Wrong Side Of Dead (29 page)

Leah first, then pass out.

“Yeah, you can pass out soon,” Baylor said.

Okay, so I hadn’t just thought that last part.

He squeezed my shoulder. “I think your brain-to-mouth censor is fried.”

Fuck it all. I looked into the cell and picked my spot. Felt for my tap. It danced out of reach, the power teasing me, there and yet impossibly far away. God, I wanted Wyatt. He’d help me. Between the two of us, we’d summoned half a Jeep into a log cabin. Together we could get Leah out of that damned cell before we all drowned in the river.

But Wyatt wasn’t there. He might never be by my side again. My throat closed and my nose stung. I coughed—it might have been a sob. The Break sparked. My tap hit me like a sucker punch, and I was moving. Flying apart. Coming back together. Less water, metal floor. I reached out blindly, flailing for a body. Touched skin. Grabbed hold.

Back in, to the other side. Agony turned me inside out. Freezing water pushed me down, under. I choked on it.

I didn’t want to drown, but I really, really wanted to sleep.

The gentle lull of movement greeted me as I woke. I was on my back, resting on something moderately soft, with the hum of an engine close by. Cymbals still crashed behind my eyes. I was wet, chilled despite the presence of what felt like a blanket.

I grunted something I intended to be “where am I?” and came out a garbled mess of muttering.

“Evy?”

Male voice. I huffed some semblance of response.

“We’re on our way back to Watchtower. Just rest, okay?”

Tybalt. Sounded like him. I tried words again and managed, “Therians?”

“They’re fine, all coming around. Turns out Thackery rigged up an electrified floor to keep them docile. Used it to knock them all out just as we got there.”

The very image of him electroshocking Aurora and Ava made my blood boil. I tried to sit up, and only managed to make my head spin and my entire body spasm. “Fuuuuuuuuck,” I groaned.

“Then keep still.”

“Why?”

“Because sitting up is obviously painful.”

I almost smiled at his error. “No, why them? What did Thackery do?”

His silence only compounded my unease. I peeked through one eyelid. He was crouched on the floor between the seats of an SUV. I could see Astrid watching us from the front passenger seat, wrapped in loose sweats, her face stony. I didn’t know who was driving; I couldn’t see.

“Leah told us that Thackery was draining their blood a few pints at a time,” Tybalt said. “Because of their accelerated healing, they replenished faster than a human would. He’d use the floor to knock them out, then go in. She said she woke up weak, groggy, and with a cotton ball taped to the interior of her elbow. She put two and two together.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. It was a horrible déjà vu to what Thackery had done to me—drained me to the point of physical death, let me heal, then took more blood. What the fuck was he doing with Therian blood?

“He’ll be telling us shortly,” Astrid said.

I guess the censor button was still broken.

“The what?”

I ignored her and drifted for a while, letting my bruised and mangled brain repair itself. Didn’t wake again until movement ceased and a hand squeezed my arm.

“Evy?” Tybalt said. “We’re back. Can you walk?”

I wasn’t even sure I could sit up. “Think so.”

By some miracle, I managed to conquer sitting upright. Any other day, I might have been embarrassed into doing it on my own and risk falling on my face. Today I gratefully accepted Tybalt’s help. I leaned on him as we climbed out of the SUV, careful of his arm’s blade attachment, and I may have actually clung a little while we walked out of the parking lot and into the main Watchtower hall.

People were everywhere, chatting in clusters. I spotted Paul and Shelby among them, still bloodstained, but as eager as the rest of us to see this thing finished. The crowd knew we had Thackery. They knew we’d found the missing Therians. Well, most of them.

“Ava?” I whispered.

“Nothing yet,” Tybalt replied.

“Where’s Thackery?”

“Being secured in one of the empty stores, since the jail is still wrecked. They’ll interrogate him soon.”

“Goodie. I want in.”

“You can barely walk.”

“Don’t need to walk to watch.”

“Point taken. You want to change first?”

I took stock. My clothes were damp, but not horribly wet. The chafing I could live with. The front of my shirt was stained with blood—my own and others, I’m sure. I kind of smelled. “No,” I said. If I offended anyone, they could suck it.

