Chapter 10

"Tell me exactly what happened from the beginning. I was taken before I heard anything about a purge," I said as we sat at the oversized dinner table in Carlos and Anita's house.

She had laid out a full meal with soup, salad, a main course of roast beef and potatoes, and a selection of other dishes I just glanced at. Much as my stomach growled and my body shook with the withdrawal from the drugs, I needed information as much as I needed a plate of real food. Cowboy knew some stuff, but he didn't strike me as understanding the ebb and flow of the abnormal world. This couple had ties to the mob and the police. They'd have more information.

I slid a stack of beef and potatoes onto a plate and lowered it to the floor for the dog. I really needed to name her.

Carlos folded his hands on the table and spoke quietly. "It started before the public knew there was going to be a purge of abnormals. As you know, the strongest abnormals were taken as quickly and as quietly as they could be taken, mostly in their sleep using an airborne mist that suppressed not only their minds, but their abilities.

"The heads of the mob families were targeted, and Rio barely escaped. Mostly with our help, but that is not to brag. It is to say that with two Hiders of our strength helping him, he was nearly caught."

Chills rippled through me and my skin rose in goose flesh. No one was eating apart from the dog and Cowboy.

"When the bill was passed, it was unanimous. Abnormals had been acknowledged in the past but were not openly accepted. We had our place in certain parts of every town. We were outsiders, but there was no real issue. A certain flavor of hatred and fear that most normals barely held contained."

The boys nodded. I didn't move.

"The bill stated that abnormals were hiding in plain sight and were manipulating the government. Senators Rylee, Alexander, and Ashspur were all immediately outed as abnormals and taken."

Well, shit. That explained that side of things.

"Taken where? They weren't in our facility," I said.

Carlos shook his head. "I don't know. Rosita was looking for them when she went missing. When they took her."

He handed me a picture of his daughter. Dark-haired with deeply intense amber eyes, she was younger than me by a few years and would stand out in any crowd with her natural beauty and the curves she'd inherited from her mother. She hadn't been in our facility, but I already knew that. I held the picture. "Go on."

Carlos spread his hands on the table. "After that, abnormals were scooped up left and right. The majority of humans didn't even seem to understand what was happening or why. The bill was vague at best, but it gave the government the right to remove abnormals from society."

"With no reason?"

He nodded. "Zero reason. Specially trained and equipped squads were sent out at night, and they used the airborne mist to knock out entire apartment buildings so they could scoop up the abnormals. I saw it happen once, so it is not a rumor."

His story rang of truth, but there was something missing. "Someone has to be heading this up. Who is it? Which senator?"

"As far as we can tell, no one. The bill was put forward and was passed, but when we tried to find out who had done it, there was no senator behind it. It just showed up and they passed it. The facility you were in was the only one I knew about at the time. Which is why I got the job at the hospital. I hoped they would bring an injured abnormal in for treatment. Rio agreed it was a good plan. I never expected to find three escapees. And certainly not you, Nix."

His wife put her hand to her mouth. "The Phoenix?"

I nodded.

Dinah laughed. "She had her wings clipped. Shocking, isn't it?"

"Shut it, Dinah." I slapped a hand over her.

Anita put her hand to her chest. "I knew Zee. He trained me."

That stuck a sharp stab right through my heart. "He died protecting me," I said softly. "He used too much ability and lost his mind." That was the nice way of putting it, but I wasn't going to give her the details of his death. Not here, not now.

She closed her eyes and a tear slid from one. Either she was an extraordinary actress, or she was truly hurt by that news.

Call me cruel, but part of me wondered if it was an act. I'd been duped by tears a few times, so I didn't like to give too much weight to them and the emotions they evoked.

"And now?"

"The squads still make regular hits on different buildings, but they're taking in fewer prisoners each time. The abnormals left on the streets are savvy and avoiding them easier and easier. But they are still being taken," Carlos said. "How many new abnormals do you get?"

"They just fill in the blanks when one dies." I tapped one finger on the table. "There was no one new in our neck of the woods other than Cowboy here." I tipped my head toward the kid.

"You sure he's not a plant?" Anita asked.

I snorted. "Because they knew we were going to break out? That I'd have a soft spot for the kid? No, they were in our heads but not in mine like that."

Now it was my turn to fill them in, and I did as quickly as I could. The fingers in our minds, the blank looks, the guards, and Eligor.

"I know that name," Anita said. She turned and grabbed a book, the name scrawled out on it popping out to me. Demonology.

I nodded. "Me too. I believe . . . it's the name of a demon. I'm sure of it—I studied them after my last run-in. Demons doing this makes sense, but they still must have someone driving them. The other names he mentioned I'm not as sure of. But Eligor, I am." I could already see the players lining up. "If I were to guess right now and lay money on it, I would say that someone has called in a big player, a powerful demon who has his own underlings, and the demon is eliminating anyone who could stand in his way. Once the abnormals are locked up, who can stop the demons? A human priest? Doubtful. All the good priests were abnormals hiding in plain sight."

"This is why you need to go see Rio. He has connections to the few others still in play. A Hider is helping him. She's young but strong."

