Wrong Side Of Dead (8 page)

“Some of them looked anyway, when they could,” Tybalt says. “Milo and I went out when he wasn’t on patrol or sitting with Felix.”

“I heard about Felix,” I say, oddly touched by Tybalt’s admission. It’s been so long since anyone except Jesse, Ash, and Wyatt cared if I lived or died that I don’t quite know how to accept the idea of new friendships. Or that others care. It’s equally odd to care so much that a Hunter who once tried to kill me is now permanently disabled and will probably never walk without serious pain again. “I’m sorry.”

“Us, too.”

“So how come you’re not dressed like you’re about to rob a high-security vault?”

“I wasn’t invited. Conflict of interest.”

A look is exchanged by Wyatt and Tybalt, and I don’t have the first clue how to interpret it. Amazing how much people and circumstances can change in three weeks. The thought makes me kind of dizzy. Everything feels ten degrees hotter. My arm seems twenty pounds heavier, the Wolf Boy bite on my arm throbbing and achy.

“Which means what, exactly?” I ask.

“Evangeline?” Phin’s voice is a welcome sound, and his attention flickers to my swollen arm as he approaches. “That’s newly acquired.”

“What can I say? I collect injuries everywhere I go.” I curl my left hand into a fist and hide it behind my hip, not in the mood for more shock over my missing pinkie. The heat and humidity of the June morning are adding to my exhaustion, as is my painful forearm. A bead of sweat trickles down my forehead and into my eye—when did I start sweating so badly? “Oh, and sorry. I lost your gun in the Pit somewhere.”

“We’ll find it.” He touches my shoulder, but his face is fuzzy and I’m not sure if he’s frowning or smiling. “Evy?”

Vertigo hits. “I think I’m gonna pass out.”

Someone catches me.

*  *  *

Waking up in a nice, soft bed surrounded by air-conditioning and the wonderful scent of coffee is too much to hope for. It’s still damned hot, but at least I’m horizontal on something moderately comfortable. My head’s pounding, and I consider sleeping awhile longer. At least until the pounding goes away.

Then someone screams and I jerk upright. Every muscle in my back aches, and the world fuzzes out for a few seconds as everything spins in circles. My stomach grumbles, demanding food. Or a gulp of water, at the very least. I try to recall where my weapons are as my vision clears.

The interior of a high-tech-looking helicopter comes into focus. The sliding doors on both sides are open, allowing a moderate flow of air into the stuffy interior. It’s powered down on the lawn opposite the parking lot, where someone has erected a kind of tent to protect the wounded. Did one of them scream?

Someone had wrapped my forearm in gauze. Faint spots of blood have oozed through the white, as well as a few pale streaks of yellow. It’s itchy, though, instead of achy, so I know it’s finally healing.

I climb out of the helicopter, more than a little embarrassed at having passed out. A black body bag is outside, waiting to be loaded, and my money’s on Wolf Boy being in it. Going wherever the hell it is that Marcus and company want to take it. It occurs to me to warn them that the corpse might be tagged somehow, but they seem like a smart bunch. They’ll think to check. I don’t know if Thackery’s even still alive, much less in possession of any equipment capable of tracking his little wolf toy.

People come and go, moving in pairs and trios. Some carry bodies, others equipment. It reminds me of a moving
crew. I scan the crowd for someone who can give me answers.

“Evy, hey.” Milo jogs over from the far side of the helicopter. His clothes are smeared with drying blood of various colors, and his nose is a little swollen. He holds out a bottle of water. “It’s warm, but it’s wet.”

“Thanks.” I untwist the cap and indulge in a few sips, which immediately sit uneasily in my stomach. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I got pretty lucky. How do you feel?”

“Nothing a good meal and a few aspirin can’t cure. What the hell’s going on?”

“We’re evacuating Boot Camp.”

I blink. “What? Why? I mean, I know it’s a mess here, but—what?” The fear and unease in his expression stop me short.

“Baylor got a call a few minutes ago.”

“Orders from the brass?”

He snorts, and it’s not a pleasant sound. “No. The brass are all dead.”

I cannot have heard him correctly. “What do you mean they’re dead?”

“Dead, as in no longer alive.”

“Were they murdered?”

