Wrong Side of Dead

Chapter Seventeen

12:45 P.M.

The fact that Phin reeked of fresh paint didn’t strike me as a concern until he was in the air and on his way toward the ferry terminal. Feathers glistening black, he was the only hooked-beak raven in existence, and I couldn’t rid myself of the ridiculous image of his human form with black paint streaks all over it. If nothing else, it was something to occupy myself with while we waited for him to return. Or for Astrid to officially declare a target.

Either one, as long as something happened soon.

Kyle twisted around in the front seat to face rear, his expression pinched. Someone he loved was out there, hoping for rescue, and I waited patiently for his accusations—that Lynn was targeted because of Kyle’s connection to me, and this was all my fault. Standard fare, really. Anyone in my orbit was fair game for inclusion in the violent insanity of my afterlife.

“You do your mate proud,” Kyle said. For a moment, I thought he was talking to someone else in the car, maybe Shelby. But no, he was staring right at me with those sad, coffee-colored eyes. I’d forgotten that in the eyes of the Therians, Wyatt was my mate. He’d declared it so during my disappearance/kidnapping, in order to secure the assistance of the Assembly. Although we weren’t technically together (if we ever were) anymore, the declaration stuck. Therians didn’t divorce. Mates were chosen for life.

Maybe if we humans chose for life, we’d pick more carefully the first time around.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You’re here, continuing to assist in the rescue of others while he lays dying of a disease wrought by one of ours.”

“You’re wrong.” Kyle blinked, surprised by my snapped response, so I hurried to clarify. “The Lupa are not one of yours, Kyle. They’re nothing like the Therians I’ve met since coming to the Watchtower.”

He tilted his head, a gesture of understanding.

“Besides,” I added, “Wyatt would want me here.”

Phin’s cell phone rang. Crap. I yanked it out of his discarded jeans—Astrid—and set it to speaker.

“Yeah?” I said by way of greeting.

“Why the blue hell did one of my Pinnia scouts tell me that a crow about the size of the average osprey just flew onto one of those ferries?” Astrid asked without preamble. Oh yeah, she was pissed.

“I have no idea why the Pinnia scout would tell you that,” I replied. Not exactly denying it, just not confirming it.

Astrid huffed. “Regardless, they confirmed your target. Two boats, one on each side of the loading pier. Backup ETA is five minutes. If your crow returns before we get there—”

“We’re going in from the pier. Tell Baylor’s team to come down the loading driveway from the north, and Kismet’s to come up the parking lot side from the south. Everyone else, straight into the pier.”

A pause, then, “Okay. I’ll signal when we’re in position. We go in hard and fast.”

“We’ll tell you which boat we’re hitting first as soon as the crow gets back.”

“Good enough.”

After I hung up, I gave the others a wry smile. “That went better than I expected.”

Our “crow” returned before two more minutes had passed and, sure enough, Phin shifted back with black streaks running across his torso, arms, and legs. One smudge went straight across his forehead like a painted-on bandanna. “North boat,” he said.

“Did you see them?” Kyle asked as we piled out of the SUV.

“No. They’re likely being kept in interior rooms, and I couldn’t get in without being spotted. Michael Jenner’s scent lingered on the pier and deck of the northern boat. He was there within the last few hours. No scent carried to the southern boat.”

“Fabulous,” I said. I texted the information to Astrid and reported my conversation with her to Phin at the same time.

Shelby stripped off his T-shirt and sneakers, leaving on only a pair of loose workout shorts. “I’ll shift once we’re onboard,” he said. “Should scare the beejeebus out of some of those damned half-Bloods, coming face-to-face with a five-hundred-pound polar bear.”

“No doubt.” I glanced around for Kyle; he’d already shifted into his dingo form and seemed eager for the hunt. Eager to find and rescue his love.

Phin put his jeans back on, then adjusted the strap holding his Coni blade close to his hip. Blue eyes blazing, he looked at each of us in turn. “Let’s go hunting,” he said.

Street traffic was moderate for midmorning—mostly delivery trucks and the occasional lost motorist. We stuck to the alley we were in, and it led us due west. Past the next block, we crossed a one-way street and came out close to the boarded-up Terminal building. In the shadows of its cracked-glass walls and faded aluminum roof, Phin bi-shifted, allowing his majestic, powerful wings to appear. Streaked in black paint and as menacing as I’d ever seen him, Phin no longer looked the part of the angel I’d once mistaken him to be. He looked like a demon about to unleash his wrath upon unsuspecting victims.

