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“FUCK, you’re annoying. I’m two pounds of pressure away from scattering sparkly demahnk brains all over the ceiling, and you’re still playing the evil-Gandhi act and spouting vague bullshit.” I held the means, all right. Maybe I couldn’t actually kill him, but either way I wasn’t going to come away from this empty-handed.
I drank in his signature, allowed its resonance to suffuse me. At least once a day, I searched Earth’s arcane flows for any hint of my four AWOL people. Now I’d have a fifth signature in my arsenal. This bastard didn’t know where they were, but not through lack of seeking. If he left even the slightest fart of a trail, I was going to sniff it out and use it to locate the others.
“You are not a murderer, Kara Gillian,” he said and teleported away a microsecond before my bullet buried itself in the ceiling.
“Pussy!” I yelled into the emptiness.
Chapter 6
The morning after the Beaulac PD valve explosion two months ago, I woke up to the world in shock and the FBI at my door. Well, at the end of my driveway, since very powerful arcane protections kept them out. They needed to get my input, they’d said, since I was a consultant for the task force.
I, very stupidly, believed them.
On the sixth day of my detention as a suspected terrorist, Gallagher and two other agents barged into my cell and announced that my house and property had been seized by the U.S. government, and if I wished to spare myself the certainty of life in federal prison, I would cooperate and allow them to take possession. They assured me that it was only a matter of time before they broke through the arcane protections, and therefore I was merely delaying the inevitable and making my predicament much worse.
When they finished their little speech, I laughed and said, “Good luck with that.”
At that point, they attempted to convince me that everyone who was currently holed up behind my fence would go to jail forever and then some if I didn’t cooperate, but I could spare them that fate if I simply accompanied the agents to—
I stopped them and said, “Let’s cut to the chase. You guys want to poke around my house and property because you have satellite imagery and probably drone video that shows something very interesting in my back yard. Only problem is that you can’t get past the fence. Not one bloody inch. And anything aerial you send can’t get within three hundred feet vertically. So how about we skip all the bullshit. I’ll take you three agents—and only you three—onto my property and give you the grand tour. You can even keep me cuffed and shackled and duct taped if it makes you feel safer.”
Which they did. They had no doubt there was a catch of some sort, but they also knew they weren’t getting past the fence without my cooperation. Within an hour we were in my driveway, which was when I discovered that my super cool and smart demonic lord boyfriend Mzatal had included a nifty feature on the new and improved back yard nexus—allowing me to tap it from anywhere on my property. It was a mere fraction of the power I could pull when standing on its surface, but it was all I needed.
Long story short, I gave the nice FBI agents an up close and personal demonstration of the power of the nexus, which included their very own aerial—though upside down—view of my house, and made it very clear that I could have easily squashed them flat if I’d wanted to. I then told them to stop fucking wasting my time and maybe now we could work together and do something about the rifts that had started opening up. Oh, and it looks like a rift is about to open up on the south end of Lake Pearl, so you jackholes might want to make sure that area is evacuated. I didn’t tell them that I’d sensed the rift via the nexus, and they didn’t push the issue of how I knew. It helped that I was right about the rift.
Needless to say, that was the end of my detention. It was also the beginning of DIRT, and how I became the Arcane Commander.
The protections that kept the agents and other official busybodies out were kickass, but Bryce Taggart—former hitman and my current security expert—informed me that, with the increased activity, we needed to add a few measures. He proceeded to hand me a breakdown of the expected costs, which included actual human security guards and improved surveillance and communication systems. I added the other costs of living that I expected to incur, as well as healthy salaries for all of us since why-the-hell-not and yes I was still mega-pissed about being detained for six days, then gave my funding request to the powers-that-be, told them it was what I needed in order to best do what needed to be done, and was utterly shocked when I got it.
The very next day, Bryce brought in portable buildings and handpicked security guards: people who he knew had excellent skills, experience, and reliability, but also wouldn’t freak about any weird shit that might happen. We had Jordan Kellum, a former world-class powerlifter who was barely 5'4" but strong as an ox; Chet Watson, gunsmith and firearms expert; David Nguyen, an expert tree man—which was a seriously useful skill with the zillion pines I had on my property; Dennis Roper, a whiz at logistics and planning; Lilith Cantrell, our resident tech guru; Ronda Greitz, mechanic and engineer-type; Bubba Suarez, construction and all around handyman; Nils Engen, medic; Sharini Tandon, who had umpteen black belts and considerable military experience; and several others who didn’t necessarily possess a definable specialty but were sharp and intuitive and darn good picks.
