Chapter 4

My mother was somehow, impossibly alive was what Mario was saying, and I wasn't sure how to react. So I didn't. I just sat there and gave him a dead stare because let me be perfectly blunt—I could feel him trying to get a rise out of me. I could feel him trying to dig at my emotions to make me more vulnerable.

Well fuck him. He had no idea what he was up against.

He'd dropped that little bomb in the middle of the room that left me silent, but it surely did not work on Dinah.

"What the actual fuck are you talking about? Eleanor died! She died to keep Phoenix safe, I should fucking well know because I was fucking well there! So, you can take your lies and shove them up your tight little ass!" Her voice was hard, but I heard the tremor in it, and more than that the tremor that ran through her body under my hand.

That had been a bad day for both of us. I'd lost my mother; she'd lost the only person who truly understood the situation she was in and who'd been at her side for years in the most literal of senses.

Mario shrugged. "It's a story, are you ready for it or do you want to keep screaming at me?"

Dinah huffed. I kept my thoughts to myself. I wanted to see how big of a hole he would dig for himself here. How many lies he would spin to try and manipulate me.

This last year had taught me patience of a different kind. My natural inclinations were to kill first and not bother with questions. But I'd learned a great deal about myself by being forced to wait. If Mario was playing with me, I'd . . . well, normally I'd just kill him. But right then I needed abnormals who had power, so he wouldn't be dead. Not yet. And if he wasn't lying about our mom . . . then I would take his knowledge.

And then I would kill him.

"Tell us," I said, my voice low. Ruby picked up on my energy and let out a rumbling growl, butting her head up against my hand, supporting me in her own way. She didn't like Mario. I respected that.

Maybe I'd let her kill him if it came down to an option.

"The labs have been around a very long time." He stood and began to pace the room. A showman, just like I'd thought. "Since before you or I were born even. Just as they are today, they were set up to take in abnormals. To run tests on them, to study them, to try and use their powers if they could. This should be of no surprise to you; humans have been pulling shit like this for hundreds of years, locking up those they don't understand. Labeling them as crazy. Testing on them."

I nodded at him to go on.

"Our mother was put into one of these labs."

"She was killed," I said. "And her soul put into a gun."

"Exactly." He pointed at me, making a shooting motion with his fingers. "But there is a moment between life and death—more especially for abnormals, you know this. A place where we are neither dead nor alive, and our souls are loose there, for lack of a better term. Not all can traverse this, or at least not all without help. And while maybe her soul was taken and put into a gun," he paused and looked at Dinah, "her body was kept alive."

Fuck, I did know exactly what he was talking about. I'd spent time in a form of limbo when I'd been trapped in the Clearview Institute. I'd used it as an escape, not really understanding what it was, only that it gave me a place to recharge, and to search for others that were like me in the hopes of banding together. There hadn't been many who could walk in that place like I could.

"That's hogwash bullshit," Pete grumbled. "I've killed enough abnormals to know—"

"It's not bullshit," I said. "When you bit me, where did we go?"

Pete frowned. "I mean, it was kind of like I was in your head, wasn't it?" He stared at me and I stared back, waiting for him to get it. His eyes widened. "Wait, you can't mean—"

"It was, and is, a place of limbo, not just in my head," I said. "Cowboy can get there too; I found him there, but he seemed to be faint. Like he wasn't good at it."

Carlos was quiet for a beat, and his voice cracked when he spoke. "Could you find my Rosa that way?"

I shook my head. "Not every abnormal can be there, at least in my experience. I either must be physically touching them like I was with Pete, or Easter," I tipped my head to her, "or they have some innate talent. Might be a proximity thing too, I'm not sure."

That last, I threw in there to keep him from pestering me to look for Rosa every time I shut my damn eyes. Because Bear could reach me in that place of limbo no matter how far apart we were. But was that because we were related? Most likely it had to do with our blood and connection as mother and son.

It wasn't like there was a rule book that I had to work off, so I had no way of knowing for sure, and I did not have the time to be fucking around looking for everyone's child.

"Regardless." Mario held up his hands, drawing everyone's eyes back to him. Yes, he had that showman quality to him, not unlike our father. That did not endear him to me, to be clear. "Her body is still alive, hooked up to machines."

