Insidious Winds (17 page)

Henry drove for about ten minutes before pulling over
to the side of the road. We were in the middle of the woods with a half-full
moon as the only light.
Perfect location for a massacre
. I held Scott’s
teddy and slipped on the ring.

My vision came easily, as if waiting for me. I saw
Scott as a little jaguar creeping into an abandoned house in the forest. After
a few minutes of sniffing things, he hopped up on a small bed and curled around
the pillow.

I pulled off my ring and dropped it back into the
pouch around my neck. “He’s safe, but I don’t know where he is.”

“Good. If you cannot find him, maybe Sinclair can’t
either,” Henry said. It sounded more like hope than confidence to me. Instead
of waiting for me to say anything else, he fired the truck back up and started
driving to the council. “Until we find out who is taking people and what the
council is planning, we can’t bring him home. In fact, I was thinking you
should call your familiar before we go after him again.”

“You know why I don’t want to do that.”

He nodded and focused on driving for a moment while
he thought over his argument. “He nearly died because of me. If I am your
familiar, then I would be able to use your power. If I am not, then at least we
have someone else to help us.”

“I almost died trying to save Marcus. If you were my
familiar, I would have had to choose between you or him.”

“Right now, I’m only asking you to help me save
Scott. He is all that is left of Zoe. He’s worth the risk.”

The ball was in my court. Henry was used to being the
best, so seeing a building blown up right before his eyes and believing his son
was killed in it must have shaken his world. How he was even able to drive was
beyond me. I didn’t have a child and probably never would, which was fine with
me. If I did have one, though, I would probably be more overprotective than
Hunt was.

I sensed Darwin trying to open the link between us
and allowed it. “
What’s wrong
?” I asked.

“
You are, if you’re trying to help Henry by
protecting him. Have you learned nothing in our psychology class
?”

“
You mean you were listening
?”

“
Cat minds are not like human minds, so there’s
not a lot of common ground between Henry’s person mind and cat mind. Male
jaguars don’t raise their young, but it’s obviously very important to Henry’s
person mind. Henry wants to follow your lead and trust you, but all the jaguar
is going to care about is that you’re trying to stop him from doing what he
wants. The jaguar doesn’t want to be protected. You’re not his alpha or his
friend, so the jaguar is probably fighting Henry right now to attack you. By
trying to protect him, you’re not helping him; you’re just making him fight
against himself. If your magic can protect him, great. Otherwise, leave it for
the battlefield
.”

I sighed. He was right. If this was what Henry
wanted, I couldn’t really tell him otherwise. However, Darwin was also wrong.
Henry was asking me to share my life and power with another creature, whether
it was him or not.

“
Besides, we came way too close to losing you
.”

*          *          *

After all the sleeping I did at the coven, I didn’t
expect to fall back asleep in the truck. What started out as a pleasant dream
of Astrid turned into warped memories of old visions, particularly the vision
where Astrid was running from someone and the shadows were not natural. The
strange distortion of light I saw Scott with was the same in this old vision. This
time, I noticed something really odd about the streets. It wasn’t anything I
could point out, just an overall sense of displacement.

As if it wasn’t on Earth.

*          *          *

I woke to Darwin poking me in the jacket. “We’re
here,” he said when I opened my eyes.

I opened the door, got out, and stretched. No amount
of twisting could work the dull ache out of my head or neck. “We’re in the
woods,” I pointed out when I realized we weren’t standing before the council’s
mansion.

“Did you want us to drive right up to the front door?
I thought we were supposed to sneak in,” Darwin said.

I nodded and rubbed my dry eyes. “Henry, shift, go
invisible, and find a way in.”

“If they’re hiding any objects or poisons, it’ll be
in their vault,” Darwin said. “I happen to know how to get in.”

“Fantastic. Henry, get us into the place, then go
with Darwin to the vault. Protect each other; that’s more important than
getting anything. I’ll snoop around the minds of the council members.”

