Chapter 44
Angel pointed out a large, dark, windowless van marked with SED on the side. “I’m going to jump in there and change. You’ll need to suit up with all the tech. Do not go inside without me.”
“Got it,” I said, finding Bobby a half-dozen feet from the dark van, handing out devices to a lot of unfamiliar faces. The first van’s back doors were thrown wide, but a curtain covered the back. Angel disappeared inside as I headed toward Bobby.
“Angel tell you to stay close?” Bobby asked as he clipped a camera to my vest.
“Yes.” Not that I wouldn’t—I had no fucking idea what I was headed into.
“NHVs enter first, but stick to your shifter like glue. Their noses will tell them which way to go. All of our teams are onsite with different entry points. You and Angel will be right behind Victor’s team.
You’re to locate survivors and guide them to the team behind you.
It’s a little like leap frog. NHVs clear the area ahead for you, your team directs survivors to the team behind you, who hands them off to the medical crew outside, and so on.
” He pulled out an earpiece. “It’s an earpiece and mic in one.
The line will be open until you’re pulled from the scene. ”
Angel jumped out of the van beside us, shifted into his cat form and carrying his vest. He ambled to my side, sitting next to me while Bobby went through a handful of other tech: goggles, baton, a taser with three options of electricity or plasma, and an ankle bracelet that muted charges in case I got hit with a taser or plasma energy from across the Veil. Handy and terrifying all at once.
“Let me show you how to help Angel with his tech,” Bobby said, and pointed out the vest—which had to be custom to Angel’s leopard, as it fit him perfectly—and a collar.
“The vest deters claws and bullets, but nothing is infallible. There’s an easy release if you need to get him out of it fast.” Bobby demonstrated how to clip and unclip the vest and collar.
“The collar has a tracking module in it as well as a camera. As long as you’re close, he can hear anything you receive from your earpiece.
And, in case of disaster, there is a set of handles here on his vest that you can use to drag him out of a situation. ”
“I should probably do more weight lifting,” I said, looking over Angel. He tilted his kitty head at me. “Not saying you’re fat, just…” I put my hand to my chest, “Smallz, remember?”
He snorted.
“The NHVs know not to leave our people behind,” Bobby said.
Angel growled.
“Hanna put the fear of the dark fae into them,” Bobby said.
He handed me a tactical helmet. I hated the things, as they really hindered my peripheral vision, but being shot in the head would be worse.
“Set your taser on the lowest level to start. Did Angel tell you most of the shit from the other side will spit out any bullets you hit them with?”
“Spit them out?” I planned to keep my sidearm strapped to my belt. Firing any gun indoors was always a bad idea. Modern bullets rarely got stuck in walls like TV portrayed. Mostly because the bullets were stronger and the walls flimsy in new builds.
“Taser first. Bullets are last resort, as you’re more likely to catch one of ours than do any damage to stuff from the other side.”
Angel chirped at him.
Bobby nodded and strapped a second taser to Angel’s vest. “In case you lose yours. Or if Angel has to quick change, he’ll grab his.
Victor’s team is up by the door.” He waved me off, voice low and calm.
I swallowed the rising bile of worry as Angel nudged me toward the group in question.
He practically vibrated with tension at my side.
“I’m trusting you,” I reminded him. I never thought I’d be willingly going into the Veil. “If we go in where it’s not the Veil, and cross it inside the building, do we stay in the same place? Or end up in some netherworld alleyway?”
Angel watched the Veil with a sharp gaze. Studying it? Did he know? Not that he could answer me in this form.
I put on the helmet, visor down, and was surprised to find the shield incorporated a bunch of tech more like a video game than any I’d ever used before. I could see the layout of the building on the screen and a ping of messages indicating where there might be people.
“That’s helpful,” I muttered.
“Holt!” An unfamiliar voice shouted through my earpiece. Angel nudged me toward the door, and I studied the faces behind the visor, my own screen telling me last names. Victor glared at me. “Are you done lollygagging?”
Who even said shit like that anymore? But heat burned my face and I was glad the visor likely skewed my embarrassment. “We’re ready,” I answered, for Angel and myself.
Victor nodded, turning back to the door with his team.
