Chapter 16
“Are we going floor by floor as a whole, or splitting up?” Wade asked.
I didn’t love the idea of splitting up, but there weren’t enough of us, even with Rook’s guys as backup.
We got one giant wolf who huffed at me as if annoyed it might trip over me, and one bipedal werewolf with eyes clear enough to look like mist. I couldn’t do more than glance at him without shivering.
It was like he could see right through me.
“We’ll have to split up, or it will take days,” Angel said. “The weres hearing is good enough to catch any of us calling if the comms go out.”
“I want to look at Brandon’s apartment,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” Angel agreed. “We’ll make our way up. Clear each floor. Full sweep. Review his apartment, then split the rest of the floors for speed.”
I tightened the brace on my wrist, heart in my throat at the idea of facing the shadows again. How much of the dream had been real? The windows gaped with darkness like empty eye sockets. No one watching. Not even a ghost. And that itself was eerie.
Everyone geared up again, though the tech was spotty. Tiana remained in the truck under heavy guard, while Ezra oversaw everything. The weres didn’t defer to him, but as Rook remained behind too, I suspected the big were was going to keep his people in line.
We headed for the door, and I kept a half step behind Angel.
“Remember to tell us anything you see,” he reminded me. “Even over here, there’s a lot you’ll catch that won’t be visible to us.”
“Got it,” I affirmed, anxiety spiking as we crossed the threshold. The lobby stank of copper and mold, but the strange breathing walls and tilting landscape were gone, replaced with the familiar layout of the high-end apartment building pulled across the Veil.
The elevator doors gaped open, cables snapped, cars looking as if they’d been splattered with paint. Blood? It didn’t look human, at least.
We swept the first floor as a unit, room by room, clearing each one, not surprised to find any of them empty.
“How far up did you go in the dream?”
“It felt like forever,” I said, not convinced it was a dream at all. “But Cassidy’s apartment is on four.”
“Let’s piggyback each floor,” Victor suggested. “One team to clear each room, one waiting in the stairwell, and one in the hall as immediate backup.”
“Sounds good,” Angel agreed as we headed for the stairwell. Everyone hesitated before it, gaze landing on me.
“Looks fine,” I said after a long moment. “No wriggling shadow things or portals.” No one wanted to find themselves in that weird prison filled with jars of goo.
Angel took a firm grasp of my arm before stepping into the stairwell, but we all headed up one flight, kicked open the door, and waited while one team went apartment to apartment, clearing each.
We regrouped in the stairwell, the door creaking shut behind us like a complaint. Dust spiraled in Wade’s flashlight beam as we climbed. The air was heavy and thick with smoke, though I knew no one else saw it.
“Smoke. Not purple like in that prison, but thick, and gray-black like real smoke.”
“No fire,” the bipedal wolf grumbled.
“I don’t smell anything other than ozone,” Angel agreed. “And that’s faint. Maybe from the building being pulled across the Veil?”
“Downstairs didn’t look like this,” I offered without further explanation.
We cleared the third floor, apartments empty, abandoned, but the smoke thick. As we headed up to the fourth, where I knew Cassidy’s apartment to be, the weight of the smoke grew worse until I was clinging to Angel to move at all, as it was suffocatingly dark.
Angel paused as we filed into the hallway, letting Victor’s team of NHVs take the lead to break open doors.
“Can’t see beyond the smoke,” I whispered to Angel. Goosebumps snaked up my arms. The sensation of something lingering in the deep shadows made my heart pound, and I clutched the Taser Angel had shoved into my hands to replace the missing one, but I’d be aiming blind.
Angel slipped his fingers around the back of my neck, beneath the helmet, and I realized he’d pulled off his glove because our connection was instant, and I could see him, despite the rising shadow fog. “You see me?”
“Yeah,” I breathed with relief, though beyond him, everything sank into layers of fading darkness.
He tugged off one of my gloves, keeping his fingers on the back of my neck. “Remember that symbol Remi showed you? Trace it on my hand.” He held up his other hand, also bare of the glove, and I stared at it. “Do you need me to trace it?”
I swallowed hard and ran my finger down the back of his hand, slowly tracing the symbol to link Angel to my shield—a simple rune, really, just a handful of squiggles. But I redrew it twice before it began to glow. “Oh, is that okay? Is it hurting you?”
“I’m good. Keep going,” Angel said.
Five more times and the symbol flared brighter, its glow seeping into Angel’s skin like liquid sapphire.
His grip on my neck tightened, not painful but anchoring, and suddenly, the suffocating smoke around us faded.
