Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

“We’ll find it.” He touches my shoulder, but his face is fuzzy and I’m not sure if he’s frowning or smiling. “Evy?”

Vertigo hits. “I think I’m gonna pass out.”

Someone catches me.

Waking up in a nice, soft bed surrounded by air-conditioning and the wonderful scent of coffee is too much to hope for. It’s still damned hot, but at least I’m horizontal on something moderately comfortable. My head’s pounding, and I consider sleeping awhile longer. At least until the pounding goes away.

Then someone screams and I jerk upright. Every muscle in my back aches, and the world fuzzes out for a few seconds as everything spins in circles. My stomach grumbles, demanding food. Or a gulp of water, at the very least. I try to recall where my weapons are as my vision clears.

The interior of a high-tech-looking helicopter comes into focus. The sliding doors on both sides are open, allowing a moderate flow of air into the stuffy interior. It’s powered down on the lawn opposite the parking lot, where someone has erected a kind of tent to protect the wounded. Did one of them scream?

Someone had wrapped my forearm in gauze. Faint spots of blood have oozed through the white, as well as a few pale streaks of yellow. It’s itchy, though, instead of achy, so I know it’s finally healing.

I climb out of the helicopter, more than a little embarrassed at having passed out. A black body bag is outside, waiting to be loaded, and my money’s on Wolf Boy being in it. Going wherever the hell it is that Marcus and company want to take it. It occurs to me to warn them that the corpse might be tagged somehow, but they seem like a smart bunch. They’ll think to check. I don’t know if Thackery’s even still alive, much less in possession of any equipment capable of tracking his little wolf toy.

People come and go, moving in pairs and trios. Some carry bodies, others equipment. It reminds me of a moving crew. I scan the crowd for someone who can give me answers.

“Evy, hey.” Milo jogs over from the far side of the helicopter. His clothes are smeared with drying blood of various colors, and his nose is a little swollen. He holds out a bottle of water. “It’s warm, but it’s wet.”

“Thanks.” I untwist the cap and indulge in a few sips, which immediately sit uneasily in my stomach. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I got pretty lucky. How do you feel?”

“Nothing a good meal and a few aspirin can’t cure. What the hell’s going on?”

“We’re evacuating Boot Camp.”

I blink. “What? Why? I mean, I know it’s a mess here, but—what?” The fear and unease in his expression stop me short.

“Baylor got a call a few minutes ago.”

“Orders from the brass?”

He snorts, and it’s not a pleasant sound. “No. The brass are all dead.”

I cannot have heard him correctly. “What do you mean they’re dead?”

“Dead, as in no longer alive.”

“Were they murdered?”

“No. Apparently, while we were here fighting creatures from hell, they walked into an interrogation room in Major Cases and blew their brains out.”

It feels like an awful joke. The brass are our bosses, in the loosest sense of the word—three higher-ups in the ranks of the Metro Police Department, who give orders to the Handlers and make sure they work independently from the police. They provide protection for the Hunters and answer to the Fey Council. No one knows who they are.

Until now, apparently.

“We’re sure it was the brass?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“The timing’s no coincidence,” Wyatt says. He’s with Marcus, who gives Milo a curious look. “Three cops, one a captain, don’t just kill themselves out of the blue, and all our calls to the brass have gone unanswered since this began.”

“But why? Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, Evy. I really don’t.”

I swallow hard against rising fear and uncertainty. Without us, the city has no defense against the Dregs. “So what happens to the Triads now?”

“They’ll pack up and head out. Marcus knows of an abandoned motel a few miles off the bypass where they can stay for a while until things get sorted out.”

“They,” I repeat. “So that’s it? You’re really done with the Triads, Wyatt? Just like that?”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t think this is easy for me, Evy. I’ve been part of the Triads for ten goddamned years, and it physically hurts to see it all reduced to this. But they’re not my responsibility anymore, and I haven’t really been a Handler since the night Jesse and Ash were killed.”

I ball my fists and plant them on both hips, indignation on the rise. “So you get fired and you turn your back on people who need you? That’s not like you, Wyatt.”

“The Triads are over, Evy. Over. I can’t turn on something that no longer exists.” A flush creeps into his neck, his own anger boiling up from the inside. “If I actually thought for a second that they could be saved … But they can’t. Boot Camp is practically destroyed, and the staff is dead. The brass is dead. Half the trainees are dead, and the active Triad forces, minus rookies, are down to half.”

On paper, the numbers sound awful. Apocalyptic, even. But this cannot be the end of it all. The city won’t survive without us fighting against the darker species who want to dominate and destroy. “So what then?” I snap. “We pack up, go home, and let the fucking goblins and Halfies take over the city? We let them win?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounds like, Wyatt.”

It’s as close to a real fight as we’ve ever had, and a pretty damned loud one, too. Occasional evacuees stop and take notice before scurrying on their way. Even Milo has taken a step back, out of the line of verbal fire.

“Just tell her, Truman,” Marcus says.

“It’s Astrid’s call.”

“She’ll get over it.”

I glare at both of them. “Tell me what?”

Wyatt looks like he’d rather stick his head in a viper’s nest than say whatever it is that Marcus is goading him on about. More than anything else, it’s Wyatt’s lack of trust that hurts me the most. He should have just shot me in the head and gotten it over with.

“You know, screw it,” I say. “Keep your fucking secrets, both of you.”

“Evy,” Wyatt says, reaching for me.

I dodge away from his hand. “Don’t. Tell you what, Wyatt, you run into the guy I fell in love with? Send him to come talk to me.” I walk away. After six steps I stop and angle back. “By the way, make sure that thing”—I point at the bundled corpse—“isn’t being traced.”

I don’t look back this time, just walk, careful to maintain a steady pace and not run like I want to. To get away as quickly as possible. Utter fury boils inside my chest, fueled by confusion and fatigue.

The Triads are broken, but they’re not unfixable. They can’t be.

The city won’t survive without us.

Greg’s dead. He bled out from his leg wound, and while I know it isn’t my fault, I still feel like I should apologize to him. He’s just one more body among dozens of others, carefully arranged in respectful rows beneath a haphazardly erected tent. The smell of death is suffocating in the summer heat, but no one’s bothering me so I stay put, comfortable here among the dead.

I think Greg is one of Sharpe’s Hunters, and he’s also the first to die from today’s engagement. Some are wounded, and they’re being tended to under another tent. I’m not sure what’s become of Bastian—if he’s alive or dead—and I’m not sure I care. Others are taking care of things, so I allow myself the luxury of just sitting and thinking, drumming up enough energy to walk to one of the Jeeps later when we evacuate.