Chapter 6

As I suspected, Pete didn't like the idea of turning into a homeless Barry Magelore type. He had his hands on the filthy—and I mean that literally—Magelore and was dragging him off to God only knew where. I didn't care, as long as he dealt with him. Better yet if he figured out what the fuck had happened to him.

I hopped up the stairs, two at a time. Ruby kept pace with me, silent at my side.

Carlos was slower, bringing up the rear. "Now that that is dealt with . . . why are you not with your man?"

That question would have slowed someone else. I didn't so much as break my stride. "I'm busy, Carlos, trying to save the fucking world. He's dying. And unless you know how to help him, there is literally not a damn thing I can do."

I looked back at him to see his eyes narrowing. "Hard words from you," he said. "For someone you love."

"It's a hard life, with hard decisions," I said. "Killian knew it when he set his path in line with mine."

I swung back around in time to see Harden lift his head from Mario's desk and touch a finger to his temple. "What happened? I don't drink anymore but I feel hung over. Like a really bad hangover."

I moved into the room, grabbed a pitcher of water off a side table and poured him a glass. "You've been bitten repeatedly by a Magelore. Pete's dealing with him, which means he is untying the bonds that Barry had on you. Might be uncomfortable."

Harden frowned and took a sip from the cup I offered, then tipped it back and drank the whole thing as if he'd been without for days.

"Not many people would willingly drink from a cup she offered," Dinah said. "So, either you are super trusting, or super stupid."

Harden choked on a mouthful of water. "What? Why would she poison me?"

"I wouldn't." I slapped a hand over Dinah as if that would help quiet her. "She likes to rile people up."

"No I don't," Dinah said and then laughed. "I would never try to scare someone."

I sat down next to him, and Ruby put herself between me and Harden, her one good eye pinning him with a glare. Or maybe it was just her resting bitch face. Putting a hand on her head, I rubbed her between her ears. "Look, you need to get that information off the tablet. You need to do it now. And then we have to destroy it. I have no doubt there is a tracker inside of it. Gardreel and his fallen will be on us in a flash."

Of course, if Mario was working for Gardreel, and the tracker blinked on . . . I wondered how far Mario would take the game of being against the fallen?

Harden blinked a few times as if coming out of a haze. "Right. Yes, of course!"

I handed him the tablet, slipping it out from my waistband. He took it, his fingers sliding over it. "New password, 1234, nice and simple. That's good. Simple is good." He smiled, but the edges of his lips suddenly cracked, blood dribbling down the edges. His fingers petted the tablet. "They don't want you to have this." He gave a shiver and lifted his eyes to mine. "They . . . want what the Magelore know. They want the hive mind."

He convulsed in his seat and his eyes went blank.

I leaned over and snapped my fingers in front of his eyes. He didn't track the movement.

"Fuck."

Carlos stepped around and waved a hand in front of Harden's face. No movement. No eye dilation, nothing.

"Fuck," I said again. Taking Harden by the head, I laid him down on the table and closed his eyes with my fingers. Harden wasn't dead, but he might as well have been. His mind was well and truly gone. I didn't doubt that had been Barton, Barry, speaking through him.

"Breaking the ties between him and the Magelore did this?" Carlos shook his head.

"He was far deeper gone than three bites." I rubbed a hand over my face. "But that was Barton giving us something, at least."

"You going to kill him?" Carlos asked. "Because if he's going to die anyway, a bullet is at least quick and merciful."

"That's my job!" Dinah yelled. "I'm the merciful one!"

I ignored her. The tablet had information we needed. A hacker could have gotten it without tripping any of the tracking devices. If I had to just open it up and look through it, I sure as shit wasn't doing it here. I had the password, at least.

"What now?" Carlos asked quietly.

"We take the tablet somewhere else, open it and try to get the information we need before Gardreel finds us," I said. Not exactly what I'd call a foolproof plan. But one that might work if I used what I knew about the city.

Footsteps pounded up the double set of stairs. Pete was not being quiet.

I frowned. How the actual fuck did I know it was Pete?

Because I could sense him—just like I could sense Easter. "Fucking hell," I whispered. The bite mark he'd given me when we'd been trying to break out of the facility was of course a connection. I'd known that when I'd basically encouraged him to bite me. But I didn't think it would still have an effect now.

I shook my head. No point in letting him know. Pete burst through the door. "Barton is dead, I tried to bring him around but whatever was done to him was like setting a trip wire . . . oh shit, he took the geek with him?"

I nodded. "What happened?"

Pete's eyes were wide, and fear radiated off him, stinking up the room. Fear that I could feel sliding between us. I brushed it aside and focused on his words.

"I cut his finger, and took just a couple drops of his blood. I could see him in a facility, could see them trying to break him. They couldn't get through to him, so they just tortured him until his mind was gone. Then they set him loose." The sweat was pouring off him. "It's bad, Nix. Like real bad what they did to him."

