Guilty by Association (Judah Black Novels) (32 page)

I tried to jerk my leg away but she was too strong. Maria held me fast. “I won't kill you. I won't.”

“You have to,” she sobbed. “You have to!”

Robbie leaned over Maria, his hands outstretched to me. “You're sure this is what you want?” he asked me, his eyes empty of all emotion. “Once we go, we're not coming back.”

“Don't go,” Maria pleaded. “I don't want to turn. I don't want...”

I closed my eyes and dropped my hand, the one holding the stake, down where Maria could reach it. “I won't kill you,” I said again. “And I won't stay to watch. But I won't take that decision away, either.”

“I don't know if I can do it myself.”

“Well I'm sure as hell not going to do it for you.”

Her fingers came up and shakily wrapped around the stake as if it were some sort of holy relic and I a saint. I didn't feel like a saint. I felt...dirty. “Thank you,” she whispered. “God bless you.”

There was a sudden scraping noise down the hall. “Time to go,” Robbie said and grabbed onto my forearms.

In the blink of an eye, Robbie and I were back in the VIP room of Aisling. The sudden heavy scent of smoke burned my nose and I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the flashing lights. The next thing I knew, there was sixty pounds of wolf on me, licking my face and whining at me. “Jesus, Ed,” I managed and shoved him away. “I was only gone a couple of minutes.”

“Oh yeah, he's threatening,” Robbie scoffed as he sank back down into his booth. “You two put on one hell of a show.”

I finally managed to get Ed off of me and clean most of the doggie drool away with my shirt. He sat a foot away and panted, tilting his head inquisitively to the side. “Yeah, I got what we needed,” I said wiping away more drool.

“I don't know how helpful her information is going to be in saving your son. Even if you do find a way to open that Way, you'll have to fight your way through a maze to get to him and then, if you're lucky, you'll only have to deal with a few of his bodyguards. That's to say nothing of LeDuc himself. LeDuc is very old, older than the Master and most of the people here. You don't get to be that old without being very good at surviving. In our world, that means killing. What's a little human girl with a couple of silver bullets, an over-sized puppy and a man of God going to do to someone like LeDuc?”

I checked the rounds in my gun and looked down at Ed who was whining at my feet. “He took my son,” I said tucking the gun away. “That's going to be his last and biggest mistake. If I have to blow up the whole damn mountain to kill Andre LeDuc and save Hunter, that's what I'm going to do. Nobody's going to stop me. Not him, not you and not your enigmatic so-called master.”

Robbie sat there for a moment, still in his chair and deep in thought. “I believe you,” he said eventually. “I see why he chose you. The last person I met with that kind of determination... It didn't end well for her either, though.” He cleared his throat. “The Master would want me to ask how I could assist you.”

Robbie flinched when I reached out to grab the lighter sticking out of his pocket. I looked it over and tucked it into my own pocket. Fire is never not useful. “You can stay out of my way,” I told Robbie and went to collect Reed who was standing with his back to the door, watching the room with hungry eyes. “Come on. I'll drive.”

“Good luck,” Robbie shouted after us as we left. “You're going to need it.”

“So,” said Ed, wriggling into his jeans in the backseat of the Prius. “You're not really just going to go in guns blazing and kill this guy, are you? ’Cause that'd be stupid.”

The car complained as I directed it into a tight left turn that would lead us back into bounds of the rez. “He has a point,” Reed commented. He was sitting in the front seat next to me, the sleeve of his nice, black shirt rolled up while he went about replacing a bandage.

“I don't know if you two have noticed but I'm not exactly in the habit of making smart choices. Going off halfcocked is pretty much what I do, especially where my son is involved.”

Ed poked his head up between the seats, still shirtless and shoeless. He was the skinniest, whitest guy that I'd ever met. I could have counted his ribs. “You don't even know how to kill him.”

“I'm open to ideas.”

Reed rolled his sleeve back down and calmly clasped the button around his wrist. “In my experience, the more pieces something is in, the more likely it is to stay dead, especially if you burn and scatter the pieces when you're done with them.”

Ed wrestled with his shirt and almost let it win. “Hey, I think Sal knows a guy with an actual katana. Maybe he'd let me borrow it?”

