Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Much to Adrian’s displeasure, the house hadn’t burned down, but the lingering smell of smoke tainted the air.
River knocked on the front door first, despite the empty driveway.
He stood back with Emma and resisted charging ahead, breaking down the door, and ripping the house apart with his bare hands.
Emma set her hand against his arm, drawing his gaze down to her.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
“No, Emma, it isn’t. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone so much in my entire existence, and I’ve lived a long time, lass.”
Thomas kicked the door in. The werewolf shrugged in response to River’s displeased frown, and Adrian’s esteem for the shifter rose. Finally. Another man of fucking action. The wolf stalked inside and returned moments later. “Everyone cleared out. It’s safe enough to go in.”
“What about the threshold? Pretty sure my privileges have been revoked,” Emma said.
“I broke through it before,” Adrian replied. “It’s weak. Unless they’ve spelled the place, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“No spells that I can detect,” River said.
What little threshold Adrian had sensed before practically collapsed when he passed through it for the second time. Joe deciding to abandon his home must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Emma stepped in behind them, followed by River and Zacarias. The latter hovered near his wife.
The living room to the left had been trashed. Only scorched fabric remained of the curtains, reduced to ash and soaked rags on the floor beneath the window. The couch had burned on one side before being put out.
“Damn, you weren’t lying about the incendiaries.” Zac crouched down by the front door and picked a few shell casings up from the floor. His nose wrinkled when he smelled them. “I’m surprised you’re still standing.”
“They were slow, and I was pissed.” Adrian shrugged and turned to survey the room. He hadn’t given it much study before, but now he planned to search every nook and cranny.
River craned her neck and glanced up the steps. “Wherever their mage went, he isn’t here. Ugh. This would be so much easier if he was a warlock. I don’t have the emotional power to deal with a magician right now.”
“What’s the difference anyway?” Emma asked.
“When it comes to a magician, think Merlin and the Sword in the Stone,” River said.
“Magicians are baby wizards who haven’t fully matured.
They teleport around and do crazy shit with the elements.
Staves and wands, all that stuff isn’t necessary, but it makes them stronger.
They’re like powder kegs waiting to blow, possessing a whole lot of raw power most of them can’t control.
They don’t come along often, and when they do, they’re the ones you hear about accidentally causing someone to spontaneously combust at a gas station.
A warlock is just a witch who’s gone to the dark side.
They’re strong too, just in a different way. ”
“Well, this guy didn’t look like a wizard. No robes, wands, or pointy hat, just an Army T-shirt. I have no idea who he was,” Emma said.
“What’d he look like?” Thomas asked. “Hair and eye color. Maybe we’ve seen him in town.”
“I… didn’t get a good look at him,” Emma admitted. “He was only in my face for a second before he hit me with his spell.”
Adrian growled low. “That’s all right. I got a good long look at him, because I wanted to rip his face off, but he and Joe were behind a shield.
You’re looking for a perp with green eyes, six foot two, and about two hundred pounds.
Sandy blond hair and probably hasn’t shaved in a couple weeks. Small scar at the corner of his mouth.”
Thomas jerked his attention to Adrian. “I know who you’re talking about. His name’s Josh. I was picking up dinner for the girls and ran into him at the diner with Joe. Pretty much turned his nose up at me like I wasn’t worth shit to him.”
Emma hunched her shoulders together and turned her gaze toward the hallway that led to the kitchen. “Joe led me straight to him.”
“Joe had a stake ready for your heart, Emma,” Adrian bit out. His hands clenched at his sides.
Maybe he wanted to rip off Josh’s face, but he wanted to do worse to Joe. He’d been a former lover, someone she’d trusted with the sensitive truth of her nature.
And if Adrian had arrived seconds later, Joe would have been Emma’s murderer. For that, her ex’s part in the hunters’ plan was unforgivable. It didn’t matter if Sariel was at the root of it. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d smeared Joe against the ground like jelly.
River made her way through the house with a quartz dangling from a length of black cord. Its placid pulse struck Adrian as serene, even peaceful, though it flared bright white when he followed the witch into the kitchen.
While they were distracted with monitoring magical auras and whatever emission the stone sensed, Adrian glanced at the stairway. “Gonna head to the upper floor. About three guys rushed me from the stairs when I came inside.”
