Chapter 11 #4
“There’s no one here,” I say absently, still studying what I can feel of the ward while part of me itches to race out and find Noah.
“You can’t know that. They could be hiding.” Gideon sounds impatient, and I give him a scathing look.
“My adrenaline is through the roof right now. I can hear the heartbeats of every person in this building and some from the street. Trust me, there’s nobody on CSG’s floors except us.
Everyone else is in the stairwell coming up or the lobby.
” If I’d been calmer before, I could have saved myself that run up the stairs.
“So where’d Noah go?”
I push aside the surge of fear. “Abducted.” The word hurts my throat. Fuck. That’s his worst nightmare, and I failed to protect him from it.
“Okay, but how? You were here in under a minute. There’s no way they could have gotten Noah down five flights of stairs and away from the building without you seeing them as you approached.”
He’s right. There would have been something—a vehicle speeding away.
“Did they teleport?” There could have been demons with them. But again, why were they even there? And why did Noah need to breach the ward from the inside for it to alert Percy? Were they not trying to get in, just standing in reception having a chat?
Gideon seems to focus for a second. “If they teleported, it wasn’t from here. There’s no residue at all. Plus, the wards that prevent direct teleportation in and out of these floors are still intact. They would have had to be in the elevator or stairwell to do it.”
We were just in the stairwell, so he would have noticed that, but the elevator… I glance at it. The panel is still dark. Definitely locked down.
“This makes no sense.”
The door to the stairwell opens as the demons from the enforcement first responders team arrive. They stop when they see us just standing there.
Gideon takes over, directing them to spread out and search every office for anything that could tell us what happened here. I notice a couple of them doing a double-take at the ward.
I just can’t follow this through. Percy seemed sure that Noah breached the ward from the inside to warn us.
That kind of makes sense—after all, if Noah was already inside the ward, what other reason would he have to breach it?
To let others in? But why? If they wanted access to information, Noah would be better served hunting it out himself.
Until a few days ago, he spent all day, every day here.
And what other reason could there be for accessing the offices after hours?
No, whatever happened, it wasn’t Noah betraying us. So that must mean he was warning us… but again, why? What was happening that he needed to breach the ward to warn us? Even if for some weird reason it wasn’t alerting Percy, he would have been safer to stay behind the ward and call us.
There’s another minor commotion behind me as the stairwell door opens for another enforcement team, this time a mix of species since they didn’t teleport. Gideon begins giving out more orders. In my ear, Percy advises that he’s just a few minutes away.
“Dammit, who beat us here?” someone whines, and it’s so out of place that everyone else falls silent. I turn around and identify the culprit as a youngish hellhound—at least, he’s the only one going as red as a tomato. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I was just sure we’d get here first.”
“You thought you’d beat demons who can teleport?” I ask dryly, walking back toward them.
Three other shifters stop dead on their way out of reception.
“What?” Gideon asks immediately.
“Only demons have been here recently, sir?” the most senior asks, taking a long sniff.
Gideon and I exchange glances. “On our side? Demons, Andrew, and a human,” he replies. “Any other scent should be at least”—he glances at his watch—“an hour and a half old, probably more. Who else do you smell?”
“Sorcerers,” the man says instantly, sniffing again.
“Four… no, five of them. Three hellhounds, all from the same pack environment. Burnt hair and some smoke—but I can’t smell matchwood or accelerant.
And…” He shakes his head as though trying to clear it.
“The scent’s a bit muddled. The human was definitely here too, but there was someone else.
” He looks around at his team. “Anybody?”
A few others sniff the air as well. “Maybe the human was wearing cologne?” one of them suggests. “And I can smell grass.”
I squint at him. “By grass, you mean…?” Surely our intruders didn’t stand around getting high?
He looks confused. “Grass. Green stuff? Grows… well, everywhere that’s not a city block. Like a lawn?”
“Thank fuck for that,” Gideon mutters, telling me I wasn’t the only one stymied. “Okay,” he raises his voice, “so we have five sorcerers, three hellhounds, and something unidentified. And at least one of them was at a park or somewhere that has grass recently. Correct?”
There are some doubtful looks and a few more sniffs, and I swear to fuck, for the first time ever, I wish Alistair would turn up. Hellhounds drive me insane.
“It doesn’t exactly smell like cut grass.” The team leader inhales so deeply, I worry he’s going to start coughing.
