The Killing Season (25 page)

She gave a sharp nod. “I can reverse the locking mechanism. Make it lock from the inside instead of the outside.” She looked up at me, eyes serious. “But then you’ll be locked out.”

That got Sunny’s attention, but before she could freak out, I motioned to Nyny. “Let’s go then. Start on the door; I’m going to clear the greenhouse first.”

It took me only a minute to navigate the narrow aisles between the bane as I circled back to the main door. When I got there, Nyny was ready, bat in hand, eyes on the shadows by the stairs. “You’re sure about this?” she asked when I came up beside her.

“I’m sure.” I lowered my voice, eyes flicking back to where Sunny was attaching the blood pressure machine to Abigail. “If I’m not back in an hour, you need to go to Killian’s office. There’s a channel number for the police’s radio. Keep trying it until you get somebody.”

“Got it.”

I didn’t say if it came to that, if I wasn’t back, and Luke hadn’t arrived, that they were probably really screwed. No matter what, I couldn’t let it come to that. I slipped out through the open greenhouse door and glanced back at Nyny. “Watch Sunny. Keep her safe.”

“Keep yourself safe, Andrews.”

I nodded at her, but she was already closing the door. I waited until I heard the lock clang into place. The greenhouse was the safest place they could hide with a locked door and shatter-proof glass. They would be safe and helping Luke’s mom. That was all that mattered.

I moved around the fourth floor, but there wasn’t much to search up here that didn’t belong to the greenhouse. I found a pair of rusted shears. They were cumbersome but gave me another weapon besides my switchblade and whip. If worst came to worst, at least I would have an assortment of weapons to defend myself.

Down the stairs I went again, keeping to the outside tread like before. On the third floor, I checked down both halls. Coldcrow’s apartment was to the left, so I went that way first. As I traversed the hall, I checked each doorknob, twisting to see if the rooms were locked. The ones that weren’t, I quickly cleared, checking bathrooms and closets.

Bedroom doors softly snicking closed as I left each room marked the only sound of my progress. I was running on all cylinders, my blood pumping. A clear-headed resolve fueled me, pumped through my blood. Not my red murder haze of anger and violence, but something deeper, colder, quicker. A level-headed readiness and lethality.

When I stepped out of the last bedroom before Coldcrow’s, I ran into a solid body.

I processed his smell first—apple-flavored chewing tobacco. Then his height. The white beard. Coldcrow.

He processed my big-ass shears and stepped the hell back. “What’s going on, Ollie?” he asked.

I noted his very obvious lack of injuries and worry, which told me he hadn’t been interrupted in Killian’s office like I thought. As casually as I could, I stepped back and adjusted my grip on the shears. “You tell me. Why didn’t you get Luke on the radio?”

He held up his hands, eyeing my deadly resolve that I’m sure shined brightly from my face. “I tried. No answer. I came up to my room to grab my satellite phone like we agreed on.”

“I got him easily enough on the radio,” I said, watching him carefully. In the dark hall and with a mask of facial hair, I struggled to read his emotions. But something felt off, like the playing field had changed. “Did you find the phone?”

“Mine’s missing too. Someone must have taken them.” He ran a hand through his beard. “I took the chance to look around in his office, like we talked about. Left some stuff out for you. Did you see it?”

“Hard to miss them. Don’t you think it’s a little risky leaving them out in the open?”

“Why? We can hide them later.” He peered down at me, brows high. He stepped forward and looked up and down the hall. “Why are you sneaking around with scissors?”

“Shears,” I corrected. “Killian is here. He poisoned Abigail.”

This time, I didn’t miss the flash of shock spasm across his face. “Wh-what?” he sputtered. “Jesus Christ.” Then under his breath, so quietly I barely heard, he said, “I was worried this would happen.” With one last glance down the hall, he pulled me into his apartment and quietly eased the door shut.

“I don’t have much time,” I said, following him into his dimly lit apartment that smelled of chewing tobacco and leather. “I have to keep looking for Killian.”

