrest by my own employer, and the necrocognitive I’d hoped would exonerate me was about to get tossed into a detention center far beyond my reach. And she thought a little snark was going to make it
worse
?

“You don’t get to talk. You got me into this.” My pissed-off face was much better than these punks could muster, but Stonecrow didn’t seem fazed.

“You got yourself into…whatever this is.” She was looking pale.

“Either way, we’re both being taken to an OPA field office for questioning.” I glared at her. “Have you been interrogated before? I’ve been on the other side of it, so I can give some pointers.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Sure, whatever.” I rolled my shoulders to keep them from getting tense and raised my voice again. “We getting to the office soon? I’ve got to piss like a racehorse.”

No one answered me.

Fuck all this bullshit.
I wasn’t letting Suzy’s mix-up land me in prison.

We were going to get out of this.

“Don’t suppose you got any of that dust left over?” I asked Stonecrow quietly. I didn’t think boils were going to do much to slow down Eduardo and Joey, hardened kopides that they were, but enchanted dust could be useful for other reasons. I could try to change it, use its power.

“They patted me down, asshole. They took all the supplies I had.” She pulled a face. “And copped a feel while they were at it.”

They hadn’t fondled me, but they’d taken all of my notebooks, too. And the gun that had been bouncing uselessly against my hip. And the Stonecrow file. I’d thought I had nothing when I had to flee my apartment, but now I
really
had nothing. At least Stonecrow would still have her hideous teal RV if she escaped.

Stonecrow gave me a scrutinizing look. “If you’re not with them, then why did you assault me during my job last night?”

“You mean the creepy death ritual.”

“That’s my
job
,” she said.

“First of all, I wasn’t assaulting you. I was taking you into custody. Big difference. Second of all, I’ve been looking for you to ask for help. I wanted you to use the creepy death ritual to talk to someone.”

Stonecrow sniffed at me. “You’ve been near death recently.”

Yeah, because
that
was hard to guess.

“I was just in a cemetery. Remember?”

“No, not that.” Her eyes trailed over me, intense and focused. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nice look to get. “Who was killed?”

“That’s what I was going to have you help me with before…” I jerked my chin at the dashboard of the car, indicating Eduardo and Joey.

That was when I realized that we weren’t in the city anymore.

The freeway had turned into a highway outside the city at some point, and there wasn’t any stop-and-go traffic left. The buildings had thinned out, and sandy hills decorated with brush surrounded the road.

“What’s wrong now?” Stonecrow asked.

“We’re not going to the office.” I looked out the back window like that would change what I was seeing. It didn’t. Los Angeles was a quickly vanishing memory behind us. The closest field office to the RV park was in the complete opposite direction. We were headed into the deep desert instead.

“You got
anything
in your bag of tricks?” I muttered as the SUV pulled off onto a dirt road away from traffic entirely. Not that dropping my voice meant anything at that point. We didn’t have much time. “Something distracting? Flash powder? Poison ivy?”

“Why would I—what’s going on?”

“I just need something magical!”

Grudgingly, Stonecrow squirmed onto her side, rolling her hip to offer her back pocket to me. No, not her pocket—it was empty, flat and smooth against her butt. “Underwear. Left side.” She whispered so quietly I could barely hear her.

Whoa. Okay.

I tried not to touch her too much as I wiggled a plastic bag out from under the elastic band of her underwear. Black lace.
Damn.
She’d tucked the bag inside the folded-over hem, concealing a couple grams of a gray powder that looked a lot like what she had used to fuck up my face.

“I thought you were all out,” I hissed.

She sat back. “I lied.”

Joey glanced at me over his shoulder, still talking on the phone, and I palmed the baggie.

Rubbing my thumb on the plastic, I tried to guess what was inside. Definitely some salt. Looked like a little grave dirt—I used it in many of my poultices, so I was pretty sure about that one. Maybe some nettle, too. It was only lightly enchanted.

It would have to be enough.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked, louder than before, making sure I’d be heard over the engine.

“I’m going to do it now,” Eduardo said. He wasn’t speaking to me.

“Not until we’re out of town,” Joey said. “Follow the plan.”

The plan
. Between our eastward travels and their mutterings, I was
not
feeling good about this “plan.”

I knew the Union had more outposts than the OPA did. We were mostly a bureaucratic affair—the brain to the Union’s body. They had fingers in everything, everywhere. For all I knew, they had a hidden base out this way and we were being sent there. But it wasn’t a base I knew.

If they were taking me somewhere that I didn’t have high enough clearance to see, then chances were good I wasn’t meant to come back.

Eduardo and Joey were focused away from us again. I opened the bag and carefully poured the gray dust in a tiny circle on the seat between Stonecrow and me. Her eyes widened, anger flashing over her face. She thought I was wasting it. In fact, I was casting the smallest fucking circle of power ever. Wondered if I might break a world record.

I poked the dust toward the north, south, east, west. The highway was straight as far as I could see—had to finish casting the spell before we hit a turn and messed up the orientation.

Pouring the last of the dust in the center, I snapped my fingers and closed the circle.

The magical juice inside was small enough that I didn’t even sneeze. It barely even tickled.

“With earth and stone, I call strength,” I whispered under my breath, pushing all of my meager energy into the circle, building its force with my own spirit. “With salt and…uh…”

“Nettle,” Stonecrow said.

My guess had been right. Nice. “With salt and nettle, I call strength. With the desert around us, I call strength.” Yeah, I know, it was stupid, but I’m not a poet. I don’t get fancy with my words.

But it was enough. I could see faint, coppery sparks of magic igniting within the powder.

Strength spells were one of my only specialties. Like the poultices I kept by the bed to juice up my muscles. Even a big guy can use a small edge when all of his foes are supernatural. I’d been making them daily, like protein shakes, for years. And that was probably the only reason my tiny, miserable circle of power was actually working, infusing the dust in the center with energy.

What else could I use against Eduardo and Joey? I needed
something.

My mind touched on Domingo. The kind of shit he used to pull in high school while gambling. Luck spells.

“With the wind and sun, grant me luck,” I added, and I blew gently on the dust, focusing every ounce of my concentration on my brother.

Gold sparks. Copper sparks.

Pretty pathetic magic right there.

And I was out of time. There was a bend in the road coming up, but Eduardo was signaling and slowing the car, suggesting that our trip was over.