Chapter 10 #2
“The mayor ?” I may not know a lot about human governments, but I know that a mayor is the one in charge, and that means things are way beyond hinky here.
We in the community don’t get involved in human government.
I mean… occasionally if they’re fucking up a town really badly, someone local might try to steer them in the right direction, but mostly we just stay out of it.
People in government have a lot of eyes and attention on them, and the number-one rule within the community is to protect the secret of our existence. We cannot risk exposure.
When I smelled so many hellhounds at city hall, I thought they might have weaseled their way into staff positions.
It would give them an in with the local authorities—the ability to hear inside gossip that could enable them to better protect their people from exposure and also potentially influence the town’s leaders.
Even that was surprising, given the goals of Tish and the CCA.
The idea that they’d run for public office never occurred to me.
“This changes things, of course,” Sam replies grimly. “Noah’s running searches now on the other enclave towns we’ve found to see if they’ve taken over local government there too.”
“You found other enclave towns? When?” They were still looking when we spoke yesterday.
“This morning. Cats in Eastern Europe, sorcerers in North Africa, and we’re still confirming, but potentially demons in Polynesia. We were saving it for tonight’s briefing—didn’t want to distract you.”
I blow out a breath. “It seems distractions abound today. What do I need to look out for, Sam? Is there a way they can use the humans to come after me?” It was bad enough when I thought I had to look out for hellhounds ambushing me on a lonely stretch of road.
If they can publicly turn the humans against me…
“Don’t do anything illegal,” he warns, “or anything that could maybe be interpreted as illegal. The chief of police is also a hellhound, and with you not being local, it’s unlikely anyone would interfere if they arrested you on some trumped-up charge.”
“Got it,” I mutter. It’s okay. The plan was always for me to be unremarkable and unnoticed, and that hasn’t changed. “Do me a favor and check on Aidan, would you?”
“Elinor’s got him on the line,” he assures me. “We figured with this unexpected change, it might be better to be in contact with him.”
Some of my tension fades. “Good. Okay, I’m getting to the outskirts of town now. It’ll take me about half an hour to get to my stopping point.”
“I’ll mute again, then. Let me know if you need anything.” The line seemingly goes dead again, and I turn my attention back to looking as innocent as possible and smelling everything that drifts past on the breeze.
The drive is uneventful, and I have plenty of opportunity to sort through some of the scents carried to me.
I pass through different hotspot areas—places where a certain group of scents are concentrated, telling me who lives where, and I make a point of associating landmarks with each scent cluster.
It might not help in the end, since I don’t have names or faces to connect the scents to, but I can at least tell the others that clustered in the area near exit 178 there are around seven extended family groups with a high ratio of children and adolescents.
That actually makes me wonder if they move families with children into this area specifically.
Given our difficulty with conception, it seems strange that there would be such a high ratio of kids.
I go cold all over.
Could Tish have already begun experimenting on his followers?
No… no, the spread over age groups is too uneven, and Tish’s research hadn’t reached that point yet—he was still a generation away.
But fuck, I came this close to shitting myself at the thought.
And on the heels of that shock comes a hint of scent I’ve been waiting for.
Elf.
No… elves. Definitely more than one. Maybe… three? Three that are here right now. There are a couple more snatches of scent that might belong to others who were here before but are gone now… or are just a lot further away.
I’m getting close to my planned stopping point.
“Sam?”
A second later, my bestie says, “Right here. What’s up?”
“I’m going to be stopping in a minute and switching to handset. Just in case you’re wondering why I’m suddenly saying ‘uh-huh’ and ‘oh, really?’ a lot.”
He laughs. “Sure. Not that I’d ever question anything you say. I’d just put it down to one of your quirks.”
My brow furrows. What’s he talking about? “I don’t have quirks.”
There’s a moment of silence, then he says, “Of course not. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Wait a second… “Do you think I’m quirky ?” That’s absurd. I’m the most reasonable, level-headed hellhound I know.
“Not at all. I misspoke. Don’t think about it right now. You need to stay focused.”