The lot of them made for imposing figures beside Victor’s lean form, though he seemed to be in the lead.
Angel’s ears twitched as we took our spot in line behind Victor’s crew.
A low hum of energy in the air thrummed with a pulse of something unknown.
I couldn’t define it, only that I felt something.
Angel pressed himself to my side, and I rested my fingertips on his back, both for reassurance and guidance.
One of the glass double doors shattered with the tap of the tactical hammer. Victor reached around and unlatched the lock, then shoved them open. Who locked the door of a public building like this?
“Fire hazard?” I whispered, more to Angel than anyone else.
He chuffed at me as we all slunk inside, Victor’s team holding up ballistic shields and weapons I didn’t recognize.
The atmosphere inside the building lingered heavy and almost fluid as it undulated with blues and purples merging into dark-edged shadows.
And we weren’t anywhere near the section of the building that had been split by the Veil.
We entered the lobby, the overhead spiky ball light, dark and lifeless, though the crackling of purple waves swirled the ceiling like some supernatural underworld waiting to swallow us whole.
“Lots of color variations,” I told Angel. “Window overhead almost looks like a portal, or a weakening of the Veil? I see movement, as though the glass is fluid. Is that normal?”
Victor glanced my way, eyes wide. Was he seeing it? His gaze went up and more SED filed in behind us, filling the space with shields, weapons, and energy. The colors flickered, snapped, and popped, like fast-moving lightning, merging and pooling into several spots. Was something manifesting?
“Merges in spots to dark shadow. Unnaturally dark. Like black pools drained of color rather than normal shadow,” I continued, doing as Angel requested, even if it pissed everyone off.
“Might be too many people in here?” How did I explain that the more people entering the building, the more the Veil seemed to strain and stretch.
How did I know it was the Veil? A guess at best, though I could sort of see a layer of writhing darkness on the other side, overlaying the mortal realm.
“Where are the shadows?” A female voice asked, and I recognized Kerry as she glanced my way. The uniform and helmet obscured a lot of her face, but I could tell she was in the larger form I’d first met her in.
“Near the elevator to the left,” I said. “And the doorway opening on the far right.”
“Doorway leads to stairs,” Kerry said.
“Elevator is a no,” Victor said as he stared at the closed metal doors. “I smell blood from above in the shaft.”
I was trained to never enter an elevator in a firefight anyway. They were called death boxes for more than the idea that they could fall.
Victor nodded at Kerry. She peeled away from the group—another, larger NVH at her side—and vanished down the hallway to the first level of community rooms. Another group followed them, shields up. Angel kept at my side, pressed against me as if he worried I’d go racing after something.
They returned in half a heartbeat. “All clear,” Kerry said. “Two units toward the back are open but empty. Neither appear lived in. Perhaps show units? No one in the workout room or any other community space.”
“Beta Group Three, hold the lobby and guide out anyone we send to you. Stairs first,” Victor instructed the rest of us as he made his way toward the large, gaping wedge of darkness in front of the stairs.
“If he walks through that, will it take him across the Veil?” I whispered to Angel, keeping myself tucked behind the shield of NHVs. “It’s a wall of swirling black, like one of those movies featuring the eye of a tornado.”
“There’s nothing there,” Victor replied, his tone annoyed. He stepped through the shadow as though it weren’t there, and into the stairwell. The rest of the group followed. I heard their movement on the other side, at the stairs, but hesitated.
My heart pounded as I stood in front of that pulsing darkness as if it taunted me. Angel nudged my hip and I reached down, wrapping my hand around where his collar and his vest met, then took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The cold hit me with a wrenching yank, like that first subzero winter day after a long snowfall, where the air itself freezes your lungs.
The icy bite sank into my bones, gnawing at my core as I sucked in a breath—surprised no one else felt it—and expected to step free to the other side, but my vision blurred.
The world strained and bulged at the seams. My stomach flipped over with a gut-churning wave of nausea that had quickly become familiar in the last few days: crossing the Veil.
My feet hit solid ground, or what I thought was ground, though not the expected stairwell.
We stood in a hallway that stretched endlessly in either direction.
This was not what the building had looked like only days ago.
Had it been warped by the Veil, or had we landed someplace completely different?