Chapter 12

"We have time," Anita said as the four of us sat at the dining room table. "Our abilities will keep us hidden until morning. Even with our address, they won't be able to find the house."

"That seems awfully generous," I said. They might be Hiders, adept at slipping through the cracks, but I'd been on the run before, and twelve hours was a long time to sit in one place. My dog dropped her head onto my lap, her one eye locked on me. As if she knew I was on the verge of bolting.

Carlos ran his hands over his head. "We have run into similar problems before. We have a good amount of time."

I wasn't sure I bought that. "We'll count on six hours, tops."

Which meant we had maybe two left before they came knocking. Peter tapped on the table.

"Here's the deal. They hired me to identify any abnormals they brought in. Type, abilities, strength, that sort of stuff. I can tell from the tiniest drop of blood. They were supposed to repay me with my freedom."

Of course, they'd drawn blood from all of us. And fed it to a fucking Magelore.

"Did they have another Magelore for the other facilities?" I asked, ignoring the look of hope on Anita's face. I wasn't asking because I was going to do this. I was asking because it was smart to know what your enemy was up to.

"Far as I know, yes. Though who is anyone's guess. I do know there are at least two other facilities." He looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. "Eligor—I knew him as Ernest—was kind of the boss of the little handlers. The ones who got in your heads. The big boss back at the facility is Gardreel. He is . . . something else, but I couldn't tell—"

"Demon," I said, thinking about my one look at Gardreel and the way the wind moved his long red coat when there was no wind. "They are demons."

Only Peter was already shaking his head. "No. I've run into demons before. They are not those."

"Eligor is a demon name," I said. "And I'd bet anything Gardreel is a demonic name too."

Peter frowned. "I didn't taste them, so I could be wrong, but they don't act like demons, Nix."

"What do they act like?" Dinah asked.

The Magelore drummed his fingers across the table. "Like they were doing something good? Like they had a higher calling? They kept me in the dark for the most part, so a lot of this is conjecture. But the word ‘cleanse' came up more than once. They want all the abnormals gone. Humanity restored."

Anita and Carlos shared a look that spoke volumes.

"What?"

"Our daughter, she said something about the people running these places. She managed to speak to one of them here, at the Clearview Rehabilitation Center with her partner. She said that they weren't like anything she'd tangled with before. They acted like they were better than everyone else," Carlos said. "Could this be a new kind of abnormal? One we haven't seen before?"

Cleansed. Higher calling. New abnormals. Demonic names.

Had they taken the names of demons out of a sense of irony? I didn't think so.

"Do you have a VPN on your computer?" I asked. "I need to look something up."

"Yes, our daughter did that for us, another way to keep our tracks clear." Anita stood and motioned for me to follow her. I tucked Dinah into the waistband of my pants and she mumbled something about being cocky and putting her away before I knew it was safe.

Anita led me to a room with a tiny window and a nice shiny new computer all set up. She logged in and I sat.

Working off a search engine, I put in Eligor's name first. It came up under a list of demon names, just like I'd thought it would. I scrolled down, seeing more names I recognized from my previous research on demons.

"Something isn't adding up," I said. I typed in "demons" and "higher calling" on a whim. A whim that paid off.

What came up under the search made me sit back, and Anita gasped. "Madre de dios. Is that possible?"

Yeah, pretty much my question too.

I did a few more searches, refining the wording until I knew I was on the right track.

Finally, I sat back in the chair. Fewer than fifteen minutes had passed, but I had my answer. I didn't like it, not one bit.

Suddenly I wasn't so sure that I could just walk away from this mess. I leaned over the small computer table, gripping the edges. A hand settled gently on my back. "Breathe."

Normally I'd have thrown off the hand and the suggestion, but fear and anger were strangling me. Fear for my son. Rage that I was going to . . . deal with this when all I wanted was to see him. Hold him. Breathe him in. This was not the life I'd chosen. I'd walked away from it—twice now.

And yet . . .

"Zee . . . he was a good man, and the best Hider I ever met." The warmth of her hand sank into my back. "He told me once that he was training a girl who moved and hunted like a jungle cat with no remorse for her prey. But that if she loved you, she fought for you more fiercely than anyone he'd ever seen. That underneath all the death was a fire that burned bright and clean for justice."

She stood there, her hand on me. "If you want your son to be safe, there is only one answer. Because these creatures will find you no matter where you go. You know what you must do."

And then she stood and left me in that little room, a cold spot where her palm had been resting, her words hammering at me.

"Goddamn it!" I snapped out the words and the table cracked under the pressure of my fingers. "Dinah?"

"Yeah, she's good," she said carefully. "But that's not what you're asking, is it?"

I closed my eyes as the tears formed. Tears of rage, of pain, of all the emotions I couldn't indulge in. "I can't . . . I can't leave him behind again."

"But are you leaving him behind?" she asked. "Or are you protecting him? That's the question."

I slowly released the table under my fingers and made myself type in a few more key searches. Nothing came up on how to deal with these fuckers. How to kill them. How to stop them.

"You going to tell me what's on the screen?" Dinah asked. "I can only see so far when I'm stuffed into your pants."

I turned the computer off and headed back to the dining room, my body cold from what I'd seen. From what I was already committing to do.

I'm so sorry, Bear. I'm so sorry that I'm not coming for you.

Four abnormals waited for me, Cowboy finally awake and sitting upright. Sort of. He was slumped in his chair, his eyes foggy from the drugs in the dinner.

