Chapter 19

Turned out that I was right about the minivan. It did not fit one hundred kids.

It fit one. Emerald.

The other hundred, well, that was a problem that only Carlos could solve. "That bus?" I said. "You're going to have to go get it. Then you are on babysitting duty."

He stared at me like I'd lost my fucking mind, and maybe I had. He looked over the group of kids. "You . . . want me to HIDE all of these children? For how long?"

I looked at him and swallowed hard, knowing that maybe I was a fool for this. Fuck, I was a fool, I had lost my fucking mind. "Pete is going to help you. He is going to use whatever spooky fucking Magelore connection he has, to get them to safety. Because nobody has Vivian. She's alive, all right, but nobody has her."

The two of them startled and turned to me. "You can't be serious," Easter said. "You'd trust these kids with VIVIAN?"

I closed my eyes, seeing again Vivian, and how she'd begged me to free those within the walls. To kill them if I had to. The tears. She'd been crying and it had been legit.

"Which one of you is a Magelore?"

A tiny dark-haired boy put his hand up slowly. "I am."

Bingo. "This was about me getting him out," I said. If I'd been a gambler I would have bet this was her boy. "Tell Vivian the price is to keep the rest of them safe too. Alive. No biting." I pointed at Pete, and he nodded, his face solemn. "Until we're ready."

"Ready?" Pete frowned.

"There is a fight coming." I looked out over the kids, knowing that there would be no choice. "They are going to have to fight with us, against the fallen."

Carlos crossed himself. "Dios mio. Are you serious?"

I looked at the kids and nodded. "We're going to need all of you to stop the bad guys. All of you have talents, all of you can fight. Some of you can heal." I reached out and touched the cat-faced child. "Will you help?"

One by one they raised their hands. I nodded. "Then we'll fight when the time comes. And so will Vivian if she knows what's good for her." Fucking lying Magelore. If she'd just told me there were kids in there, I would have gone.

I put my hand on Pete's shoulder and tightened my fingers. "I trust them with you, Pete. If for one second it looks like she's going to flip-flop, you know what to do."

His face hardened. "I will deal with her then."

The finality in his voice was all it took to push away any lingering doubt. "You've grown, Pete."

He winked at me. "Someday I'll tell you why Vivian's the strongest. And why being with you has brought me up into her stratosphere."

Interesting. But not pertinent other than it would keep the kids safe. I clapped my hands. "All of you, go with Pete and Carlos. They'll protect you until you don't need protecting anymore."

Carlos looked at me. "You are not the monster, Phoenix. If you ever were, you were hiding even then."

A smile ghosted over my lips. "Get the fuck out of here, Carlos, before I change my mind and send you off without Pete to help with all those kids."

He laughed, and then pulled me into a hug. "You are not the monster," he said again. "Remember that." He let me go and I stared hard at him.

"Someone has to be, Carlos. Might as well be me."

"And me," Dinah said. "I like being a bitch."

It looked as though he had something more to say, but he bit it back and then they were away, leading the kids through the forest like a pair of fucking pied pipers, back toward the school and the bus. Gardreel might want to find them, but with any sort of cover off me, hopefully his eyes turned my way.

Fuck, who was I kidding? I could already feel the weight of those eyes, considering. And if we didn't get our asses moving, he'd be on us before we were ready to face him.

"You sure?" Easter asked quietly. "You think we'll need them for a final fight?"

"Better than leaving them in there," I said as I turned away and started back the way we'd come. Emerald had been quiet all this time.

"You sent away a Hider," she said. "Why?"

"Because those kids need him more than we do," I said and let myself look at her. "Come on. We've got work to do."

"Are we going to find Bear and Angel?" Emerald asked.

Killian jerked like he'd been slapped. "You know them?"

"I found them just after you were taken. We were on the same plane." She blinked up at him. "He's my friend. She's pretty quiet for a baby so she's okay."

Friend. "He's your cousin," Dinah said. "They both are."

Emerald frowned. "Who is talking?"

"My gun." I pointed to Dinah in her chest holster. Emerald reached over and I let her touch the handle because fuck, how could I not? If she was drawn to the weapon, maybe it was because the soul within it was her mother's.