His phone chirped; he checked it. “Other teams in position,” he whispered. “It’s now or never.”

My pulse sped up, as did my breathing. Adrenaline coursed through me. My toes tingled, and I pulled one of my guns, testing its unfamiliar weight. Hard and fast, just like I liked it. I pulled at threads of loneliness, fueled by my need to have Wyatt battling by my side today, and my tap to the Break sparked. I kept that spark close, tickling the front of my mind, just in case I needed it.

“Time to have some fun,” Tybalt said.

Boarding the north ferry was something of a blur, spurred by adrenaline and fraught with the lingering fear that, by doing this, we were ensuring the deaths of those we’d come to save. Shelby had shifted, and he used his furry white bulk to break down the passenger loading doors. The ferry was anchored so close to the pier that a ramp wasn’t necessary. Just a quick jump across a slice of stagnant water, and we were onboard.

Onboard and in a stairwell of sorts. Most of the glass partitions were shattered, only metal frames remaining. Straight ahead was an empty area where the loaded cars parked. To our right and left, metal staircases led to the upper passenger decks and observation areas. Nothing stirred in the car lot, so up we went. Phin, me, and Kyle-the-dingo to the left; Tybalt, Paul, and Shelby-the-polar-bear to the right.

Our entrance must have both alerted and confused the Halfies we found on the next deck. I barely caught a glimpse of dormitory-style futons and cheap furniture behind the bodies of the Halfies swarming toward us from all directions. Young, in shape, and clear-thinking due to whatever it was Thackery was feeding them, they attacked with a precision and coordination I didn’t expect.

Phin launched himself at the crowd with a cry and a gust of wind from his wings. Kyle snarled and pounced on the nearest bare throat.

I aimed away from them and began firing. I’d never be a perfect marksman, but human torsos made nice big targets. Three half-Bloods went down right away, screeching and clawing at their chests. Bullets hurt no matter who you were; bullets laced with something your kind was violently allergic to hurt like fucking hell.

I fired again, and a fourth went down. The crush of bodies increased. A hand crashed down on my wrist, and I lost the gun. Air exploded from my lungs—I felt the ache in my back a split-second later. My knees buckled. Instead of fighting it and losing my balance, I instinctively dropped to a crouch—well timed, as the air of a missed punch whizzed past my head. Using my right hand for support, I plucked a blade from my ankle with my left hand, then shot that foot out backward. Connected with something hard and made someone scream.

The roar of a bear vibrated the floor, as did the thundering of additional footsteps in the metal stairwell nearby. Backup or more Halfies—we’d soon see.

I sliced upward with my left hand. Blade met skin, and warm blood splashed my arm. I contemplated my backup gun just as a symphony of shots popped off nearby. Too many to be my lost weapon. Backup was here.

A Halfie about my age, long blond hair done up in dozens of small braids, slammed into me sideways. We hit the deck in a tangle of arms and legs. Fangs snapped at my throat. Her breath smelled like old pennies. I worked one leg up between us and leveraged her away, rolled us somehow, and came up on top. I drove my knee down into her stomach. She hissed and kept an iron grip on my left wrist, the blade angled away.

A hand tangled in my hair and yanked so hard that I saw stars. I lost my hold on the girl and was pulled, via hair, to my feet. I couldn’t stop the scream of shock and pain. Strong arms looped around my waist and held me tight to a strong chest.

Shit.

The crush of Halfies near the stairwell left a semi-open area that looked like a poor college campus’s version of a rec room. I pulled on my tap to the Break and let its power tingle through my body. Focused on that open space and shattered. Heard the Halfie cry out in surprise.

The brief, headache-inducing teleport put us away from the main fight, next to a stained futon. The shock of it loosened the Halfie’s arms. I broke free, and spun and sliced his throat in one quick motion. He flopped onto the futon.

I paused a moment to catch my breath. The air reeked of something both familiar and foreign—and ultimately nauseating when I realized it was the smell of sex. I guess the Halfies, being of a certain virile age, needed something to entertain themselves.

This entire deck seemed to be a hangout for the Halfie horde, which meant Thackery was either on the deck above, or he was hiding below in the engine room. And up seemed less likely than down.