Tybalt aimed us toward Operations, which didn’t seem right. “You said he was in a store.”

“Yeah, he is, but you aren’t participating in the interrogation. Astrid’s orders.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You could have killed yourself teleporting everyone today, Evy. Relax for ten minutes.”

“Aurora and Ava are still missing, Tybalt.”

“I know that. But you can’t help them if you end up in some sort of magic-overload coma.”

Coma. Wyatt. Shit, I should go see him. But I needed answers, too. Needed to find Aurora and Ava, and to make sure they were safe. I was Ava’s godmother, her
Aluli
, and I had to save her. Period.

Tybalt steered us through Operations and into the War Room. Some of the seats were already occupied. I ignored exact faces in favor of what was being projected onto one of the whiteboards—Walter Thackery, bound to a chair, in the middle of an empty store.

“Oh good,” I said as Tybalt put me into a chair. “Pay-per-view.” Further proving my edit button was broken, I said, “He’s not going to blow up, is he?”

Someone at the table snickered.

“He was checked out thoroughly before we brought him inside,” Tybalt replied. “No detectable explosives or tracing devices.”

“Detectable.” We hadn’t detected anything on Felix. Then again, we hadn’t been smart enough to check properly that time—a mistake I bet no one was eager to repeat. “Awesome.”

“It is what it is.”

“Evy?” Rufus asked. His voice startled me into swiveling my chair around too fast. My ankle slammed into the footrest of his wheelchair and sent a shock up my leg.

I hissed through my teeth.

“You look lousy,” he said.

“Well, good, because I feel pretty damn lousy,” I replied.

My tone slid right past him. “We watched everything from here. I’m amazed you were able to use your Gift so many times in such a short span.”

“Ditto. I think I lost a few million brain cells in the process, though.” We hadn’t really spoken in almost a month. Since the morning Boot Camp was attacked, and Rufus told me he’d been there eleven years ago when Wyatt’s family was slaughtered by vampire bounty hunters. Rufus admitted to being one of those bounty hunters, young, the apprentice of the man who’d decided that innocent victims shouldn’t be allowed to live to repeat what they’d seen.

He still hadn’t told Wyatt. Now he might never get the chance.

“Have you been to see him?” I asked.

Rufus shook his head, hazel gaze casting downward. “No,” he said, lowering his voice. “There’s no point. You can’t confess your sins to a man who can’t hear you.”

“Might make you feel better.”

“I don’t deserve to have my conscience assuaged by a deathbed confession, Evy.”

Before I could give him a verbal smack-down for several different parts of that statement, someone closer to the head of the table said “Showtime” pretty damned loud. A hush fell over the group, which had doubled in size in mere minutes. Someone even dimmed the lights.

On-screen, we had a wide, slightly downward angle of Thackery. Three figures entered the frame, easily identifiable from the backs of their heads: Phin, Astrid, and Baylor. Phin was still streaked in black paint, his majestic wings out, Coni blade in one hand. He flanked Astrid on her left; Baylor was on her right. As an interrogation squad, they were an impressive trio.

Thackery remained stone-faced.

“He won’t talk,” I said. My voice was loud in the hushed room.

“They dosed him with Sodium Pentothal,” Tybalt said.

Truth serum meant little to someone with a strong enough mind, and Thackery had that in spades. I guessed we’d see how it worked itself out.

“Walter Thackery,” Astrid said, her Command voice sharp and furious, “you are wanted by the Assembly of Clan Elders for the kidnapping of seven Therians, as well as the murder of Michael Jenner. You are also wanted for the kidnapping and torture of Phineas el Chimal.

“You are additionally wanted for innumerable crimes against humankind, including the murder of Rhys Willemy, the deaths of thirty-one humans one month ago at the facility known as Boot Camp, and the infection of dozens of humans with the vampire parasite. You are wanted by the vampire Families for the foreign illness plaguing their membership. How do you answer?”

Thackery looked right at her. And yawned.

A few people in the War Room hissed. Someone growled.

“You are very cavalier with your life,” Astrid said.

“No matter what I say to your charges,” Thackery replied, “you will sentence me to death. I prefer to not answer.”

“This is no human court. There is no right to not incriminate yourself, nor is there a right to a speedy trial. You are guilty of these crimes, whether by your own word or by mine. The question you must answer is how quickly you wish to die.”