He clicked a button and the TV screen behind him came to life. The video was shitty, but there was no doubt that whoever had taken it had been in a facility. Shot from the waist, the scene bobbled and weaved until the person turned into a room on the left. A single bed, a single body, hooked up to IVs and breathing machines. There were a lot of wires and equipment so as the shot moved over the person in the bed it was hard to say for sure who it was. If not for the color of her hair and the scar to the left of her eye from my father slapping her with his ring on, I wouldn't have known.

"That's her," I said. "If you have this video, then you know where she is."

Mario shook his head. "It was sent to me anonymously. And when I tried to trace it, the sender had been killed."

"Where were they?" The city that the sender had been in would be near the facility.

"They'd run," he said as if he already knew the direction of my thoughts. "They were in the UK when I found the body."

"Where was the postage from?" Easter asked.

"Again, I tried that angle. There are no facilities in northern Canada." He pulled a face. "They'd run before they'd even put the video in the mail. They knew it was dangerous."

A strange feeling rolled over me. "When was this sent?"

"Two years ago," he said.

Two years. Right around the time that . . . that I'd thought Bear and Justin—my first husband—had been killed. Justin was able to respawn, though. Over and over.

It wasn't that I knew for sure. Because with every respawn Justin changed his image.

But it fit.

And despite all that we'd been through, he had always been trying to keep me and Bear safe in his own fucked up way.

"Who are you thinking?" Dinah asked. I looked down as I realized that I'd put my hand on her.

"J," I said.

She sucked in a gasp. "The timing is right. And he'd risk it . . . but how did he know?"

I snorted. "He didn't. More likely he thought he would give me some closure if I could say goodbye to her."

But I would take it.

"You know who sent this?" Mario twisted to look at the video.

"Play it once more. You see hands at one point." I stood, taking Dinah with me so that I could get closer to the image.

The scene played out again, and there was a split second at the very beginning that drew my eyes. "There, start it and freeze it right away."

Mario did as I asked, and I found myself staring into the blurred eyes of a man that I'd loved for a lot of years. Or at least a man I'd learned to love. "Fucker. It's him, I'm sure of it."

"Then we find him and ask him." Mario thumped the table and I laughed at him.

"He's dead. You said it yourself." I narrowed my eyes at him as I saw the truth. "You knew who it was who sent you the video?"

He shrugged. "Regardless—"

"He likes that word," Dinah whispered.

Mario glared at her. "Even if our mother's soul has gone on, there is a chance that we can gain what she knew. In the body, there is memory held and stored in the mind and the muscles. If we were able to get to her, and put you and a death talker in touch with her, there is a chance that—"

"You mean actually break into one of the labs?" Easter cut him off, her voice hard. "Go back into one of those hell holes? On a chance? You are out of your fucking mind. You haven't been there; you don't know what you're asking of us."

Mario stared her down and the tension between the two of them was interesting—not quite animosity, not quite interest. "You would not be the one going back in. Nix would be the one. She has the connection to our mother and the apparent ability to traverse limbo. That would be needed at the least. She could take a death talker with her; two would be far easier to get into a facility."

I leaned back in my chair, considering the options. I needed to get Bazixal to agree to place himself inside a weapon. With a little negotiating, I was relatively certain I could convince him. I could offer him the thing he wanted—to be on this side of the demon realms.

Mario nodded. "I understand, but I have been searching for this spell for a long time, and I believe that this is our only option."

He had, had he? Interesting. He wanted his own sentient weapon too.

The spell, the how to do it on the other hand . . . and would it work with a demon rather than an abnormal who had a soul that was dying? I didn't have the answer to that. If my mother—dead or otherwise—was the one shot I had, then she was the one shot I had. If Mario wasn't blowing smoke up my ass. A distinct possibility just to get us out of his hair. Or to get us to find the spell he'd been looking for, apparently.

Carlos spoke up. "Are there any other possibilities? Anyone else who might know this spell? It does seem a long shot. Especially when we don't even know where the woman—your mother if this is true—might be, or if she is even still alive. Information stales quickly. We all know this. And this video is two years old. Not exactly fresh."

Fred might know. The crazy old kook had a good number of fingers in different pies.

"You've already sent people over for Fred and Cowboy?" I asked.

Mario nodded. "Shouldn't be long now. We had to wait for our diversion." He turned and clicked a button. The news came on and the anchor's face was somber.

