Raising Innocence (8 page)

I splashed water over my face and put a cold, wet paper towel over the back of my neck. A soft knock on the door barely made me twitch.

“Ma’am,” the flight attendant said, her voice sharp like she was hoping something was wrong with me. “Are you alright in there?”

“I’m fine. Bugger off,” I barked. I heard Alex repeat the ‘bugger off’ and the flight attendant gasped; then it went quiet outside the door.

I tried again to Track the kids, going through their names one by one, hoping by all that was holy in this world that it was a glitch, some sort of freaky accident that was done and gone

Nope, still nothing.

Wracking my brain, I wished that I could phone Giselle when we landed, and ask her to help me through this. Bile rose in the back of my throat, coating my tongue. Between the grief of losing my mentor, and the fear of what was happening. I could barely breathe.

It took everything I had to still my mind and look at this in a more logical way.

I was going to see another Tracker—he would help me. Jack Feen would know what was going on. He had to. Clinging to the faint hope that a man I’d never met would be able to solve a riddle I didn’t understand, I left the privacy of the bathroom and went back to my seat.

I didn’t look at the pictures again, couldn’t. Because if I no longer had the ability to Track, I had no idea what I would do with my life.

From my seat, I listened to the conversations around me, an attempt to subdue the panic in my heart futile. Until I heard a voice I recognized. The kid in the red hoodie, the one who’d come in last and slumped down into his seat. Agent Valley was just leaving him and heading back to his own seat.

Kyle, that little bastard was on the plane? Here was the distraction I needed.

Jerking to my feet, I stumbled all the way to the black line, hesitated, and then strode over it. Agent Valley and his partner threw themselves at me, and with a roundhouse and two swift front kicks, I dropped them one right after the other. Hunched in his seat, Kyle seemed oblivious to what was going on. The agents were pulling themselves to their feet, and the flight attendant was standing against the far aisle, her eyes bugging out, her hands twitching.

Kyle’s hoodie was down, and his ears were plugged with headphones. Perfect, he never even saw me coming, the cocky little shit.

I reached down and clamped a hand over his shoulder, digging my nails into his scrawny frame. Letting out a yelp, he looked up and paled. I dragged him out of his seat and back to my area of the plane while he begged and pleaded.

“Rylee, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t keep something like this a secret! A huge government cover up! Please, listen to me, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I wouldn’t have come to your place or taken the papers, but I couldn’t get back into the FBI files, they blocked me after I hacked in . . . you had the only proof that the government knew about supernatural beings—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said as I reached the black line and tossed him over it.

He scrambled backwards until he was pressed against the far wall, sweat beading up on his forehead.

“Please don’t kill me.” He whimpered, a tear trickling out the corner of one eye.

What an idiot. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“You aren’t?”

“No, but I’m going to make sure you never do anything so goddamn stupid again.”

The throb of his Adam's apple as he attempted to swallow was almost comical. More than that, he was giving me an outlet for my own fears. Sure, it wasn’t fair, but the kid deserved at least an ass-kicking for double-crossing me. If he’d been an adult, it would not have gone so easy for him.

The two agents nearly tumbled over themselves in order to place their bodies between me and Kyle.

“I’m not going to kill him,” I said, one hand resting on my hip. “The shit had the nerve to play me. I can’t let that go. You know what that would do to my reputation?” I was completely making this part up. I had no idea if I even
had
a reputation, nor cared if it was affected in any way if I did have one. However, they didn’t know that.

Agent Valley cleared his throat. “And what do you have in mind for him?”

“Well, he works for you now, doesn’t he?”

The FBI agent nodded once. “Yes, he is far too talented to be left out on his own. We might as well make use of his particular talents.”

I smiled; Agent Valley’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I’m thinking I will make good use of his talents too. For free, for the rest of his ever-loving life. Got it? He will be my personal hacker in everything I do; he will work for me pro bono until I deem he’s worked off his debt, if that time ever comes.”

Kyle scrambled forward on his knees. “I can do that. I can.”

Agent Valley’s eyes narrowed further, to mere slits. “You aren’t going to hurt him?”

Again, I smiled. “Oh, I never said that. I just said I wouldn’t kill him.”

