CHAPTER 12 ARCH
ARCH
I’d been off kilter since I’d hung up with Manny and Oz this morning.
Which hadn’t done me any favors when I’d called Dominic from the car to update him on everything I’d learned.
Well, everything about the auctioneer and his pet vampire.
I was keeping Manny being a healer under wraps until after I’d spoken to him.
My report to Dominic was an incoherent mess, probably making him wonder why the hell he’d promoted me.
I kept having to backtrack and re-explain things.
I couldn’t write it up for him because we didn’t know what kind of system access the leak had.
In the end I’d promised him a better organized update tomorrow.
Though if tonight went the way Manny and Oz had hinted at, I might be even more distracted tomorrow.
Focusing my thoughts firmly away from our date this evening, I took several turns to make sure no one was following me. I checked my SUV for trackers every morning, but that wouldn’t prevent anyone from knowing where I went the old-fashioned way.
At last I felt secure enough to drive to the warehouse. If those flashes I’d seen a couple of times yesterday had been what I thought they were, it could be the break I needed.
The building was even creepier now that I was alone. Especially because I’d only brought the one flashlight. I had my phone as backup, but I didn’t want to risk running out of battery, so I kept it in my pocket.
I stood in the hallway where I’d seen the first flash. “Hello? My name is Archer Jones. I’m a Hunter, and I’m trying to track down the people who are trafficking Wonders. If you’re a ghost, I can see you and talk to you.” Thank fuck for being family with Rory.
This ghost might not be the sort who’d kept their memories and sense of self, but I had to try.
“You can see me?”
Spinning around, I barely stopped myself from drawing my gun. Not that it would do any good against the woman who stood in front of me. She was already dead.
I lowered the flashlight so it wasn’t directly in her face, though I doubted it bothered her. “Yes, I can see you. My name’s Arch.”
She examined me. “You’re not a Medium?”
“No, I’m a Hunter. But I’m related to a Medium, and he was able to give me the ability to see ghosts like he does.”
“Can you help me move on? If I talk to you, will you help me cross to the other side?”
I resisted the urge to look away. I had no idea how to get a ghost to cross over. “I’ll sure try. And if I can’t help you, I’ll call the Medium and he’ll walk me through it.” Hopefully.
She stared at me some more. “Okay. I’ve been trying. I’m the only ghost here, and I’m ready to leave. I watched them with the other Wonders, but the only other one they killed crossed over right away. I just can’t find the trick to it.”
“I understand. You went through a lot before your death. It’s bound to have had a negative effect on your mental state.”
Nodding thoughtfully, she started to drift down the hallway. “That’s true. My name’s Amanda Gallman. I’m from Atlanta, and I was brought here in January.”
“Nice to meet you, Amanda.” She’d been some sort of shifter, but I couldn’t tell what kind. “Did you ever see who was in charge of this place?”
Her face turned thunderous, her ears lengthening and her teeth getting sharper.
“A fucking magic carrier, that’s who! Aren’t they supposed to support us Wonders?
Look out for us? And that poor vampire he has on the end of his sickening mate bond.
” She crossed her arms. “It’s the most evil thing I’ve ever seen. ”
“It does sound awful. Did you hear the magic carrier’s name?”
“Not really. The guards called him ‘Boss’, but one time the vampire called him something like ‘Nelson’. Maybe it was ‘Nolan’? Something like that. Anyway the guy got pissed and hit the vampire until the poor thing called him ‘my love’.” She shuddered. “Horrifying.”
“You’re sure the, um, person with the magic carrier was a vampire?”
She rolled her eyes. “I never saw one before being brought here, but it was human-shaped, it had red eyes, fangs, and claws. Oh, and, you know, it drank blood to survive. What the hell else could it have been?”
I had a strong feeling Amanda and Manny would get along famously. I had to help her cross over so they would never meet.
I asked her a few more questions about what else she’d seen, but she didn’t have anything else new to tell me.
