Aftermath (4 page)

Hesitant to step inside the cell should the door close or someone sneak up behind me, I reached in, my fingers tingling at the threshold like the rest of me had at the main door, and grabbed a handful of papers off the desk. Flipping through the pages, and clearly unhurt but whatever it was, I was quickly distracted from the weird sensation. The papers read like a case study of the mentally deranged. The penmanship, using the term liberally, would put most doctors to shame and have them questioning the amount of effort they put into making their prescriptions illegible. They clearly needed to work harder at it.

From that it didn’t take more than a few seconds to realize the cell probably belonged to the old coot who’d sniffed me out. It had his brand of crazy smeared all over it. The chicken scratch ran the gambit of sizes and styles and even languages, too, if I was reading it correctly. I could pick out a word or two here and there but there was no cohesiveness to it, nothing to tie any of it together in a way that stood out. It was like the manifesto of a two year-old. My eyes began to blur after a few minutes of trailing the lines of insanity, and I was ready to toss the whole batch when I caught sight of something I recognized. My chest tightened as my gaze zeroed in on one of the sheets of paper. It was some kind of official document that had been squeezed in among the rest of the pages.

“You have got to be shitting me.”

Plain as day, etched across the letterhead in a fancy gold and black script, was the name of the organization responsible for setting up the secretive prison in the Louisiana backwoods.

The Motherfucking Department of Supernatural Investigation.

Chapter Four

As soon as I saw the letterhead, I grabbed all the paperwork I could find and stuffed it into a plastic sack that the guard—the ex-guard, now dead body—had stashed in one of his desk drawers, then bolted outside. I took a few minutes to clean up the Nephilim bodies I’d left scattered about and kicked some dirt over the blood before getting back under cover.

While it might take the first responders some time to get organized and be given the go ahead to enter into the nuclear wasteland that had been Pitkin, the DSI wouldn’t have the same restraints on their movement. And given that the local government probably didn’t have a clue about the clandestine prison being operated in their state, I could see Shaw rallying her troops sooner rather than later to clear the area before anyone else got wind of what really happened. No matter how good your PR person is there was no positive way to spin a gang of supernatural maniacs setting off a nuke in order to facilitate a prison break. Stuff like that wasn’t something a shadow agency wanted slathered across the news. Bad for business. So I hunched down, reined my essence in, and waited.

I hadn’t seen Shaw since I’d sicced the lycanthropes on the DSI building she and her flunkies had been hiding in. Though I’d promised to call off the weres and vamps once I’d gotten my hands on Judas, I had been lying out of my ass. Once that genie was out of the bottle there was no putting it back in. They, the Covenant of Dusk as they’d christened themselves—
morons
—wanted me dead even more than Shaw did. It would take killing every last one of them to stop their rampage now.

Ain’t no one got the time for that.

I’d heard that Shaw’s credibility had taken a hit with her superiors because of the rampant supernatural attacks, and she was holding an even bigger mad-on for me than she already had been, which I was okay with. Fuck her. She deserved every bit of grief seeing how she’d used Judas’s agenda to get back at me. She might not have known what he intended, or how low he’d sink, but she was as complicit as he was as far as I was concerned. I might not have gone out of my way to collect on her ass since I’d killed Trinity, planted Judas in a parking lot for all eternity, and started a race war in retaliation, but the thought of Shaw coming to me was like being handed a buy one, get one blowjob free coupon.

I was in the middle of imagining just what I’d do when Shaw showed up that I almost missed the sudden pop of energy pinging my senses. Someone had teleported nearby. A quick glance told me I’d been smart for waiting.

There, just a short distance from the wrecked door of the prison, stood Rebecca Shaw and her goon squad: Grace, Thud, Kit, and my old pal Styg. Both Venai and Alexander Poe were conspicuously absent but seeing the rest sent a tremble of excitement spidering down my spine. Adrenaline set my hands to shaking, readying me for a fight. I hadn’t wanted anything so badly since puberty.

“Be quick about it,” she told her lackeys while staring off at nothing. The faraway sheen of her eyes told me she was communicating with someone through a mental link.