Messed up, so fucking messed up.

Eligor sat in the very back of the Bronco as the four of us climbed in.

Emerald gave him a look, her cheeks pinking up. Yeah, he was cute, if only she knew what she was really looking at.

I however gave him a fucking stink eye. "No EMP pulse."

"I tried." He cringed. "I tried but I couldn't figure out how to make it work without letting him to the surface. And he . . . is not being cooperative."

My jaw ticked. "You fucking let him to the surface next time. And if he doesn't cooperate then I will deal with him. But we almost got caught because you couldn't pull your head out of your ass."

Killian didn't ask where we were going, just got us turned around and booking it out of the area.

"I still don't understand how there weren't more guards, or at least one fallen?" Easter muttered. "Not that I'm complaining, but did they think that the kids were less dangerous? If anything, all those kids are more dangerous, with less control than an adult—especially in high stress situations."

I was mulling over the same thing, and I'd felt something back there, a tickle, a sensation that I couldn't quite be sure of. But I could take a pretty good guess. "Eligor? You want to tell me what exactly happened?"

I looked in the rear-view mirror. His eyes were still clamped shut tight and the tension around his face was intense to say the least. As if he were holding his breath while being severely constipated. It was not a good look in my opinion.

"I kept them away," he whispered. "I'm still keeping them away. That's why I didn't use the EMP pulse."

"How?" I twisted around. "How are you keeping them away?"

"I'm the top handler." He licked his lips. "I . . . pulled rank and sent everyone I could to one of the small rooms and told them to meditate until I told them otherwise. I made them send away all the guards to the south end of the facility. Away from you."

My eyes widened. "And you never thought to mention this before?"

"I wasn't sure I could do it. Especially at a distance." He cringed as if I was going to beat him.

"Ipos, this for real?" Yes, I was asking a demon for truth. Crazy had never looked so sane.

"If he's the top handler still, then yeah. He could do it." Killian's voice held an edge and then he shook it off. "Fucking hate that bloke."

"You're still holding them? How far away are we?" I looked at Killian and he held up his hand. We'd gone twenty miles.

"Yes, but not much longer." His words were tight, strained.

"Hold it as long as you can," I said. "I want to see how far your distance is."

He groaned but slowly gave me a single thumb up.

Turned out his distance was only another five miles before he gasped and opened his eyes. "I can't hold it any longer."

I gave him a quick nod, said nothing as my mind worked out this new tool. If I took into account the distance from where we'd parked to the facility itself . . . it was a fuck ton farther than even Cowboy's EMP pulse would hit. Close to thirty miles was no small thing when it came to taking out the handlers. Because they were the real security system. They would know the second any of their charges saw something out of place.

Already I was re-working the plan I had for hitting the next facility.

"Gardreel wasn't there," I said, breaking the silence. I took note that Emerald had been exceptionally quiet, curled up next to Easter. But that name made her lift her head.

Eligor cleared his throat and wiped both hands down his face several times. "No, he wasn't. Why would the other Magelore tell you she was there?"

I looked at Emerald. "That was where they were keeping all the kids. And the future of the Magelore blood line was in there. Vivian's boy. I suspect that Vivian sent us to save him, lying about where she was." But the box had looked very real, and her pain had seemed real. Which told me that there was a good chance she'd been locked up at some point but had managed to get free.

And she'd used me.

Eligor shuddered. "They are . . . they are perhaps the worst abnormals."

"Why?" Emerald asked. "Because they drink blood? Or because they can't be handled? Like me?"

My lips twitched as I watched Eligor turn to her. "Both. They are more than half demon, three quarters really, with just a very small portion of human blood in them."

"So, half demon is okay?" Her body was tense as she asked the question. "They aren't as bad?" Of course, what Eligor didn't know was that her father had been a demon of sorts. A very, very bad monster that her grandfather had controlled.

Eligor shook his head. "No demon is okay."

I laughed; I couldn't help it. "Eligor. You are a fallen angel. You do realize that makes you a demon in your own right?"

