Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series) (16 page)

I stepped into the penthouse living room twenty minutes later, ready to go in what I considered my best business casual outfit of straight cut black slacks and a silky button down shirt. I wasn't sure if I should go for bad ass or corporate, but since the alley scene last night I figured maybe I should play up the brains aspect. This was my 'yes, I can kick your ass, but don't take it personally, it's just business' outfit.

"Cormac said he
'd be right back and that you should eat this before you go."

"Hi Dark." I hadn
't even noticed him at the table in the corner where a makeshift desk had been set up for him. His head was bent over, his concentration alternating between the book and the lap top. "How's it going? Anything?"

"Yes, the dialect sucks. The guy that wrote this had to be more boring than watching grass grow and he was convinced that
The Keepers were going to bring about our version of the apocalypse."

"How far through the book are you?"

"Only about a quarter."

"You find anything else out about the monster yet?" Cormac asked as he walked in to the room and I took a qui
et bite of the turkey club that had been waiting for me.

"No. They have no idea how it was made, just that it was supposed to cure all human kind, werewolf and Fae of disease."

"Do they explain how?" I asked.

"Nope, that might have actually been interesting, They just write that
The Keepers are touting this to all the other races. Then something goes wrong."

"What?" I asked.

"They don't know."

"Keep reading," Cormac told Dark and then turned to me. "We
've got to go,"

"So where
's this neutral location we are heading to?"

"It
's a diner, out on the highway, a few miles before the California border."

"And it
's safe?"

"I
'm not worried about a few wolves. As long as there are no snipers, we're good and I've already had the area swept."

"Why are snipers so bad?"

"Too many bullets, too swiftly, before we know they're coming; they take us down quicker than anything else. Always sweep an area for snipers. Always."

We walked into the garage where all his cars were stored and I looked at the space my trailer had occupied. Didn
't matter, I'd find it.

"The Ferrari again?" I asked as he climbed into the silver sports car.

He opened up the engine and let it roar in the garage. Then smiled at me. "If I can afford it, and I love it, why shouldn't I? There are certain perks to being able to create gold. Why not enjoy them?"

I swear he drove quicker than normal as we headed out onto the open highway
, just to show off, because I'd made a point of picking on his car.

"As to the many perks of being an Alchemist, I
'm really not going to age?"

"No. For the same reason your breasts are a full C cup. Your brain decided what it thought was best and did it. Most male alchemists don
't look older than thirty, the women seem to get stuck somewhere in between mid to late twenties."

"I
'm not a full C."

"Just because you try to squeeze them into B
's doesn't make it true."

"How do you know?"

"I know. Do you really want the details?"

I dropped
the matter.

We pulled into the mostly empty parking lot. I felt a
shudder in the ground as we stepped out of the car. "Was that an earthquake?"

"Felt like a small one."

"Weird timing." We'd had earthquakes before so it wasn't a big deal other than the fact that it was right before this meeting. "Who's here?"

"Rogo. That
's the name of the guy you made pee his pants last night with the alien in the portal."

"I guess we
're off to a good start."

He walked in first, paused just inside the door and checked out the place. It was the little things
, like that, that were slowly wearing down my resolve against him. I didn't need him to protect me, but it didn't make a difference. The girly side of me went to pure mush and then my mind wandered back to the kiss. What the hell were we anymore? Friends…kinda? I guess? Partners? It seemed that way. Dating? No, definitely not. But what was the kiss then? All I knew was that I wasn't going to ask. The guy had shot me, then flirted with my best friend, then stole my trailer and he funniest thing was that I couldn't decide which of those was the worse deed.

When I stepped into the diner, Rogo was sitting in the corner booth with an attractive woman. How cute. It could be an interplanetary double date.

Up close, the woman was striking. Black straight hair fell to her waist as they both stood and shook our hands. Her name was Carlene and Rogo slung an arm possessively around the back of her seat when they sat down. I thought I'd picked up a bit of a sexist vibe from some of the wolves but the fact that he brought a female with him to this meeting made me soften slightly. Or maybe 'not quite as repulsed' might have been a more fitting description.

After the waitress brought us coffee and walked away, Rogo leaned forward. It wasn
't exactly aggressive, but he was definitely trying to display dominance. Rogo could have beaten his chest like an ape and it wouldn't have made a difference. I guess that's the difference between people that are born to it or not.

"The
wolves have elected me to be in charge, since Tracker is no longer available to speak for us." A pointed look toward me made it more than clear who he thought was responsible for that absence. "We have two issues."

"I
'm listening." Cormac leaned back in a completely relaxed position. And was that his arm, slung on the back of my seat?

"You stole from us."

"I wouldn't describe it as
stealing
. It wasn't your history," I said. Cormac, on the other hand, said nothing. I knew it was a flimsy argument but I didn't have much to go on. Cormac's jaw was locked into place. If I thought he didn't like the Fae, they were best buddies compared to his reaction to Rogo. I found his demeanor grating as well.

Rogo sat there
for a moment and fiddled with his silverware. I guessed he was debating whether or not he was going to take the straw I handed him and try to retain some pride, or if he was going to go to the mat with Cormac. Considering how I'd shamed him last night, it was a bitter pill. Finally, he nodded and looked like he was going to move on from it.