River jerked her head toward him. “No one should go off alone, just in case there’s a trap left behind that I can’t see on the surface aura of the house. Tommy, you take the upstairs with Jamie Fraser there, and I’ll check the rest of this level with Zac and Emma.”
Adrian scowled at the Outlander reference.
“What?” As River feigned an innocent look, a subdued smile touched Emma’s lips.
“The accent’s stronger when he’s pissed,” Emma said.
The witch snickered. “Tempting to piss him off a lot then, huh?”
He hurried upstairs before the two women could make any more jokes at his expense.
It was nice to hear Emma’s laughter though. Nice to see her smile, to see her bouncing back from the trauma she’d endured.
Taking the second floor one room at a time, Thomas and Adrian uncovered a disaster zone. Each of the three bedrooms painted the same picture: opened dresser drawers, empty closets, and the slovenly mess left behind by a group of too many men occupying one house.
They’d left random odds and ends scattered across the floors, including abandoned plates and glasses. Looking around, Adrian tried to estimate the number of occupants sharing the rooms and frowned. Had there been that many more hunters in the house than the ones who attacked him?
“They must have really tore out of here in a hurry,” Thomas muttered. “Smells like BO in here too.”
“Yeah. I guess showering wasn’t on the Kill All Non-Humans agenda.”
“Stress doesn’t help either. There’s a healthy dose of fear permeating this room.”
“It was still early when I escaped with Emma. They probably figured I’d call in the Overseers and return within the hour.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She came first,” Adrian replied with a shrug. “They can be handled later. There’s only one Emma, and nursing her back to health took precedence over stopping them and calling in the cavalry.”
To his surprise, Thomas only nodded. “I get that. We know who the leaders are now at least, right? River, Zac, and I are good friends with the local police chief, so if they come sniffing around Atropos again, we’ll be the first to know.”
“He’s aware of the supernatural?”
Thomas nodded again. “He’s a good guy. We kinda saved his ass when this shit went down with Rosenhaven anyway.”
“Maybe we can convince him to string together a story about an assault. Put out an APB and contact the state police.”
Thomas’s eyes lit up. “I like how you think.”
Adrian grinned back at him. “Same here.”
Noting a rectangular hatch in the ceiling of a closet in the master bedroom, Adrian decided to circle back to it for later exploration and continued into the adjacent room.
He stepped into a small office with dusty bookshelves on one wall and faded movie posters on another. A desk beneath the window housed an equally abused and outdated desktop computer.
“What do we have here?” Thomas poked his head in through the door.
“We’ll see in a moment.” Adrian lowered himself into the desk chair and powered the computer on. “I’m not going to hold my breath that they left anything useful here.”
“Me either.”
An empty Windows screen dashed Adrian’s tiny fragment of hope. “Reformatted.”
As he shoved the keyboard away in disgust, heavy footsteps thundered on the stairs. Zac appeared with River and Emma trailing behind him.
“Smells like gunpowder in the garage. From all the empty casings and the mess they left behind downstairs, I’m going to assume they were making enough rounds to start a war,” the shifter said. “You guys find anything up here?”
“A computer,” Adrian replied. “Though there isn’t much on it.”
Thomas pulled a cellphone from his back pocket. “I’ll call Harrison. We have a friend who can probably recover some data from it at least.”
“Isn’t it a little late to be calling people?” Adrian glanced at his watch. “Eleven is early for us, but not so much for normal folk.”
The alpha wolf snorted. “We’re far from normal, and Harrison is always on his PlayStation around now. It won’t be a problem. Besides, this sort of stuff is what his clan does. The hunters were stupid to leave it behind at all.”
“Maybe they were out of space,” Emma suggested. “Who has room for a computer when you have enough ammo to challenge Rambo? Plus, it’s old.”
“Point,” Thomas said. He stepped away to make his call.
“She’s right. There’s no telling what else they took with them for a computer to be seen as disposable,” River murmured.
“Zac said it also smells like manure out back, and I don’t see a single horse or cow.
I don’t want to assume there’s a posse of scary dudes with guns driving around with homemade explosives in their trucks, but better to be safe than sorry. ”
Adrian trailed toward the doorway. “I may have seen the entrance to an attic in the master bedroom. We can check it out while we wait on Thomas to make his call.”