Chapter 9
GRIFFIN
I held my breath as I pressed the cotton ball against Bradley’s cheek. Loaded with ointment, supposed to be good for little wounds. What the hell did I know? In my line of work, one of my specialties was hurting other people. People who wanted to hurt my clients.
Bradley hissed, his eyes cutting accusingly toward me. I gave him an apologetic nod, silently endeavoring to go back in with a gentler hand. Very humbling to learn that I didn’t know much about actually healing.
We were stuck in another MEA interrogation room, back where it all began, tossed into a van and herded to HQ by a squad of their smiling agents.
Trust MEA’s suits to roll in when the party was already over.
Trapped in our box, there was nothing we could do about the mess back at the oracle encampment, but I did know two things for sure.
First, by the time we’d left, the oracles were already tending to each other. Collapsed tents aside, I had to hope that not a lot of other damage had been done. And second, the dudes in helmets had been hauled in for questioning as well.
Good luck getting any answers out of their messed-up faces, though. Normally, I’d think twice about cannon-knuckling someone in the face, but those brutes deserved it. If only we knew where MEA was keeping them.
Somewhere even more uncomfortable than our box, in all likelihood. Someplace where the suits didn't respond kindly to threats about going and grabbing first-aid kits to tend to banged-up clients, damn it.
I painted ointment onto another of the many angry red lines streaking Bradley's face. He winced. My stomach twinged.
“Sorry.”
He said nothing, his teeth clenching, his jaw setting in a very enticing way. It felt wrong to admire him like this, but who could blame me? The boy was a looker under any light.
Probably even more inappropriate, but the little cuts and grazes made him even prettier. Some guys cleaned up nice. A roughed-up Bradley Brooks was somehow that much harder to resist.
“You worried me for a second back there,” I muttered, dabbing with more care this time.
He cocked an eyebrow, the rest of his face holding perfectly still. “Oh, so you worry about me now, do you?”
When was the last time I had a client who liked to volley quite this much? Flirt, even. I cleared my throat, furrowing my brow to convince him I was concentrating on anything else but staring at his face.
“In a purely professional sense, of course. You’re my client, after all.”
Bradley rolled his eyes. He knew. I knew. But we also knew we didn’t have to discuss it. Not when there were more pressing matters at hand.
“You did great, Griffin. About as well as you could against an unknown enemy. Two of them, if you count both the Hive and those guys in helmets.”
“You weren’t a slouch yourself, Brooks.” I finished up, sitting back to admire my work.
Good enough. “What was that trick you pulled back there, anyway? The oracles, they went all bug-eyed. Literally. Then you shouted something weird, and the fight went out of them. That was some spell you cast. Something you picked up from your research?”
He chewed on his lip, his eyes downcast, avoiding my gaze. Was it something I said? He might be from an established arcane family, but damn, magic could be a touchy subject for him.
“Well, whatever it was you did,” I continued, “it stopped them in their tracks. Those eyes—never seen anything like that. But you did your thing, then the oracles went back to normal. Well, mostly normal. You know what I mean.”
“That’s the problem. The Hive are entities entirely on their own, insectoid creatures with a hunger for conquest and destruction. They don’t need human hosts to function in our world. At least that's what all the historical records tell us.”
I turned my hands up and shrugged. “So you think they’re trying to be more subtle this time around? An actual invasion from giant bugs would put humanity on high alert, mundanes or otherwise. This is them hitching rides in human bodies. Wearing human skin.”
Bradley shook his head. “I’m just as stumped as you are. You heard what Wallace said about Zuleika. We saw it happen right before our very eyes. The oracles are more susceptible to the influence of things from other realms.”
“So you’re saying it’s a sort of possession.”
“I hate to say it, but infestation almost sounds more appropriate.” Bradley’s hand curled into a fist. “It was those helmets. This has JA Williams’s stink all over it. He weaponized ancient texts about the Hive, inscribing all the right runes to—well, I’m not sure to do what, exactly.”
“To force the oracles to surrender their bodies to the Hive?” I suggested. “Maybe this was a test run. Williams wanted to see if his toys worked on the most psychically sensitive people he could find.”
