Blood Diamond
Blood Diamond
Witch & Wolf #3
by RJ Blain
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher or author
excluding the use of brief quotations in a book review.
© 2015 Pen & Page Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-928148-08-1
For more information or to contact the author, please visit
rjblain.com
.
Chapter One
The world was full of corpses, and I, Dante Jackson Emmett Anderson, knew them by name. Unfortunately for me, my brother knew my secret.
When my brother asked for help, it usually involved unidentified bodies or paperwork. When he had showed up at my door, I hadn’t expected an invitation to join an Inquisition field operation, one dangerous enough to warrant the use of my brother’s armored truck. He had me dead to rights when he told me I’d be driving, and judging by the way he had smirked while spinning the keys around his finger, he had known it.
I doubted the red-painted, tempting seductress of a monstrosity could be eliminated by anything other than a missile or a tank; even if someone wanted to blast their way in, they’d need a ladder to reach the door. I wasn’t small, not at six foot three, and I needed the help of the step rail and roll bar to climb in. The rest of the team needed me to give them a hand.
I drew a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. I should have refused my twin and ignored the lure of driving his absurd, stupid truck. I should have told him I would do a stint at the Inquisition headquarters shuffling papers and naming dead people instead of pretending I was trained for field operations.
Drumming my hands against the leather wheel, probably the only normal thing in the truck, I waited. The manila envelope on the dashboard mocked me, reflecting in the windshield as I watched the darkening forest for any signs of the team’s return. Once I opened it, I’d know more about the operation and its Inquisitors than I wanted. I’d know the names and faces of the dead, and if my bad luck held, I’d get a glimpse of their final moments.
The dead were vindictive like that.
I leaned forward, resting my forehead on my hands. My brother had been in enough of a hurry to get me into his truck and on the road I hadn’t had time to change out of my suit. Combat boots, fatigues, and Kevlar protected the Inquisitors. I wore a silk dress shirt and an equally thin jacket a bullet would ignore before tearing a hole through me.
Clenching my teeth, I bumped my forehead against the wheel as I cursed my idiocy.
A smart man would’ve put the idling engine into gear and left. If I did that, I’d be the target of my very own Inquisition operation. I doubted even the Red Beast could withstand a pack of angry Fenerec armed with more firepower than the military. They had missiles, and I had supplied all six warheads to them. If they launched one at the truck, they’d blow it—and me—into scrap metal and unidentifiable bits.
I turned my head to check the clock. In ten minutes, it’d be time to rip open the envelope and find out how the operation was going. If things went well, the photographs would tell a story where the Inquisition’s victims were dead and my team still lived. My brother had been adamant about the next part of my directions: if half of my team was dead by sunset, I was to take the Red Beast and get out of the area fast.
Fast was something the truck could do. I had clocked it at a hair over a hundred miles per hour over the rabbit trail of a road leading into Oconee National Forest, much to the dismay of the nine passengers crammed into the cab with me.
In a way, I felt sorry for my brother. He thought he knew me. He thought he could guess what I’d do, like he was so good at doing as the Inquisition’s youngest Shadow Pope. Unfortunately for him, while I had nodded my acknowledgment of his orders, I had no intention of abandoning the Inquisitors, and the team knew it. They had stared at me like I’d grown a second head for daring to disobey orders within five minutes of receiving them, but I wasn’t about to have a pack of Fenerec haunting me for getting them killed unnecessarily.
If everything went well, I’d do as my brother wished, staying in the Red Beast while my team did their dirty work. Once done, I’d drive the Fenerec pack home, clearing away a year of obligation to the Inquisition as payment.
If things didn’t go well, I would do what I could for them. The world was full of corpses, but if any of the Inquisitors numbered among the dead, it wouldn’t be because I had abandoned them. If I were going to be responsible for someone’s death, it’d be because I chose to tap a bullet between their eyes. Of course, I’d have to be close to my target to hit them, but that was a different matter entirely.
I checked the time again.
Five minutes gave me enough time to double check my gun, a vanilla Beretta M9 I had snatched on my way out the door. I preferred something heavier, but the M9 would suffice. It was loaded with silver, and that’d stop a Fenerec for a bit—or kill it, if my aim was good enough.
I wasn’t willing to make any bets on that.
If I needed the Beretta, it was because the team was in trouble, and I had left the Red Beast in favor of stupid heroics without the benefit of body armor and heavy munitions. If I didn’t get myself killed, my brother was going to finish me off when—if—I made it home.
I took my time checking the magazine before chambering a round, turning the safety on, and holstering the gun. Drawing a deep breath, I held it to the count of thirty before letting it out. The manila envelope was filled with photographs and a few sheets of paper. Dumping the contents onto the Red Beast’s dash, I flicked on the overhead light and used the reflections in the windshield to flip the twenty-three photographs and the stapled sheets of paper upside down.
So long as I didn’t directly look at the faces of the men and women the Inquisition meant to kill, my magic wouldn’t work. The photographs belonged to the wild Fenerec pack living too close to civilization, slated for execution. The papers, which consisted of three sheets, included the pictures of the eight men and one woman on my team. If they died, I’d learn their true names instead of the code names they favored during field operations.