A translucent haze lingered in the air, snapping with energy like sparkles on a high-priced ballgown, but the hallway sharpened, doorways revealed, cracks stretching the walls, and the outline of Victor’s team moving apartment to apartment ahead.
“Hold on to it,” Angel said, his focus on me.
The rune pulsed in response, its light threading through the veins of his hand like a living thing.
I could feel Angel’s heartbeat against my palm, the controlled rhythm of his breathing, the way his power, warm and bright, flowed into the symbol, reinforcing it.
“There it is,” Angel said. “Just like that.”
Rather than draining or siphoning my power, the rune tied to Angel created an anchor, or a conduit, grounding my flailing magic into focus. “Holy fuck.”
“Good or bad?” Angel wanted to know.
I could see everything. Almost. The empty apartments, the movement of the teams, even through the walls and down near the trucks where the rest of the team lingered.
“Good,” I admitted, flexing my fingers against Angel’s.
“Intense.” My gaze snagged on the door to Brandon Cassidy’s apartment.
The moment I focused on it; the clarity shattered.
The rune’s glow flickered. The hallway dimmed. The door wavered in my vision, edges blurring as if smeared with oil.
“Don’t chase it,” Angel’s voice was sharp, dragging my focus back to him. The hallway solidified, and the connection stabilized.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Tell me what you see, but don’t linger on any of it. We’ll keep working on our connection until it’s easy as breathing.”
I could really use a few hours of nothing but breathing him in, but we were stuck in another tactical nightmare. “I can see through walls. People moving. Almost like infrared, but I know that’s not what it is.”
“Life forces,” Angel said, understanding.
“Brandon’s apartment is dark, impenetrable. Not lifeless like the other apartments, like a void.” The apartment across from Brandon’s snarled with snapping energy, thicker than the static haze of the Veil. “The one across from him has dead inside.”
“I don’t hear anyone moving on this floor that’s not us,” Wade offered.
Did that mean Brandon’s place was empty? Or that there was some sort of spell to mute everything?
“No living smell,” the crystal-eyed wolf muttered.
Victor’s team cleared through the first two apartments at lightning speed.
“The one on the end left was Cassidy’s,” I whispered to Angel. The only one with the door cracked open a sliver, a pale stream of light coming from inside almost illuminating a symbol drawn on the door of the one across from it, and the lingering taint of death spilling into the air.
The NHV team returned, each apartment empty and now gaping open. “Cleared in a panic, but clean,” Victor said.
“Reeks of rotten food, but nothing dead,” Kerry agreed.
“That one belonged to the suspect,” Angel said, waving his gun toward the cracked door. “Clear the one across first, then we all go in?”
“Someone is dead in that one,” I said, certain of it, though no ghosts remained. “There’s a rune on the door.”
“I’ll take a look,” Remi offered, coming up from behind us.
Victor gave him a curt nod.
Remi did something to the door that blazed bright enough to send color spots through my vision.
“Ow,” I grumbled.
Remi glanced back my way. “Sorry, but it’s clear to open now.” He stepped back; the symbol on the door cracked, actually physically cracked down the center.
Victor’s team surrounded the door. The vampire himself delivering the kick that punched the wood inward like it’d been hit by a jackhammer. The group hurried inside and cleared it with a few sharp retorts. When they returned, they looked grim. “Three dead in there.”
I swallowed hard, not surprised, even now that the door gaped wide. Not even a flicker. Maybe my power was wonky again? “I don’t see anything lingering.”
“How long have they been gone?” Angel asked.
“Could be weeks,” Kerry said. “They don’t smell anymore. And they look…” she wobbled her head back and forth as if trying to decide on a word, “sucked dry?”
That was a bad sign. “Is there an ME on this side?” I asked. How did the chain of evidence work for this sort of thing?
“We’ll bag them and bring them across,” Wade said. “They might have family looking for them.”
“Can I look?” I asked, wondering if this was like the ones I’d reviewed from the lot that had been void of any remaining life.
The group all stared at me for a long moment, Angel’s connection giving me clarity to see their concern, not doubt.
“I’m okay. I’m just trying to sense if they are like the ones from the lot or not. ”
“Your shielding isn’t great,” Kerry said after a long minute.
“But better than it was,” Victor pointed out. “Can we create a physical barrier?” He asked the latter of Angel, instead of me. “Keep him in your sphere until we know his view, bag the bodies for transport, and continue? I don’t want to lose his sight over the rest of the building.”
What was that? I was useful? Even to the stuffy vampire? I gripped Angel’s hand. “I’m good.”
“Let’s try it,” Angel agreed. “Don’t let go of me,” he instructed. “The connection isn’t solid enough.” I didn’t plan to let him go. Ever.