“I wish to go free.”

Laughter rippled through the room. I didn’t laugh, because I knew Thackery was dead serious. He still had two people very dear to me, and three Lupa were loose in the city. He hadn’t played his last card yet.

“What makes you think that’ll happen?” Baylor asked.

Thackery turned his head, aiming his quiet smile at Phineas. “The child is adorable.”

I started to stand, my only thought to wrap my hands around Thackery’s neck, and was pulled back into my chair. I wasn’t even in the same room with him. My heart pounded in my ears. My face flushed with fury.

Phin’s only sign of emotion was the slight arching of his wings. He had one of the most impressive poker faces I’d ever seen, and it was on in full force right now, even though his emotions had to be churning like a cyclone. “Where are they?” Phin asked, each word a bullet of hate.

Thackery blinked slowly, likely forcing away the effects of the Sodium Pentothal. I’d felt its effects before; it wasn’t easy to fight. “They’re safe. They’re with my boys.”

Shitfuckhell
.

“The Lupa.”

“Yes. Always have a contingency plan.”

“Let me guess,” Astrid said. “You in exchange for them?”

“Not quite. Myself in exchange for the child.”

“And her mother?”

He pressed his lips together, thoughtful. “I believe the mother’s life is a fair trade for all of the Halflings you slaughtered today.”

Phin’s knife hand jerked. Even through the camera’s lens, his control was obviously slipping. My own hands were fisted in my lap, fingers numb, my entire body vibrating with hate for the man in that room.

“Those Halflings, as you call them, were dead the moment you allowed them to be infected,” Baylor said.

Thackery clucked his tongue. “You forget your old Hunter friend. They were not like the half-Bloods who roam the streets and mindlessly infect and kill. My Halflings were controlled. I found a way.”

How do you control the bloodlust, Felix? What’s Thackery giving you?

“You call emotional blackmail control?” Baylor asked.

“Felix was a special case. He had unique insight that I found valuable. As for the rest, if they didn’t wish to earn the right to their stability by joining us … well, they were dealt with.”

“They were executed.”

“I couldn’t allow them free to mindlessly infect others. I need them to stay close, controlled, until I can cure them.”

Goddamn, the nutjob still thought he could cure the vampire parasite. Thackery had moved beyond obsession to absolute fanaticism—a perfect belief in his own superior intelligence.

“And you offered this nonexistent cure to Felix, just in case blackmail wasn’t enough,” Baylor said.

“Of course. He hated what he was. The dream of one day being free and returning to his loved ones was the perfect incentive.”

Next to me, Tybalt let out an impressive string of expletives.

“I gave all of them a purpose,” Thackery said. “A mission. Direction, which are things our young people sorely lack.”

“You really think you’re the hero here?” Baylor asked. “You changed their basic nature without their consent. Making someone sick and then offering them treatment doesn’t negate the original crime. It only proves intent and ill will.”

“Call it what you like,” Thackery replied. “But the vampires you’re so eager to help started this plague. I did what I had to do in order to further a cure for our people and to put an end to theirs. My Halflings proved that there can be life after infection. They don’t all have to die because of what those vampires have done to us.”

“The vampires you infected today did not kill your wife and son.”

Thackery flinched and, for a moment, he looked sad. Wore the appearance of the broken man he was inside. Then he blinked hard and the weakness was gone. “Have you ever lost someone you care about to the parasite?” he asked.

Baylor nodded. “Two Hunters. I put them down myself.”

Ouch
.

“And the half-Bloods who infected them?”

“Killed one on the spot. One got away.”

“Do you ever think of the one that got away?”

“I like to think that some other Triad hunted him one night and killed his ass dead.”

“But you don’t know.”

“It’s the past, Thackery. I don’t live there. My life’s in the present.”

That irritating, thoughtful face came back out. “You think I’m living in the past, then,” Thackery said.

“Hell yes.”

“You may well be right, but my actions today are to preserve the future for our kind. There is nothing, save the ruling hand of a few, to prevent the Dregs you used to hunt from taking this world from us. One bite from a vampire, and it’s over. And the shape-shifters? An army of animals capable of higher thought?”