Dark Light of Mine (5 page)

"So someone very determined wants Dad dead," I said.  "But why?  What did he ever do to anyone?"

"That," Shelton said, turning his head to gaze at Dad, "is a very good question.  Someone would have to
really
hate your dad to pay the fee for a Devoted hit."

"Who put the bounty on me, Shelton?" Dad asked.  "I looked at the Conclave website but it didn't say."

Shelton shook his head.  "I don't know.  I assumed it was the Conroys.  They weren't too happy with you sending normal investigators to poke into their business."

Dad's face flushed crimson and his lips curled back in a snarl.  "They have my wife and daughter.  What do they expect me to do?  Send them a thank you card?"

"Whoa, cowboy.  Don't take it out on me."

"I have a feeling you know a lot more than you let on," I said to Shelton.  "As you told me before—you're a detective.  And I know you're not stupid.  If you found out where we live, then I'll bet you know exactly who put the bounty out on us."

"I told you, I don't know."

In a flash, I gripped Shelton's duster by the collar and jerked him off the bench.  "You're lying."

Eyes glaring into mine, Shelton tightened his jaw and said, "Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you."

I resisted the urge to launch him across the plaza and into the fountain.

Elyssa's hand touched my arm.  "Let him go, Justin."

"He knows something.  He knows who wants my father dead, too, I'll bet."

Shelton snorted.  "If I knew do you think I'd be helping you right now?"

"Someone threatened him," Elyssa said.  "That's why he's not talking."

My grip went slack, dropping Shelton on his feet.  He brushed off his duster and took a seat on the bench.  I turned to Elyssa.  "What—how do you know this?"

"I've built up some instincts over the years, helping my family round up the law breakers."  She cast a glance at Shelton.  "I think he knows exactly who put the bounty out.  And they know he knows, so they told him to keep his mouth shut."

Shelton crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.  "Listen to the girl, ace."

"All you care about is your own hide, isn't it, Shelton?  Why did you even bother to help us today?  You had to know a tracker meant someone was hunting for my dad."  My mouth dropped as the truth hit me.  I slapped my forehead.  It took all my willpower not to body slam Shelton through the wooden bench.  "You thought you'd collect the bounty.  I'll bet you figured whoever wanted him would follow us here and you'd have my dad all locked up in a circle by then."

Shelton bolted up from the bench.  "Now you're just plain wrong, boy."

"Oh, are you back to calling me 'boy' or 'kid' again?  Can't face the fact I see through your games?"  I paced away from him, fists clenched and teeth aching from the tightness in my jaw.  I faced him.  "What was your angle when you supposedly helped me rescue my dad from the rogue vampires?  Were you hoping to bag him?"

"If I'd wanted to do that, I could've done it any time.  You were exhausted.  Your dad and lady Sherlock there were passed out."  He stepped toward me.  "I could have slipped a pair of sleepers on you.  Dumped the both of you on the Conclave's doorstep, collected a hundred grand in bounty for you and your dad, and been outta there."

"But Stacey would have found out and gone after you," I said, my mind clutching wildly for some reason he wouldn't have done exactly as he said.  Elyssa might never have recovered if I hadn't given her some of my blood that night, so she wouldn't have been able to go after Shelton if he'd betrayed us.

"The felycan?"  He snorted.  "You gotta be kidding me.  The day I'm afraid of a felycan is the day I go back to wearing diapers."

Dad's voice cut through my thoughts.  "Justin, I don't think he has anything to do with this."

"But it makes sense!"

Dad shook his head.  "No.  He's right.  He could've taken us anytime he wanted after you saved me.  And if he can't or won't tell us who put out the bounty, there's nothing we can do about it."

I turned back to Shelton.  "Can you at least remove the mark?"

He belted out a laugh brimming with disbelief.  "You go from blaming me for all your problems to asking for my help again?"

"Well, can you?" I asked.

He ran a hand down his face, grumbling under his breath.  "I don't know.  A tracker is one thing.  A death mark, especially one from the Devoted, is another matter altogether."

"It might be rigged," Elyssa said.

My chest tightened.  "It'll kill him if we try to remove it?"

"It might."