I sighed. “I think it's time for you to tag out, Ed, and let us take LeDuc on.”

Ed's face twisted up in confusion. “Tag out now? Are you kidding? And miss the final boss? Are you crazy?”

“This isn't a video game, son,” said Reed, glancing back at him. “There is a good chance that one or more of us won't come home.”

“I know,” Ed barked in a tone I'd never heard him use. He sounded more like Sal or Chanter in that moment than himself. “I know,” he repeated after closing his eyes and counting audibly to three. “I'm not a little kid, okay? I'm not the biggest or the scariest werewolf ever but...Dammit, I'm tired of being told all the things I can and can't do. Maybe I'm not the hero of this story, maybe I don't get to deal out the final blow but I'm not going to just stand by and do nothing, not while two members of my pack are in danger. That's not how we do things. We protect our own.”

I stopped the car at the intersection of This and That streets, watching Paint Rock's one traffic light blink. “Two members of your pack?”

“Yeah,” Ed said a little sheepishly. “Leo and Hunter both. They're as much my brothers as anyone else. If Chanter's taught me one thing since I came here, it's that you don't leave your brother. No one gets left behind.” He swallowed audibly. “And if you go in there and die...”

I reached over and put a hand on Ed's shoulder. “Okay, Ed. You can come.”

Ed grinned back at me as if I'd just offered him a million bucks and I hit the gas, turning up the road on the way out of town and toward the river. Honestly, I had no intention of letting Ed walk into that Way with Reed and I. It wasn't that I didn't believe Ed had his uses. I did. I just knew that in a life or death situation someone like Ed was going to freeze. He wasn't trained to deal with this. Hell, I wasn't trained to deal with that. This mission was going to be dangerous enough without having him along for me to protect. I needed to distract him, get him busy doing something else and slip away while he wasn't looking. I hadn't even wanted Ed to come along with me to the club. If I'd been in any condition to drive at the time, I would have left him in the dust. I had enough blood on my hands already.

I still had no idea how I was going to open the Way or if, once I got it open the first time, I could get the four of us out. Sure, I had that eagle's talon Chanter had given me but who knew if it worked in any Way aside from the one he used? Maria had said that LeDuc had the Way set up so it would only react to his commands. Even his own men couldn't come and go without LeDuc opening the Way for them.

I was still thinking about it when my phone rang and I had to go fishing through my pockets to get it, cursing up a storm. I hadn't even realized I'd brought the dumb thing with me. “Black.”

“Black,” said Tindall's voice excitedly on the other end. “We got him. The car's a match. It's registered to Andre LeDuc and that's not even the icing on the cake. I just got off the phone with Montreal and he's wanted for questioning up there in connection with five
more
kidnappings. I'm scrambling a team to go and execute an arrest warrant.”

“No,” I nearly screamed into the phone. “If you move on him before I get the kids out of there he might kill Hunter!”

Tindall paused. “Hunter? That's your son, isn't it? Dammit, Black. Why didn't you report this?”

“I've been busy.”

“If I'd known this was a hostage situation I could have handled it differently! It's too late. We're already moving to seize his passport and the APB is out. I can't undo that.”

“Listen to me, Tindall. I've got this
handled
.”

“Like hell you do!”

I swear, I only closed my eyes for a second, just long enough to draw in a deep breath and let it out. That was long enough. Ed screamed. My eyes snapped open and I saw the shadow in the road just a fraction of a second before we hit it. The body slammed into our car on impact and I jumped on the brakes, dropping my phone. A mess of blood and gore splattered on my windshield. The Prius squealed to a stop and we sat there in the middle of the road, looking at the mess of cracked glass and blood all over Daphne's car.

“Holy shit,” Ed breathed.

“I think that was human,” Reed said. Even his cool confidence had been shaken.

Ed gulped. “Do you...Do you think he's dead?”

I unbuckled my seat belt and retrieved my cell from the floor. The impact had knocked the battery loose. “Stay here,” I said opening my door. “I'm going to check it out.”

The wreckage didn't look as bad from the outside. The windshield was cracked and covered in bits of hair and blood but the body itself had slid down to the pavement and was mostly underneath the car. The only thing sticking out was a pair of boots. I knelt down, still trying to get the battery into my phone. That's when I heard Hunter's voice, tiny and weak, coming from under my car. “Mommy?”

