Tiffany took a careful step back, so she wasn’t standing between two drakul. “I think you fulfill an important purpose,” she said to Night. “One that doesn’t involve being leashed to SPECTR. If you want to leave, I’ll take you with me now.”
“No,” Night said.
When he didn’t elaborate, Tiffany let out a long breath. “All right.” Her gaze cut to John. “I’ll take your hard drive with me. If Kaniyar does find out about whatever this is, I was never here, understood?”
“Understood.” He leaned tiredly against the couch. “Thanks, Tiff.”
She gave him a curt nod, tucked the hard drive into her Gucci purse, and made for the door. When she opened it, Zahira stood on the other side, hand raised to knock.
Zahira’s eyes widened in alarm; from her vantage, all she could see was a stranger and Gray on full display. Tiffany, however, turned back to John. “Starkweather…”
“Special Agent Zahira Noorzai, this is Tiffany Ward.” Zahira had read the unredacted reports on the battle they’d fought on Fort Sumter. “Tiffany, Zahira knows everything. We trust her.”
Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. “You have a history of trusting the wrong people, so forgive me if I’m not reassured.”
She pushed past Zahira and vanished down the stairs. Zahira stepped inside and shut the door hastily, as if worried someone else might wander inside. “John?”
Gray and Caleb switched places. “She’s helping us,” Caleb said. While he explained the situation to Zahira, John wandered over to the small dining room table.
The torn paper Zahira had pieced together still lay there, silent and damning. EXORCISE US it shouted at him in large, urgent letters.
Goddess.
The naga in the facility beneath the Center had recognized his face. Said her host had waited for his return.
He picked up the necklace he’d removed from the naga’s body after Night killed her. It was just a simple gold chain, decorated with a crescent moon and a star that might have been zircon or a tiny diamond chip, he didn’t know. The sort of thing a teenage girl might wear as a keepsake.
He’d failed that girl when he didn’t return before her forty days were up, and the fact of it lay heavy on his soul. Having his brain wiped was probably a better excuse than most, but every time he imagined her alone in the dark, hungry and waiting, clinging to the hope of a rescue that would never come…
He fastened the chain around his own neck and tucked the charm beneath the edge of his shirt. It was the only truly tangible evidence he had to hold on to at this point. The metal felt cool against his skin, as though some of the chill of the underground facility still clung to it.
“John?” Caleb called.
John blinked. “Sorry. I zoned out. What it is?”
Caleb and Zahira both looked sympathetic. “I was just telling Caleb that Chief Fontaine called me on the way over here,” Zahira said. “There’s been an incident, and since SPECTR-NOLA is still short-handed for the holidays, she wanted me to take a look into it. I thought Caleb and Gray might come with me?”
“I’ll come too.” He needed to get out of his own head for a while, and a case was as good a distraction as any. “It isn’t as though I can do much else but wait for Tiffany right now.”
Caleb picked up his heavy coat and slung it on. Pointing at Night, he said, “You. Stay.”
Night cocked his head. “Are you going to hunt?”
“That depends on what we find,” Zahira replied.
“Then I wish to go.”
Caleb didn’t look thrilled. John put a hand to his arm, but said, “You can come, Night, but please stay in the car until we need you.”
Night made no verbal answer, but rose to his feet. Caleb sighed and went to the door. “Fine. Let’s go see what fresh horror is being served up today.”
Two
John drove them in the SUV, and Caleb sat in the back with Night, watching the landscape go by. Traffic was snarled near the airport, but it had cleared out once they left the interstates and turned onto Old Highway 51.
“This is the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area,” Zahira said, peering at her phone. “According to the website, it’s over 112,000 acres, consisting mainly of flooded cypress-tupelo swamp. It looks like there’s fishing, hunting, birding, and camping. Not much in the way of hiking, though—I suppose the lack of consistently dry land makes it hard to establish trails.”
“I have hunted here before,” Gray chimed in. “The terrain is…difficult.”
Memories leached of color unspooled behind their eyes. Struggling through mud. A gator’s jaws closing on a leg. Lying beneath the water as Gray’s stolen body slowly rotted enough to release him.
“Gray’s been here before,” Caleb reported. “He’s not a fan.” He eyed the trees pressing in on either side of the narrow, two-lane road. The forest looked more scrubby than in Gray’s memories, though he couldn’t tell if it was because of damage from Katrina or from some other cause. “At least the gators are hibernating this time of year.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to try to track this thing through the swamp,” John said.
He looked tired—of course he did. The last week had worn him out. Christ, Tiffany’s people had better find some answers on that hard drive.
Gray’s unhappiness intertwined with his own. Gray wanted a clear enemy to fight. Something he could bite and rend, and thereby make everything all right again.
That isn’t how it works, though.
“I know.”
Soon enough they spotted the flashing lights of a police car pulled off the road, along with those of an ambulance. John steered onto the narrow berm and pulled up behind the cop car.
The cop looked annoyed as he approached. His scowl only deepened when John identified himself and showed his badge. But when he spotted Caleb in the back, his expression grew downright ugly.
He wasn’t one of the cops who had hauled Caleb in on suspicion of murder…but he might have been one of those who’d ended up with guns drawn when Caleb resisted going into the station. Or maybe word had spread about the SPECTR agent who swooped in and removed a murder suspect; that seemed likely enough.
“This is a secure scene,” he growled at Caleb. “He stays in the car.”
“It’s our scene now,” John snapped. Zahira blinked in surprise; John was usually Mr. Tactful. Now it seemed his patience was at an end.
“Fine. Then you handle it.” The cop left, and a moment later the squad car peeled out with a screech of tires. Probably off to harass someone for Driving While Black.
John sighed as they climbed out of the SUV. “Fontaine isn’t going to be happy about that.”
“That’s her problem,” Caleb said. “Besides. It’s sexy when you’re all assertive like that.”
It brought a reluctant smile to John’s mouth. “Says the man who has a problem with authority.”
“What can I say? I’m a complex guy.” He turned back to Night. “Stay here.”
A white man sat in the back of the ambulance, a blanket wrapped around him. His expression was one Caleb had seen too many times recently: numb shock, underlain with sheer horror. A woman sat beside him, her dishwater blonde hair pinned back from a worn face. She rubbed his back comfortingly with one thin hand.