My only plan was to go to New York to find intel on Killian. I was going after my son, not some demon on a vendetta.

A wash of fatigue hit me hard and I closed my eyes, breathing through it. Anita noticed first. "They are exhausted, Carlos. Come, I will show you where you can sleep. Carlos and I will hide this place for the night so you can all sleep in peace. But you must go in the morning."

Peter followed her as if he were a well-trained pup. A Magelore sleeping peacefully in the same house as me, under the protection of a couple of Hiders. I wouldn't have guessed I'd be ending my day this way if I'd had a million guesses.

Cowboy stretched and then leaned across the table to me. "You trust the Magelore?" he asked in an undertone.

"About as much as I trust you," I said.

Dinah laughed and Cowboy drew back as if I'd slapped him. "Seriously?"

"I didn't say I didn't trust either of you. I said I trust you the same." I reached for the food on the table and filled my plate. I needed food, real food, and then I would sleep.

Anita led a sullen Cowboy to another room so it was just me and Carlos at the table. I shoved food in my mouth, moaning as the flavors hit my tongue.

"Good stuff." Carlos smiled as he cupped a coffee mug in his hands. "My Anita is quite a cook." I kept on shoveling as he watched, his eyes sad. "If you are right about the demons, we are in deep trouble. But you will look for Rosita? When you are stopping this? Keep an eye out for her at least?"

I slowed my chewing and spoke around a mouthful of food. Telling him I wasn't going after Rosita was a bad idea, so I figured I'd sidestep the question. "I need to check a few things, but I can find out if it's a demon real quick." I paused, then asked, "Are the tracers really destroyed?" The MRI machine had been almost too slick, too easy. And they found us at the hospital.

His smile slid off his face. "Yes. They are out of commission. But I hid you from the moment I realized who you were, what you were. It bought us time. Likely the vehicle you were driving had a tracer too. That is where I'd lay my guess."

"Why did you hide what you were from us?" I asked.

"I was trying to protect my wife. You are known for your shoot first and never bother to ask questions style of working. I hoped that we would be able to appeal to you to go after our daughter. I have heard the stories of how you took down Mancini to save your own son."

I tapped a finger on the table again. "That was when I worked for my father, I had no pull then. It was not my job to ask questions."

"So you are a freelance assassin now?" His eyebrows shot up.

I sighed and kept eating. "I am a mother whose children are missing, Carlos. The same as yours."

Children. No. Child. My gut clenched and I snapped my teeth shut to keep the food in my belly.

Carlos reached across the table and put a hand on top of mine. "My Rosita, I saw her the day before she went missing. You see from the picture she has her mother's beauty and fire? She was determined to help the missing abnormals. Many of them were her friends. Those she'd grown up with. Good people."

I stared at him as he stared down at the picture of his daughter. Her long dark hair had been caught up in the wind, and really, she looked like a model as she smiled coyly over her shoulder at the camera. Unusually bright amber eyes peered out from under long dark lashes, sparkling with laughter, with life.

"She said she had a lead. It didn't take her to the facility that you were at, but somewhere else. She went there and now . . . she is gone. Her partner couldn't find a trace of her. He has all her papers. Maybe together you two could—"

I was already shaking my head. "That's not how this works."

He barreled on as if I hadn't spoken. "I wanted you to feel a connection to her so you would want to find her for us," he whispered. "You are the Phoenix. You are the boogeyman of our world. If you cannot save us, who will?"

His fingers tightened on mine and I turned my hand over so we were palm to palm. "Please, find her."

"Fuck," I said. "I can't help anyone. Don't you get it? If they can do this to all our kind, what hope do I have of stopping them? None. That is the answer. None. They locked me up as if it were nothing, Carlos. Me."

I'd seen Bear in trouble. My boy was afraid and angry, and that was what had driven me out of the facility more than anything else. My tolerance for waiting, for biding my time, had exploded in an instant. Nothing mattered more than my boy's safety.

Because he was the only one I had left.

"I was giving birth," I found myself telling him. "When they took me."

Anita walked into the room and sat, a small box in her lap.

Dinah was quiet, and I could feel her listening. She hadn't known I was pregnant with Killian's child when I gave her to Easter.

"They did not use the mist?" Carlos asked.

"I was awake. They gave me an epidural for a C-section. Tied my arms down. Strapped my head back. I let them, of course, I did." I started to shake, unable to stop the memories now as I slowly spoke through them.

My head was strapped to the operating room table as were my arms. Lower body numbed and useless from the epidural. But I could hear, and that torture was like nothing I'd ever felt before.

I could hear and do nothing as my world turned itself inside out.

"Tell him," one of the nurses said. "We've got no pulse on the child. None on the mother."

There was no cry of a baby, no first breath taken. Hands pushed on my innards as I was roughly put back together. I wanted to speak, to tell them they were wrong. I was alive. I was sure the baby was too. She was alive. She had to be.

I tried to pull on my wrists, needing to get up, but my body ignored me. The cold flush from the epidural spread through me again, up and down my spine, paralyzing me. A cold cloth settled over my eyes, cutting out the bright lights of the surgical room. I couldn't even twist my head side to side. A set of hands pushed down on either wrist, holding me there. "You don't want to move. They're still stitching you up."

