Chase the Dark (6 page)

“N-no,” Piper gasped. “It’s Uncle C-Calder.” Lyre squeezed her even tighter. Her father and uncle were identical twins but Quinn had been wearing a suit with a dark shirt. Calder had been wearing a white dress shirt.

“It is?” Ash repeated, startled. “But he—wait. He’s alive.”

Piper jerked back so hard Lyre staggered. “What?” she shrieked. She tore away and spun to find Ash kneeling beside her uncle, his hands flashing over Calder’s bloody chest. She dropped down beside him and grabbed Calder’s limp hand. “Will he make it?”

Ash didn’t immediately answer, his mouth tense with concentration. “He’s right on the edge. Curse the Moirai. I’m not a healer.”

“You have to try!”

“I
am
. We need—”

Boots clomped in the doorway. She and Ash looked up at the same time.

“You need to step away from the man and cross your arms on your chests in an X,” ordered the uniformed man in the door. A large black rifle rested in his hands, identical to the guns held by the three men behind him. “Slowly now,” he added.

Lyre, his face white, crossed his arms as instructed, pressing his palms against his opposite shoulders in a position that made it impossible to quickly cast magic without hitting himself. Piper rose carefully to her feet and followed suit, her hands shaking. Ash copied her, his eyes glittering like obsidian.

“Help him, please,” she whispered to the man, jerking her chin at Calder. “He’s going to die.”

The man, his black uniform marked with the symbols of a prefect—the police force of the daemon community—gave Calder a brief glance. Without changing expression, he gestured to the men behind him.

“Arrest them.”

CHAPTER 3

P
IPER
slumped on the bottom stair in the front foyer and tried to pretend she was calm. She stared at the silver bands of metal around her wrists.

Lyre fidgeted beside her, standing with his back against the wall and his cuffed hands trapped behind him. Apparently, he was more dangerous than her, so his wrists were behind his back. His eyes darted around the empty space, returning every few seconds to Ash.

The draconian was leaning against the same wall as Lyre but was slouched in semi-consciousness. If the prefects thought Lyre was dangerous, then they thought Ash was a walking atomic bomb. Not only was he cuffed, but he’d also been collared with a magic-depressor and gagged. It was the former making him so drowsy he couldn’t focus. Shimmers kept rippling over him in random patterns as his dampened magic weakened the glamour that made him look human.

All daemons were a little—or a lot—paranormal in appearance, but most of them could use magic to disguise themselves. Completely changing their appearance took a huge amount of magic, but they could fool the eyes and the senses with touches of power. The more human-looking they were to start with, the less magic they needed in order to walk around in public. Lyre, for example, didn’t bother changing the color of his unnatural looking hair and eyes because it wasn’t worth the effort.

Ash, on the other hand, probably needed quite a bit of glamour to pass as human. It must take a lot of magic to keep his appearance as semi-human as it currently was, since he didn’t change his hair even though dark wine-red would be almost impossible to replicate with dye. He probably relied more on a
don’t-see
projection when he was around humans—a mental aura that made him blend into the background. Humans would simply fail to notice him as long as he didn’t do anything to draw their attention.

At the moment, Ash was barely managing to keep up his glamour. Piper squinted, trying to make out his real face through the sporadic shimmers. He was human-enough in shape that his face was about the same without glamour but she kind of thought he might have a tail. Daemons were aggressively secretive about their real appearances so she only had a general idea what he might look like underneath the magic. Volunteers to model for textbook illustrations were a little hard to find.

She couldn’t blame the prefects for taking precautions with Ash—he wasn’t the kind of daemon you wanted ticked off at you—but the prefects were treating
all
of them like criminals.

The front door swung open and the sergeant in charge of the prefect team walked in. He was a big man with bigger muscles and an expressionless face that was the result of a missing sense of humor. His flat stare slid over Piper and Lyre to stop on Ash.

“How’s my uncle?” she demanded, her voice too shrill. “Is he alive?”

The sergeant shot her an impatient look. “Yes, he’s alive. He was moved to a medical center.”

“Will he be okay?”

The man shrugged uncaringly, his gaze moving back to Ash. The door opened again and another prefect came in. He stopped beside the sergeant, looking scrawny and weak-chinned in comparison.

“Sir, the magic signature is definitely haemon, not daemon.” He jerked a thumb at Ash. “The explosion wasn’t him.”

Piper’s eyes narrowed to furious slits. “Excuse me, but we already told you the explosion went off while me, Ash, and Lyre were upstairs. Ash wasn’t anywhere near the vault.”

The sergeant ignored her, but the other one looked over with what might have been pity. “He could have set it up in advance,” he told her, “but we know for sure now he didn’t.”

“I’ve barely been five feet from him for two days,” Lyre said angrily. “
None
of us did a damn thing wrong. Why are you arresting us?”

“I’ve heard your version of events,” the sergeant said dismissively. “Until we have some cold hard facts, none of you are going anywhere.” He looked at the prefect. “Anything else?”

“The expert is sure the magic signature belongs to—” the man glanced at Piper. “To the one you suspected.”

The sergeant nodded slowly. Piper ground her teeth. “What are you arresting us for, then?” she snapped. “What are the charges?”

Taking a clipboard from the prefect and flipping idly through it, the sergeant didn’t bother to look at Piper. “We can’t charge you with the deaths of nine daemons or the attempted murder of a Consul since the magic isn’t yours, but I imagine ‘accessory to murder’ and ‘grand larceny’ will stick just fine. Maybe even ‘conspiracy to commit crimes against the peace,’” he added thoughtfully.

The blood drained from her face and she was glad she was already sitting. “What?”

“Piperel Griffiths,” the sergeant said, his voice going hard and flat as he finally looked at her, “would you like to tell me where the Sahar is?”