Gideon opens his mouth, and I hastily leap in. I’ve seen that look on his face before. It never ends well. “Thank you. We’ll let you know if we have more questions.” It’s better if we wait for Alistair and take advantage of his nose—and then he can deal with his brethren.
The hellhounds disperse to carry out their orders, and I look over at Gideon.
“This is fucked,” he says bluntly.
Before I can answer, Percy’s voice in my ear says, “We’re unlocking the elevator and coming up.”
Gideon and I both turn to look at the panel as it lights up. “We’re right here waiting,” I tell Percy. “Who’s with you?”
“Alistair and Sam and half a dozen enforcement agents.”
“Ask the agents to wait downstairs,” Gideon says. “Let’s not disperse this scent too much more before Alistair gets a chance to smell it. There’s already been a lot of people through here.”
“Consider it done,” Percy says, and then the sound cuts out as he mutes his phone again.
“Sam should have stayed home,” Gideon grumbles. I say nothing, because at this moment, I really wish I’d made Noah stay home.
The elevator doors open, and Percy and Sam hang back and let Alistair exit first. He walks right past us without even a glance of acknowledgment, his expression one of laser focus as he inhales.
“Three hellhounds,” he says at once. “From a West Coast pack. Give me time and I’ll remember which one.”
West Coast, huh? Maybe the reason Tish fled there was because he had allies. Could the cult have been a decoy?
A lot of work for a decoy, though.
“Noah was here,” Alistair continues. “And a couple of those fireballs he’s so fond of. He was…” He shoots me a glance. “He was afraid, but not a lot. I’m getting a lot of adrenaline from him, though.”
Good. He was prepared to fight back. Please let him be okay.
“Five sorcerers.” He hesitates.
“What?” Percy asks, stepping out of the elevator with Sam on his heels.
“One of them smells familiar. It’s the same scent that was all over Sam and the lab in the bunker.”
My heart stops.
“Tish?” The question bursts from multiple mouths.
Alistair shakes his head. “I can’t say for sure. I’ve never met him. I just know that I smelled this sorcerer in the lab, and he’d touched Sam.”
“Definitely male?” Sam asks sharply.
Alistair nods. “Yes. Male, fully mature but not elderly, and very worked up about something.” He sniffs again.
“But he wasn’t using sorcery while he was here.
In fact, none of them were.” He scrunches up his nose and sniffs again.
“Hold on, I want to shift and see if I can get a better handle on this.”
He shifts, and while he’s sniffing around in his waist-high hellhound form, Sam says, “I can’t be exactly sure who came near me while I was unconscious”—Gideon growls—“but Noah said the lab assistant who ran the tests that night was a woman, remember? I think Tish was the only male sorcerer who came near me in the bunker.”
“If it’s not Tish, it’s someone in his inner circle,” Percy says. “Regardless, their presence here combined with the attack on David and Elinor is a clear sign that Tish has been playing us.” His face is like stone.
Realizing the conference call has been disconnected, I ask, “How did you convince David to hang up?”
“He’s coordinating on the West Coast,” Sam replies. “Looking for Tish’s allies. I think he also decided to interrogate the prisoners himself. Last we heard, he was demanding a doctor to heal his concussion.”
“ David did?” Complex healing is one of the rarest sorcery abilities and is only used for life-threatening injuries.
Some of us who are more highly placed at CSG can overrule that if healing a more minor injury is important for government business, but we don’t take advantage of it often…
and to my knowledge, David’s never done so.
Sam shrugs. “He’s worried about Noah. And Tish is dangerous.”
I can’t argue with that.
Alistair shifts back to his biped form. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, but it’s seriously messed up,” he declares. “There was someone else here, but I’ve never smelled anything like that before. As far as I can tell, they were the only one doing any kind of sorcery or magic.”
“Sorcery or magic?” Percy asks sharply. “Were they a sorcerer? Or perhaps a human with magic? We’ve been assuming that Noah is the only one who’s explored that gift, but Tish could have been ahead of us there too.”
Alistair shakes his head. “I don’t know.
I don’t think it was either. I’ve literally never smelled a being like this before.
I’m saying sorcery or magic because it kind of smells like the residue of both, and it’s definitely from this one person.
Could they be some kind of genetic cross Tish developed? ”