I nodded. "Keep going. What did they want from him?"

Pete put his hands flat on the table. "They wanted something . . . the Magelores . . ."

"Are connected," I offered. "Barton came through Harden here and filled me in. What about the hive mind could work for the fallen?"

Pete was shaking. "We're all connected. At least to a degree. So if Barton had information, he could have passed it on to another Magelore before he died. So that there was nothing to torture out of him."

I stared hard at him. "That what you do?"

He started to shake his head and then nodded. I could feel the sense of relief that he could speak about this. "I didn't have a lot. But I know where most of the Magelores made their hunting grounds. They wanted it from me. They kept asking about Vivian. They wanted her more than anyone else. I kept telling them she was dead."

"Because she was the strongest?" Carlos asked. "You think that's why?"

Pete shrugged. "That's my best guess. She was a powerful spell caster too. She had a lot going for her, power structure wise, and a lot of years gathering knowledge to her hoard."

"And Barton?" I asked.

"He didn't feed on humans. He only ever fed on abnormals. It meant that he was strong—we gain power depending on the food source." He slid a look to me, and I narrowed my eyes.

Don't even think it, Pete.

He cringed and nodded. "Right. So anyway. Barton's mind was pretty messed up, but what I could pull from it is that the Magelore hive mind has something that the fallen want. And they think that Vivian had it—actually they're sure she had it. So they're looking for the Magelore she handed it off to before she died. They let Barton go when they could see they'd broken him too far. Being that he fed off powerful abnormals, my guess is they thought they'd use him as a sort of living tracker."

My jaw ticked. "And he led them here. How long was he feeding on Harden?"

"A couple days, I think," Pete said.

A couple days. Long enough that Mario should have noticed. Unless he didn't care because he wanted to catch the Magelore.

I was betting he didn't know that Barton had been in the fallen's hands already.

We had to move, we couldn't just sit here and wait for shit to rain down from the sky.

"Carlos, find Mario. Stick close to him and see if you can pick up on any chatter between him and the fallen."

Carlos gave a tight nod. "I am regretting bringing us here."

"He had Killian," I said. "I would have ended up here eventually."

I snapped my fingers at Pete. "Find Easter, bring her to the old church in the financial district."

Carlos looked at me. "Do you think that Mario knows you are on to him?"

It was a valid question.

I pulled the tablet out. "If he's a smart man, he'll suspect. But he won't make a move because he isn't as strong as me. I'm going to give Gardreel a calling card to follow nice and loud. Away from this place."

"Maybe we get to test out the new bullets?" Dinah whispered, hope in her voice. "I really want to do that."

Carlos's dark eyes narrowed. "And your man? What if we have to run for it?"

Who had we met in here that we could use? Almost no one. And that of course had been Mario's plan too.

I answered his question with one of my own. "Do you know anyone in here, either of you?"

Pete nodded first, then Carlos. "There's a shifter in here I ran with years back," Pete said. "Honest as a shifter can be."

Which meant not so much.

"Twins. They are scrappers, the both of them," Carlos said.

My jaw ticked. "Get them ready to take control of the group. We need leaders if Mario meets an untimely death."

Dinah laughed. "Oh, fuck yeah. I don't like him. Never did. None of our siblings were worth fighting for."

She wasn't wrong. I'd had a moment where I'd hoped . . . but it wasn't to be.

"As for Killian . . . if things go sideways, see if you can get him out too." I tucked the tablet back into my waistband. "He's not dead yet. I'd like to keep it that way."

Breaking into a jog, I headed out of the factory with Ruby shadowing me. What a giant ass clusterfuck this was. I didn't like playing defense. Which meant it was time to blow some shit up.

Time to change the rules.

Out in the streets of New York City, I slowed my pace and took the next left, crossing the street. Ruby woofed if anyone got too close and otherwise was quiet, keeping close to my side. We weren't exactly inconspicuous, but I wasn't looking to hide right then. Traffic was heavy and we slid through it, barely changing my pace.

I would give Gardreel a direction to look that wasn't Mario and the abnormals there. A direction that Killian was not in the path of if Gardreel realized his plant—Barton—was dead.

Fucking Magelores, somehow even when shit going wrong wasn't their fault, it was their fault.

I pulled the tablet out as I walked and pressed the power button. The screen blinked white and then showed off a logo of a pair of wings, not all that different from the tattoo I had across my back and upper arms.

The image dissolved in a fluttering of birds across the screen. I punched in the simple code Harden had set up. 1234.

I kept walking, knowing that I was taking a chance by not paying full attention to my surroundings. "Watch, Ruby."

She gave a woof and that was good enough for me. The screen that came on had a passcode that was linked to a fingerprint. What were the chances?