He stiffened. "No, it doesn't—"

Emerald held up her hand, as if she were in school. "Actually, it does. A fallen angel has lost grace, and so they are no longer an angel at all, but one who will actively try to pull down those around them to make themselves look better. That's what my . . . mom used to say."

Dinah flinched in her holster. Of course, Emerald had a mother, someone she was raised with—even if it was hard for Dinah to hear it.

Eligor shook himself. "It is not the same."

"Po-tay-to, Po-tah-toh," Killian drawled. "Semantics. You're a demon. Just like the ones you been slagging. Fucking hypocrite."

Eligor huffed and slumped in his seat like a sullen child.

I was in no mood to placate him. "Everyone get some sleep. It's a long drive, and we don't know when we might have to fight."

Easter was the first one out cold, with Eligor close behind her. Emerald just stared at me through the rear-view mirror, her eyes locked on my face, searching. I knew the questions were coming.

She leaned forward and whispered, "You're really my auntie? Like my blood auntie?"

"Yes." I closed my eyes and put my head on the head rest. "I am."

Her hands dug into the top of the seat, creaking the fake leather. "And my . . . real mom?"

"She's dead, kid," Dinah bit out. "You stay close to Nix. She'll take care of you. That's what your . . . real mom would have wanted." Her voice cracked at the end, and I put my hand over her.

Emerald audibly swallowed. "I'm half demon."

I reached back and cupped the side of her face, finding her with ease. "I know, kid. I've got demon in me too. So does Killian. So does Eligor's body back there." At least I was assuming I had demon in me. If I had fallen blood, that was pretty much demon in my mind.

Killian grunted. "I'm beginning to think the best of us do. The strongest ones." I didn't want to point out that if that was the case, it was also worth noting that the bloodthirsty ones were also mostly demon.

He wasn't wrong, the thought had crossed my mind too. "Try to get some sleep, Emmy." The nickname popped out of me, and I let it hang there. "We'll talk about demons and abilities later. You're safe now, that's all that matters."

Because I knew that was the next thing she'd want to talk about. What she could do to help. What she was good at. And I already knew. She could talk to the dead. She was the one that Gardreel had been trying to break.

To get her to speak to my mom.

It was not lost on me that he might be setting me up to get the information, the spell on how to raise a demon, and find a way to kill the fallen for himself. That because my mother had the other spell as well, we were going to do his work for him.

I closed my eyes—there was literally nothing I could do about it right then—and sunk into a deep sleep with Ruby's head settled across my thighs, her solid warmth sinking through me. Killian would wake me to take over the driving when he was needing a break.

There were no dreams, there were no visions of fucking Vivian, though there was a moment I thought I heard her laughter. As I came to, I kept my eyes shut and let my mind work over what we were dealing with.

I wondered if Vivian just sent us in there to save the boy. Was he hers? That seemed the most likely situation. But then was she stuck in another facility, and if she was, had she given up the spell that Gardreel so badly wanted? What if he had figured out a way to get into her head? None of that felt right. I was almost certain she'd found a way to escape. The same as me.

If Vivian was free, Pete would know soon enough. And if she wasn't . . . well, then if that was the case, we were working on a much shorter time span than we'd had before. Days. We'd have days to create a weapon worthy of killing the fallen.

The night of the bleeding stars. Three days away. Not far enough by half.

Killian pulled over, we switched places and I took over the driving.

"Lass, do we ask her where Bear and Angel are?" he whispered to me as we passed each other outside the vehicle, the air cool and humid, making his breath puff.

Yes. I wanted to shout the word, to demand to know where Bear was and where my little girl was. I shook my head. "No. The more who know, the more danger they are in. We wait until we can actually go for them ourselves."

"Fuck, I know you're right, but it's eating me up." He ran a hand through his hair as he slid into the passenger seat. He closed his eyes as I pulled us back onto the road. The Bronco rumbled as a couple of large semi-trucks sped by us. Not exactly confidence-inspiring if we had to tangle with one of the large army trucks that Gardreel and his fallen had at their disposal.

