Chapter 1
London
Jestina Ridley moved through the dark, dirty alley, careful to avoid the broken glass and occasional uncapped syringe, praying something useful would come out of this little visit to the seedier side of Stockwell. But after sidestepping one especially wet and smelly patch of asphalt, she rephrased that thought, deciding this particular part of southwest London was pretty much all seedy. Definitely not the kind of place tourists flocked to after midnight.
Good thing I’m not a tourist.
“I’ve got nothing,” Jaime Wilkerson grumbled through the tiny radio bud wedged in her ear. “I told you this was going to be a waste of time. That guy we talked to doesn’t know squat about this kidnapping.”
“In all fairness, he never said the kidnappers were holding the girl here,” Neal Goodwin, the other member of their Special Threat Assessment Team, pointed out, his gravelly voice rough over the radio. “He said the people who grabbed the kid used one of these abandoned buildings to stage their equipment and plan the job. He didn’t say they’d still be here.”
Jes stifled a groan. Neal was right, but she’d hoped they’d get lucky all the same. She and the other two members of her STAT team had been in London for three days checking out a kidnapping with clear supernatural indicators, and so far, they’d come up with nothing.
A week ago, someone had snatched fourteen-year-old Olivia Phillips out of her bedroom on the eighth floor of her apartment building. Her father was a high-level official in MI5, the British Security Service, which meant the place where they lived had better security than most, including watchdog monitors on all the elevators and doors, as well as cameras along every corridor and a handful of roving guards.
None of it had mattered. Olivia had gone missing in the middle of the night and whoever kidnapped her had left the two men guarding the building dead, their throats torn out. The way the men had been killed—along with the mystery of how the kidnappers had gotten into the apartment—had immediately put the crime on STAT’s radar, since it looked like the handiwork of supernatural creatures.
After seeing autopsy photos of the guards’ bodies, Jes had no doubt some kind of paranormal was involved in the kidnapping, but that didn’t make it any easier to track down the thing. Especially since Olivia’s parents had stopped cooperating with law enforcement within twenty-four hours of the girl’s disappearance, claiming they were doing it on the advice of legal counsel. Jes thought it was more likely because the kidnappers had contacted them to negotiate a ransom and warned them not to involve the cops. Considering the father worked for MI5, it was also possible he was freezing out the locals and letting the British version of the FBI handle the investigation.
Not that it mattered who was running the case for the Brits. Jes and her team were here for one reason—to determine if there were supernatural elements at play and deal with them accordingly. Because that’s what STAT did: figured out what scary thing they were dealing with and made it go away.
“All right, let’s call it a night. Wrap up whatever you’re doing and meet back at the car.” She sighed. “We’ll come back tomorrow and check out the area again, this time in the daylight. I doubt we’ll find anything, but maybe we’ll get lucky and someone might remember seeing something.”
Jaime and Neal agreed, sounding as frustrated as she felt. Both of the guys had been with STAT for over a year and knew how bad it could be in the real world when things that went bump in the night targeted their prey. Olivia had been missing for so long, even one more night could mean the difference between getting the girl back alive or not.
Jes continued along the alley, checking out the rear entrances to a series of low-cost government housing buildings that looked like they hadn’t seen a legitimate tenant in years. The doors were nailed shut, the windows boarded up, and there wasn’t a single light to be seen inside or out. If there was a place in this neighborhood where a supernatural creature might hang out, it’d be here. But when she stopped every so often and peeked through the cracks between the wooden slats over the windows, shining her small flashlight inside, she didn’t see anyone.
She was heading toward the grassy side of the apartment building to meet up with the rest of her team when she heard a low, menacing growl over her earpiece that chilled her to the core. It was immediately followed by gunshots, then shouting.
Jaime and Neal.
Crap!
Pulse pounding, Jes pulled her Sig 9mm with her free hand, clicking off the safety with her thumb as she raced across the scrubby grass in the direction of the sound. She rounded the corner of the building to find herself face-to-face with construction equipment, trash-filled dumpsters, and a handful of big, metal storage pods. As she weaved her way through the maze, she realized the growls and gunfire had ceased and all that was left was an eerie silence. She fervently prayed that meant Jaime and Neal had taken down whatever the hell they’d come across.
But if they had, why hadn’t they called out all clear over the radio?
“Jaime? Neal? Do you copy?”
No answer.
Double crap!
Jes smelled the blood before she saw the two bodies lying motionless on the ground near one of the dumpsters. She ran toward them, her heart in her throat. If she could pick up the odor of blood, there had to be a bucketload of it.
There was.
Dark red pools of it that looked black even in the glow of her flashlight.
Damn, she hated being right.
Knowing her teammates were almost assuredly dead but needing to check all the same, she crouched beside Jaime when movement near one of the storage containers caught her attention. She jerked her head up to see something big and hulking in the darkness less than fifteen feet away. That same low growl she’d heard before rumbled from its chest as it gazed at her with glowing yellow eyes, and a chill ran along her spine.
Jes brought up her weapon, resting it on the hand that held the flashlight, and pulled the trigger in quick succession, knowing there was no way she could miss at this distance. But the creature disappeared before the bullets could find their mark. One moment, it was there, and the next, it was gone. Before she’d even gotten a good look at it.
As fast as the thing moved, it could easily come at her from a dozen different directions, but she couldn’t worry about that. One or both of her teammates might be alive. All that mattered was helping them.
But when she turned her flashlight on Jaime and Neal, she realized it was too late. Whatever had killed them had savagely torn out their throats. They had been dead before they’d hit the ground.
She swallowed hard and pulled out her phone, thumbing the speed-dial button for the STAT emergency operation center in Washington, DC as she scanned the area around her for the creature that had killed her teammates.
“This is Agent Ridley,” she said. “Two agents are down and I need a cleanup team out here ASAP. Tell McKay we have confirmed supernatural involvement. I’m going to need backup.”