My blood went cold and my limbs numb. Everything in my gut dropped down into my feet and I screamed his name back at him. Ed scrambled out of the car. “It's Hunter! Help me!” Ed didn't even hesitate. He grabbed the front end of the Prius and did what he could to lift it up while I tugged on Hunter's legs. “Lift it higher!” Ed's response was a grunt. I got him about a quarter of the way out when I realized something was wrong. This wasn't Hunter. It couldn't be. The body was too big, too heavy. This had to be a full grown man.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind that not all was as it seemed, a hand shot out from under the car and closed around my forearm. The fingers were too long to belong to a human, wrapping all the way around my arm as if it were a spaghetti noodle. Claws, long and black, dug into my skin. It felt like they went clear through. I screamed for Ed to drop the car but he didn't seem to understand what was happening. That moment of hesitation cost him. The creature under the car swung its legs and a boot made contact with Ed's shin. There was a loud crack, a gasp and then Ed was down. The entire weight of the car slammed back down on top of the creature but, whatever it was, it bore all that weight without any trouble. The only difference that the car made was that it had to let go of me in order to lift the car.

Father Reed scrambled free of the vehicle just in time to avoid being tossed a hundred feet down the road along with it, his sword already free of the scabbard. His eyes went wide and his face paled as both of us got our first glimpse at the most terrifying creature I'd ever encountered.

It couldn't have been a man. The limbs were all wrong, way too long and gangly. The mouth was too wide and full of serrated teeth. But LeDuc's face was stretched over all of it, as if the human version of him had simply been a mask. “If you want something done right,” LeDuc spat, rolling his head and shoulders. “Best to do it yourself.” He pointed one claw at me. “I told you to mind your tongue but you bitches... You just can't shut that cake eating hole of yours, can you? You think this whole world revolves around you and the pathetic spawns that crawl out of your broken bodies.”

LeDuc took a step toward me and lifted a hand. Unseen energy blasted me off my feet and I skidded across the road, taking up bits of gravel in my face and hands. Reed rose and let out a war cry as he swung the sword. LeDuc dismissed him with a flick of his hand and the same force that had struck me sent Reed tumbling end over end and pinned him to the ground. Then, LeDuc walked over to where Ed was lying, moaning in pain and holding his broken leg. My hands shaking, I started trying to get the battery back in my phone again while LeDuc loomed over Ed.
Come on,
I told myself and jammed the battery back in. I didn't even put the back on before I flipped it over and tried to turn the stupid thing on.

“That's adorable,” LeDuc
said squatting next to Ed. “Did you really think I would let you call for help?” He extended a single finger in my direction and searing cold sank into my fingers. Frost crept up over the face of my phone until the whole display cracked. The screen flashed once and then went dark.

“You son of a bitch,” I said, lowering the phone. “What did you do to my son?” LeDuc cackled. It sounded a lot like a broken stereo squeal. Then, he turned and slammed his foot into Ed's other leg. Ed gave an agonizing cry, rolled over and threw up. I fished out my gun and pointed it at LeDuc's head. “Step away from him. Slowly. And get your hands where I can see them.”

“Silver plated bullets with an iron core,” LeDuc remarked and spat on Ed. “I'd stake my life on it. Maybe you've even gone so far as to bless them or dip them in holy water. The creative ones always do.” He walked toward me. No. LeDuc didn't walk, not in that form. He shambled, spreading his arms wide. “Go ahead. Unload your clip. What is it you Americans say? I double dog dare you?”

He got closer. My hand started shaking all on its own and I had to use both hands on the gun to keep it steady and aimed at his head. I pulled the trigger and the first round hit its mark, sailing right into his eye. LeDuc's head jerked back and to the side. He staggered but didn't go down so I fired again, this time lodging a bullet into his jaw. I put a third one in his neck before I realized he was still coming. He wasn't even
bleeding
.

“You fucking Americans and your guns,” said LeDuc as he shambled forward. His unusually long arm swept forward and struck my wrist, knocking the gun from my hands. It went sailing through the air and into the desert sand before discharging again in a flash of light as it landed. I scrambled backward when LeDuc hissed at me.