Another Kind Of Dead (4 page)

“No, that was a full-on earthquake.”

The city was no stranger to earthquakes of a much smaller magnitude. Mostly they were barely felt. Earthquakes this powerful were rare and, if hidden history showed anything, usually products of troll activity. Trolls, also called Earth Guardians by the Fair Ones, were part of the Earth itself—dirt and stone and natural elements. They’d had their internal wars a hundred years ago, and the city had suffered for it.

Combined with the earlier Break-hiccup, I had no doubt something bigger was brewing belowground.

Wyatt’s cell phone jangled, no longer on the counter where he’d left it. He rummaged in the mess covering the kitchenette floor. Checked the display. The surprise on his face was hard to miss as he received the call. “Truman.”

I stood up and wandered closer, concerned as his surprise gave way to actual shock. My heart sped up.

“Hold on,” Wyatt said. He pulled the phone away from his ear, hit a button, then said, “Say that again for me.”

On speaker now, Adrian Baylor’s voice came over loud and clear. “I said Boot Camp was attacked, Truman. Unplug your ears.”

A chill wormed down my spine and spread gooseflesh across the backs of my legs. This was so not what I expected to hear. The start of a question squeaked out of
my mouth. I clamped a hand over it to silence myself. Baylor was a Handler and a former colleague of Wyatt’s, and among those people who thought me dead. Again.

“That’s what caused the earthquake,” Baylor continued. “At least three trolls were systematically testing the underground security measures for about five minutes before the quake. A couple of their friends must have come along to stop them, because their fight? That’s what shook the city.”

Troll wars. Holy shit. My mind raced. Boot Camp was a secret, supersecure facility in the mountains south of the city. It was where new Hunters were trained to kill, and it was a place where only one in two people came out alive. Four years ago, I’d been one of the lucky ones.

I couldn’t imagine why a bunch of trolls would want to get at those kids and their trainers. But they weren’t the only secrets hiding behind the high, magically secured walls or the deep, oil-slicked, electricity-bound barrier beneath. After the discovery of a macabre lab of science experiments in an abandoned nature preserve a week ago, the contents of that lab had been moved to Boot Camp. Contents including scientific research notes, vials of liquids no one could identify, lab equipment and technology beyond anything I’d ever seen in person, and fourteen living, breathing creatures that had been tortured in the name of science.

Creatures that ran the spectrum from docile and harmless to vicious hellhounds created with the worst intentions. Creatures that could terrorize the public and kill without remorse if set loose.

“Has anyone heard from the Fey Council about this?” Wyatt asked.

“Feelers are out, but the brass says no word yet. We’ve got teams coming in to keep the place locked up tight,
but we aren’t making the same mistake we made at Parker’s Palace.”

The mistake of thinning out our ranks to chase after minor incidents while those closest to the imminent slaughter didn’t believe it would happen. Sixty-four people were dead because of that mistake.

Wyatt puckered his eyebrows. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay by your phone for now, at least until we have a plan.”

“Fine.”

As he snapped his phone shut, I said, “Fortunately, with the advent of mobiles, asking someone to stay by the phone no longer requires them to sit around at home and fidget.”

Wyatt gave a tolerant sigh. “You want to go out there.”

“You’d rather sit around and hope Baylor gives you an assignment? If trolls are attacking, then something’s wrong. They’ve been one of the most neutral species in this city for years.”

“Neutral or not, they seem to take direction from the Fey.”

His accusation struck me dumb. A chill settled in my stomach. True, at Amalie’s request, a troll named Smedge had once rescued Wyatt and me from a group of Halfies. The Earth-bound trolls had some sort of partnership with the Fey, but that didn’t preclude trolls from working for others given the right incentive. Or they had attacked on their own, for reasons beyond my present understanding.

“So now you’re accusing Amalie of turning against us?” I asked.

He scowled. “No, just making an observation based on fact. Amalie has been a staunch supporter of the Triads since the beginning, but she doesn’t speak for
all Fey. Just for the sprites and the decisions of the Council.”

“A power play by other Fey?” Saying it aloud sounded ridiculous. The Fey seemed perfectly content to live outside the city, happily roaming the mountains and forests that surrounded us and leaving the more violent, city-dwelling species to kill one another.