“Before we try to move you on, is there anyone I can contact for you? Any messages you want to send?”
She shook her head. “I looked in on my sister, but it hurt too much so I came back here. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Okay. Well, let’s see.” We were at the end of one of the hallways lined with cells.
At the end was the opening to the main hallway to the entrance.
“Um, imagine this hallway leads to the door to the other side. We’ll walk down it, and as you get closer, you’ll see a light welcoming you.
” Yes, I was making all this shit up based on mostly horror movies I’d watched.
I took a few slow steps to get her moving.
No fucking way was I getting close to that doorway, whether I could see it or not.
“The door to the other side is at the end of the hall.” She said it like a mantra as she floated on. She gasped. “I see it!” She sped up, and not a second later there was a small burst of light and she vanished.
Fuck, I hoped I’d done the right thing. I’d ask Rory later, but right now I needed to call Dominic. After I got the hell out of this warehouse. I turned around and took the opposite hallway to leave, anything to avoid walking through where Amanda had just vanished.
Dominic hadn’t been thrilled to hear my confirmation that we were dealing with a magic carrier and some sort of enslaved and feral vampire.
He’d texted me the number for Simon, who we’d previously thought to be the only vampire left on Earth.
Last summer, he and Reno, a Seer in South Texas, had killed the remaining vampires who’d been hunting Wonders for decades.
I pulled into a coffee shop parking lot to make the call. I felt more secure having conversations like this in my SUV, where I could see my surroundings but no one could hear me, than I did at home, where my sightline was obstructed by walls.
He picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, Simon. It’s Arch Jones. We met last summer when I came down with Dominic and the other Hunters to help with the cleanup after you killed the vampires.” The vampires who’d killed two Hunters along with more Wonders than anyone could count. Everyone in the campaign should be grateful.
“Arch, yes. Hi, how are you?” His tone was wary, and rightly so.
“Well, you’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
He paused. “Let me go outside. Hang on.” I heard him cover the phone and tell someone he’d be in the backyard. A few seconds later, he said, “Okay, go on.”
“I’m in Houston. A month or so ago we busted a trafficking operation and rescued over forty Wonders.
At the time, nothing stood out from the documentation we had from the interviews of the abductees after the rescue.
But we have a leak in the Hunters. Someone’s working with the traffickers.
I only figured out yesterday that most of the rescued Wonders weren’t even interviewed at all. ”
He hissed into the phone. “A Hunter? Hunters are designed to protect Wonders. It’s their mission.”
“I can’t be one hundred percent sure yet, but right now I don’t have any suspects who aren’t Hunters.
” I took a deep breath. “It gets worse. Yesterday I ran into one of the Wonders who was rescued, and he asked me what had happened to the magic carrier who’d been running the trafficking ring.
” That got me another hiss. “The Wonder I spoke to didn’t know what kind of magic carrier he was, but the guy had a Wonder with him at all times who he referred to as his ‘pet’. ”
“You’re saying we have two magic carriers actively harming Wonders? The one trafficking them and the other one a Hunter who’s feeding the first one information?”
“It sure sounds like it.”
“That is... highly unlikely.”
“I would’ve thought so too. Today I went back to the warehouse where they’d been held because I thought I’d seen a ghost there. I’m able to talk to them because my brother’s mated to Rory Blackbourne, the Medium.”
“Okay.”
“The ghost confirmed the guy running the show is a magic carrier, and she also confirmed what the rescued Wonder I spoke to suspected. The Wonder the head guy is keeping as a pet is a vampire.”
He didn’t speak for a long time. “Fuck.” He paused again.
“I know of one vampire who disappeared right after World War II. None of the vampires I tracked down knew where he’d gone.
His name was Kinnon. If this isn’t him, then it’s a vampire who snuck through the portal without permission at some point. ”
The Elves had closed the portal in 1946.