Additional familiar faces had entered the fray, and bleeding bodies were piling up. Tybalt moved through the fight like a dancer, his prosthetic blade slicing throats and torsos and limbs, carving a path for more of our fighters to join in. On the other end of the deck, Paul fought like a whirling dervish, cracking skulls and breaking bones with each resounding contact with his aluminum bat.

Phin broke away from the battle, arms streaked with red, eyes blazing with battle lust. He had a particularly wriggly Halfie by the throat and was dragging him along like a piece of luggage. Phin threw the Halfie hard against a metal bulkhead, and I swore I heard bones crack. Maybe twenty years old, the Halfie slumped to the floor, whimpering. Phin stepped on the kid’s ankle, and this time I did hear a bone crack. The half-Blood screamed.

“Where are the Therians being held?” Phin asked. The intensity of his appearance aside, by his tone he could have been asking for directions to Uptown.

“Down below,” the kid replied, sobbing openly. His small fangs had torn through his lower lip, and blood streaked his chin.

“Thank you.” Phin reached down and snapped his neck cleanly. The body slumped to the ground.

The heart of the continuing battle was centered around the stairwell—the only visible access to the lower decks. Phin could fly through easily, but I’d have to fight my way past and that would take time. “The parking area is below us, right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Empty, open, no obstacles that you saw?”

He seemed to understand where I was going with this. “None that I recall. Can you?”

“We’ll see.”

“I’ll meet you down there.”

Phin rose up in a gust of air, his wings beating hard in the enclosed area. He soared close to the ceiling, slicing a few Halfie throats as he went. I pulled on my tap again, opening up to even more power. Everything snapped and crackled as I teleported through the floor of an old ferryboat and materialized on the deck below. A dagger of pain poked me between the eyes, and I stumbled. The din and crash of fighting continued overhead, as well as outside and across the dock, echoing through the cavern of the parking deck.

“This way,” Phin said.

I spun toward his voice. He stood across the parking area from the stairwell, about ten yards from me. I jogged over and didn’t see the door until I was almost on top of it. Probably designed to fade into the walls and not be noticed by passengers, the metal door had NO ADMITTANCE printed in small block letters. Just below it, hand-painted, was a late-addition caveat, probably put there by Thackery: Without Permission, Under Penalty of Execution.

Dude ran a tight ship. So to speak.

“Bingo,” I said. The only thing I didn’t see was a handle of any sort. “So what do we do? Say Open Sesame?”

“An explosive of some sort would be useful,” Phin said.

“I left my C4 in my other pants.”

He huffed. Took a step back and slammed his foot down on the spot a doorknob would normally be found. The reverberation shook the wall and echoed behind. Phin stumbled back, eyebrows furrowed, lips tight.

“Sounds hollow just behind it,” I said. “Pray it stays that way for the next twenty seconds, or this is really going to hurt.”

“Evy?”

I closed my eyes and imagined an empty stairwell landing just behind the metal door. Fell into the Break and let it shatter me. The knife between my eyes stabbed a little deeper, burned a little hotter, and I moved through the door. Sensed the open space around me, and pulled back out. A wave of vertigo nearly bowled me over. Three teleports in less than five minutes. My body felt like jelly, my head like a zit about to pop.

It was also pitch black, so regaining my equilibrium took a moment. A fist pounding on the other side of the door helped orient my sense of direction. I felt along the rectangle of cool metal until I found a solid bar. Pushed down and out, and the door swung open.

The flash of light illuminated a steel stairwell that went both up and down—probably staff stairs to get from the upper deck to the engine rooms. Phin slipped inside with me, and we descended. I kept my hand firmly on the slick, grimy rail as the door swung shut and cast us both into blackness.

At the bottom, I traded my knife for my second gun, unsure what we’d find behind Door Number Two. My heart hammered against my ribs, and my mouth was dry.

“I smell them,” Phin said, his voice barely a whisper of sound. “Stay behind me.”

I considered objecting, but this was Phin’s family. His heritage as a Coni. He slipped around me. Metal squealed. Light splashed through the door, along with the most bizarre odor combination of antiseptic and scorched hair. We were at one end of a long, low-ceilinged corridor of gray metal. Exposed lightbulbs ran along the ceiling, spaced every five feet or so, giving the gray metal a sickly yellowish glow. I expected warm, dank air, something like a basement, and instead got a waft of coolness around my ankles.

