Chapter 5
Arow of townhouses sat nestled between the hill in the back and the parking lot, shaded by live oaks.
Behind the first hill, other slopes rose, their spines sheathed in more oaks, mountain cedar with hairy bark, pecan, and mesquite.
Big, pitted chunks of limestone littered the dry, rugged terrain like natural landmines.
Diana inhaled the evening air. It smelled of cedar, strong and itchy. Ugh. At least it wasn’t the cedar pollen season.
True to form, the MII helicopter was everything Augustine implied it would be. It was fast, safe, and too loud for a conversation. They didn’t speak, so she concentrated on keeping Akela and Whiskey calm and read the files he’d forwarded to her tablet.
Juliana Glass’ real name was Kensley Hicks.
She was thirty years old, born in Vernal, Utah, and registered as a lower range Significant illusion mage.
Her professional record was a series of positions with various illusion Houses, all of which had eventually cut her loose.
For the past six years, she had been self-employed.
According to Augustine’s sources, she was a person of interest in two murder investigations and would’ve been arrested in a third one, had the investigation not collapsed due to police misconduct.
Kensley Hicks was a hired killer. Her wet work provided her with a comfortable lifestyle.
She owned a mansion in Utah. Six million, paid outright, in a cash deal.
Augustine’s team had found pictures online.
Diana scrolled through them, looking at an enormous white house with a backdrop of snow-capped mountains.
The gallery of images rolled under her fingertips, their captions announcing the blood-soaked luxury.
Twelve thousand square feet, a private gym, an indoor pool, spa, movie theater, white picket fences with horses grazing in the pasture…
Diana kept thinking of Aleah in the hospital bed, wrapped in a tangle of wires and tubes, and Kayson’s wife, her dark eyes red with tears, hugging Kayson’s body to herself and rocking gently back and forth…
They had landed just before seven behind a warehouse building. A car was already there, waiting for them, a GMC Yukon in a boring anonymous grey. A woman waited by it. She was young, fit, and had a no-nonsense air about her. Augustine approached, she passed the key to him, turned, and walked away.
Augustine held the door open for Akela and Whiskey. She settled the wolves in, noting that the third row of seats had been removed. Instead, a large crate of black plastic occupied all available cargo space, rising just high enough to keep from obstructing the view through the rear window.
Augustine got behind the wheel. The four of them traveled past the massive studio lots and took a side road that carried them behind the sound stages, deeper into the Texas hills, where several enclaves of temporary housing sprouted among the slopes like mushrooms from a mossy forest floor.
They spoke little on the way. She’d sunk into herself, too obsessed with the prospect of the hunt, and he must’ve sensed it because he stayed silent.
Now they had parked before the row of townhouses, small two-story units, each with a balcony and identical door, with the siding painted in shades of beige and olive green.
It would be twilight soon.
“Which unit?” she murmured.
“12B.” He nodded at the last townhome on the right.
“Shall we knock?”
“I think that would be best.”
They got out of the Yukon. She had no idea what she looked like, but her legs were clad in jeans, so an illusion was in place.
She’d changed before getting into the MII helicopter.
She wore her hunting clothes now, a pixelated camo tracksuit and running shoes.
The fresh pouch of Celeste’s milk was resting in the oversized pocket of her jacket, being kept warm by her body heat.
Next to her Augustine was the picture of a young Austin professional: a blue polo shirt, khaki cargo pants. He’d lost ten years and four inches of height and gained fifteen pounds. His face turned round, with brown stubble and wavy dark hair brushed back, a broad nose, and a wide smile.
She glanced down where two French bulldogs trotted by her, one tan and the other black. He’d changed their appearances, but he could do nothing about their gait. They stalked forward, paw over paw. The black Frenchie raised his muzzle to the sky and inhaled, sampling the scents. His lips trembled.
She would’ve laughed if she wasn’t so focused on their target.
They approached the unit. Augustine raised his hand to the door.
Feedback flooded her, flowing through the bond from Akela: the sound of the wind through the window in the back, the scent growing fainter, the lack of sound.
“She’s gone.” Her voice was a low growl, and she didn’t care.
“What?”
“She fled.”