I got the Bronco up to speed and took note of the other vehicles around us. Nothing suspicious. Nothing to worry about, at least not yet.

Emerald leaned forward. "Will you tell me about my mom? What was she like? Why did she give me up?"

Oh fuck.

Dinah cleared her throat. "I knew her best. She wasn't a bad person. She just made some stupid mistakes. She chose the wrong man to love, and he betrayed her and you . . ."

Emerald looked over my shoulder, down to the shoulder holster. "Why do you know so much about her?"

Dinah had gotten herself into this, I wasn't about to dig her a path out. At some point the kid would learn who she really was.

"Because I was with her a long time," Dinah said. "She loved you more than anything. And because she was afraid for your life, she gave you away. She didn't want to, she wanted you with her forever, but it wasn't safe for you."

Emerald was quiet. "I was in danger."

"Because of who your father was," I said, deciding maybe Dinah needed a little help. "His strength passed to you. And there were people—like your grandfather—who would have used you up. Your mother saved you the only way she could."

Emerald slid back in her seat, and in the mirror, I could easily see the tracks from the tears. Dinah trembled against me, and I put a hand over her. She'd told her what she could for now. More would come later; I was sure of it. But in pieces.

I don't know why, but the trip to North Dakota was literally unremarkable. We didn't have anyone following us, there were no traps waiting down the highways. Maybe Mario had done his part better than we'd hoped. Maybe Gardreel thought we were still with him, though that was hard to believe when I thought about getting all the kids out.

Twice I checked in with Pete and Carlos. They were strung out, but not in danger. Lots of squealing, screaming kids. I smiled at the thought of them dealing with a hundred kids.

Us, well we rolled through the badlands like we were on a fucking vacation. When the truth was with each mile my muscles tightened further. Because the woman we were going to see . . . she was a special breed.

"You sure about this?" Easter asked as we got closer to her place. "I mean . . . I've never asked a Tracker for shit, and I know exactly why."

I snorted. "You think she's grumpier than me?"

Easter laughed. "No, I doubt that. This one is young though, not like Jack."

I nodded. We all knew about Jack, the Tracker across the pond. He was difficult to deal with to say the least.

I cranked the wheel at the next stop sign that would take us out of town, more into the rural areas of Bismarck, North Dakota. What a place to set up shop. Middle of fucking nowhere.

The road got bumpier the further out we went, and soon enough a large, three-story farmhouse came into view. The upkeep on it was solid, but the structure itself was old. That much was obvious. Between it and the massive barn sitting just behind it, the place had a feeling of age.

A beat-up Jeep sat out front. I parked at the end of the driveway—I was not blocking us in. "You all stay here."

I let myself out and started down the long driveway. Before I was halfway to the house the front door banged open. A woman with long red hair—seriously, what was it with all the fucking redheads?—stepped out onto the porch. I couldn't see her eyes with the way the porch shaded her.

I held up both hands, palms toward her. "I'm looking for the Tracker."

A large dog bounded out past her, woofing and . . . howling. He came straight at me, tongue out, eyes wide as he raced across the yard.

I had Dinah out and pointed at him before he'd taken ten strides. "Call him off."

He slid to a stop, sat and waved a giant mitt at me. "Hiya. Alex. Who you?"

A talking . . . thing. Not a dog. Something else. "Phoenix."

"Oh, pretty bird. I like pretty birds." He lay down where he was and rolled to his back, showing total submission. His master, though, was not so inclined.

"You even think of shooting him, I'll cut your head off and set it on a fucking pike," she growled as she stepped down the stairs. Dressed in blue jeans and a simple black T-shirt, she moved like a predator.

Good.

It took a great deal of strength to drop Dinah's aim. I held her at my side. "So, the dog talks and you think it's a good idea to lower me?" she beaked off.

The Tracker stopped. "Your gun just talk?"

I snorted. "You got a talking dog. I don't think you have room to point out oddities."

Her lips quirked. "Fair enough. What the fuck do you want, Phoenix."

"A direction."

Her eyebrows went up. "You want me to Track a kid for you?"

This was where it got tricky. "No, I need you to Track a mostly dead woman."