Bradley pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “What if he found a way to force the Hive on humans at large? Imagine it. A place like New York, anywhere that people are packed together like sardines. Trigger the infestation on a handful of humans on the subway. What happens then?”
He didn’t even need to go that far. Targeting the oracles was bad enough on its own. There were oracles everywhere, banding together in their private enclaves. Those helmets could wreak plenty of destruction as they were. What was Williams even hoping to accomplish?
I rubbed my hands over my hair, scratching the top of my head. “I’m still not over the fact that these things are actually real. I mean, can you believe it? The Hive existing? The implications are—”
“Incredible,” Bradley breathed, a faint tremble in his voice, his eyes alight with inner fire.
“Actually, I was going to say ‘terrifying.’ The implications are terrifying.” I pursed my lips. “Though I suppose from a purely academic standpoint, this discovery must be gratifying for you.”
“Vindication,” he said. “Or something like it. It’s bittersweet, really. Years of being ridiculed and scoffed at, of being told that my field of study was no more legitimate than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.”
My hand fell to the back of my head, kneading in a guilty, soothing rhythm against my nape. I was one of those ridiculers. Until the oracles, I was one of those scoffers.
“But it feels wrong to celebrate,” he continued. “The Hive have awakened, and they’ve looked into our world with their many eyes. It’s only a matter of time until they cross over. Until they really come back.”
A horde of ravenous alien insects, come to swarm the planet, to devour everything like locusts. I’d peered over Bradley’s shoulder while he read, caught glimpses of those old illustrations. At the time, I thought it was just fantasy. Fiction.
How could I have known that I was looking at anatomical sketches?
A knock at the door. I jumped, clutching at my heart. A pair of agents peered through the window, smirking. The one that I hadn’t bullied into finding me a first-aid kit spoke up.
“She wants to see you. If you’d please follow me.”
Bradley pushed against his chair, making to stand up. The agent held his hand out.
“Not you. Just this one.”
Just me? I hesitated, considering for a moment the safety of the doors currently separating me from Nicoletta Falcón.
But she’d only get angrier the longer we delayed this.
I gave Bradley a reassuring nod, unsure which one of us needed it more.
Minutes later, I’d been frog-marched straight to her office.
Each time I sat across from her like this, I couldn’t help but wonder what was hiding behind that eyepatch.
An empty socket, a glass eye, or, knowing Nicoletta, a magically augmented prosthetic.
But she stared me down with enough rage out of a single eye as it was.
I fidgeted in my seat, fighting the impulse to take a running start and jump through the nearest window.
“You had one job,” her glare seemed to say. And she was right, too. I was supposed to keep an eye on Bradley, keep him out of trouble while sniffing out information on Williams.
But it had become so much more than that—attraction aside—now that Williams was actively in the picture, now that we had proof the Hive existed. I opened my mouth, summoning up just enough courage to launch into an explanation. Nicoletta held up one hand.
“A fine mess you got yourselves into. Why didn’t you just chuck a pipe bomb into a shopping mall? That would’ve caused me fewer problems.”
“Look, Nicoletta.” I held my hands up in placation. “I can explain.”
“I’d like to see you try. First you squirrel your way into one of Williams’s establishments without even bothering to conceal your identities, and then you miraculously find yourselves in the middle of some dispute between oracles and mercenaries?”
“That wasn’t just some dispute. It was an attack on the oracles. As for the Vault—we knew what we were doing. We needed the manuscript, and things worked out just fine.”
“Just fine?” Nicoletta banged her fist on the table. “It was sloppy. That’s what it was.”
I tried not to argue the point that we technically had a few tools to help us with the job—shadow puppets to obscure the security cameras, a good right hook backed up by enchanted brass knuckles. I knew that Nicoletta wasn’t in the mood.
“The club,” I said. “There was barely any magical activity there. You heard about that? Why would the MEA bother?”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Gallows, or have you forgotten? We didn’t come down on you for your shenanigans at the club. It was messy, but you made it out with results. But the oracles? What the hell were you thinking?”
She flung a manila folder onto her desk. One of the photographs slid out. I recognized the runes on the ribcage. Nicoletta opened the folder. I grimaced, a dull ache in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ve seen these before. Put them away.”