“I’m just thinking out loud, Evy,” he said. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything, because I really don’t have a damned clue what’s going on.”

I nodded, knowing exactly how he felt. “Too bad I have no idea where Smedge went to ground. He’d probably know what’s happening.”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “That would make things too easy.”

“Yeah, and God forbid anything ever be—” A heavy thud rattled our front door. For a brief moment, I expected the world to start shaking. Instead, whatever had thudded slid down the length of the door until it hit the ground.

I reached under the coffee table and pulled a knife from its hiding place. Weapons were stashed all over the apartment, and this one was the most immediately accessible. Wyatt didn’t try to stop me; he didn’t tell me to be careful. I approached the door on silent feet, glad for the cement floor, and checked the peephole first—nothing in sight except the opposite wall.

Pressing my ear to the door, I listened. Heard the faint, muffled sound of heavy breathing. By my feet, something dark red caught my attention. It glistened on the floor, just under the door’s edge. Blood. I curled my fingers around the knob and snicked the lock back. Twisted. Yanked.

And leapt backward as a man’s body tumbled halfway into the apartment, landing flat on his back. Blood
oozed from multiple wounds in his abdomen and had soaked through his once white shirt.

“She knew you were alive,” the man croaked, and I finally took a good look at his upside-down face.

It was Jaron, another sprite and Amalie’s most trusted bodyguard. And s/he was dying.

Sprite-Jaron was an orange crystal-encrusted woman who barely came up to my waist. Jaron’s human avatar, besides being male, had the height and bulk of a professional wrestler, which made him an ideal bodyguard for Amalie’s avatar. It did not make him ideal for being dragged across the floor to the sofa. Even with Wyatt and me, it took several minutes to get him there. Jaron stayed quiet, grimacing but making no noise, even though he had to be in agony.

We finally gave up on the couch and left him on the rag rug that covered the area nearest the sofa. While Wyatt closed and locked the door, I fetched a couple of towels from the bathroom. I put one beneath his head and pressed another over his wounds. That’s when he cried out.

“Who did this?” I asked, trying to ignore the streak of blood that stretched from his feet to the door.

“Goblin,” he rasped. “I think.”

He thinks?
Goblins were pretty damned easy to pick out of a crowd. “Why did it attack?”

“Don’t know.” Sweat beaded on his forehead. His brown eyes were wide, pained, unfocused. “Earth Guardians attacked. I left First Break. Situated myself here. Left my apartment. It stabbed me with … its hand.”

“Its hand?” Goblins had sharp claws, but not long
enough to inflict the kind of damage done to Jaron’s abdomen.

“Fingernails, like small knives. Too long.”

Just the mental image of that made my stomach roil.

“Why come here?” Wyatt asked, kneeling on the other side of Jaron. “How did you know Evy was alive?”

Jaron rolled his eyes toward Wyatt. “Amalie knew. Gifted who are in her true presence … she can sense their aura. Their tether to the Break. She can sense you both.”

Creepy and cool. Wyatt and I had both spent time in Amalie’s true presence, seen her as she really was and not just in her human avatar. The aura thing was new information, but I really knew little about sprites and their ways with the Break. She knew I hadn’t died last Saturday, and she also, apparently, hadn’t shared that intel with the Triads. Interesting.

“But why here?” Wyatt persisted.

Jaron groaned. Blood gurgled up his throat, into his mouth, and down his cheeks. He coughed, dim eyes searching. I squeezed his shoulder and leaned in, desperate to know what had driven the sprite to drag a dying man to our little corner of Hell. His head listed toward me, but he didn’t seem to see.

“Jaron, please, tell us,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not … betrayal.” The words were barely intelligible. I leaned closer, missing most of his whispers. “Don’t … trust …” His eyes flared white, the briefest flash of the power of the Fey possessing his body. Then the light went out. His body stilled.

“Jaron? Fuck.” I rocked back on my heels, stunned. Why did they always die before they finished saying what needed to be said?

Wyatt checked his pulse and found none. We didn’t even know the man’s real name—the man who gave his
body over to the will of a powerful sprite whenever she needed to walk among humans and was none the wiser. The man who died because someone had been sent to kill Jaron in her most vulnerable state.

“Betrayal,” Wyatt said. “But who’s betraying who?”