"It's worse than you could possibly imagine," I said, not sitting.

Peter's face paled. "That is not cool, Nix, coming out of your mouth."

I folded my arms. "The names—Eligor and Gardreel—they are demonic names in some circles, but in others . . . they are the names of the fallen. Angels who either chose to leave their realm or were kicked out for a variety of reasons."

I'd basically dropped a bomb on the middle of the table. Dinah was the first to speak, eloquent as always. "What the fuck? So fallen angels that act like demons? Feathers and shit?"

"No feathers that I saw," Peter said.

They were all looking at me, and I held each of their gazes in turn, ice forming over my heart. I had to put it away for a little longer.

"I have an idea. But we need to move and quickly, because if there are angels—fallen or otherwise—looking for us, then I have no doubt they have the ability to track us."

Anita gave me a sad, hopeful smile. "Then you will try to stop them?"

"On one condition," I said.

"Anything," she whispered, and because she was a mother too, I suspected she already knew.

"You will find my boy, and you will hide him until I can get to him," I said.

She gave a slow nod. "He'll be in Europe."

"Start looking in Ireland." As soon as I said it out loud, I wanted to take it back, despite knowing two Hiders were using their skills to keep us as hidden as anyone could be. "What's left of the Irish mobsters will have the latest info. When you find him . . . tell him that Montana is pretty in summer, but a wintry bitch." That was our code phrase.

Anita hurried from the room. "I'm leaving now for the airport." As she passed me, she reached out and touched my arm. "On my life and the life of my own child, I will protect him."

I didn't like the way my throat tightened. It should have been me leaving, not her. "Tell him I'll be there soon."

She bobbed her head and then she disappeared deeper into the house. I knew she would pack weapons, using her ability to hide them from the TSA agents. Fifteen minutes later, she was gone, down the road and on her way to Bear. I didn't have a picture of him, but I'd described him as best I could.

"I met your father once," Anita had said. "I'll recognize your boy if he favors your side so strongly."

Just me and the boys left—and, of course, Dinah.

They'd packed their bags too, and the room was quiet.

"What are we waiting for?" Cowboy asked.

The gray dog hadn't left my side through all this, standing with me. Feeling my pain. She let out a low whine and I dropped my right hand to her head, the touch soothing her and me. "We need a plan. They're going to find us, but if we're smart, we'll take them on a road trip."

I explained what I was thinking, the plan spilling out of me.

Cowboy liked it.

Carlos was hesitant and Peter . . . well, Peter didn't like it one bit.

"I'm not bait!" he snapped. "I'm a fucking Magelore! I may not be as feared as you, but I'm no chump change to be used as petty BAIT!"

I raised an eyebrow. "They aren't going to catch you. I'm sending Carlos with you, remember? When the moment comes, he'll hide you both, and then you'll meet back up with me and Cowboy."

Peter's jaw ticked and danced with irritation. "Fuck." Just like that, he'd agreed.

Carlos cleared his throat. "Before we go on, I must apologize for even thinking of handing you over. The stories about you—"

"Are true," I said. "But that is what makes me uniquely designed to kill every single one of these fuckers and burn their world to the ground without flinching." Eligor would have been the only one I left alive, but he was gone. Terminated.

He tipped his head at me. "I have something you should take."

He led me down the hall into the last bedroom, the master suite. Done up in floral blues and greens, the room was probably meant to be soothing, yet I felt nothing but a pulse of anxiety. Was this how the rest of the world tried to sleep?

"Help me push the bed," he said. I bent next to him and shoved the bed, scratching the hardwood. The floor beneath the bed didn't look any different, but he waved his hand over a section of it and an iron pull appeared. Hiders. Sneaky bastards. He grabbed the ring and opened a small space, three feet by three feet, maybe a bit bigger.

"I have a weapon here, like yours. He's a mouthy thing, but I think he will help you. He loves Anita like a sister," Carlos said.

Dinah shivered. "A sentient gun? Like me?"

I grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back. While he was theoretically on my side, I couldn't risk letting him pull a gun. If he attacked me, I'd have to shoot him, and we still needed him.

Keeping him on my right, I reached into the darkness, and my fingers brushed against the metal butt of what felt like a larger gun. Something semi-automatic by the feel of it.

A voice breathed out of the small space. "Oh, baby, just like that. Carlos, you didn't tell me that you were giving me to a pretty girl!"

I raised an eyebrow at Carlos. "It's no small thing to have a sentient gun. I thought I had the only two."

He shrugged. "He was a ladies' man in life. That didn't change after. And it was his wish to be . . . placed in a gun to protect someone he loved."

I was going to have a longer chat with Dinah about the spell used on her. Find out just how many people knew about it.

"Hey, Carlos, you fucker, you going to let me go do some damage?" the gun yelled as I dragged him out of the hiding spot.

He was no handgun, but an AK-47, with what looked like a seriously long-range scope. Matte black—he had that much in common with Dinah. I rolled him over once. "What's your name?"

He shivered in my hands. "Well, that depends. You want the name I was born with?"

"I need a name so I can yell at you," I said.

He chuckled. "A woman with fire? Bring it on, baby. You can call me Diego."

Carlos cleared his throat. "We should go. We have less than thirty minutes before they arrive."

I looked at him as the rumble of an engine cut through the walls of the house, soft, barely there but I heard it. My dog lifted her head and I turned toward the front of the house.

"Correction, we are out of time."