"The bigger issue we have is the portal being shut down."

Hmmm, nice touch. Downplay your failure with the book like it was the lesser issue. He might have made a decent politician. Maybe, when we killed the senator, we could nominate him for senate. It might be an improvement from the current political environment.

"Non
-negotiable at present," Cormac replied and I hoped he was going to continue on and throw him a bone. Another full out slight would force Rogo's hand and then I'd either be opening up a portal that would eat up the diner or I'd be picking pieces of Rogo off the floor.

Just when I thought it was going to get ugly, Cormac handed him a salve for his pride. "But we can offer you extended visas while we are shut down."

Huh? Of course they can stay. We can't send them back! I wondered if there was even a reason we came today.

"That
's reasonable," Rogo answered.

The coffee I
'd just taken a sip of almost went spewing across the table. I swallowed it, but barely as half when down the wrong pipe. I went into a mindless coughing fit and excused myself from the table as Cormac and Rogo talked over some mindless and inconsequential details. I pointed toward the door and waited outside.

I watched as
Cormac strode out of the diner. He didn't look as pleased as I thought he should've, since the meeting had gone better than anyone could've expected.  I hopped off the hood and got back in the car. "What was the point of that whole thing, because I'm not getting this?" I said once we were back in the car.

"Remember all those new faces at  Burrom
's?"

"Of course."

"He's getting them in."

Shit. How the hell had I missed that? "He
wanted
you to think you'd won. You wanted him to think you won as well."

"Exactly.
This meeting was a farce on every angle. If he had put up a fight I would've known he had nothing to do with it, but he rolled over."

"You think Hammond is alive and still out there
, helping them?"

"He
's alive. He must be. I just don't think that the defectors that left would have had the juice to do it."

"And we haven
't been shut down long enough for it have gotten easier for them, yet."

"We
've got to shut Hammond down. Without him, they're dead in the water."

Words
failed me as the truth of it sank in. I didn't know why it bothered me. I'd helped almost kill Hammond, Father or not; had I expected him to run and find me afterward? We were on different sides in a war, and yet it still stung. It didn't make sense. I guess things didn't always need to make sense to hurt.

"Jo?"

"I'm fine." I wasn't. I felt another crack in the mortar chip off my wall. That's another thing about cement walls, once they start to crack, it always spreads. Problem with them is, it's not like you can go back to before you had the wall. No, now you just have a big messed up landscape with clumps of cement all over the place. "Next time, you better fill me in."

"Because you clue me into your plans?"

I didn't fight with him because I knew the only place it would end was some agreement on both our parts to full disclosure. I wasn't sure I was ready for that. I'd rather be in the dark every now and then.

We slowed to a stop as a line of cars spread out in front of us, with no end in sight.

"What's going on?" I asked, trying to peer over the truck in front of us, which was very hard to do in a Ferrari and when you're barely off the ground.

"I don
't know. Can you drive a stick?"

"Not very well."

"Hop in the driver seat and move the car up if we start moving." He was opening the car door and was getting ready to step out.

"I said I CAN
'T drive a stick," but he'd already gotten out as I said it. "And people wonder why I repeat myself. Obviously, I have to."

I grabbed the keys
from the ignition, just in case someone else here could drive a stick and decided to take the opportunity, and I followed him. As soon as I got to the side of the road, I could see how far the line of cars went. I could barely make out where the line stopped.

Cormac turned and stopped
when he heard me, waiting for me to catch up. There was a look in his eyes that chilled me, probably because I felt it too. There was something very wrong here. Not like a car accident wrong, I could feel it in the air. It even smelled weird.

The sun beat down on us as we walked further up. We weren
't the only ones walking. The closer we got, the more people I saw, all headed in the same direction, to find out what was going on. Now that I thought of it, I hadn't seen any traffic coming from the opposite direction in some time and then it struck me that I hadn't heard any sirens. Why weren't there any police or fire on their way to whatever calamity had occurred to stop a major roadway like this?

On a hunch, I pulled out my phone. "There
's no cell service."

"Sometimes it
's sketchy over here."

"You know that
's not what it is," I told him.

First, I saw the people
; there had to be at least a hundred of them all gathered. I realized most of the cars were abandoned by this point, their owners  all searching for the problem like we were. I was worried, but not as alarmed as I was when I realized the air and sky past them didn't seem right. The closer we got, the more it appeared to take on a grayish murky appearance. With each step, it grew darker, until we were standing on the edge of an abyss like I'd never seen before. It was as large as five football fields and dome shaped. One gigantic wormhole stood open, in the middle of the desert, looking out onto pure space, interstellar space clouds and all. I tried to feel with my Keeper senses for the edges of this wormhole, but it didn't have a normal perimeter. It wasn't an area being forced and held open like we did when we traversed them, it was a violent rip. There was no closing this wound. Nothing to close it with. It was the difference between a razor slicing your skin and a wild beast tearing away a chunk of flesh, muscle and all, from your body.

Our universe had been mauled.

I looked for an opening in the crowd, where I could get a better look, but Cormac's hand on my arm stopped me.