“No. Apparently, while we were here fighting creatures from hell, they walked into an interrogation room in Major Cases and blew their brains out.”

It feels like an awful joke. The brass are our bosses, in the loosest sense of the word—three higher-ups in the ranks of the Metro Police Department, who give orders to the Handlers and make sure they work independently from the police. They provide protection for the Hunters and answer to the Fey Council. No one knows who they are.

Until now, apparently.

“We’re sure it was the brass?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“The timing’s no coincidence,” Wyatt says. He’s with Marcus, who gives Milo a curious look. “Three cops, one a captain, don’t just kill themselves out of the blue, and all our calls to the brass have gone unanswered since this began.”

“But why? Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, Evy. I really don’t.”

I swallow hard against rising fear and uncertainty. Without us, the city has no defense against the Dregs. “So what happens to the Triads now?”

“They’ll pack up and head out. Marcus knows of an abandoned motel a few miles off the bypass where they can stay for a while until things get sorted out.”

“They,” I repeat. “So that’s it? You’re really done with the Triads, Wyatt? Just like that?”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t think this is easy for me, Evy. I’ve been part of the Triads for ten goddamned years, and it physically hurts to see it all reduced to this. But they’re not my responsibility anymore, and I haven’t really been a Handler since the night Jesse and Ash were killed.”

I ball my fists and plant them on both hips, indignation on the rise. “So you get fired and you turn your back on people who need you? That’s not like you, Wyatt.”

“The Triads are over, Evy. Over. I can’t turn on something that no longer exists.” A flush creeps into his neck, his own anger boiling up from the inside. “If I actually thought for a second that they could be saved … But they can’t. Boot Camp is practically destroyed, and the staff is dead. The brass is dead. Half the trainees are dead, and the active Triad forces, minus rookies, are down to half.”

On paper, the numbers sound awful. Apocalyptic, even. But this cannot be the end of it all. The city won’t
survive without us fighting against the darker species who want to dominate and destroy. “So what then?” I snap. “We pack up, go home, and let the fucking goblins and Halfies take over the city? We let them win?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounds like, Wyatt.”

It’s as close to a real fight as we’ve ever had, and a pretty damned loud one, too. Occasional evacuees stop and take notice before scurrying on their way. Even Milo has taken a step back, out of the line of verbal fire.

“Just tell her, Truman,” Marcus says.

“It’s Astrid’s call.”

“She’ll get over it.”

I glare at both of them. “Tell me what?”

Wyatt looks like he’d rather stick his head in a viper’s nest than say whatever it is that Marcus is goading him on about. More than anything else, it’s Wyatt’s lack of trust that hurts me the most. He should have just shot me in the head and gotten it over with.

“You know, screw it,” I say. “Keep your fucking secrets, both of you.”

“Evy,” Wyatt says, reaching for me.

I dodge away from his hand. “Don’t. Tell you what, Wyatt, you run into the guy I fell in love with? Send him to come talk to me.” I walk away. After six steps I stop and angle back. “By the way, make sure that thing”—I point at the bundled corpse—“isn’t being traced.”

I don’t look back this time, just walk, careful to maintain a steady pace and not run like I want to. To get away as quickly as possible. Utter fury boils inside my chest, fueled by confusion and fatigue.

The Triads are broken, but they’re not unfixable. They can’t be.

The city won’t survive without us.

Greg’s dead. He bled out from his leg wound, and while I know it isn’t my fault, I still feel like I should apologize to him. He’s just one more body among dozens of others, carefully arranged in respectful rows beneath a haphazardly erected tent. The smell of death is suffocating in the summer heat, but no one’s bothering me so I stay put, comfortable here among the dead.

I think Greg is one of Sharpe’s Hunters, and he’s also the first to die from today’s engagement. Some are wounded, and they’re being tended to under another tent. I’m not sure what’s become of Bastian—if he’s alive or dead—and I’m not sure I care. Others are taking care of things, so I allow myself the luxury of just sitting and thinking, drumming up enough energy to walk to one of the Jeeps later when we evacuate.

Evacuate. It’s a foreign word to me, and one I just can’t assign to Boot Camp. We’ve always been here. Okay, realistically, we’ve been here about eight years, but for every Hunter currently active, it’s always been here. It’s been our heart, the lifeblood of the Triads. Leaving it all behind feels like walking away from a funeral—fully aware that what I’m walking away from is never coming back, no matter how much I want it to.