M
y fingers gripped Alex’s collar as we stood in the pouring rain arguing with Agent Valley. Kyle slinked off with the other agent, still rubbing his ass from the full on over-my-knee spanking I’d given him with the flat of my sword. That made me smile. He wanted to act like an idiot child, so I’d treated him like one.

“I want to meet the Tracker first. I’m not going to the police station until I meet him.” I had to dig my heels in on this—there was no other way. I had to figure out what was stopping me from Tracking these kids. Had I lost my ability somehow? I harboured a fear that this sudden change had to do with the demon venom I’d carried around last month. Shit, as if almost dying wasn’t enough, the venom had to leave me useless too?

Alex picked up on my tension and let out a whimper, but said nothing. I’d told him that he couldn’t speak a word while we were in London unless there was no one else around. So far, he was remembering.

“Ms. Adamson,” Agent Valley said. “Our number one priority should be the children, shouldn’t it?”

Guilt tactics, fuck I hated them. I used them on myself enough. I didn’t need the agent piling on the weight.

Time to get seriously tough. “They’re dead. Correct?”

He flinched as if I’d hit him. “Yes.” He was going to have to learn how to hide his ‘tells’. Already, I was gaining the upper hand; something I’d never managed with O’Shea.

“Then they won’t mind waiting another couple of hours.”

With that argument, I won out and was taken to the hospital where Jack Feen was slowly dying. We pulled up and I stared out at the tall, greyish concrete building, the exterior as depressing as no doubt the interior was with all the sickness and death hidden behind the walls.

I leashed Alex, and tugged him tight against my leg. This was the first time I’d taken him to a hospital and I was worried he might be overwhelmed, not only by the smells, but the strong emotions. As I’d learned last month, the werewolf was sensitive to the emotions other people threw off. Which was not necessarily a good thing.

But Alex tucked in against my left leg, heeling at my side like a well-trained mutt. Which is all the humans would see, as long as his spelled collar stayed on.

I turned and looked down into the car. “Aren’t you coming in?”

Agent Valley shook his head. “No, I will be heading to the local station. I’ll send a car round for you. You have one hour, Ms. Adamson.”

Giving him a sloppy salute and swirling my wrist like a girly girl, I spun on one boot heel and walked away. Alex snickered under his breath. “Funny Rylee.”

“No talking,” I said, though my voice was far from harsh. Even with the fear of losing my Tracking ability, even with the loss of Giselle so sharp, I was excited. I was about to meet someone who knew what the hell he was doing, and he could share that knowledge with me.

We stopped at the front desk, I gave told them Alex was a therapy dog, and got directions to Jack Feen’s room. He was on the fifth floor. Alex and I took the stairs. Elevators mostly worked for me, but with Alex too, it might be too much for the technology to handle. Today was not a day I wanted to get stuck in an elevator.

I thought about what Agent Valley had told me on the plane, explaining the science behind the truths I’d lived for most of my life.

“We’ve found a very specific vibration that supernaturals give off, almost like their own EMP pulse, though with some subtle differences. You each have a radius, and the more supernaturals, the larger the radius of technology that is affected. There are a few things that can protect equipment, iron plating coated with a skin of silver is the best.”

I’d stared at him somewhat blankly. They were studying supernaturals? Though I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised, it unnerved me. The more the FBI learned about us, the easier we would be to corral. Control. Not what I had in mind. So I asked questions.

“So why don’t guns work?”

Agent Valley tapped one tooth with his index finger before answering. “The best way to explain it is that everything has positive and negative vibrations of energy.”

My eyes widened. Crap, this sounded like he’d actually done some research and believed what he’d found.

“And the primer in explosives of all types has a, more or less, negative energy.”

“That’s not surprising,” I said.

He grunted and kept going.

“Most supernaturals have a positive type energy that they throw off. When the two come into contact, the positive energy does, for lack of a better explanation, weird shit. It’s why bullets swerve, guns misfire, and occasionally everything works fine. It’s literally a crap shoot.”

Well, that explained a number of things I’d always just taken on faith. Don’t play with guns and don’t touch technology. That shit will break on your ass when you need it the most.