Coldcrow shook his head. “If you’re right and he’s really here, he’ll be on his way to me. Besides, there’s something I need to show you first. I found your proof.”

“Those files prove nothing about me. That woman’s—Irena’s—face was too blurry to make out.”

“Sit down.” He jerked his chin toward the lumpy couch, already heading to his faded blue recliner.

“I’m—”

“Sit
down
.” He slumped into his chair and put his head in his hands. “No one should have to hear this standing.”

His words curdled in my stomach, but I took a spot on the edge of the couch across from him. I didn’t know what I was about to hear, but I knew I wouldn’t like it. I would rather be out in the halls, hunting down a killer, than sitting here listening to whatever Coldcrow had found out about my family. I refused to consider what that said about me.

“You don’t just resemble Irena Volkova. She
was
your mother.”

My stomach sank. “How do you know that?”

“No matter what I’m about to tell you, you need to remember that Irena was a prodigy, the last hunter to use the stingray whip. Until you,” Coldcrow clarified. His dark eyes met mine, unwavering. “She was good, Ollie. She was a great woman. Remember that.”

It sounded like he was giving me the good news, when I was the type who always wanted to hear the bad first. “Get on with it, Coldcrow.”

He sighed, resigned to the truth. “When you came to Fear University, Dean suspected who you were. You had Irena’s beauty, her presence. But it wasn’t until your blood tests came back that he knew.”

“Blood tests?” I asked, startled.

“When you first arrived at the university, Sunny ran some blood and bone marrow tests on you. Only Dean saw the results of the DNA test, but Killian must have stolen a copy from Dean’s office while he was in Kodiak. The results were in Irena’s file.”

“So your conspiracy theory was right.” I forced myself not to think about those pictures. The pictures told me a horrible, terrible fate for my mother—the mother I’d spent eight years hating. I waited to feel something aside from the guilt lancing through my insides, but nothing happened. I had no clue if I should feel angry, relieved, or excited to finally understand a piece of my mother. If so, none of it came to me.

“They took her, Ollie. They took her and used her.” He leaned forward, fists clenching. “Hex was the one who did it. He’s your father.”

Hex’s distant voice slipped through my mind like an inky black eel. He’d sounded so surprised, so stunned, that I was alive. He said he’d thought I’d died that night with her. That he was going to save me. That these people would try to hurt me.

But he’d been the one . . .

“She escaped, though,” I said, my voice catching. I didn’t remember my mother, the warrior. I remembered my mother as a traitor.

“I imagine she escaped from the ’swangs right before she gave birth to you. She couldn’t return to Fear University, because she knew Killian would kill her or you, likely both. And she had to stay hidden so Hex wouldn’t find her. She was protecting you the best way she knew how, Ollie.”

“That night . . . when she left me, she died, didn’t she?”

Coldcrow’s eyes were too sympathetic. I had to look away. “I can only assume Hex found her and she knew, so she led him away from you. I figure she left thinking she would be able to make it back or signal Dean for help at the university. But she didn’t make it. She was murdered that night.”

He pulled a picture from his shirt’s pocket, where it had been carefully folded up into a tight square. When he offered it to me, I hesitated, uncertain if this was something I wanted to see. But in the end, I took it. The edges unfolded too easily, and all too soon, I was staring at my mother’s body. Her murder. Her death.

She stared into the camera with her throat slit and darkness seeping down the front of her shirt. Irena Volkova. My sickly mother. She hadn’t abandoned me. Instead, she’d died in the field behind our house, barely twenty feet from where I crouched in the closet.

My eyes were dry and unblinking as I folded the picture back up and put it in my own pocket. Coldcrow watched me like a hawk, like I might fall apart at any moment. But I didn’t. There was still a murderer loose in the base, and I had people to protect.

“What do I do now with this information?” I asked.

Coldcrow looked away, eyes falling on another picture in a frame on his wall. A second later, I realized it was of him, Peg, and another man around Peg’s age—probably her husband. The picture was taken outside a classroom at Fear University. For him, the picture probably carried as much weight as the one sitting in my pocket.

