Wrong Side of Dead

Chapter Eight

Saturday, July 26

4:20 A.M.

Watchtower

Funny how it’s possible to both feel better and feel like utter crap at the exact same time. My nose was stuffed, my eyes were swollen, and my head felt twenty pounds heavier, but all in all I was okay. The minor breakdown over the Therian abductions and Thackery’s involvement was over. I leaned against Wyatt’s chest, comfortable there on the floor of the gym, content to be held until I had collected myself enough to ask a coherent question.

“What are you doing here?”

He stiffened. “I can go if you’re uncomfortable.”

He could—what? I sat up and twisted my somewhat-stiff neck to stare at him. He looked startled. I shook my head, confused. Then I got it and laughed. “No, you idiot, not that. I thought you and Marcus were interrogating Felix.”

“We had to stop for a bit. The only thing he’d say was ‘I can’t’ and ‘it’s for them,’ and it was getting”—he blanched—“messy.”

“Oh.” Ugh. I tried to get Felix’s words to make sense, but a fog had settled around my reasoning skills, and it wasn’t going away.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I touched my face. I really wanted to blow my nose. “When did I become such a weepy mess?”

“When you died and got a new body complete with new emotional imbalances?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I smiled.

So did he. “Get it out of your system?”

“I think so. Although the punching bag may never forgive me.”

“It might surprise you.”

The teasing banter was so normal, so us, that it was easy to forget we weren’t us anymore. Hadn’t been for weeks. I sat up straighter and got my first good look at Wyatt. Flecks of blood dotted his gray T-shirt and the skin of his bare arms. Some stuck to his neck. If any had made it to his face, he’d taken the time to wipe it off. He was smiling, but it didn’t hide the hint of concern in his expression or the shadows haunting his eyes.

“I’m so sorry about Ava,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry yet.” A brief flare of annoyance shut out any lingering threads of grief. “I plan on getting her back alive, along with the rest of them.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know, Wyatt, but saying you’re sorry feels like a condolence, and I don’t want it.”

He lifted his hand and brushed a damp strand of hair off my forehead. “What do you want, then?”

Boy, that was a loaded question, and it had nothing to do with the missing Therians. For once, I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t have a clue what I wanted from him. We’d been keeping each other at arm’s length for two weeks, getting the space we both needed. I just didn’t know if I was ready for the heart-to-heart that would finally lay it all on the table.

“I want a shower,” I said.

“Well, you are kind of a mess.”

“No kidding.” I had dirt on my arms and legs from both of my tumbles (the roof of the rave and the driveway landing), drying sweat everywhere from my battle with the heavy bag, not to mention tears, snot, and probably a little bit of blood from any number of sources. I couldn’t smell very good, either. “No, I think ‘mess’ is kind. I’m downright disgusting.”

“Come on, then, Stinky.” Wyatt stood up, then offered his hand. I waved my boxing glove at him. He laughed, then grabbed my wrist and helped lever me to my feet. He unstrapped the gloves—for which I was eternally grateful, as my fingers were stiff and refusing to work properly—and tossed them aside.

“Thank you for this,” I said.

“Of course. I’ll do everything I can to help you get the Coni back. You know that.”

“I do.” I flexed my fingers, wincing at the sharp twinges in my joints. The soreness would fade quickly, thanks to my healing ability, so in some bizarre way I wanted to enjoy the pain while it existed.

We headed for the door. I grabbed his arm before we reached it, and he stopped short.

“One favor after my shower?” I asked.

“Depends on the favor.”

Smart man. “I want to speak with Felix.”

“Think you can make him talk?”

“Probably not, but if he isn’t talking, then Astrid won’t keep him alive much longer. I just want a minute before his neck gets snapped.”

“Why?”

“Because he never finished answering a question I asked him on the roof.”

The shower felt wonderful. A little bit of steamy, wet heaven after a nightmarish few hours. I almost felt normal again as I left the bathrooms in fresh jeans, a navy blue tank top, and the latest in heavy-duty sneakers. My hair was left to dry in whichever manner it chose.

Wyatt was lingering outside of the jail. “Astrid said you could have five minutes.”

“Generous of her.”

“Play nice, Evy.”

“With Astrid or Felix?”