We have a city to protect. We have able-bodied Hunters and Handlers who need someone to guide them. If all the brass are truly dead, someone has to step up and make decisions. Maybe Kismet or Baylor, I don’t know.
Wyatt’s obviously turned his back on everything he once believed in.

No, not going there. Just thinking Wyatt’s name infuriates me all over again, and makes me second-guess returning, coming back into his life when he’s managed to accept that I was gone. I should have stayed away, for both of our sakes.

Phineas is smart to approach from a wide angle, giving me plenty of time to see him. I am so not in the mood to be startled. He has a bottle of water and a banana, and he’s stripped out of his black shirt and shoulder holsters. Given the heat, I kind of wish I could strip down a little more. I might have, too, if I wasn’t so embarrassed about my starved and tortured appearance.

“They’re bringing food out of the cafeteria,” Phin says as he stoops under the tent. He squats in front of me and holds out the banana. “Hungry?”

“Famished. Thank you.” I start to peel the banana, more grateful than I can properly convey. The first bite is too sweet, too sticky, but I force it down anyway, glad it’s solid. It isn’t a milkshake. And it isn’t lemon.

My stomach clenches and twirls at the memory of those awful protein smoothies, and I choke on the second bite. Spit it out. Phin takes the banana away and presses the bottle of water into my hand. I manage a few sips. Much more and I’ll probably vomit for real.

“I’m sorry, Evy.”

“Not your fault. You have no idea how much I want to be able to eat that.” Almost as much as I want a cold shower. I rinsed my hands before hiding in the tent of death, but my body is sticky with blood, sweat, and a layer of grime that looks like a second skin. If I look half as gross as I feel …

“Perhaps something blander.”

“Something tells me the kitchen isn’t taking orders.”

His mouth quirks. “Once we leave, then. It shouldn’t be much longer.”

“I have nowhere to go, Phin.” The words eject themselves before I can self-edit, and a pang of sadness sits heavily in my chest. It isn’t completely true—I still have the old apartment on Cottage Place. I just don’t want to go back there. And so far, no one has offered me an alternative. Or asked for my help.

He frowns, eyebrows furrowing. “You assume Wyatt won’t ask you to accompany him?”

“Well, he didn’t seem too keen on the idea the last time we talked.”

“Wyatt is used to being in control, to making his own decisions. He’s now part of something over which he does not have complete control.”

I snort, then sip more water. Still hot, still queasy, but definitely less likely to barf at any moment. “So who is in control? This Astrid chick?”

“Please don’t call her ‘chick’ to her face. And yes, Astrid was the leader of the Assembly’s private security force. She helped clean up Belle’s mess last month. She also delivered punishment to Snow.”

Impressive résumé. “Felia?”

“Correct.”

So eye color really does run in Clans, as every copper-eyed were I’ve met so far has been Felia. Phin shares bright blue eyes with Joseph, Aurora, and Ava—the last of his own Clan of birds-of-prey shifters. “How about the others?”

“Marcus is Felia, as well. Leah is Ursia and Kyle is Cania.”

“Leah is a bear?” I can’t help the brief bubble of laughter at the idea of the slight woman with multicolored hair shifting into a bear—grizzly, black, panda, or teddy. It seems too ridiculous.

As if I have room to judge.

“So how’d Wyatt get mixed up in the Assembly’s little task force?” I ask.

“He was invited, same as I.”

“By Astrid?”

“Yes.”

“So she decides who to let in?”

“Mostly, but Marcus is her second, and his opinion carries a lot of weight.”

Terrific
. “Any other humans?”

Phin hesitates. “Not at present. Tybalt was considered, but his loyalty to Gina Kismet and her team made him too great a risk.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Please understand, Evy, this isn’t personal. The Assembly has long seen a need to protect itself and its Clans, and now we have the means and the outside support to do so.”

“Outside support.”

He presses his lips together, an indeterminate emotion passing across his face like a shadow. “I can’t promise anything except this: you will have somewhere to go. When you were—when you went with Thackery, the Assembly was … honored by your sacrifice.”