I sighed, watching as the vestiges of sunset faded from the sky. In the dark of night, I would begin my own hunt—one my brother wouldn’t approve of. If he had wanted obedience, he wouldn’t have come to me asking for help. He should’ve known better than to think I would turn my back on those entrusted to my care.
I lifted my chin and began my grim task of flipping over photographs so I might learn the names of the dead. Of the twenty-three, one still lived, and all I could see in her jade eyes was accusation.
~~*~~
It took me ten minutes to work up the courage to pick up the stapled pages. The faces and names of the dead wouldn’t hurt me, not really, but I had spent an hour getting to know them as we chatted in the cab, at least when they weren’t cursing at me for putting the Red Beast through its paces. To them, I was only a human with a touch of witchcraft, someone entirely useless in their field.
My brother was a lot of things, but I had to give him credit; he knew how to manipulate the Inquisition into believing subtle falsehoods. The Inquisitors knew I could sense gemstones when I wanted to.
They knew nothing about my ability to learn the names of the dead.
An hour stuck in close confines with people capable of tearing me to shreds had done a lot to nurture a sense of comradeship with them. For the duration of the operation, we were a team.
Being behind the wheel and driving recklessly enough to make
them
nervous had helped with that. I’d never be pack with them, but I had claimed my place as leader from the minute they’d buckled into my brother’s truck until they left for their op. When they returned, I’d be the leader once again. I was responsible for getting them home safely.
I didn’t want to be burdened with their deaths.
I drew a deep breath and let it out in a controlled, long exhale. I flipped over the papers.
Instead of a traditional cover letter, my twin’s face greeted me. He was grinning, flipping his middle finger at the camera. Judging from the camera angle and image quality, he’d taken the shot with his cell. If the Red Beast hadn’t been an indicator of my brother’s utter lack of dignity, the photograph was proof—and blackmail material that I would file away for another time. Below his picture was a photo of a woman. She was seated at a conference table. Her brown, short-cropped hair hung in front of her eyes, and she was so absorbed in her work that I doubted she had any idea that my brother had been snapping images of her with his phone. If my guess was right, my brother had his very first girlfriend.
I had to give him credit; she was pretty enough to take a second look at.
“How inappropriate,” I muttered, shaking my head at my brother’s tactless method of showing off his lady to me in a way the Inquisition couldn’t track. The truck wasn’t equipped with cameras—none that relayed to Inquisition headquarters, at least. The only one who had access to the truck’s surveillance system was my brother, who was nestled safe at home, probably watching television.
Flipping to the second sheet, I braced for the worst, only to discover a timeline of the operation, including when I was supposed to flip to the next page. According to the clock, I had ten minutes to waste, waiting inside the belly of the Red Beast.
I skimmed the rest of the orders. Everything was as my brother had described. If all went well, in ten minutes, I’d be on the road with the team.
What the orders didn’t include was what to do about any survivors. I glanced at the photograph of the jade-eyed woman. She was still alive. Worry and tension tightened in my chest. She tempted me into a lot of things, including ignoring the itinerary altogether.
Muttering a curse at her and at the Inquisition Fenerec, I flipped to the next page, tearing the sheet in my hurry.
One by one, I stared at the faces of the Inquisitors I had driven to Oconee National Forest, located an hour outside of Atlanta. One by one, I knew their true names, subsuming the code names they’d called each other during the drive. I shuddered. What could kill something as tough as a Fenerec?
Throwing the pages onto the dash, I spat curses at myself for playing by the rules and them for having gotten killed trying to take out a wild Fenerec pack preying on park visitors. Sweeping my hand out, I shoved aside the pictures of the dead to snatch up the image of the jade-eyed woman to reassure myself she still lived. I slipped her picture into my pocket.
With the Inquisitors dead, I had no reason to remain. Still, I fretted about the sole survivor, even though the possibility was high that she had been the one to kill my fellow Inquisitors. If I were smart, I’d change gears and leave. Instead, I stared at her picture, wondering how such a delicate lady managed to survive an Inquisition on her own. What sort of wolf was she?
Sighing, I turned off the engine and pocketed the keys. I snatched the dashboard’s GPS unit and shoved it into my jacket pocket. It’d probably take some tinkering to get the device to pick up the transmitters from the Inquisitors, but I’d manage; like the Inquisition’s missiles, I had acquired the gadgets in the first place.
If I couldn’t make the GPS work and pick up the Inquisitors’ trail, I’d be ashamed of myself.
Just in case someone did find the truck, I gathered the remaining photographs and the stapled sheets of paper and stuffed them back into their envelope. Folding it up, I shoved it into my belt.
Opening the door, I glared at the ground, which was a long way down even by my skewed standards. I jumped out without the assistance of the roll bar or the step, grunting as I landed. Locking the truck was an exercise in futility, but I did it anyway, if only to prevent my brother from adding it to the list of things he’d tan my hide over later. With the Inquisitors dead and the lone survivor likely a wolf, no one was going to steal it.
A worried laugh worked its way out of me. My brother was going to eat me for dinner once he finished berating me over the poor timing of my chauvinistic male pig tendencies. I could hear him already, scolding me for going to the rescue of a Fenerec lady who could rip my arms from their sockets if she wanted to.