“Let’s go.” Grace was the first inside, a born leader. A Nephilim like Kalar and his deceased buddies, there wasn’t much to her magic but what she had was wrapped up in a hell of a package. Dark of skin with long black hair, she was built like a dancer: long, lithe, and powerful. A little sharp around the edges maybe but she was beautiful nonetheless. She moved with an elegance that matched her name.

“After you.” Thud followed her, staring at her ass all the while. He was a demon after my own heart even if he was a yappy moron with about as much sense as a lobotomized goldfish. The fact that he stood all of five feet tall and almost as wide made it hard for me to take him seriously. We’d probably get along with a few dozen beers in us but every time I saw the guy I wanted to take a baseball bat to the rock wall that was his forehead just on general principle.

“Be sure to set the charges properly,” Shaw told Kit without bothering to look at the young girl.

Kit gave a barely perceptible shake of her head, hugging the backpack she was carrying before she disappeared into the prison. A mage whose power was rooted in technology there was no doubt Kit knew how to do her job way better than her handler ever could but it was simply in Shaw’s nature to be a bitch. If it ain’t broke…

Styg was the last of them to head inside. All doom and gloom he chased Kit’s heels and didn’t say a word. His pasty skin stood out against the shadows, flickering like a ghost before he, too, vanished inside the bunker. His heavy boots and metal-tinged duster echoed from the stairwell for a few minutes, and then went silent.

That was the opportunity I’d been waiting for.

Shaw continued to stare off into space, and I slithered out from behind my covering mass of foliage to sneak up behind her. She stiffened and hissed just before I reached her, my essence pinging against her senses despite the leash I had on it, but it was too late.

“Miss me?” I asked while driving my fist into the base of her spine

She took the blow like a champ, grunting through clenched teeth as her head whiplashed back and she toppled to her knees, but I didn’t give her a chance to recover. I clubbed her upside the head, sinking my knuckles into her temple with a vicious twist and knocking her onto her side. Shaw raised a hand to ward off another blow, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction. My fingers bit into her arm and I rolled her onto her back, dropping a knee into her solar plexus. Her breath whistled from between pursed lips, but she shut her mouth as soon as she spied the ball of energy I held just inches from her face.

“Nothing to say?” I asked. “That’s a first.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes a little unfocused but she still managed to sneer at me. “Don’t posture, Trigg. Had you meant to kill me you would have already done so.”

“Maybe I want to see you suffer first.”

She shrugged. “While that is likely true, your curiosity has gotten the best of you. Admit it. I can see it on your face.” She motioned to the prison with her eyes. “You want to know what was so important that someone would destroy an entire city to possess it.”

Sadly she wasn’t wrong but I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. “Give me a reason not to kill you here and now, Shaw.”

“I can give you several,” she answered without pause. “The first, and most important to you is that I neither knew about nor authorized the attack upon your family. Judas set Trinity after you before I’d even known they had been freed from Limbo. I had no say in the matter.”

At the mention of my family my teeth clenched so hard I could feel them creaking against my jaw. “And you expect me to believe that?”

“Believe what you will, it’s the truth. While I’ve certainly no qualms against doing what I must to ensure my goals are met it served no purpose of
mine
to have the mother of your child killed. Her death was…unfortunate and not at all a good thing for my own plans, and I wish things had ended differently. Truly I do.”

I growled and stated into her eyes while inching the ball of power closer to her face. Nothing in her expression made me think she was lying. After a few silent moments of the mystical energy casting fiery shadows across her cheeks and giving her a mild case of sunburn, I extinguished it and moved away, letting her up. She stood and dusted herself off casually without giving me the satisfaction of seeing her so much as acknowledge the wounds I’d given her.

“Don’t go getting all weepy and apologetic now. It doesn’t suit you.”

She grinned. “I’m only sorry it wasn’t you that Trinity killed. I could have reasoned with Karra, come to an agreement about our respective places in the world, and we’d all have been the better for it. She would have understood how things had to be. You, however…”

My magic rose up and flickered toward her like the tongue of a serpent. “Keep her name out of your mouth, Shaw. You don’t deserve to speak about Karra as if you knew anything about her.” I stepped closer, power flaring. “Say her name again and I’ll rip your throat out and feed it to the lapdogs you have scouring the prison.”