Blinking, I looked up at the door I stood in front of. ‘Jack Feen’ was etched into a small nameplate. Somehow, I didn’t think it was a good thing that he had his own plaque.

Glancing back the way we’d come, I saw a nurse wave at me from the desk. I gave her a bob of my head in acknowledgment.

Lifting my hand, I knocked on the door.

“Come the bloody fucking hell in or bloody fuck the hell off! But don’t just stand out there hovering in front of my fucking goddamned door!”

Swallowing hard, I pushed the door open. Alex and I stepped into the room. The air was cold, the window halfway open and the winter wind whipping through. Pale yellow walls that were meant to be cheery only made me think that the shade had been handpicked for Jack. His skin was the same pale tone, and contrasted sharply with his bright red hair. Not a good look. There was no I.V. or other instrument connected to him—of course, to get them to work would be a freaking miracle. He was here to die, slowly, and by the looks of the bare surfaces around him, alone. No flowers, no balloons, not even a single get well card. I drew closer to the bed, Alex trying to hide behind me and tangling my legs.

“Alex,” I grunted, grabbing at the bed to stop my downward tumble.

“What the fuck? You brought a fucking goddamn werewolf into a bloody hospital? Woman, are you out of your ever-fucking mind?”

Damn, and I thought I had a potty mouth.

“He’s fine. Just clutzy.” I stared down at the Tracker, at a loss for words.

“Well? What are you here for? Charity? Motherfuckers don’t realize I ain’t got no fucking money left. Sons of bitches have bled me dry.” He let out a wheezing laugh that ended in a rattling cough.

I pulled a chair up, and took a closer look at his face as I spoke. “My name is Rylee, and I’m a Tracker.”

This close I could see that he didn’t have
just
blue eyes. They swirled with three shades, light almost grey blue, a dark blue the colour of a lapis stone, and a bright blue like a summer sky. At least I knew now why my eyes were the way they were. Looked like it was an outward sign of a Tracker.

“Tracker, eh? That what you think?”

“It’s why I’m here. To finish the job you started.”

He pursed his lips, eyes narrowing to mere slits. Had I pissed him off? With me, that was a definite possibility.

“You know what you’re doing?” He asked. “Who trained you? Brin has been dead for years and he was the last Tracker on your side of the water by your accent.”

Excitement coursed through me and I tucked the name away. Brin. I would look him up when I got home—better yet, I’d have Kyle do it. “My mentor was Giselle, but she wasn’t a Tracker. I was hoping you’d tell me what you know.”

His eye snapped wide. “No one trained you?”

I shook my head, my one hand resting on Alex’s back as he sniffed at the edges of the bed.

“Well, fuck. How the hell didn’t you kill yourself?”

“Ah . . .”

“Never mind. Come here, let me have a look at you.” He beckoned with a gnarled up hand, the skin drawn tight over the bones to the point that I could actually see the blood pulse through his veins. Crap, this was like some creepy-ass freak show.

I scooted my chair forward and he took my hand gently, which surprised the hell out of me. “What can you do besides Tracking?”

He turned my hand over and I answered. “I’m an Immune.”

Chuckling, he nodded. “I wondered when I couldn’t get a bead on you. I’m a Reader.”

I nodded, recognizing the name as one of many Giselle went by. Looked like he’d dodged the curse that had claimed her. I’d say he was lucky, but by the looks of things now, maybe not so much.

“Do all Trackers have multiple abilities?”

Holding my hand lightly, he touched a scar above my wrist. “Yes. It’s necessary in order to be a good Tracker to have some additional abilities. It seems the gods favoured us and cursed us all in one breath.”

Alex lifted his head up and peeked over the edge of the bed at Jack, his claws curling around the bunched up blankets.

He took a sniff and wrinkled his nose. “Sick?”

Jack looked down at the werewolf. “Dying.”

With an exaggerated pout, Alex flopped onto his ass. “Alex no like dying. Dying sucks shit.”

A burst of laughter escaped Jack. “Yeah, that’s what I think too.” His eyes flicked up to mine. “Comic relief, I like it. Keep him close; you’ll need all the laughs you can get. The longer you’re in this business, the less you’ll feel like smiling.”