The guard shack at the end of my driveway was one of the many new additions. I stopped in front of the gate and rolled my window down. The guard on duty was Tandon—tall and lean, with ink-black hair pulled back into a tight coil at the nape of her neck. She gave me a smile but kept a hand on her sidearm and maintained a distance of no less than ten feet from my vehicle.
“Afternoon, Miss Kara,” she said. “Any word on when football season might start up again?”
“Afternoon, Sharini. I figure the Saints will come marching in when the moon turns red with blood.” A coded question and response that changed daily and would hopefully trip up a shapechanged demon attempting to infiltrate. It wouldn’t stop Xharbek since he could simply read the answer from the guard’s mind, but the protections that Zack laid around the perimeter would hopefully be more up to the challenge.
She nodded at my correct reply then hit the button to open the gate. I continued up the long winding driveway and to my lovely hundred-year-old Acadian style house—still in need of a paint job, a task that kept slipping lower and lower on my list of priorities. Fifty yards to the east of the house was a double-wide mobile home, current residence of my best friend, Jill Faciane. To the west, five short and squat trailers sat in a line at the edge of the woods—housing and office space for the security team. It truly was a compound now.
Cory’s Bertha was parked near the front of my house. I pulled in beside it, and as I climbed out of the Humvee a flash of red hair drew my gaze to the woods beyond the house. Jill, running the obstacle course. Probably not the first time she’d gone throug
h it today, either. Hardcore exercise was only one of the ways she’d been burning through her grief and anger over the kidnapping of Ashava.
Jill had been understandably devastated, but she wasn’t the sort to wallow in misery. By the time the Feds sprang me from detention she was already working her ass off to get strong and tough. “I need to be ready to do whatever needs to be done to protect my daughter,” she’d told me.
I had zero doubt she’d be ready for anything. A mama grizzly was a fluffy bunny compared to Killer Jill.
And yet . . . I knew Jill, and she wasn’t fooling me. She was like a Prince Rupert’s Drop, able to withstand hammer blows to its body but exploding into bits at the slightest flick to its tail. The more time that passed without word of her daughter, the longer that vulnerable tail grew. High on my mental to-do list was “Talk to Jill about Xharbek being Fake-Zack,” but I was going to have to approach the issue carefully. I had no intention of keeping her in the dark, but the last thing I wanted was to get her hopes up about finding Ashava when nothing might result from it. I’d track her down after I finished assessing Cory. That would give me time to plan my approach.
She vaulted over a wall with an ease that showed her gymnastics background, did a diving roll under a log, then sprinted to the finish, face set in a snarl of determination. As she slowed, her expression shifted to a smile, and I realized Bryce was there, holding a stopwatch. I was too far away to hear what he said, but it made her laugh and smack his arm. A measure of my worry slipped away. Yep, Bryce was damn good for her.
Maybe one of these days he’d let Jill know how much he loved her.
No, he does that every day, I thought with a smile. But at the same time he never crossed the line. Though Zack was nowhere to be found, he was still a part of Jill’s life, and out of respect for their relationship, Bryce remained an absolute rock of support for her without ever doing anything to make her feel uncomfortable or pressured. And, in turn, she’d been there for him when he needed it. Bryce shared an essence bond with demonic lord Seretis—a union of minds that went deeper than the closest friendship. After the valve explosion, not only had the ways closed between Earth and the demon realm, but his bond with Seretis had gone silent as well. Yet that silence was more than just a closed door. For Bryce, it was as if the room beyond it had been a favorite space, a treasured and safe retreat that was now an empty void.
Yep, Jill and Bryce were a good team, helping each other through loss and worry.
I grabbed my bag and headed toward the porch, reaching it as Pellini’s chocolate Labrador trotted up the steps carrying a kitten by the scruff of its neck. Granger, by the look of it. One of the six kittens Fuzzykins had splorted out onto my bed around three months ago. They were more “catlets” than kittens now. Certainly a lot more rambunctious. To everyone’s amusement, Sammy had become fiercely protective of the litter, even enduring swats and growls from Fuzzykins to be near them.