Wings tucked close to his back, Phin crept silently forward. I allowed the door to close as quietly as I could, but it really didn’t matter. Thackery had to know we were here.

A few paces from the stairwell, we found a long row of Plexiglas windows inserted where walls had probably once stood. Behind them, our Holy Grail. Individual cells, each roughly the size of a modest bathroom, composed of stark metal walls and floors, with a plastic bucket and nothing else. And in each cell, a naked, prostrate body.

Phin pressed his palm flat against the Plexiglas window of the first cell, shoulders tense. “Joseph,” he said.

The wrinkled, ancient Coni lay facing us, one bony arm stretched out toward the Plexiglas window. His thin chest rose and fell, and a small puddle of drool had formed on the floor by his open mouth. A bloodstained white bandage was taped to his temple—the source of the blood we’d found at the country house, I’d bet. The sight constricted my chest and settled a ball of hot anger deep in my guts.

The cell wall had a rectangular line that framed the window much like a door, but there was no handle or indication of how the damned thing opened. While Phin continued inspecting the cells I smashed the butt of my gun against the Plexiglas, and the impact shook my wrist without making a dent.

“Leah de Loew, Lynn Neil, Dawn Jenner,” Phin said as he spotted each person.

With every name, the heavy weight on my heart lifted just a little. I followed him down the line, glancing at each person, horrified to find each one as naked and unconscious as Joseph. God, what had Thackery been doing to them?

Phin stopped at the last cell and stared. Aurora and Ava had to be in that one. His silence ratcheted up my pulse. I stepped to his side and glanced in, braced to see a helpless child asleep on the floor.

All I saw was an empty cell. Two more windows stretched past us. I checked each one; neither was occupied. “Goddammit!” I said.

A metallic bang echoed from the far end of the corridor. I didn’t wait; I just ran. Past other doors that led to unused engines and storage rooms, past newer-looking doors that probably hid whatever horrors Thackery had been conducting down here these last few months. Or maybe years. The lit bulbs thinned out to every third or fourth, and the air took on a slightly danker feel. We were moving out of the used portion of this deck, toward the bow of the ferry, which meant—

“He has a way out,” Phin said, keeping pace behind me.

A lot of snarky retorts—no shit, ya think?—died before they made it past my lips. I wasn’t angry at Phin. I was angry that Aurora and Ava were still missing, and that Thackery had a head start on us. Assuming he was on board in the first place.

The corridor ended at a T junction. To the right was a hatch marked Buoyancy Tank, and to the left another heavy door. Probably a stairwell. I had only a vague idea that a buoyancy tank wouldn’t make a good escape route, but the stairwell should take us back up to the sundeck and navigation. If Thackery was getting off the boat, it was from above.

We thundered up the stairs, once again in pitch dark. Light sprinkled down briefly from two decks above, and an upper door banged shut. The narrow, twisty stairwell made it impossible for Phin to fly straight up, and I didn’t have the concentration to attempt another teleport—not with zero idea of what to expect on the sundeck.

I burst out into bright sunlight, heedless of how stupid a move it was. We faced west, over the river, nearly at the bow of the ferry. Behind us was a slightly elevated platform and the wheel room. The deck was warped with age and covered in piles of dried bird shit.

Movement to the north caught my attention.

Walter Thackery stood on the sundeck of the next ferry, drawing the last corner of a plank of wood over to his side. Tall, lean, and movie-star handsome, he looked a bit like a wannabe spy preparing a hasty getaway. Too bad he wasn’t the hero in this little adventure. A good ten feet of water and a three-story drop separated him from me. But not from Phin.

Phin snarled. Thackery raised his right hand. We both dove to the nasty deck as Thackery fired. The shot pinged off the metal door. I lurched to my knees and returned fire. Thackery ducked and shot back. White fire grazed my shoulder. I didn’t stop, just peppered the deck all around him.

Taking advantage of my distraction, Phin dropped his Coni blade and his pants, shifted into a smaller target, and flew across to the next boat. Hovered. I stopped shooting, having run out of bullets. He shifted in midair as he dropped right down on top of Thackery with a rage-fueled battle cry.

“Stone!”

I didn’t stop to identify the person calling my name. A fourth teleport so soon after the others was going to hurt like hell, but I grabbed the blade and did it anyway. My tether to the Break was wide open, sharp and agonizing. My wounded shoulder shrieked in agony as I fell apart and came back together on the deck of the other ferry. Everything tilted and spun, and I crashed to my knees.