“Astrid. She’s taking these disappearances more personally than you are. Clan protection is her job.”

True, and a great point. Except for Phineas (and, to an extent, Kyle), I hadn’t given consideration to the feelings of the Therians we worked with. Before creating the Watch, Astrid had headed up an elite security team for the Assembly of Clan Elders. Losing so many people at once had to hurt.

“Okay,” I said. “Five minutes.”

We went inside. The first room was large, with a center desk and three observation windows, one on each wall. The rooms to the immediate left and center were both specialty jail cells—the walls created with alternating strips of silver bars (anti-Therian) and raw pine (anti-vampire) to keep the majority of potential prisoners from staging a breakout. To the right was the interrogation room, its walls a similar composition. Two different chairs were bolted to the floor at intervals, also of different materials depending on who was being questioned. A rack of tools hung on the back wall of that room next to an industrial sink.

Seth Nevada stood behind the desk, arms crossed over his chest. I didn’t know him well; he’d been a Handler in a different part of the city and had volunteered here as the equivalent of town sheriff. Three others worked under him, and the quartet manned the jail. Humans were chosen because of the wall materials—to prevent accidental injury. Nevada was smart, fair, and fond of snacking on hard-boiled eggs.

“Truman. Stone,” he said.

I gave an impolite half nod in his general direction, too horrified by what I saw in the interrogation room. Felix was slumped over in the wooden chair, bare arms and thighs bearing weeping blisters at every point of contact. Blood oozed from several parts of his body, and he was having trouble breathing. It took me a moment to spot the reason—a small head of garlic was hanging around his neck. Vampires and Halfies are allergic to all plants in the allium family, but garlic and onions had the worst effect.

And we knew all the tricks.

My stomach twisted. He’s not your friend, Felix died, he’s not your friend, Felix is dead. Seeing him like that made it harder to remember.

It also made it impossible to forget Alex Forrester. A kind young man who was once the best friend of Chalice, my new body, he’d volunteered to help me after my resurrection. He lost his life for his generosity, ending up in a position very similar to the one Felix was in now—a half-Blood tied to a wooden chair, tortured for information.

A warm hand squeezed my shoulder. I knew it was Wyatt without looking. “You sure you want to do this?” he whispered.

“Yes.” No. Fuck.

Nevada punched a code into the digital lock, and the interrogation door clicked. I pulled it open, stepped inside, and pulled it shut.

The odors of garlic and blood stung my nose and watered my eyes. Felix didn’t move, head down, arms and ankles shackled to the chair. He seemed to have passed out, but I knew better.

“I hear you haven’t been very cooperative,” I said.

His head snapped up, iridescent eyes blinking through a sheen of tears. “You brought me here and assumed I’d trade info for good-byes,” he said, voice hoarse, bitter.

“Not interested?”

“Anything I agree to ends with me being executed anyway, so what’s the point?”

I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug, struggling to keep an air of nonchalance when all I wanted to do was look away. “One final good deed before you die? For old time’s sake?”

Felix snorted, then winced. “What the hell do I owe the Triads?”

“I don’t know. Most of us were heading toward early death, jail, or a pretty fucked-up adult life before we were recruited. You think you’d have lasted this long without the Triads?”

He looked away, as if actually considering the question. I was barely eighteen and on my way to jail for assault and B&E when the Triads made me an offer. In some ways, Boot Camp was like jail, but I have no doubts that a prison full of women who were a lot tougher than I’d been back then would have killed me. Or at least broken my spirit. Four years as a Triad Hunter had broken a lot of my bones, but so far my spirit was intact and still fighting.

I didn’t know Felix’s story. Hell, I barely knew anyone’s story—even Tybalt’s and Milo’s, who were the closest Hunter friends I had now. Talking about the past wasn’t a particularly favorite subject of conversation for anyone.

“I was a street hustler,” Felix said.

It took me a moment to process that. I was afraid to interrupt or react in any way, just in case I shut him up.

“It was fast money, and it kept me from starving and freezing in the streets. Hated it, though, every fucking second. I guess Gina knew, because our Handlers got all the dirt on us, right? But if so, she never said anything. When the guys found out, no one cared. I hated it so much that I couldn’t believe they didn’t care.” He was babbling a bit, saying whatever his muddled memory pulled out of storage.