"Breaking news. We have reports of a fire in the top three floors of the Empire State Building. Crews are on site, but it seems that the fire is being fed by an unknown accelerant."

The scene shifted from her face to a live shot of the Empire State Building, smoke rolling off the top of it. The people closest were all looking up, hands shading their eyes.

I stared at the fire. "Why would that get their attention?"

"It's one of their landing pads," Mario said. "I've seen them landing there off and on."

Landing pads.

Ruby let out a rumbling growl and I found myself grabbing at her collar. I didn't like this.

"How long before Fred and Cowboy get here then?" I didn't bother to soften my voice.

Mario turned to me; his face smooth as a baby's ass. "Soon."

Soon. The lie just rolled right the fuck out of him.

"I'll go check, if you like?" he offered. "Make sure they are on the way?"

"Do that," I said as I shared a look with Easter. She gave me a nearly imperceptible nod. She might want to fuck him, but she got that he was not on our team. Not by a long shot.

"I'll go with you." She stood and I slid Diego off my back and handed him to her.

Diego shivered. "Oh, I love me a saucy redhead."

Mario didn't so much as break stride. "Of course."

Of course.

I watched them go, and noted that Mario did not shut the door tight. I stood and went to stand by it, so I could see out the crack. Easter looked back, saw me and then kept on going with Mario.

"Are we really going to try and break into one of those places?" Pete asked. The fear in his voice was there, a slight shake to the words. "I mean . . . it took you a year to break out. And there was no way I'd have escaped on my own."

"That's not our biggest problem," I said softly. "Mario . . . we can't trust him. Not by a long shot."

I turned to look at them both. Carlos was pale. "You think he is working for the fallen?"

"I think he knows too much. And there are scars across the base of his neck that I don't like the look of." I paced the room, Ruby keeping time with me. "I think he might be double-timing us."

"Then why wouldn't he have just handed us over?" Carlos asked quietly. "They were actively hunting us, why not just take us the second we arrived?"

I frowned, but didn't slow my pace as I rolled my thoughts through what we'd learned. "Something to do with my mother," I said suddenly. "He had that ready to show us. It was timed for our arrival."

"Dios mio," Carlos whispered. "I thought he would help." He covered his head with his hands, rubbing at his hair a moment. "Then we have to go. We have to go quickly before he realizes . . ."

I shook my head. "He knows I know. The second Easter shadowed him, and I gave her Diego, he knows."

Which was good and bad.

"Unless there is someone else who has the information we need, we still need to get to my mother," I said.

Dinah snorted. "Seriously, she can't be the only one."

"A lot of abnormals have been killed," Carlos said, and Pete nodded.

"A lot." The Magelore frowned. "And the Magelores, they would be a place to ask."

We both looked at him. "What?"

"Well . . . we do have spell casting abilities. You know that. Not me. But others. Higher ups." He cleared his throat. "If we found a stronger Magelore, we might be able to tease it out of them?" He winced.

I laughed. "Glad you pulled a face. Can you imagine trying to tease something away from a powerful Magelore? They're like fucking dragons!" I snapped.

"Hoarders," Dinah grumbled.

I sat down in Mario's chair, pulled my knife out of my boot and rolled it across my knuckles, thinking out loud. "Back to the task at hand. We'll leave Mario for the moment. The fallen, they are looking for abnormals to try and break out, they guarded against that possibility," I said. "They won't be looking for any of us to break in."

"Us," Pete said. "I don't like that word. Mario said it would be just you."

I stared hard at him. "We don't have a choice, Pete. I will need your speed, Carlos's Hider abilities, and Cowboy's EMP pulse. We can knock out the facility before we even go in. If Easter will stand guard up top, I can be in and out in a matter of minutes."

In theory.

In my mind's eye the scene played out, smoke and flames, gunshots, slipping through dark corridors with lights flashing. A body over my shoulder as I dragged my mostly dead mother out of a facility she'd been in for years. What then?

Did I kill her afterward, put her out of her misery?

The answer was simple. Yes. But not before I pried her memories out of her.

The two of them stared at me, eyes slightly wide. "You're already planning this," Carlos said. "You're going to do it."

I gave him a slow nod. "Unless you have a better idea? We could literally spend years searching for this spell that Mario has been looking for. I don't think Gardreel and his fallen are going to give us years."

No, I doubted they were even going to give us hours at the rate we were going.