"Why bother with the mark?  Why not just kill him when they had the chance?  If they can mark him, surely they could have just finished the job."  I shuddered at the logic.  They could have taken my dad at any time.  But they hadn't.

"The marks are usually a warning of what's to come," Shelton said.  "They give the marked time to put his affairs in order and say goodbye to loved ones.  They're also used to strike fear of the Brotherhood into the community and remind everyone they are very real and not to be forgotten."

"So right now there's a timer counting down my dad's life?"

Shelton nodded.  "Yeah, that's about the short of it."

My legs felt like jelly.  I sank onto a bench, gripping my head with both hands and staring at the ground.  How could this be happening to us?  The backs of my eyes burned as though they were trying to release tears.  But I had no more tears to give.  That had been the soft old version of me.  Now I had strength and power.  I could stop this Underborn guy if only I knew where to find him.  But what about my mom and sister?  I'd planned to go after them next and rescue them from the Conroys, the maternal grandparents I'd never met.  Obviously, I'd have to put those plans on hold and deal with this first.  It wouldn't do me much good to reunite my family if Dad died.

"How long do we have?" I asked.

Shelton stared at the tattoo again.  "A couple of weeks.  Maybe three.  The tattoo usually indicates the time unless the client instructs the assassin otherwise.  Then the timer might be false just to play tricks with the target's mind before the end."

Something occurred to me.  I looked at Dad.  "Mom called me and told me to leave just before you got home and told me about the tracker.  Do you think the Conroys know about it?  Is that why Mom called?"

Dad shook his head.  "Anything is possible with them.  One of my contacts told me they were keeping an eye out for me."

"Wait just a minute."  In my head, I played back the minutes after Mom's phone call and glared at Dad.  "You came from outside the house.  You were out looking for Mom again weren't you?"

"Now, son—"

"Don't you 'now, son' me, Dad.  I'll bet someone tagged you while you were out."  I thought back to when I'd pulled Dad's weak form from the crypt where the rogue vampires had kept him.  I had strapped him onto a moggy's back, facedown.  His neck would've been visible and I would have noticed such a strange tattoo.  "When did you leave home?"

Dad looked away from me.  "Right after you went into your bedroom."  He looked up, met my eyes.  "I can't stop looking, Justin.  I'll never stop.  Assassins can go to hell for all I care.  I'm going to find Alice and Ivy and bring them back.  Your mother and sister need me."

"Bring them back to what?  Your family knows where we live now.  You might be dead in a few days.  Whatever you're doing to find them isn't working."

A siren wailed in the distance.  I looked up and saw uniformed officers questioning people near the skating rink.  One of the people pointed in our general direction.  They looked at us and I knew we were running out of time.

Chapter 5

I looked back at Dad.  "You can't go chasing after Mom anymore.  You're a marked man.  Your family, the Slades, can find you, and god only knows who or what else is looking for you now."  I turned back to Shelton.  "Can you cut off the signal?"

"Maybe."  He sighed.  "I'll need some time, though."

I motioned my head at the cops as they stopped to talk to someone else.  "We don't have much time.  We need to do something and we need to do it now."

Shelton looked at the cops and chuckled.  "You don't do anything without raising a ruckus, do you?"

"If people would just leave us alone—"

"Believe me, I know the feeling."  He gave me a meaningful look before pulling out his smartphone again and looked for something.  I sidled up to him and watched as he scrolled through a list of files before opening one called
Disruptor 5.0
.  Computer code of some sort filled the screen.  It looked vaguely familiar although a lot of the symbols on the screen didn't exist on any keyboard I knew of.  "I hate to use this," he said.  "But it's all I got on short notice."

"What's going to happen?" I asked.

"Just don't try to use your cell phone until I tell you otherwise."

"Should I power it off?"

"Nah.  Just don't make any calls."  He stepped up to the circle where Dad stood.  "Once I break the circle, the tracking spell on the death mark will be able to transmit again.  I'm gonna need you to stay real still while I arm this disruption spell."

Dad nodded, turned, and dropped to one knee to give Shelton a better angle on his neck.  "Ready when you are."