“They were your partners,” I said. “They loved you.”

Felix hung his head. A tear splashed into the leg of his jeans. When he looked up again, his face was a mask of misery and fear. “I just want it all to stop hurting, like before.”

My heart beat a little faster. “Soon.” Damn, I hated to play this card. “Felix, if you ever cared about Milo, or Tybalt, or Gina, you’ll be honest with us.”

He snarled, baring his fangs, and lunged. He didn’t get far enough to make me jump—the restraints were too tight. “Fuck you, Stone. Don’t tell me who I care about.”

“You’re a half-Blood, Felix. The depth of your feelings now means shit to me, but the man you were? The Hunter who died on that bus? He’d help us. You wanna die a monster or a man?”

He settled back in the chair, miserable. And also potentially pondering my words. He flexed his fingers, weeping palms leaving damp streaks on the wood arms, then curled his hands around the ends, as though he enjoyed the agony of the blisters.

“It’s for them,” I said, repeating the words he’d said to Wyatt. “You meant Kismet, Tybalt, and Milo, didn’t you?”

Felix dropped his chin to his chest, shoulders tensing. It was as good as a verbal confirmation.

“Someone’s threatening them if you don’t keep your mouth shut about this Halfie collection. Am I right?”

“He promised they’d be safe.”

Ding! “Who did?”

“I can’t—”

“They’re here in the Watchtower, Felix. We can protect them, but you have to tell me from who.” He was so close to giving me the confirmation I needed but didn’t want to hear. He just had to say Thackery’s name. “Please, Felix.”

A tear splashed onto his shirt, adding another damp spot to the muddle of fluids already present. “Two conditions?” he finally said.

“Ask.”

“You finish what you started on the bus.”

I jerked, startled by the request. Angry, agonized eyes met mine, and I could only stare back at him.

“I want you to kill me,” he said.

My mouth felt like sand, and my stomach dropped to the floor. Son of a bitch. It was Alex’s death all over again. He’d begged me to set him free and I put a bullet in the back of his head. Fuck!

“Fine. What’s the other condition?”

“I’ll only talk to you and Milo.”

I balled my right hand into a fist and pressed it hard against my thigh to stave off an irrational need to punch something. “Has Milo come to see you?”

“No, none of them have.”

“You think there’s a good reason for that?”

“Yeah, but I … I need to say good-bye. I owe Milo that.”

There it was—the reason we’d brought him back here in the first place. And now that he’d caught on, I was uncertain if the others would follow through. Milo had been incredibly hurt by Felix’s infection for very personal reasons. Seeing him earlier in the corridor must have ripped the scab off a healing wound—if it had even scabbed over in the first place.

“I can’t promise Milo,” I said.

“Then anything I know about Walter Thackery dies with me.”

Ding ding ding! We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen! It was almost too easy, and now that Felix was talking, I needed to tread carefully. “What do you know about Thackery?” I asked.

“He’s the one organizing us.”

Cold fingers crept up my spine. “He threatened to kill Gina, Milo, and Tybalt so you wouldn’t run to us and spill your guts?”

“Yes.”

It made sense, but it also … didn’t. We had the resources to keep them safe from Thackery, and yet the recent Therian kidnappings seemed to prove otherwise. I just couldn’t help thinking there was more to it. A second, more powerful reason that Felix would be Thackery’s lapdog. “What else does Thackery have on you?”

He glared. “Don’t forget the price of admission.”

Dammit.

The door clicked open. “Evy?” Wyatt asked. “Outside a minute?”

I followed him out, my mind reeling with the confirmation of Thackery’s involvement in this. In the outer office, I asked, “Did either you or Marcus mention Thackery or the missing Therians to him?”

“No, we didn’t,” Wyatt said. “He knew on his own.”

“Which means he was at the rave on purpose, as a distraction.”

“Almost definitely, but that’s not why—”

“Phineas is missing,” Astrid said as she stormed into the jail’s office. Every muscle rippled with annoyance. She looked like a prowling cat ready to pounce on the first prey that moved.

“Missing?” My heart nearly burst out of my chest. “How—?”

