Echoes of the Past

Chapter Five

“It’s only been a couple of hours, Frank. Glad to see you’re staying out of trouble.”

I didn’t need to turn around to recognize the sarcastic Barry White imitator that teleported in behind me. “Hi, Rahim.”

DRAC’s resident badass, and newly-made furry, walked up beside me. He glanced over the edge of the building. Tall, dark, and ominous, he looked like I remembered him when we first met. Darth Vader had nothing on Rahim. While creeping into his late fifties, he was well over six feet of aged muscle, his bald head catching the sunlight and seeming to absorb it. He had his serious face on, but he looked healthy. There was no trace of the spinal injury that had crippled him and drained the life from his eyes. He looked vibrant.

Becoming a werebear suited him.

Michael Li shuffled up to the ledge a moment later. A telepath, receptive to all the emotions and thoughts of the world around him, Michael didn’t look anywhere near as vigorous as Rahim did. Dressed in jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt, he had a couple days of scruff on his chin and the gray was showing. The fallout from the war in Heaven was taking a toll on him. He looked beat.

“Hey, Mike.”

He waved and followed Rahim’s eyes to the chaos below. A quiet sigh slipped from between pursed lips. “I managed to deflect some of the incoming 911 calls to make it look like this was a gas explosion, of some kind, but there’s nothing I can do about the witnesses. It’s only a matter of time until the general populace realizes this was yet another supernatural incident.”

“What happened?” Rahim asked, turning to look at me.

I’d been wrong about how he looked. There was sorrow in his gaze; deep pools of it, which settled heavy in his dark eyes. Thoughts of Abraham came to mind unbidden. We were carrying on like nothing had happened, but it was a lie. Abe was dead and everything he had made DRAC to be was crumbling.

I cleared my throat, not wanting to think about it. There was nothing we could do to bring Abe back. Even my dating a necromancer couldn’t fix dead. Not in the ways that mattered, so there was no point dwelling on it. I stuck to the business at hand. “I think it was a specter. It came out of nowhere and hit me while my back was turned. The thing never said a word or claimed any kind of allegiance, and I wasn’t able to pinpoint its controller.” I shrugged. “It could have been a government agent.”

Rahim’s eyebrow lifted. “Why would you think that?”

“I had a visit from a group called the Department of Supernatural Investigation.” I rubbed my forehead where the bullet had gone in. “They made quite an impression.”

“The DSI?” Michael shook his head. “They’ve been around for a while, but they’ve never done much beyond sniffing at the tails of paranormal investigator frauds and psychic scam artists.”

“Well, it looks like they’ve got a new agenda, and Uncle Sam has opened his checkbook to them; wide. Worse still, they’ve got their foot in the supernatural world. Their head honcho is a wight.”

“Really?” Rahim glanced up at the cloudy sky. “I guess that would make sense given what’s happened, but this really isn’t a good time for them to start digging deeper into our affairs.”

“Tell me about it. They seem to think I had something to do with the storms. They’re just waiting to find an excuse to play judge, jury, and executioner on my ass, and whoever else they think is involved. DRAC is probably in the crosshairs, too, so keep your eyes peeled.”

Rahim’s shoulders sank as he turned to Michael. “Have you heard anything about them recently?”

Michael shook his head. “They’ve never been a concern, but I’ll look into them deeper. If they’ve got a legitimate source in the supernatural, there’s no telling what they could dig up on our people and resources. They could cause all sorts of trouble for us.” He looked to me. “Other than trying to get to the bottom of the storms, did they say what their focus was?”

“Only that they were sanctioned to defend the U.S. from supernatural threat.” I laughed. “Maybe we can take a vacation now that the para-cops are on the job.”

“Doubtful,” Rahim replied. “Sounds to me like they’ve an open-ended agenda; one that doesn’t exactly bode well for any of us. If they’re looking to police the supernatural realms, we can expect them to be involved in everything we do from here on out.” He growled as he looked back to the streets below, his voice sounding like his counterpart bear. “We don’t need this shit right now.”

Amen, brother. We had a hard enough time keeping the supernatural bullshit down and out sight as it was. Now with a government agency diving into the pool to muddy the waters, things were gonna get more difficult. Even better, since the U.S. formed a supernatural swat team, you could bet your ass the other major players in the world had enough information and motivation to do the same. Given the fluidity and hazy boundaries of the other realms, it was pretty damn likely we’d be stumbling all over these groups every time we stuck our big toe over the U.S. border or into another dimension.

“Go see what you can do to keep this quiet a little longer,” Rahim told Michael. The telepath nodded and walked off. After he was gone, Rahim pulled away from the ledge and waved me along. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slow. “I don’t know how to say this, Frank, so I’ll be direct and hope you understand it isn’t meant to be personal.”

With an introduction like that, how can it be bad? My shoulders sunk a little.

Rahim shuffled, looking at me but not really meeting my eyes. “DRAC is going through a rough time, not that I need to tell you that, but…Rachelle is taking Abraham’s death very hard.”

We all were, but I knew what he was getting at. Abraham died because I couldn’t save him, and I’d chosen to take the blame for our not telling Rachelle until after the battle. She needed Rahim way more than she needed me, so it only made sense. I knew there’d be backlash from the decision, but I wasn’t sure what it would be…until now.

“She doesn’t blame you-“

“Sure she doesn’t.”

“She’s just hurt, Frank,” he countered, his voice speeding up. “No matter how close any of us were to him, Rachelle had his heart. He was her life. It’s only natural for her to be angry. She’ll see things true once things calm down some.”

“What are you asking of me?” I had a pretty good idea. Despite it all, I could feel my cheeks warming. It was something I didn’t want to hear.

He swallowed hard. Always so confident, so certain, it worried me. “I think it best if maybe you took some time away from DRAC, let things settle a bit.”

There it was. My punishment for letting Abe die was banishment from the cool kids club. I started to argue, but clenched my teeth and bit back on the disappointment that threatened to spew out. For all her oddness, Rachelle had never been anything but kind to me, and I knew Rahim was right in asking for this. I certainly didn’t want to rub salt in the wound of Abe’s death. I’d be a constant reminder of what she’d lost, and that was simply cruel. Rachelle didn’t deserve that.

“Fine.” I couldn’t bring myself to be more diplomatic.

Rahim winced and drew another hard breath. “If something comes up…” he motioned to the street.

I waved him off. “Yeah…yeah, I appreciate it.” I knew it was the right thing to do, for Rachelle and all of DRAC, but I’d lost Abe, too. They weren’t the only ones hurting, but I’d dug this grave and would have to lie in it. There wasn’t any turning back now. Responsibility was a motherfucker.

For just a second, I contemplated telling Rahim about the message I’d received from my uncle but thought better of it. They had enough on their plate with Abe gone and the DSI stepping up. Hasstor didn’t make it seem like the world would end tomorrow, so I figured I had a few weeks for shit to cool off before I dumped a steaming bowl of it on DRAC’s doorstep.

I wandered over to the ledge and looked at the scene below. I didn’t have a clue who’d sent the specter after me, or what they wanted, but given all the crap lately, I figured I could handle it on my own. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a few resources of my own.

“Tell Mike goodbye for me, yeah?” Rahim nodded as I walked away. I’d been caught off guard coming back from my powwow with Hasstor, but it looked like I’d been given a breather. It was time to shore up my defenses and make myself less of a target.

I was thinking I’d get a dog or two…hundred.