The illusion dropped without warning, and the two bulldogs vanished, revealing two grey wolves, one white and the other a dark grey.
Their bonds strummed with magic. The wolves had caught the scent trail. She dove into the bond. It was like jumping head-first into a swift river. The magic current pulled her until the line between her and the wolves blurred and they became a group, a whole. A pack.
The trail ignited before her mental vision—a glowing, ragged thread leading up, into the overgrown hills.
Akela raised his head. His eyes burned into her. Whiskey shivered with anticipation.
Go!
She sprinted across the parking lot, running at full speed.
“Diana!” Augustine screamed.
She leaped over the curb and rocks and dashed into the brush.
The two wolves darted ahead, weaving between the trees.
Oaks and cedars flew by. Her muscles warmed, turning loose and pliant.
Her world expanded, her ears catching distant sounds, her eyes registering the flickers of life among the trees.
Odors flooded the trail, pushing in from all sides: the nutty, fir-tinted signature of squirrels, the musty, old-gym-bag stink of raccoon, the sharp tang of a female mountain lion, the rats, the rabbits, the birds…
She sent commands down the bonds to the wolves. At this distance, this close, she didn’t even have to whisper.
Silent, quiet, hidden. Track.
The thread shone brighter. They were gaining on their target.
The wolves crested the hill and plunged into the ravine below, and she followed, so light on her feet, she was nearly flying.
She jumped over ragged chunks of limestone, dodged trees, and slipped through the brush, fast and sure.
There would be no backup. No human could match her speed, not in this terrain with twilight creeping in.
If Augustine tried, he would break his legs.
That was perfectly fine. This was a family matter.
They crossed the shallow valley and started up another hill. The trail vibrated, solidifying. The thread was solid now, like a fluid glowstick, veering between the tree trunks. Her enhanced hearing caught the rapid thumps of feet in boots striking the ground. Their prey was near.
She pushed a command down the bond. The wolves split, darting to the sides. They bounded uphill. A slight burn nipped at her legs, the first sign of fatigue. She dismissed it and kept running, pushing up the rocky slope.
The air flung a new scent at her, the foul, rotting, nauseating stench of putrid vomit. Llama spit. They were likely passing by a ranch.
The trail faltered, dimming and diffusing into the stench. Kensley had realized she was being tracked and was trying to disguise her trail.
Diana almost laughed.
The wolves slowed, padding through the chaotic violence of the llama spit.
The solid glowing line of the trail had turned into a faint cloud, but the two hundred and eighty million olfactory receptors in wolf noses had given them the kind of sensitivity the human body couldn’t overcome.
They sorted through the llama scents, picked the one that didn’t quite fit the pattern, and were off again.
Within moments, the trail solidified back into a solid glow, then changed slightly.
A different human scent—Kensley, altering her signature again.
It didn’t matter. Both Akela and Whiskey had locked on, and the three of them chased the glowing line through the clump of cedars up the slope and to the left.
The ground leveled out again. She caught a flash of a clearing through the trees, a group of live oaks, thick and twisted, with a dozen trunks growing from almost the same spot, rising up, then curving nearly parallel to the ground.
The flicker of black was her only warning.
Diana darted behind a cedar trunk just as the gun barked twice.
Bullets bit into the other side of the tree, but she was already moving, slinking along the rocky terrain on all fours with inhuman speed, past the thicket of agarita to the left.
A few more feet, and Diana sank to the ground, hidden by a mountain laurel bush, and went still.
In front of her, the massive live oak rose from the hillside.
Someone had cleared the brush around it, and the packed-gravel ground lay bare.
A stone bench—just a slab of limestone resting on two other chunks—waited by the tree, and beyond it, there was a hole of open air.
Kensley had run to a scenic overlook near the apex of the hill.
Diana inhaled deeply. Her senses sampled the environment and identified the foreign presence, a shadow figure leaning against the big oak’s trunk.
The assassin had tried to blend in, weaving an illusion, but she was not nearly as skilled as Augustine.
She had succeeded in matching the color and pattern of her clothes, skin, and hair to the oak’s bark, but she was still human-shaped.
She still breathed and smelled, although she had altered her scent again, trying to match the cedar.
In her place, Augustine would’ve been invisible.