She froze in place, unable to breathe. How did he know about the secret object from the vault that her father was supposed to have given to the ambassadors?

“It would be in your best interests to come clean now,” he continued, stepping closer to loom over her. “I’m sure we could bring the charges down to something less . . . treasonous.” His expression softened slightly. “Did Quinn force you, Piperel?”

She stared, not understanding.

“Or was it these two?” the man asked, jerking his chin at Lyre and Ash. Lyre’s mouth hung open, his face a mask of horror. “You don’t have to protect them, Piperel. They can’t hurt you now.”

“What . . . what are you talking about?” she whispered.

The sergeant’s expression hardened again in a flash. “One of two things happened here tonight, girl. One: Quinn betrayed his position and stole the Sahar with your help. Or two:
You
betrayed your father and stole the Sahar with the help of these two animals.”

“It’s stolen?” she repeated blankly. The special artifact was gone? The man’s words slowly sank in and Piper felt hot blood surge through her.

“
My father did not steal it!
” she yelled, leaping to her feet. “Why would he? Even if he wanted to, it’s been here for months. Why would he steal it in front of a bunch of people?”

“Then tell me this, girl,” the sergeant growled. “Where is your father now? Why wasn’t he in that room with everyone else? And why,” his voice slowed, “does the magic signature of that explosion belong to the Head Consul?”

Piper couldn’t breathe. Her knees gave out and she sat on the step again with a thump. “It’s not,” she whispered.

“It is,” the man said coldly. “The Sahar couldn’t be removed from its spot in the vault without the combined efforts of three skilled magicians. Perhaps that’s why he waited . . . although why he didn’t find some excuse to get his brother out of that vault first is beyond me.”

No. Impossible. Quinn wouldn’t have almost killed his brother. It wasn’t even conceivable.

“You’re wrong,” she choked. “You’re wrong.”

“Quinn created the blast. That is fact.” He leveled Piperel with a stare that held no mercy. “Now we must determine your role in this heinous crime. You say you heard the explosion from inside the house. Why didn’t you immediately investigate? You surely could have reached the vault before Quinn exited it.”

Piper was shaking so much she could barely talk. “We couldn’t because of the choronzon.”

“What choronzon, Piper? Anyone could have smashed the furniture.”

“I saw it,” Lyre said loudly, anger finally giving him a voice. “It tried to kill Ash. We fought it off.”

“
You
fought it off? A choronzon?” The man snorted. “Try something more believable.”

“We did! It wasn’t very strong—its power was limited and it was acting strange, but—”

“I’m not questioning
you
, rake. Speak again and we’ll gag you too.”

Lyre paled at the same time his eyes flashed to near black. He flexed his jaw but said nothing more. Ash’s head came up, his eyes briefly focusing as they cut across the sergeant like a knife on flesh.

“Now, Piperel,” the man went on, “quit with the games. Quinn is gone. So is the Sahar. You and these two daemons are the only ones still alive on the property—with the exception of Calder Griffiths, who was left for dead. Do you really expect me to believe you had nothing to do with this?”

“You should believe it, because it’s true.” She glared, tears threatening to spill over. “And my father didn’t steal it. Something else must have happened, and you can’t figure out what.”

“You’re a liar, Piperel Griffiths,” the sergeant said. “If I were your father, I would have shipped you off to a human boarding school years ago. You don’t belong here.”

Piper gasped and hunched like she’d been punched in the gut. “I’m a haemon,” she retorted weakly. The man snorted again as four prefects stumped down the stairs and joined their sergeant in the foyer.

“Sir,” the first one said. “The entire house has been searched. The Sahar isn’t here, and we found no clues as to where Quinn may have gone to ground with it.”

The sergeant nodded like this didn’t surprise him. Piper stared dully at the floor between her feet, aching inside and shaking on the outside. This was so wrong. Everything about this was wrong. The police, even the daemon police, were supposed to be the good guys. Why did she feel like she was in enemy hands?

The cold voice of the sergeant spoke the next order with no emotion. “Search them.”

She looked up as a prefect descended on her. It was the scrawny-looking one who’d watched the entire interrogation with a nervous, uncomfortable tic to his eyebrow. He gave Piper a subdued smile as he asked her to stand. She pushed to her feet, wobbling on weak knees, and tried to stare at nothing as the man patted her down. Beside her, Lyre glared straight ahead while another prefect turned his pockets out and checked inside his mouth.

Two more heaved Ash to his feet. The draconian leaned heavily on one while the other checked him over.

“I think the collar is too strong for him,” the man acting as a prop told the sergeant. “I would have figured he could handle it, but he’s gone semi-comatose.”

“It’s not the collar,” the sergeant replied dismissively. “Well—yes, it’s the collar, but only because he’s lost so much blood. Keep it on him. Dragon-boy can handle it.”

Piper jerked her head around, staring at Ash. Blood loss? Where was he bleeding? One of the sleeves of his borrowed red hoodie was torn off, but—

His glamour shimmered again, and focusing this time, she saw the red stain running all the way down his left arm. It looked like he wore a wet, crimson glove from his bicep to his fingertips. She gasped, half reaching toward him before the cuffs cut into her wrists.

“What . . . ? When . . . ?”

“The choronzon,” Lyre muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “He hid it because you were already hysterical when we found you. Didn’t think you needed to see any more blood.”

She clenched her hands. “Is he . . . ?”

“He’ll be fine. Bleeding’s already stopped. He’s tough, don’t worry.”

The man checking Piper finally got her boots off to check the soles. She made no effort to help as he tugged on her socks, then worked his way back up, patting every inch of her. She went rigid when he checked the back pockets of her jeans. Making semi-apologetic noises, he slid his fingers along the waist of her jeans. She fought the urge to knee him in the face.