“He left the Watchtower without informing anyone. We’ve been watching his heat signature since his return from the country house, and not five minutes ago he flew off the grid.”

“He left?”

“I just said that.”

“Where the hell would he go?”

“Would he search on his own?” Wyatt asked.

“Maybe,” I said, “but he’d tell someone first.”

“Are you certain?” Astrid asked.

I threw my hands up, exasperated. “No, I’m not, Astrid. I’m his friend, not a telepath. He’s angry and he feels responsible, and even Phineas isn’t above doing something stupid when his emotions are running high.” I glanced at Wyatt. “Would he go back to the condo?”

Phin owned a condo in Uptown. It was a lovely three-bedroom place in a private community. For a time, he’d shared it with Wyatt and Rufus St. James. Rufus was wounded badly several months ago, and those injuries left him with a great deal of pain and unable to walk without assistance, so he opted to use a wheelchair for ease of mobility. He’d also turned down several offers to join the Watch, so he continued living at the condo. Wyatt now lived here at the Watchtower, and Phin shuttled between the two.

“Maybe,” Wyatt replied. “But if he did, I’m sure Rufus would—” As if on cue, Wyatt’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, then showed me the I.D. Rufus. He flipped it open. “Is he there?”

I almost pinched Wyatt for not putting the call on speaker.

He nodded an affirmation—Phin was at the condo. “What’s he doing?” A pause. “Try to keep him there. His family has been kidnapped and I don’t—” He fell silent, listening. “Walter Thackery’s involved, but we don’t know why yet. Just try to keep him—Rufus?”

“What?” I asked, unable to stay silent any longer. This was a ridiculous way to manage a conversation.

Wyatt held up a shushing hand. “Rufus, what just happened?” I was nearly reduced to tapping my foot by the time Wyatt said, “Okay, thanks” and hung up.

“Well?” Astrid and I said in stereo.

“He showed up on the condo balcony,” Wyatt said. “Rufus let him in, and he went straight to his room, didn’t say a word. Rufus called when he heard a lot of noise, like he was shoving stuff around, searching for something. Said Phin came out with a wooden box about the size of a loaf of bread, went back to the balcony, opened up the box, shifted back into an osprey, and flew off clutching whatever was inside the box in his talons.”

“Rufus didn’t see what he took out of the box?” I asked, shocked by the described actions.

Wyatt shook his head. “Said it was long and shiny. The inside of the box was lined with satin, and he said the construction looked old. No nails, just wooden joints. Could have held a knife or something similar.”

We both looked at Astrid, who shrugged. “If that box’s contents hold significance for Phineas or his Clan, I’m not aware of it,” she said.

“Awesome.” Wait. Significance for his Clan? It could very well be a waste of time, but … “I think I know where Phin went.”

Wyatt insisted I not go alone or without weapons, so it was a good ten minutes later before we were in a Jeep and driving north. It was less than an hour until dawn, the streets quiet and thick with summer heat. We’d taken a real Jeep with the removable plastic roof and windows, and the hot air blasted us. I twisted my hair around one hand, wishing I’d thought to grab a rubber band or something.

We were crossing the Lincoln Street Bridge toward downtown when Wyatt asked, “Did you get to ask your question?”

“Huh?”

“Felix. You said you had to ask him something.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t.” The conversation had abruptly changed when he brought Thackery into it. The kidnapped Therians and the Halfie army had to be connected somehow, and knowing Thackery’s hatred of vampires and penchant for scientific experimentation, it probably wasn’t good. We also knew that Thackery had been threatening Felix’s loved ones to ensure his cooperation. In some ways, that spoke to Felix’s level of sanity and control, but there had to be more.

“What was the question?”

I almost commented on curiosity and cats, but it would have been funny only if Marcus was around. Still, talking was better than awkward silences. “Back on the roof of the rave, I asked Felix how he was able to maintain his sanity, despite the infection.”

“And?”

“He said he just did, but that’s bullshit. There’s something else, and I want to know what.”

Wyatt turned onto Atlantic Avenue, which would take us north into the heart of Mercy’s Lot. Our ultimate destination was just a bit farther south, on the border of the Lot and the rest of downtown. A place I used to know very, very well.

“Shit,” Wyatt suddenly said.