I slid my finger over the beckoning lines and let it rest there. I glanced up, checked our street, and continued as the tablet blinked open.

"Hello, Phoenix."

Gardreel's voice echoed through the tablet and even over the noise of the city, I heard him.

"You might be wondering why your fingerprint opened one of our tablets. The truth is, I suspected you might try and break into our system. And of course, you would know that the minute you did, your position would be targeted. So, the question is, did you know? Are you waiting for me to find you?"

"Creepy motherfucker. Or should I call you granddaddy?" I said. "I mean, I assume you have some kids out there? Some abnormal could call you Dad. Pops."

Dinah laughed. "Shit, is he really talking to us or is that a recording?"

The sharp intake of breath through the tablet said it all to me. "Live, he is chatting with me live. Tell you what, Gardreel, fallen angel and creator of abnormals," another sharp intake of breath from him, "you and your feathered friends fuck off and leave the rest of us alone, and I won't kill you all and piss on the ashes."

His laughter was sudden and bounced out of the tablet enough that the humans around us cringed. Yeah, the sound of a fallen angel laughing had my skin crawling too, like listening to a madman caw right before he tried to hack your head off with a rusty blade.

Dinah shifted in her holster. "Is he going to back down? Because I would really like another chance to blast one of those nasty fucks."

The screen flicked to life, and I was now not only listening to Gardreel, but looking at him too. I smiled at him, the smile that I'd perfected in my years of killing abnormals. Cold, hard. It was the smile that said death was coming for you. "I did your job for years," I said. "I'm surprised you didn't just try and recruit me back then."

"We did."

I didn't think many things could shock me, but here I was, wrong again. I composed myself quickly. "Let me guess, Romano wouldn't share?"

Gardreel sighed. "That is the past, Phoenix. What you need to understand now is that Eligor is even now being put into another body. A body that will connect me once more to you. I know that you won't wait for me with the tablet. But I wanted a chance to make you that offer. Come to me. And I will let your child live. I will heal your man. They will be safe."

The offer was a good one, a great one, as offers went. But I knew the truth.

"You lie pretty good for an angel." I laughed at him. "I mean, fuck, it's not like you're worried about getting back into heaven, are you?"

The sudden change in his features told me a whole story and I stopped in my tracks. "Shut the fuck up. That's it, isn't it? You think you'll get back into whatever version of heaven you think is out there if you kill off the evidence of your sins?" The words tumbled out of me.

Dinah chimed in. "Oh, God! Maybe if I help, they'll let me in heaven too?" And then she laughed and laughed.

Gardreel's face continued to tighten until it looked like he'd sucked down a few too many lemons.

I shrugged and took another corner, starting down the gentle slope that would take me to the financial district and the church I was headed to.

"Seems a gamble to me," I drawled. "I mean, I wouldn't let you back in if I was your boss. You defected, broke the rules, and now are trying to save face? Tells me you aren't all that loyal."

His breathing was coming in rapid pulses, and I smiled. "Don't like what I'm saying?"

"Nail to head." Dinah laughed. "A little too close to the sore spot, just to the rear of his balls."

Gardreel's face filled the tablet's screen. "I will cleanse this world."

I rolled my eyes. "I wouldn't bet on that. Perhaps a face-to-face discussion is warranted if you'd like to keep on talking about how you're getting back into heaven?"

The rapid blinking said it all. He wasn't expecting me to talk to him. Certainly not face to face.

"Easter will be there," I said. "And the Magelore who broke out with me. That's like two of the three things you want, right? Just missing a death talker."

"How . . ."

I smiled and winked. "Mario told me. Handed you right over, sung like a canary. We are, after all, blood."

Two of us could play the lying game.

Then I flipped the tablet shut but didn't turn it off, and continued walking. I'd always known there was a chance we wouldn't find anything useful in it, or that it would break when Harden tried to crack it. I had not expected to talk to Gardreel.

Dinah shivered and muttered under her breath, "You sure about this?"

"I just gave him a lot to mull over. Put Mario in the hot pot if he is indeed working for that side, and if we get a shot at Gardreel . . . you can use the new bullets."

"Sweet," Dinah growled. "Diego is going to be pissed he missed out."

"Easter will bring him," I said.

Hope though was a funny thing. Just when I'd sworn off hoping, it crept into my life again, only to be yanked out. I'd found Killian and a brother who could have been something amazing in my life. Killian was dying, and the brother was a fucking douche at best.

"No more hoping, Dinah. We do our job, kill all these pissheads and get our kids."

Her sigh went straight through me. "Ours."

"Bear. Emerald. And my baby girl."

She was quiet a moment. "Fuck yes."

I took a corner and the long metal fence that wrapped around the church came into view. As soon as I got close enough, I tapped my fingers along it, drumming a steady beat.

"Wakey wakey, demon. Ornias, I'm talking to you."

Time to have a family reunion of a different kind.