Avenger of Sins (SPECTR Series 3, #6)

Chapter 6

SIX

Caleb sat on the roof, rain pissing down on him. Just an annoying drizzle, no thunder or lightning, no storm. It ran down his long hair and slipped under his collar, dripped from his nose. At least he didn’t need to wear glasses anymore thanks to Gray; otherwise he would have been blind from the raindrops on the lenses.

The trees standing a short distance from the house were the same wet gray as the sky. A shockingly blue pool sat in the backyard, surface rippling as the rain fell on it. In front, the unnaturally green lawn provided its own splash of color. Lydell must have an army of gardeners, swooping in to yank out any weed that would dare to interrupt the grassy wasteland, then covering it in chemicals to kill anything left.

Night was somewhere below, hopefully out of the rain. And hopefully not scaring any agents who weren’t strictly supposed to know about her.

Caleb tried to settle into the inhuman patience of a drakul, but his mind kept going to John. Was he okay? Lydell had better stay the fuck away, or he’d…

What? What could he do that John would approve of and wouldn’t get them in trouble with Kaniyar?

I don’t like being helpless, he thought at Gray.

“We are not helpless,” Gray responded. “We are waiting for Ryan and the other mortal.”

Pittman’s dead, isn’t he?

A wave of indifference, followed by, “Perhaps. I do not care. I did not like him.”

Pittman hadn’t been a fan of them, either. He thought Kaniyar should have chucked them into some black ops site, and put John in jail.

Still, the guy probably didn’t deserve to have his brain taken apart before Ryan killed him. And the loss of her long-time assistant wouldn’t help Kaniyar. Hopefully she wouldn’t get any bright ideas about tightening the leash she had on them.

A small car pulled up to the gate, a red delivery service sign strapped to the roof. A driver wearing a red baseball cap that matched the sign stuck his arm out the window as Agent Chris-Chris came over. Caleb couldn’t make out either his face or what he was giving the agent, but a few seconds later he pulled away. Agent Chris-Chris, probably glad for an excuse to get out of the cold rain, hurried up the drive and into the house with the delivery.

Caleb scanned the grounds again, then walked to the other side of the roof and did the same with the backyard. Agents patrolled the woods, but there was no sign of Ryan.

Surely Ryan wouldn’t just walk up to the house. He wasn’t stupid.

Jo was either more impetuous, or else her mind had broken under the weight of Ryan’s telepathic instructions. Or she was just that desperate for their blood, and Ryan let her try for it.

Was their blood addictive in some way?

“Mortals will ingest anything to make themselves feel better,” Gray observed.

True. And being juiced up on drakul blood would probably feel pretty good to anyone with a paranormal ability. A sliver of what being a drakul was like: powerful, confident. Running over rooftops, hunting demons, feeling as though they could do anything they wanted.

That was how Yuri and Drugoy had gotten into their head. That high. Just drinking the blood probably wouldn’t be half as good, but for someone in a bad place psychologically, they might find themselves chasing after that feeling of power. Especially if they felt helpless otherwise.

Well, Jo was the poster child of being in a bad place psychologically right now. As for John…

He was fine. They’d gotten together before anyone realized about the blood. He wasn’t some power-hungry fuck-up like Drugoy’s renfields.

“Drugoy and Yuri are dead,” Gray said, no doubt irritated by Caleb’s fretting. “We are hunting Jo and Ryan. The rest is mortal nonsense; let it go.”

Right. Ryan. Still no stupider than he was five minutes ago. The property was locked down like Fort Knox, so how did he plan to get inside past all the agents, the cameras, everything else?

“Perhaps he is not even here. He may have decided to kill the other mortal instead.”

Harlow? Maybe. But he works for a private military contractor—those guys have as much firepower as the actual army.

Caleb bit his lip, considering. He was thinking about this the wrong way around. Asking how Ryan could get to his victims, instead of how Ryan would.

Ryan was a telepath. He might be able to conceal himself from the perceptions of the agents patrolling, just as he’d done with Jo at Foster’s place. But he’d still show up on camera. So sneaking in using his usual M.O. wouldn’t work.

What then? The weak link was always people; he’d read that somewhere. If you had a high-vis vest and a clipboard, you could go just about anywhere, and people would assume you belonged there.

Just like he’d assumed the obvious delivery driver was just doing his job.

He scrambled down from the roof and reached the gate in a few seconds. Agent Chris-Chris was just getting back to his post; he startled when Caleb materialized beside him.

“What did the delivery guy drop off?” Caleb barked.

The agent seemed taken aback. “A smoothie for Ms. Lydell—she gets one for her dinner, same thing every day. You’d think as rich as she is, she’d be eating filet mignon every night, but?—”

“Make sure she’s okay. Now!”

A spark of fear lit in his eyes, and he touched his headpiece. “Is Ms. Lydell all right? I’ve got the contractor here, and—what? Oh shit.”

That was all the confirmation Caleb needed. “Open the gate!” he shouted, and ran full speed for the motorcycle.

Lydell moaned as John rolled her into the rescue position and felt her pulse. It beat erratically beneath his fingertips, and her breath rasped as she struggled to breathe. Her eyes flickered, then closed.

“Help!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “We need an ambulance!”

Her body stiffened, then went into a seizure, back arching and arms thrashing. He put himself between her and the coffee table, making sure she didn’t accidentally hurt herself on its sleek, cold edges.

Then she went still. No seizing muscles. No breath. He took her pulse, but no life pumped against his fingers.