I gave him a sharp look, but he didn’t seem alarmed. “What is it?”

He glanced at me, a peculiar expression on his face. “What if Thackery developed some sort of serum that helps half-Bloods maintain their sanity? Like a Halfie Prozac or something? What if that’s the other thing he’s holding over Felix?”

A chill wrapped around my heart and squeezed. “If Thackery did that, he’d have loyal and sane Halfies at his disposal.” And it made a horrific kind of sense, considering Thackery’s need to be crowned World’s Maddest Mad Scientist. “But why the body dumps?”

“Maybe they’re failed experiments. Maybe the serum didn’t work, so he killed them. We didn’t collect samples from those body dumps. We’ll never know if there was anything unusual in their physiology.” He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “It’s also possible that some of them refused to enlist in Thackery’s private army, serum or not, so he had them disposed of.”

“That’s an awful lot of maybes and ifs, Wyatt.”

“You know, that’s usually my line.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” He reached out with his right hand and squeezed my arm. “The idea of it scares the shit out of me, too, Evy, but we both know what Thackery is capable of scientifically. We can’t disregard the possibility.”

I hated that he knew me so well. Walter Thackery and his experiments had been haunting my afterlife since the first time I ran into one of his hounds. His fingerprints covered every major event since my resurrection, and he’d been as difficult to capture as an eel in an oil slick. We were no match for him intellectually, and so far he’d had all kinds of hybrid monsters doing his physical dirty work. The Halfies were just another in a long line of victims.

Just like Wolf Boy had been. Discovering that an actual werewolf had been alive and well and moving freely in the city had thrown the Assembly into a tizzy. As a Clan, werewolves had supposedly gone extinct in the early sixteenth century. No one would tell me why (“It’s Clan business, Stone, and it’s need to know” was a favorite statement from Michael Jenner); they’d say only that werewolves had been bloodthirsty, nasty creatures with no desire to adapt and live among humans. They preferred wolf form, preferred the hunt, and offered no mercy to their prey.

That Thackery had one in his employ until I killed the kid during the destruction of Boot Camp … Well, it had the Assembly on the alert for signs of others popping up. So far, none had. But that didn’t mean Wolf Boy was the only one Thackery knew about. Thackery never showed all his cards at once.

Wolf Boy, the hounds, the hybrids, his never-ending experiments—all served to remind me that Thackery was little more than a sociopath. And that he terrified me on the most basic of levels.

I squared my shoulders, more for me than Wyatt, because he couldn’t really see it anyway. “I’m not disregarding the theory. Hiding from something until it goes away isn’t my style, Wyatt.”

“I know that. Just making sure you didn’t forget.”

The temptation to knuckle him in the arm was almost too strong to resist. Childish, maybe, but dammit, he still knew how to bring that out in me. He knew my buttons better than anyone. “So Thackery knows how to make Halfies less crazy, and he’s now recruiting an army of them to do what?”

“The last six years of his life have been dedicated to curing vampirism in humans. He thought your blood would help.”

“Yeah, I was there, thanks,” I deadpanned.

He slowed for a left turn. “But it didn’t, is my point. What if Thackery got to a place where he decided if you can’t beat them, join them?”

“Fight fire with fire?”

“Whichever metaphor you want, yes. He could theoretically use those Halfies to attack the vampires. Look at how those Halfies fought for Tovin at Olsmill. They almost match full-Blood vampires in strength and speed. Their biggest flaw was being mostly bat shit insane.”

“Which Thackery has taken care of.”

“Exactly.”

I dropped my face into the palms of my hands, mind racing. This was bad on so many levels. Granted, it was all fucking theory, but it was a damned good theory. All of the pieces fit, and it did make an awful kind of sense.

Wyatt’s hand slid up my arm to squeeze my shoulder. “We’re almost there.”

I sat up. Familiar row homes and middle-class apartment buildings lined the rolling streets of this small slice of city halfway between the bustle of downtown and the desperate poverty of Mercy’s Lot. Wyatt parked near a familiar telephone booth, within view of my destination.

“Hang here while I go look,” I said.

He nodded, surprising me with his lack of protest at my wanting to go alone. “I’ll call Astrid and let her in on our new theory.”

“Okay.”