The cloth didn't come off my eyes. Killian's voice echoed to me. "I need to see her."

My heart lurched. He would get me out of this nightmare. Our girl could not have died, and I knew I was not dead. I heard the cry of an infant from far away and tried to jerk on the ties holding me down. The cloth on my eyes slid off and I was looking up into his face, into his green eyes. The words wouldn't come, though. I had no voice as I fought whatever was sliding through me, whatever drug they were pumping into my spine to keep me immobile.

Killian. Don't let them take me.

Because that was what was going to happen. Someone was taking me. I didn't know why, but I knew this game as surely as I knew my own name. As surely as I knew anything in my life.

"Nix," Killian whispered my name, touched my face, then closed his eyes. "Go then. Take her."

Take her.

Was he out of his mind? A scream bubbled up in me, but nothing came out, as if I had no control over my body at all. There were fingers in my mind keeping me still, keeping me quiet. Killian turned away, a child in his arms. Maybe she'd survived? But his next words negated that. "I'll bury them together."

Together.

I only had to say one word, to tell them to stop, and I knew I could change his mind. Why would he tell them to take me?

"Finally. That man was far too good for an abnormal whore like this one."

A woman had said that. A nurse maybe? I didn't know, didn't care. I tried again to pull against the straps, over and over, but my body didn't react to my commands and I didn't know how to get around the drugs in my system.

"She's trying to burn through it."

"The handlers will have her soon enough. Give her a heavy dose, it won't kill her."

Something was shot into my IV. The tingle started in my left arm and spread upward to my chest and then into my lungs, slowing my breathing. But I was still awake, even if I couldn't move a fucking inch.

Where were they taking me, and why?

Away from my family, that was where. Rage lit me up and the drugs dissipated as if they'd never been in me. I snapped the straps holding me down.

"Damn it, hold her!"

"I can't. She's too strong!"

The shouts were music to my ears as I fought the five men who had thought they could manhandle me into a waiting vehicle. My legs were still unresponsive, but my upper body was doing just fine, even with a brand-new C-section incision stitched up tight. I didn't feel it, not through the rage that kept me moving.

I punched the one on my left in an uppercut to the balls. He went down and I pulled his weapon—a Taser. I shot it into the guy to my right and he jerked and bounced like a fish on the line.

The problem was there were too many of them, and not enough of me. Someone grabbed me from behind and put me into a sleeper choke. If my legs had been functioning, I could have . . . the thought stuttered as the blood cut off to my head. But that wasn't what really slowed me.

No, the fingers in my mind were what cut me off from anything I could do.

I slapped at the hands and went limp. I was released and stuffed into an ambulance, or some other similar transport, strapped down to a board, and my IV was jammed into a new bag of something. I stared up at it, blood trickling down the side of my face. An attendant got in with me, lifted my shirt.

"Shit, she ripped the stitches."

One of those holding me stepped up and sat next to me. My head was again strapped to the board so all I could do was roll my eyes to look at him. He looked to be in his forties, strong build, square bulky jaw like a bulldog. Marine if I was reading him right. At the very least, he was a marine.

He stared down at me. "You aren't ever going to get out of where you are going. So you'd best stop trying." His nametag said George.

I didn't answer him. That was what he wanted.

He settled beside me while the paramedic, or whoever it was, stitched me up. Nurse maybe? My brain tried to tell me that a paramedic wouldn't be stitching me up.

The marine smiled. "You got that look like a caged animal. I'm going to recommend some things to make your stay easier on all of us."

"I'll kill you," I whispered.

"You might think that." He didn't stop smiling, but instead pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket and put one in his mouth.

The paramedic/nurse shook his head but didn't tell the marine not to smoke in that small area where I had no doubt an oxygen tank was hidden somewhere. Maybe he'd blow us all up.

"You see, the handlers want you bad." The marine drew in a drag, held it, and puffed out a perfect ring. "They think you're special, but I think you're just like all the other freakshows."

"You aren't supposed to talk to her," the nurse said.

"The meds they've got will wipe her memory of this." The marine blew smoke into my face. "And this bitch killed two of my men. So let me have my fun."

He leaned over and pulled his cigarette from his mouth, close enough that he could have kissed me. He lifted the cigarette to my eye. "You don't need to see to do what they need you to do."

I twisted my head hard to one side and the strap on my forehead slid off. I snapped my head forward, catching him on the bridge of the nose, shattering it. He fell back with a yell, pulled a gun and leveled it at me.

"Don't you do it," the nurse said. "We'll both get eliminated if we lose her."

The marine was breathing hard, blood flowing from his nose as I stared up at him. "I'll kill you."

What felt like days later, we stopped, and I was pulled out of the transport vehicle. The light was bright on my eyes and I blinked away tears as I looked up at the building we approached. Or rather I was pushed toward, still strapped down.

The sign on the front glass door had a different name then, one that they changed later.

Clearview Medical Institute for the Criminally Insane.