“She said she came here after the trolls attacked.” Or were attacked—either way, she had to be referencing the earlier earthquake. “Could they have turned on the other Fey? Maybe she was going to give that information to the Triads.”

He shook his head. “Then why come to us after being stabbed? Why not call the brass or one of the Handlers?”

“I don’t know.” I thought of how the avatar’s eyes had flashed, glowed that brilliant white at the moment of death. Just the avatar’s death, or … “Wyatt, if a sprite’s avatar dies while the sprite still possesses it, what does that do to the sprite?”

His eyes widened. “I have no idea. I don’t know enough about avatars to even guess.”

My stomach twisted as the implications caught up with me. Had Jaron come to the city to tell us something important about a betrayal? One so big she’d dragged her wounded avatar across town to find us, only to die before giving up anything useful? Possible. Horrifying, but possible. And who the hell was the man/goblin/thing with the clawed hands? Except for certain shape-shifters, I didn’t know of any other nonhuman species capable of manipulating their bodies like that.

“Amalie knows I’m alive,” I said. “She must have sent Jaron to contact us, which means that whether Jaron’s alive or dead, Amalie will know something went wrong. Maybe she’ll try to contact us again, some other way.”

“Let’s hope.” He dug beneath the dead man’s behind and retrieved a billfold. Some cash fell out when he
flipped it open. “Jed Peters is the name on the driver’s license. He lives five blocks from here.”

“I would have pegged Jaron for picking a Parkside East type for her avatar.”

“They need humans with open minds, who willingly believe. They’re probably a lot more cynical on the other side of the river.”

“Good point.” I pulled the folded towel from beneath Jed Peters’s head and draped it over his face, then stood up. “So a dead body decorating the living room certainly adds a new wrinkle to today’s plans.”

“I’d say it’s less a wrinkle than a big damned bump.” He snagged one of the other towels and started wiping the blood off the floor, cleaning up the smear that led to the door. There’d be blood in the hall, too. Peters/Jaron had probably left a trail of it all the way from his apartment. Five blocks to here.

Wyatt mopped closer to the door. I watched him, uneasy, instinct telling me what my mind wouldn’t.

“The goblin with the claws he told us attacked him,” I said, trying to process it out loud. Hoping for a clue.

“What about it?” He reached up from his half crouch and flicked the door lock open.

“Jaron didn’t say she fought it off, just that it stabbed her and she came to us.”

He paused, turned his head, and looked at me. Understanding bloomed like a deadly flower. The knob turned under his hand. Wyatt slammed his shoulder into the door, but someone pushed from the other side. Someone a lot stronger. Wyatt went sprawling onto his left hip and continued to roll, clearing the door, which had just been kicked completely open. Jaron hadn’t managed to describe her attacker beyond the claws and
thinking
it was a goblin, but what stood in the open doorway wasn’t what I expected.

It was a goblin—or had been, at one time. Maybe four
and a half feet tall, it stood up straight rather than hunched as other goblin males did. Skin that should have been slick and oily was dull, as if powdered with starch. Black hair tufted out from in and around its ears—ears that should have been wide and pointed but instead were round like a human’s.

I looked in its eyes, and my stomach lurched. Not the lusty red eyes I’d grown to know, but watchful brown that were completely human. The mismatched features, combined with the clothes—jeans and a black T-shirt, for Christ’s sake!—sent a shock wave of cold through my body. My insides quaked. This wasn’t right. I couldn’t possibly be seeing it.

Until it stretched out a decidedly goblinesque arm in my direction, as though pointing with its entire hand. Goblins had long, sharp fingernails, good for rending flesh and getting a grip. This creature had them, too, and before my very eyes, they grew to the length of four inches each. Tiny daggers, four in a row. Only the thumbnail didn’t grow.

It looked past me, at the body by my feet, and snarled. Dry lips pulled back, showing off a single row of sharp, jagged teeth. Bile scorched the back of my throat. It still didn’t attack. Good for us.

I had a small knife strapped to the side of my right boot, an easy grab, but the goblin-thing would be on me the instant I reached. The knife I’d taken from beneath the coffee table was still on the floor where I’d dropped it minutes ago, halfway between me and the monster. More weapons were in the kitchenette, another beneath the sofa, others in the bedrooms. If I went for any of them, it could attack and kill Wyatt.