“It was her first day,” he said quietly. “We were so proud of her.” He tugged on his beard and looked away, blinking quickly. “I have no doubt Peg was attacked because of Fear University, but then, we all die because of what we are, who we fight for. But it wasn’t her fault that she had to kill that ’swang,” he said, meeting my eyes, “I’m an old man. Surviving this long is lucky, but it also gives me wisdom most hunters don’t have the time to develop. I’ve been around and seen a lot in my time. None of it gets easier. It just gets harder and harder to accept what we do.”

“So how do you deal with it?”

“You remember people have good intentions, even if they get a little warped throughout the years. That’s what Dean has become, but I deal with it because I’ve become just as twisted. We all do. So maybe you’re a little more bent earlier on than most of us. But you can still fight to avenge your mother. You can still be the warrior Fear University needs even if you don’t agree completely with Dean. Be the best you can be, be someone who would make your mother proud. Use this information to embrace what you are and make no apologies for it. People like Dean will try to use you, but you can deal in secrets, Ollie. Always keep the upper hand on them, and you’ll come out of this fine.”

I shook my head. It was all too much to think about right then. Ten minutes ago, I didn’t even believe I really had a mother. I pushed aside all the emotions opening up inside me and focused on the present. I had to survive the night first.

I jerked to my feet. If I stayed in here another moment, I was going to drown in the truth. “I have to go . . .” As I spoke, my eyes trailed across some written notes strewn across his coffee table, jumbled amongst pictures and books. I frowned. That handwriting . . .

“What is it?” he asked.

It clicked. “What the fuck, Coldcrow? You wrote that note in my room after Sin’s murder!”

In a blink, I had my shears in hand and pointed at his throat.

He held out his hands but stayed seated, his eyes wild and wide. “Now, Ollie. Just wait, okay? I can explain.”

“Then explain,” I snapped.

“Ollie,” Coldcrow whispered my name, his eyes jerking over my shoulder toward the door, like he didn’t want anyone to hear us. “Don’t freak out when I tell you this, okay? Just remember I’m getting played just like you are.”

“Fucking tell me!”

“I knew from the beginning why Dean sent you up here.”

“What?” I growled. “You’re working with him?”

“You have to understand, there’s two sides at the university: Killian’s and Dean’s. I’m working on the side that keeps Peg safe. Dean sent you up here after Fields so I could show you the truth about your past in a way you would accept. Dean thought it would be easier to handle coming from Peg’s uncle. But Killian didn’t want that. I thought he would just go along with the plan, but he sees this as his chance to take the presidency from Dean. He’s gone rogue.”

I lowered the shears, my eyes watching him closely. “Do you know why he would kill Sin and poison his own wife?”

Coldcrow’s eyes shifted away. I knew his ties to Killian ran deep; they’d lived together up here for years. But when he looked back at me, he nodded, giving up his friend. “I wasn’t certain he’d killed Sin until you said Abigail had been poisoned tonight. Sin made a lot of enemies up here, but he genuinely loved Abigail. I sent you to find them that first night you were here because I need your focus on Killian. Dean thought it was best if you believed Killian left you the note and tried to keep you from finding out about your past. He wanted your anger directed at someone else besides him.”

“Did you open the doors too?” From the way his eyes shifted away from mine, I knew he was guilty. “Damnit, Coldcrow! You could have let in all the ’swangs in Alaska doing that shit.”

“I was watching the door! But Killian took advantage of Dean’s plan to clean up his own loose ends. I never thought he would go so far as trying to kill Abigail. Dean thought if we pushed you away from the truth, you would fight harder to figure it out. That’s why I left the note and opened the doors.”

“That’s why you acted all anti-Fear University. You wanted me to open up to you.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

I just stared at him as I tried to come to terms with the facts. I’d been played, but it would never happen again, I promised myself. It would take a lot more to manipulate me in the future. “So what are we going to do about Killian?”