Shaw stood her ground but she knew better than to provoke me further. “What would you have me speak of then?” A flutter of a smile brightened her pale lips.

I forced down my anger and let my magic settle. As much as I hated the woman, she was right. I needed answers as to who had bombed the city and she was the only one who had them. “What’s the big deal about this place?”

“You mean what is so important that over 600 people had to die?”

“You’re not making this whole not murdering you thing any easier, you know that?”

Shaw chuckled. “Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would go through such trouble to free those locked inside. While all are dissidents of one kind or another, many apparently captured after the battle for Eden, none are of any strategic importance that I know of. Hence the reason they were locked away.”

“Rather than killed, you mean?” I asked.”

She shrugged again.

“What about the old man? The one in cell number three.”

“I’d have to check my files to be certain of his identity but—”

“Don’t lie to me, Shaw,” I said, cutting her off. “There are only twenty cells inside and a couple of those were empty. You can’t make me believe you don’t know every single aspect regarding the men locked inside, to include their IQ, shoe size, and the consistency of their poop.”

Shaw grinned. “You presume to know me, Trigg. That’s unfortunate.”

“Damn right it is. Now tell me what—” I’d barely started talking when the shuffle of feet drew me up short. I spun about as Thud emerged from the prison. Our eyes met, and I knew then my cozy little chat with Shaw was over.

“Hey!” Thud shouted to the rest of the group that stomped up behind him. “It’s that crazy motherfucker Triggaltheron.”

I groaned at hearing the demon utter my full name and barely restrained myself from tossing a fireball his direction. “Had I known I’d have to see your ugly face again I would have let the damn bomb kill me.”

“Would have saved us the trouble.” Kit’s hands were flying in front of her, pieces of something coming together in a blur.

If past encounters were any indication, she was building a weapon I was going to regret being shot with and I wasn’t in the mood for all that. “Cool your jets, Inspector Gadget.”

Her lip piercings clacked together in annoyance and she didn’t stop building her device until Shaw raised a hand.

“We can seek our pound of flesh later, Kit. Right now we have more important things to worry about.”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “
You
have more important things to worry about. Not my lube, not my jackoffs.”

Shaw chuckled. “Oh, but it is your problem, Trigg. At least now it is.”

“What are you on about?”

She glanced about real quick before turning back to face me. “It’s clear from my
investigation
that it was the Covenant of Dusk that attacked Pitkin. There’s no doubt they’ll claim responsibility soon,” she came closer, grinning, “and I’m almost one hundred percent certain they’ll identify you as the man who ordered the attack.”

My hand shot out and wrapped about her throat. She was in the air a second later, her feet dangling above the ground. I squeezed but nothing peeled the smile from her thin lips.

“That won’t happen if you’re dead, Shaw.”

“But it will, Triggaltheron.” I glanced over to see Grace fiddling with the teleport ring they all wore. “You can’t stop all of us. Put her down.”

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be happier with her dead?” I asked the girl.

Grace grinned, her face brightening for an instant before the mask of neutrality returned. “It doesn’t matter what I want. Let her go or all of this lands on your head.”

I growled and tossed Shaw to the ground. “I should have killed you in God’s prison.”

She nodded. “You should have but the opportunity has passed.” Shaw got to her feet and dusted herself off. “You’ll never have it again.”

I flipped her off, turned and started to walk away but Shaw called to me, her words stopping me in my tracks.

“We’re not done here, Trigg,” she said. “Not if you want to protect Abigail.”

I spun on her. “What the fuck did you say about my daughter, Shaw?” My power welled until it throbbed within my veins, tendrils spilling from my pores like furious worms.

“You misunderstand, Trigg.” Shaw raised her hands in mock surrender. “I seek only to ensure your daughter’s continued safety. The Covenant chatter is that she’s holed up with your cousin Scarlett and DRAC’s enforcer.” She grinned, enjoying the surprise rippling across my face. “Such a lovely couple those two make.” The threat wasn’t lost on me. The DSI knew where Scarlett had taken Abigail. Either I backed off or Shaw would go after my daughter.