I stayed at Shelton's side, curious to see what was going to happen.  He gave me pained look.  "You gonna stay glued to my side or something?"

"I want to see what you're doing."

"Fine.  Then you rub out the circle so I can run the spell."

I nodded and stepped up to the chalk outline.  "Ready?"

He nodded.

"Go."  I wiped part of the circle out with my shoe.  A rush of magical energy whispered past my ears like static as it was freed from the circle.  Some of it seemed to soak into my skin, leaving goose bumps and standing hairs on end.

Shelton aimed his phone's infrared port at the tattoo and pressed the
Execute
symbol on the screen of the phone as he concentrated his full gaze on the offending ink.  The phone beeped and flashed
Processed
in big red letters.  A man sauntered past, chatting away on his phone while he walked his dog.  Shelton's phone flashed,
Complete
.  The man with the dog yelled in surprise as a burst of static roared from his cell phone.  More cries of alarm sprang up all over the park as radios and phones burst into high-pitched wails and static.  The man's phone smoked where the speaker was before the screen on the phone cracked and died.

"What in the hell did you do?" I asked.

"Told you I hated to use this spell.  It's for emergencies only, but this qualifies, wouldn't you say?  The spell distorts and overpowers all wavelengths for a period of time."

"But why would a cell phone signal have anything to do with a magical one?"

"I don't know what frequency the tracker is operating on.  It could be using anything."  He motioned for us to follow.  "We gotta get out of here fast, though.  The spell uses a lot of power and won't last long."

I glanced back at the cops frantically dancing about as they tore smoking and sparking radios off their belts and threw them to the ground.  "Where are we going?"

"I know just the place," Shelton said.

Katie stared dumbfounded as people all over the park tossed their screeching, hissing smartphones on the ground, running from them like they were live grenades.  A Pomeranian dog yapped at his master's phone until it made a loud popping noise, then yelped and ran in circles until his leash wrapped so tightly around his owner's legs, the guy toppled over.  I tapped Katie on the shoulder to get her attention.

"We're moving out."

She nodded and followed behind me wordlessly.

Elyssa fell into stride next to me.  "I know this is a bad time, but, well, I'm starving."

"Blood?"

She nodded.

"I need some sustenance myself."  My legs were still weak and trembling from our long run.  The demonic source supplying my supernatural abilities howled for relief.  My throat felt parched and my stomach growled over and over again.  I'd been too hyped with worry to think about it until now.

I glanced at Elyssa. "How will you, uh…you know?"

"My parents have packs.  I know of a few other places I can get them, but…"  She trailed off.

"But what?"

"I don't want to leave you.  You'll probably get killed without my help."

I laughed.  "You're such an optimist."  I looked at Shelton's back as he led us out of the park and into an alleyway across the street.  "Can we trust him?"

"You want my professional opinion?"

"You're obviously a better judge of character than I am."

A smile lit her face.  "I think we can trust him to an extent.  But Shelton looks out for Shelton.  Don't expect him to deliver more than he can."

"Then why is he helping us?"

"I have a feeling we'll find out."

My stomach clenched at the thought.

After a twenty-minute walk through a warren of narrow service roads, alleyways, and pot-holed streets in a bad part of the city, Shelton stopped in a narrow alley and examined an iron door set into the side of an old red-brick building.  It might have been a storehouse at some point.  A dozen or more identical doors lined this alley and the next one over, but I didn't see what made this one different.  The front of the building faced a cracked and rutted one-way street across from a graffiti-covered convenience store with more bars on the windows than the state penitentiary.  A bum in a cardboard hut groaned and rolled onto the filthy alley floor.  An empty alcohol bottle rolled from his fingers and into the gutter. In front of the convenience store I saw a group of men laugh raucously, drinking from containers covered with brown paper bags. I almost wished I could hear them swap stories—probably about killing people in prison.

"Nice neighborhood," I said.

He smirked.  "Quaint, ain't it?"

The inside didn't look much better.  Dust covered a bare concrete floor.  A filthy mattress with stains I didn't care to identify occupied a corner of the room.  "You're keeping Dad here?" I asked, horrified at the prospect of anyone sleeping on that mattress.