Henry stripped, put his clothes in the truck, shifted,
and vanished.

“You know, I think I get Addie’s deal,” Darwin said.
“I heard something about black jaguars being bigger than--- yow!!” he shrieked
and cradled his left hand. “It was a compliment, bitch.”

I opened my mind to Henry after a moment and sensed
him circling the mansion. Henry’s feline mind was in control and collecting
details no one else could have noticed. He could smell where people frequented
and which doors were never used. He peered into pitch black windows and ducked
out of the way before any light was lit.

I was aware that he found a way in and that he
searched several rooms to make sure it was clear before returning to a small
side door off an old, deserted kitchen. “
Clear
,” he said. Darwin and I
followed the same path he had taken towards the castle. “
Stop
,” Henry
warned, right before we broke the tree line. I grabbed the back of Darwin’s
hoodie to make him halt and he did without question.

After a moment, a wizard in a dark cloak passed,
seemingly out of nowhere, entered the forest about ten feet from us, and
disappeared into the darkness. “
Who was that
?” I asked.

“
Grayson
Adams
,” Darwin said. Even
though it wasn’t said aloud, I could still hear a sneer in his voice.

We continued to the mansion, where Henry guided us to
the door via very confusing directions. “Left, no that’s too left,” and “come
this way,” are not useful instructions. When we made it through the door,
Darwin left to lead Henry, who was still invisible, to the vault. I wandered
through the halls, letting my instincts guide me.

At first glance, the mansion seemed to be entirely
empty, but I knew otherwise. It would have been helpful had I known the layout
of the place ahead of time so I could have avoided the kitchen and other
service areas, since I knew none of the council members would be there. After a
while, I realized I was circling one cluster of rooms.

I focused my magic to find the minds of the most
powerful wizards and wasn’t surprised at all to sense them close. I was,
however, surprised to sense that they were below me. There was obviously a
basement floor… which wasn’t actually unusual. “
Have you run into any
problems
?” I asked my friends in their heads.

“
Nope. We’re good here
.”

“
Are you in the basement
?”

“
A vault in the basement? No, we’re on the second
floor
.”

Still following my instincts, I entered a room. It
was a study with no visible steps or side rooms.
Is it too much to ask for a
damn elevator
? I started pulling books from the bookshelves and setting
them back when nothing happened. After about ten minutes of this, I gave up and
turned to face the room. All four walls consisted of bookshelves. If there was
a fireplace or picture, it would have been the first place I checked.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the glass
sphere that Hunt gave me, only to put it away again. I was saving it. Instead,
I focused on the minds of the wizards downstairs. The simplest of the minds was
also the greediest. The man was a piss poor wizard, which was how I knew whose
mind it was I was looking into. Kale Lycos.

Yuck. I hope I don’t catch mad cow or something
.
Trying not to tip the wizard off that I was in his mind, I forced myself to be
gentle. It wasn’t like the creep had that much functioning brain to begin with.
I didn’t give him a command, but I softly pushed the image of the study into
his mind. It activated his memories of him pressing a trigger under the work
desk that released a trap door in the floor. From there, it was a series of
secret tunnels. The first room on the right was where the council was meeting.

I backed out of his mind, opened my eyes, went to the
desk, and reached under it where the chair slid in. Just a few inches from the
edge, I felt a switch, which I pressed. The trap door behind me released. It
blended seamlessly with the natural wooden boards of the floor except when it
was opened. I lifted it, pulled out my penlight, and peered inside. Yes, I was
more likely to give myself up, but I wasn’t about to hop down into a wizard’s
basement without so much as a peek.

Seeing that it was clear, at least for the moment, I
carefully climbed down the metal ladder. The tunnel was dark, but there was a
soft glow up ahead from the council room. The floor was stone, the walls were
brick, and it was cold. It was cold enough to keep bodies down there.
Then
again, it’s a secretive group of power-hungry wizards; that’s probably exactly
what they keep down here
.