He’s right, but I can’t help worrying a little. Quirky? Me? No way.
“Okay, coming up on the rest area,” I tell him.
It’s not much as far as rest areas go—a cleared gravel area for parking and a very dodgy-looking concrete toilet block.
There’s a single picnic table too. It’s currently abandoned, as anyone with sense would likely squeeze their legs together until they reached the very tiny unincorporated town only five miles away that a recent sign proclaimed has a gas station with café.
In other words, it’s perfect for my purpose.
I swing in and park the truck nice and close to the toilet block, then pretend to scratch the side of my face so I can slip the Bluetooth earpiece out and pocket it.
Lifting the handset to my ear, I get out of the truck and begin pacing slowly up and down along the length of the picnic table.
Occasionally I nod and make sounds as though I’m agreeing with the person on the other end of the line.
“Anything?” Sam asks softly.
“Oh, definitely,” I say conversationally.
There’s a hint of Tish coming up on the breeze from the south, enough to make me think this might be his base.
I wonder if anyone confirmed how much time he actually spent in that human religious cult compound.
Now we know he has access to the portal-creating elves, we need to consider it was intended to be a decoy all along, and that he wasn’t actually there a lot of the time.
I’m also getting a pretty strong concentration of elf.
They’re definitely spending their time here, and I commit as much of their scent to memory as I can, trying to break it down.
It’s good that there’s been more than one of them here—it gives me more to work with in tagging elements of their scent identifiers.
The overall base, the part that would be their species, is the bit that makes me think of fresh, growing grass—although not quite like any grass I’ve ever smelled before.
The other elements will identify things like sex, age, family group, location and environment—or they would if I had reference points for any of those things.
“Oh, really?” I say. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But isn’t this something we can talk about when I get there?”
“Sure,” Sam says, a thread of humor underlying the word. “I just thought we might—”
“That’s just fine, honey,” I interrupt, all my senses suddenly going on high alert.
An elf has just opened a portal not too far from me; I’m sure of it.
I can smell that same weird magic/sorcery combo that was in the office when Noah was taken, and the scent of elf is suddenly a lot stronger… and closer.
This is a new one, though. Not one of the elves I’ve been sniffing out for the last few minutes. And it’s a lot closer than any of them. Within a half-mile, maybe?
I try to remember what’s half a mile south of where I am right now. Not much—it’s pretty barren right here, lots of shallow rocky hills with some scrubby patches of woods. It gets better a few miles back from the road, near the river, where the settlements Aidan told me about are.
So why would an elf open a portal to what’s essentially the middle of nowhere?
Unless they know I’m here and want to sneak up on me?
That doesn’t make sense, though—they’d be better off opening the portal right here. I’d have no time to sense them and prepare that way. Although it would leave them open to being spotted by someone driving past.
“Ah, listen, sweetie,” I say to Sam, “I really should get back on the road if I’m going to get to you anytime soon.”
“Problem?” he asks seriously.
“Not sure how long it’s going to take me, exactly. I’m either pretty close, or I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. Ha ha ha.”
“Al, you gotta give me something here. Do I need to be worried or not?”
“Not yet,” I reply, because the elf doesn’t seem to be moving.
It’s pretty much just standing near where it opened the portal.
I really want to go have a look and see what it’s doing.
“I’m just thinking I might stretch my legs a bit before I get back on the road.
” I could stroll leisurely in that direction, right?
Just a guy who’s been in the car for hours having a bit of a stretch before continuing his journey.
“Fuck no,” Sam says immediately. “Absolutely not. Don’t make me get Percy, Alistair.
The mission parameters were set for a reason, remember?
You need to get moving—you’re already nearly at the end of the window we decided was safe, and that was before we knew the CCA had infiltrated the human government. ”
I hesitate, because I really, really want to know what the fuck that elf is doing…
but he’s right. We— I —can’t give anybody here reason to suspect we’re on to them.
We can’t give them any reason to act now.
We need as much time as possible to work out what the fuck is going on and what our next steps will be. I can’t jeopardize that in any way.