Fuck.

“Ambulance! Now!” he shouted again, even as he rolled her onto her back and began CPR.

“You’re trying to save her?” Ryan asked, aghast. “Why?”

The sudden intrusion of Ryan’s thoughts interrupted his rhythm. John gritted his teeth and focused on resuscitating her.

“Have you forgotten what she did to us? The demons she called forth, guiding them into our bodies? Our minds?”

There was a snap as a rib cracked beneath the force of his compressions. I remember. But I’m not going to sit by and watch anyone die!

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Other agents rushed in, Kaniyar among them. He answered their questions in short bursts as they worked. One of them put on latex gloves and retrieved the remains of the smoothie. Sirens grew louder and louder, and soon paramedics crowded into the room. Arms aching, John gratefully let them take over.

There was no sense of Ryan in his head. Maybe he’d gone out of range or was otherwise occupied. Where were Gray and Night?

“What happened?” Kaniyar asked as he moved out of the paramedics’ way.

He didn’t answer for a moment, watching the paramedics move Lydell onto the gurney and wheel her out, oxygen mask strapped over her face.

She was a terrible person. The world would be better off without her. And yet, when she had collapsed, he hadn’t been thinking of all the awful things she’d done to him.

He could have stood back, waiting a few critical minutes to make sure she was gone. Watched her suffer for once.

But the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, and it repelled him now. Maybe he could blame SPECTR indoctrination for that, but he didn’t really think so. It had simply been instinct to try and help someone dying in pain.

“I made a choice,” he said.

Gray rises to the surface, waiting to bloom outward the moment Ryan is in sight. It takes Caleb a few precious seconds to unsecure the motorcycle from its trailer. Then it roars to life beneath them, before shooting down the drive and out through the opening gate onto the tree-lined street.

Caleb leans forward; their hair whips out behind them in a black cloud. No time to put on the helmet, not while their quarry has such a head start.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it right away,” Caleb rages. “Scratch that—what the hell were the agents doing, letting her order out in the first place?”

There is no point to lash yourself or others. What is done is done. Now we hunt.

Not the sort of hunt he would prefer to be on—but if they can catch Ryan, stop him, perhaps some of the sadness will leave John’s eyes. Or perhaps a new sadness will replace it; mortals are endlessly creative in finding ways to suffer.

“That isn’t fair. You know it’s more complicated than that.”

It should not be, Gray replies stubbornly, even though Caleb is right.

“Yeah, well. That’s being human for you.”

The wide street with its light traffic quickly gives way to interstate-side strip malls and gas stations. No sign of the car with its red sign yet, but traffic on the entrance ramp is at a standstill. Ryan couldn’t have gotten far, assuming he chose to go this way.

“He might not have,” Caleb admits. “But he’s not familiar with the area, so far as we know. And he wants to keep moving. The interstate is the fastest way to do that.”

There—the vehicle they seek is just nosing out onto the slow-moving interstate. The traffic forces them to slow, so Caleb threads a path through as best he can, squeezing between concrete barriers and car doors with only millimeters to spare, splitting the lane between semis. It takes too long—they are too slow?—

An opening; Caleb cuts in front of a truck, less than an inch before collision, and they’re off the ramp and onto the interstate. Ahead, the vehicles are beginning to move faster, the knot in traffic caused by the on-ramp clearing slightly. From five miles an hour, they accelerate to ten, then fifteen. Caleb opens the throttle; they roar between cars, faster and faster, the sedan with the red sign five cars ahead, then four, then three.

Ryan swerves into the HOV lane and guns it.

“Damn it!” Caleb shouts, then recedes, and Gray bursts to the fore.

He dodges another car and swings into the HOV lane, ignoring the blare of angry horns. Ryan is just in front of them now. He can try to lose them, but his human reflexes are nothing to theirs. No matter what he does, they will run him to ground.

A pickup truck swerves toward them.

For a split second, they both think it is simply an inattentive driver. Then Gray catches a glimpse of Jo at the wheel, an instant before she slams into them.

In the sliver of time he has to react, Gray gets their left leg out of the way before it is trapped between the motorcycle and the concrete barrier separating north- and south-bound lanes. Agony tears through them as the right is caught between the side of the truck and the motorcycle. Sparks fly and metal screams as Jo tries to either drag or crush them against the barrier.

The pain is immense, but Gray pushes through it. Jo is right there now, inches away, driving with her left hand. Her face is horribly white, and fear flickers in her eyes when she glances frantically in their direction.

Good.

He punches out the driver’s side window. Jo instinctively flinches away, jerking the wheel as she does so. Their leg comes free, the poor wreck of the motorcycle falling behind. Gray sinks claws into the side of the truck and hauls them up and partially through the window.

Horns blare and the truck swerves again. The front plows into the barrier; a sudden snap as they stop, but his claws hang on. The airbag deploys, hitting them in the side of the face like a punch, then collapses.

Jo moans in pain. There’s an abrasion on her forehead from the bag, but she’s trying to curl around her right hand, the one they bit. Guilt sparks through them from Caleb, which is nonsense—what else were they to have done?

Still. “We do not wish to hurt you,” Gray says. “Surrender.”

“Surrender to a demon,” she says, and laughs weakly. “God.”

Why must mortals say such ridiculous things? “I am no demon. John would not wish for you to be harmed further. Do not fight me.”

She holds up her left hand, and for an instant flame flickers, and he braces for pain. Then, with a groan, she lets her hand fall, the spark going out. “I give up. Do what you want.”