I put my penlight away and approached the entrance to
the room that was emitting a soft light. I could see this light because there
was no door, so it felt almost too easy. I pressed my back against the wall
beside the door and listened.

“We have to wait for Grayson,” one of the men
whispered.

“Absolutely not. Logan is making fools of us and we
cannot allow this to continue,” Kale argued crossly.

“What if we just required paranormals over a certain
age to register?”

“You want to pander to them because they can create a
little wind storm?! Every one of those students will be tagged and taxed before
the month is out and that school will be shut down if I have to bust it apart
with my bare hands!”

“Logan’s school isn’t harming---”

“He’s teaching them to defy us! That’s why Grayson
can’t even control his own daughter anymore!”

The council thinks Hunt is responsible for the
tornado around the school
.
That means Grayson and Felicity are working
alone. But why? He would have needed Felicity’s help, so it must have been
something she benefited from as well. Why would Gale and Felicity attack
students
? I pulled out my disposable phone, found the voice memo app, and
started recording the conversation.

“You have a point,” one of the council members
finally said, breaking the tense silence. “We have to have every single wizard
to side with us if we’re going to make this work. Logan isn’t going to agree to
this and his staff will side with him.”

“He doesn’t see that this is best for everyone,”
another agreed.

“We can assassinate some of the lead paranormals and
frame others. We can send a vampire to kill Maseré and leave evidence that the
vampire was out of Stephen’s coven. Then we can send a fae to kill Stephen and
leave evidence that the Canostrof tribe was to blame. We’ll just keep hitting
the leaders until nobody knows who to trust except for their own kind.”

“That’s brilliant,” Kale said. “Then we’ll step in
with our plan and everyone will agree to it. Any wizard who defies us then will
be executed in the name of the greater good for all paranormals.”

“So, by the end of the year, all shifters will be
confined to Australia, vampires will be in Africa, and Fae will be in Asia.
What about Europe?”

“Europe is too accessible. We don’t want the others
getting confused as to their territorial boundaries. The fae like to spread out
and they’re not smart enough to roam free without fences. Maybe we should put
them in Africa and let the vampires have Asia.”

“Fae need more space.”

“Nonsense. They’re just greedy. They haven’t been
taught. If we tell them to form tighter tribes and imprison those who wander,
they will learn. Europe will be used for us. We have many contacts in place
there.”

“But wizards are also getting North and South
America?”

“Of course. We don’t live in covens, packs, or
tribes, so we need more space. Besides, we’ll be keeping the peace between the
paranormals, so we deserve it. The only thing standing in our way is Logan and
his school.”

“But we have followers at his school.”

“No, we don’t. We tried to allow his school to
continue by giving them very simple directions.”

“They had to be registered and have a license.”

“Exactly. They defied us, so anyone attending the
school is a rebel.  We’ll go in and destroy the school. Arrest and tag anyone
who surrenders. Kill anyone who doesn’t.”

“Now hold on!” one of the wizards said. I heard a
chair scrape as he stood. “We have lineage in that school. My niece is a
student and her father is a teacher there.”

“Well, let’s hope you taught them well so they will
surrender. Don’t worry; we won’t kill anyone at Logan’s other schools. Those
paranormals are too young to understand what they’re doing. They will, however,
need to be taken into custody to be trained by---”

Two more chairs scraped against the floor and violent
protests drowned out the rest of his words. A yelling match broke out and grew
in volume until I started inching away from the door, certain that shots were
about to be fired. I turned off the recording to save room and battery, which
turned out to be a good thing because it took ten minutes of arguing before a
bright burst of blue light shut them all up.

I started the recorder again.

“Now, this is not a discussion,” Kale said angrily.
“We voted on the implementation of these rules and procedures because everyone
is too afraid to replace John after what he did. What
we
let him do. If
you want to back out now, then you’re out of the council.”