The skin-on-skin sounds of two men wrestling kept me from pitching into a serious faint. I inhaled several deep breaths, and exhaled hard through my mouth. Sometimes the physical price of magic sucked.

“Where are they?” Phin snarled.

I blinked the pair into focus. Thackery was on his stomach, both arms twisted behind his back and up so high that I half expected one to pop out of its socket. Phin straddled Thackery’s waist and held his wrists tight between his shoulder blades, Phin’s own weight keeping the man facedown on a rough bed of sun-baked bird shit. His black-streaked wings stood up high, arched, looking as angry as the rest of the warrior.

“Stone!”

Tybalt’s voice. He and Paul stood on the other ferry, watching us with weapons drawn, clothes speckled with blood.

“They’re on the bottom level, near the engines,” I said.

Paul nodded, then turned and bolted.

“Where are they?” Phin asked again, pulling harder on Thackery’s wrists.

Thackery grunted.

The skin on the back of my neck prickled. The last time I’d been this close to Thackery, I was strapped to a table having my left pinkie hacked off in the name of science. I held out my hand, a sight both familiar and foreign—four digits instead of five, a healed bump instead of a joint. Bastard did that to me.

I inched closer and extended the Coni blade toward Thackery’s face. His eyes latched on and followed the twin blades, nearly crossing as I pressed one sharp tip against his cheekbone. “You owe me a finger,” I said.

Utter fury blinked across his face. “The vampires you protect owe me a wife and son,” he replied.

“One vampire killed your wife, not the entire race. Not the people you infected today.”

“They aren’t human.”

“Neither am I,” Phin said. “But which one of us is a cold-blooded killer?”

“By my own hands, I’ve never murdered a human.”

I pressed the blade until a bead of red formed on the ridge of his cheekbone. “They don’t have to be human for it to be murder.”

“What of the human Rhys Willemy?” Phin asked.

Thackery grunted. “His death was at the hands of my protégé. I merely assisted in carrying out his vision.”

“An accomplice to murder still makes you guilty.”

“In your book.”

“And your supposed friend Bastian Spence?”

Something dark flickered across Thackery’s face. “What of him?”

“You set your hybrids and hounds loose at Boot Camp. He was still on-site. Do you feel no responsibility for his death?”

Clearly that wasn’t the answer Thackery was expecting, and the barest hint of grief peeked through his cold façade. “I told him to leave.”

Thackery was officially insane. Six years spent plotting his revenge against vampires had warped his idea of right and wrong, cause and effect. He didn’t even see the world in terms of black-and-white. It was simply his way and our way—and according to his way, his hands were clean of all the deaths he’d left in his wake, including a man he’d once considered a friend.

“Bastian saved my life,” I said, feeling no pride in it. “I bet that makes you all kinds of happy.”

He glared.

“Just like it probably makes you happy to hear that I stabbed your protégé through the throat not long after,” I said.

Fury flashed in his eyes. Oh, he didn’t like jabs at his precious werewolves? Too fucking bad.

“We killed three more of your precious protégés earlier today, too,” I added. “And let me guess. You didn’t murder Michael Jenner, either?”

“Of course not. Why waste the blood?”

Phin pressed his weight down hard. Thackery groaned.

“What about all the half-Bloods you’ve made?” I asked. “You were an accomplice to their deaths the minute they were infected.”

“The lesser of two evils, child.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means you’re too young and ignorant to truly understand the scope of my vision. But you will see part of it come to fruition.”

Ignorant my ass. “Not if you’re in custody, pal.”

“The wheels are in motion. Capturing me now doesn’t stop what is to come.”

Oh joy.

“The Coni female and her child were not with the others belowdecks,” Phin said. “Where are they?”

“Alive, for now,” he replied.

“Where?”

“Come now, shape-shifter, I never put all my leverage in one place. By the way, you might want to tell your cohorts to begin abandoning ship.”

“Why is that?”

A distant rumble of thunder caught my attention. I glanced at the sky and saw only cloudless blue. Then a groan of metal joined the thunder. Across the slice of water, on the opposite ferry, Tybalt braced himself on the deck rail with his right hand and was gazing at his feet. He looked up, puzzled. Then concerned.

“Because it’s about to sink,” Thackery said.