“So either way the vampire’s been on Earth since way back then.
I don’t know if this changes things, but it doesn’t sound like the vampire is voluntarily cooperating with the trafficker.
” I told him about the vampire begging Oz to kill him, and how Amanda had described an unhealthy mate bond between the vampire and the trafficker.
Simon cursed again. “This is not common knowledge, but you know how when Wonders and magic carriers bond with their mate, their own abilities become enhanced?”
“Yeah?” Hunters get new abilities like echolocation and thermal imaging vision.
“Vampires’ mates actually take on vampire abilities instead of having their own enhanced.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s not something we discuss publicly, and in our home dimension the Elves never noticed because vampires have always mated with other vampires, in which cases it seems like the mates’ own abilities were being enhanced, just like with any other Wonder.
The changes can vary from person to person, of course, but for instance when Reno and I bonded, he gained the ability to see and manipulate different kinds of connections. ”
I froze. “Vampires can manipulate connections? Oh, right. When they were kidnapping Wonders, they’d cut all the person’s connections so it would seem like they’d died.”
“Exactly.”
It wasn’t the time, but I was deadly curious about how else connections could be ‘manipulated’.
“Any thoughts on what abilities the trafficker could have gained from the vampire?”
“Hmmm. Mesmerizing, strength, speed, lifespan extension.”
Shit. “Mesmerizing. Is that short-term, or can it be used to control someone’s actions later?”
“You’re thinking of the leak in the Hunters?”
“Yeah. I’m grasping at straws, but what if they’re leaking info to the guy against their will?” It would make more sense than having two magic carriers acting against Wonders at the same time.
He hesitated. “Vampires can plant suggestions to influence later behavior. Like I could make you remember to perform a task or ask a question when you were in a certain situation. But you’d still have free will.
Absolutely I could tell someone that it was alright not to interview the abductees, to convince them that the procedures had changed and one of their colleagues would do it later.
But it would be difficult to make them falsify a report on the interviews afterward.
It would be too complex and would trigger too much resistance in most people. ”
“Makes sense.”
“If I were him, I’d use a combination of things.
First, he knows where to run into one or more of your Hunters, and he forces them to tell him what he wants to know and erases their memories of the conversations afterward.
And he might be influencing some of their behavior, but I’d bet he’s blackmailing them to do things like falsify reports. ”
“Ah. The old-fashioned way.” Fuck. We’d investigated everyone on the team for financial abnormalities, but maybe the guy had something else on them.
“It’s a tried-and-true method for a reason. But, Arch, do you have any leads on where the vampire or the trafficker are now?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’ll keep you posted though.”
“Thanks. When you find them, I’ll come to Houston as soon as I can to help you with the vampire. But don’t put yourself or your team in danger to save him.”
I rubbed the top of my head. “If we kill the trafficker, will that kill the vampire too?”
“No. Though it won’t be pleasant for him.”
I sighed. “Doesn’t sound like the poor bastard has experienced anything pleasant recently, so hopefully he won’t care.”
This morning I’d struggled to think of anything except Manny and Oz. And now, when I was on my way to meet them, I was struggling to think of anything except how the trafficker might have vampire mesmerizing powers and was coercing my team into helping him, whether they knew it or not.
And I couldn’t warn them to watch out for periods where they might not remember how time had passed, because then I’d have to explain I knew about the pet vampire. I didn’t want that to get back to the trafficker.
But was keeping that information secret more important than warning my team? If I were in their shoes, I’d have wanted to know. Something to discuss with Dominic.
Okay, time to put all that aside. I couldn’t do anything more tonight, and I was about to have dinner with two sexy men. One of whom was a fucking magical healer.
Part of me didn’t want to confront Manny, just let the evening unfold without the tension that conversation would bring. But if I was serious about trying for a relationship with the two of them, I couldn’t start out by hiding things. I needed to tell him I knew.
Or get him to confess.