Eileen Wilks - Death Magic

They gathered and talked for a few minutes, sounding variously calm, keyed up, worried, or pragmatic. The one in the dashiki didn’t speak. Now and then a fifty-ish woman with a dramatic silver streak in her black hair would take the silent woman’s hand, smiling and nodding at her, then would relate something to the others as if the silent woman had spoken.

The one in the muumuu was the oldest and heaviest of them. She seemed to be in charge. Her eyes were as milky white as her hair. “Enough chitchat. They’ll be here when they get here,” she told the others. “We’d best be where we need to be when they arrive. Come on.”

“You know where to head, then?” asked a tall, husky woman with milk-chocolate skin and a thick southern drawl. “I can’t see a thing.”

The oldest of them chuckled. “Dark, light, it’s all the same to me. The feel of the place is clear enough—thick metal doors over a big hollow tube going straight down. Susan, you might take my arm. I won’t be paying attention to what’s up close, so I could trip over a twig and embarrass myself.”

A mild-looking woman in her early thirties took the old woman’s arm, and all seven set off into the grass, the little lights bobbing along with them . . . headed directly for the underground missile silo.

“Oh,” said the one in the muumuu. “Here’s Sam now.”

PAULChittenden was Friar’s East Coast lieutenant, but he wouldn’t be taking the stage at the rally. He kept a low profile. Humans First’s official organizer for the D.C. rally was Kim Evans, a tall, nervous powerhouse of a woman who liked cameras just fine and had a problem distinguishing between fact and fiction.

Rule had met her recently at a D.C. party, the sort of event he used to attend more often. The sort of event Lily hated, which was why he accepted far fewer invitations than he used to. But he’d heard Kim Evans would be at this one, and he’d been determined to meet her and size her up.

It had been worth the effort. In five minutes’ conversation, Evans lied three times—twice about things she’d said that were on record, available to see and hear at various news sites. The third lie was her insistence that Rule himself had just said something he hadn’t. She’d lied passionately and sincerely, and when called on it, brushed it off with “don’t be ridiculous.”

Evans’s fierce insistence that the truth was whatever she said it was created its own odd sort of charisma. Heaven knew the press found her fascinating. There were television cameras set up on stage—those operated by the Jumbotron people, yes, but also from various news outlets.

Rule stood beside Cullen at the north side of the crowd, where it thinned slightly, way back from the stage. They’d been unable to get closer without forcing a path. Rule had been ready to do just that when Abel found them. Abel had decided to pay a visit to the people hosting the event. He could badge his way in, he said.

The crowds had swallowed them up ten minutes ago. Rule was getting increasingly nervous. Abel hadn’t called. The brownies were either late or they couldn’t get through the mob, and the show was starting. A swell of music announced Kim Evans as she mounted the steps. Evans had a racehorse’s elegance—thin and quick and nervous. She was immaculately turned out in a bright pink suit and three-inch heels; she’d worn her blond hair loose, and the wind whipped it around her narrow face. The crowd went crazy cheering.

Rule’s phone sounded. It was Lily. His heart pounded in a mix of relief and anxiety—relief because he’d hear her voice. Anxiety because she wasn’t here . “Yes?” he said, then, blocking his other ear: “Say again. There’s too many people screaming and clapping. I couldn’t hear.”

Even with his hearing, even with his other ear stopped up, he missed a few words when she repeated her message: “... going to be kinda busy here, but you need to know. Pass the word. They . . . making lupus dopplegängers. Wolf form. A whole lot of them. Must have used Brian’s tissue. Turning them loose on . . . here and . . . buquerque and . . . iego and New York.”

THEplan was simple enough. Let the bad guys get all their unconscious victims loaded up—then stop them, take their wheels, and show up in their place at the rally.

Having all the bad guys outside was obviously best. Having all the victims in one place and secured inside the truck made it harder for the bad guys to use them as hostages. The tricky part was that she was trusting Drummond. Sort of.

Lily was going with her gut—and maybe with Mullins’s gut, too. Drummond’s sense of right and wrong might be twisted as hell, but it was strong. Strong enough for him to sacrifice his career and his bloody stupid war against the Gifted to keep a bunch of homeless people from being sacrificed. In his screwed-up head, everything he’d done was supposed to protect people. Lily and Ruben, the lupi, the Gifted in general—they weren’t really people to him. But he couldn’t let “innocents”—people without Gifts or the knack of turning furry—be killed.

She wouldn’t turn her back on him, but she’d use him. He had an advantage she couldn’t overlook. He’d supplied the thugs in the first place.

Or rather, he’d arranged things. Dennis Parrott hadn’t known how to go about hiring muscle who wouldn’t object to wet work. Drummond might claim he didn’t know about the death magic, but he’d known his compadres were planning murder. Like most cops, he knew people on the other side of the law. He’d set up a meet between Parrott and Randy “Big Thumbs” Ballister. “Big Thumbs” got his name from saying he’d “squish that prick like a bug,” accompanied by a motion with his thumb. Word was, he did a lot of squishing.

Most of the operation would be carried out by the lupi. If everything went right, Lily wouldn’t even be needed. That grated on her. She didn’t like sending others into danger while she stood around giving orders, but she wasn’t going to risk lives just to soothe her ego. Lupi could do things she couldn’t.

So Lily squatted across the street from the Webster house, tucked behind a hugely overgrown juniper. The world was growing lighter, though still wrapped in shades of gray; she could see clearly enough. The catering truck was parked in the cracked driveway, its open rear facing the house. Its driver had just climbed back behind the wheel and rolled the windows down so he could enjoy a smoke.

He was a bit of a wild card; surrounded by metal, he’d be hard to take, and there was no cover to reach him unseen. They were hoping Big Thumbs’s men were scared enough of him to obey, no matter what. If not . . . that’s why Lily had picked this spot. It was the only place with cover that gave a good view of the man.

Two men emerged from the front door, a long, blanket-wrapped bundle carried between them. Another man—Big Thumbs himself—stood by, watching.

If the count was right, that was the next-to-last hostage. And here came two more men with another bundle. Where the hell was . . .

She sighed with relief as a white Ford that any self-respecting criminal would make for a cop car pulled up, blocking the catering truck. Drummond climbed out, slammed his door.

The first two men hastily heaved their bundle into the truck and hurried to back up their boss. They didn’t bother with subtle. Both drew their weapons.

Lily could hear Big Thumbs clearly. “What the hell you doing here?”

“Parrott thinks I’m his goddamn messenger boy, that’s what. He says he left something behind last time. Fancy card case, metal—might make it through the fire when you torch the place, and it’s got his initials on it, so he wants you to find it.”