I grabbed a spare pair of sweatpants from the backseat and climbed out. I walked up the inclined sidewalk toward an empty lot half a block long and nearly as deep. The last time I was here, the blackened rubble of a major apartment building fire still lay scattered in heaps and piles. In the intervening months, someone had cleared the lot of debris, leaving behind a cement foundation and an asphalt parking lot. All other evidence of the Sunset Terrace Apartments was gone, bulldozed away. Forgotten.

But not by everyone.

A familiar figure was sitting cross-legged a few dozen yards away, back to me, easy to spot even in the gloom of faraway streetlights. I approached slowly, taking noisy steps, allowing the gentle breeze to carry my scent to him. Phin turned his head when I closed in to less than ten feet, then looked away. It wasn’t an invitation. It also wasn’t a “get the hell away from me,” so I took it as permission to come closer.

I sat next to him on the warm concrete, noting the knife-shaped object in his lap.

“Rufus called you,” Phineas said.

“Yes.”

“He’s concerned.”

“We all are, Phin. You left without telling anyone where you were going, and right now, we can’t afford to let you out of our sight.”

“Lest we lose the last of the Coni?”

“We haven’t lost the others yet. They’re just misplaced.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. He looked at me full-on, and the simmering hatred in his blue eyes startled me. “Three stories up from this spot is where Jolene and I lived. After she died, I left Sunset Terrace and moved east, closer to the river. Remaining with the Clan only reminded me of the pain. I survived the massacre because I had turned my back on my people.”

“If you’d been here, you’d have died, too, Phineas. And who would have protected Aurora and Joseph when they needed you?”

His nostrils flared. He looked away, over the landscape of cement.

“What is this?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you play the self-pity card.”

“I prefer to think of it as self-reflection.” He lifted the object in his lap—a knife. Fourteen inches from hilt to tip, it gleamed a reflective gold. The blade curved to both sides, divided like a trident missing its center prong. Intricate patterns and swirls decorated the base of the blade where both halves came together, and the handle appeared to be some sort of smooth bone carved with similar patterns.

It looked deadly.

“I told you once that the Coni were a warrior race,” he said. “Centuries ago, we left behind our savage ways and embraced peace. We chose a life among humans rather than as mythical beings apart from others. We were one of the first Clans to integrate. One of the first to propose what is now the Assembly.”

“Do you think the Fey are punishing you for that?” I asked.

“They punished us for being powerful, and because it played well with their other plans. Two hundred and twelve of us were Coni, Evy. We were a force to reckon with, even against the Fey’s magic. To anger all of the bi-shifting Clans at once? The Fey would stand no chance in a direct battle.” He snorted. “As if they would dirty themselves to fight their own battles.”

He had a point. I’d never seen a sprite outside First Break without the use of a human avatar. A few faeries, yes, but they were less powerful than their fellow Fey. Demanding that the Triads destroy the Coni and Stri Clans could have ended with humans and Therians at each others’ metaphorical throats, on the edge of open war. It hadn’t (by some miracle), which threw a lovely monkey wrench into the sprites’ plans. Left them scrambling and improvising, which they don’t do well.

“What’s the knife for, Phin?” I asked.

“Until about five centuries ago, our elite guard carried them as symbols of their status. Only a few survived, and one has been passed through my line. The others were destroyed during the fire.”

I studied the gold knife and its twin blades—one for each branch of the Clan. Coni and Stri, separate and together. Its age surprised me.

“For me, this is no longer about the Watchtower or the city’s best interests,” Phin said, his voice cold. “It’s about my Clan. I will do whatever it takes to find them and bring them home.”

“I know you will. So will I.”

“Walter Thackery will die by this blade.”

As much as I wanted to argue and lay claim to killing Thackery, I didn’t. Phin hadn’t said who would wield that blade, after all, which left all sorts of things open for interpretation. “We have to find him first,” I said.

“Something tells me we won’t have to wait long.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.” He turned his head slightly, giving me three-quarters of his profile. “Don’t react, but we are being watched.”

I tensed. “Wyatt’s in the car.”

“The opposite direction, about two o’clock.”

Damn him and his Therian eyesight. All I made out in the shadows between two faraway streetlights was a dark blob. “What is it?”

“A wolf.”

Terrific.