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I glanced at the soldier’s name tag and gave him a kind smile. “Corporal Frazier? Are you all right?”
Sweat beaded on his forehead and dark splodges marked his maroon shirt under his arms. “Yes, ma’am. Just shaken.”
“That’s understandable. Lord Kadir has that effect on pretty much everyone.” I gestured toward his pocket. “What did you write on the napkin?”
He paled and took a half-step back. “It’s . . .” The word came out in a strangled croak, as if he’d tried to hold it in and failed.
“Corporal? It’s important for me to know.” Even more so now that it seemed Kadir had put some sort of compulsion on him.
Frazier fought his hand as it moved toward his pocket, while I watched in growing confusion. Tense and shaking, he withdrew the napkin and offered it to me. “My . . .” he said through gritted teeth. “My . . . confession.”
Confession? What the hell? I took the napkin, one corner tearing where he held it in a vise grip. The instant I had it in my hand, Frazier stiffened and shouted, “I did it. I kidnapped Tommy Lochlan.”
I stared in utter shock as I struggled to place the teasingly familiar name.
“Are you shitting me?!” Pellini roared, startling me out of my daze. “That was my case!” He barreled toward Frazier, fists cocked and murder in his eyes. “What the fuck did you do to him, you fucking piece of shit? I held his mom while she fucking cried her eyes out!”
Oh, shit. Now I remembered the name. “Pellini, no!” I jumped in front of him and prayed he wouldn’t simply sweep me aside. Tommy Lochlan was a Beaulac kid who’d disappeared during a third grade field trip a year or so back. Despite intensive searches and a media blitz funded by the Child Find League, no clues to the boy’s disappearance ever turned up.
Pellini stopped, eyes blazing in fury as the MPs seized an unresisting Frazier. “What’d you do to him, you shitstain? Where is he now?”
The terrible, nauseating details poured out of Frazier as everyone in the compound looked on in stricken silence. He concluded by choking out, “F-false wall in my closet. Still th-there. Alive.”
Curses and exclamations of shock erupted throughout the compound. The blubbering Frazier got hauled off while Pellini made urgent calls to scramble a team to recover Tommy.
I tuned out the noise and commotion while I tried to sort through the entire turn of events. Kadir had compelled this teddy bear of a guy to confess to kidnapping and heinous child abuse. But why? Kadir seemed to delight in tormenting people. Was his purpose simply to break Frazier and make him suffer? Yet, his aura had gone to hell-frozen-over pissed when he confronted Frazier—as if it was the idea of the kid locked in the closet that affected the ice king. None of it fit my mental image of Kadir’s style. Weird.
Once Pellini finished his calls, we returned to the Spires. The number of security personnel around it had tripled in the last two minutes, though the invisible barrier that kept people from getting close remained in full effect.
“We need to take the fight to them,” a young private announced as we drew near, face flushed with the excitement of the recent events. “Go through the gate with a few tons of C-4. That’ll shake ’em up!”
I drew breath to rip him a new asshole, but Pellini beat me to it. “What a great idea! Except for the fact that you can’t get near the gate, and even if you could, you’d end up in Lord Kadir’s lap.” The soldier swallowed, wide-eyed, but Pellini was already wound up over the Frazier incident and on a roll. “But sure, maybe we could all go through the rifts instead. I’m assuming you somehow know where the rifts come out in the demon realm? Because a rift a hundred feet in the air is no problem for winged demons, but you and your precious C-4 might have a hard time flying. Or maybe the rift will open up in the middle of a demon encampment. But, hey, you’ll have a few tons of C-4, so you’ll be fine. If C-4 even works there, that is, which none of us know for sure.” His smile grew fierce as the young man’s expression went sullen. “And it’s a good thing you have othersight so you can see the arcane traps and wards. Oh, wait, you can’t see the arcane.”
Pellini lifted his hands and spun out a sweet little coil of potency. I had to bite the side of my cheek to keep from smiling. He’d been practicing. A lot. The kid couldn’t see the odd, Kadir-style aversion sigil, but it was clear he felt it as Pellini advanced on him. His face paled, and he stumbled back.
“Y’think you can remember to stay tough when you’re pissing yourself?” Pellini said through clenched teeth.
“Pellini,” I murmured and took hold of his forearm. “Stand down.”
He stabbed a glance my way then exhaled and dispelled the sigil. Immediately the private straightened, gulping as he tried to regain his tough-guy composure.
“Remember that sensation,” I said, voice hard. “That was one variety of an aversion, and Pellini snapped it out in a matter of seconds. Now think about being faced with large numbers of creatures who’ve lived and breathed the arcane for their entire existence—and I’m talking hundreds or thousands of years.” I paused to let that sink in, pleased to see that I had the attention of everyone in the area, even Captain Hornak. “Whether it’s a rift or a gate, we can’t go in blind. Remember the Dirty Thirty? They were brave and ready for anything, just like you.” A week after the incursions began, DIRT Command—against my advice—sent thirty volunteers through the New York rift. A few days later, demons were taken down wearing weapon harnesses made from their uniforms and skin and teeth. “You want your mama to bury a hunk of your skin, private?”
He quickly shook his head. “No, ma’am.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to tell her that’s all we could find.” I turned my back on the private then stalked toward Captain Hornak with Pellini beside me. Hornak frowned at us as if we were the root of all his problems and drew breath to speak, but I beat him to the punch.
“Get me a secure line to General Starr,” I snapped out. I knew he wanted to order us both to come to HQ with him, but I had zero time for bureaucratic games.
A muscle in his jaw twitched, but Hornak didn’t have an argument for my request. A few minutes later I was tucked in the back office with Pellini and a video conference connection to a harried General Starr. Behind him, a wall screen showed a world map practically glowing with rift activity.
I gave the general a full report, including several details the statuefied people likely weren’t too clear on, and made sure to point out that Pellini and I were still the only ones who could get near the gate. Hopefully, that would quash any ideas of sending troops through. I also emphasized that Kadir had departed peacefully and of his own accord, but left out my suspicion that he might still be on Earth since there was nothing to be done about it at the moment.
When I finished, the general grimaced and scratched a hand over his stubbled scalp. “Thank god you were there to keep the situation from going batshit crazy.” He hooked his thumb toward the screen behind him. “A crisis at the Spires on top of all the new rifts would’ve screwed us royally. We’re down to raw recruits and shitty equipment already. Don’t have even half enough SkeeterCheaters to do the job.”
I straightened in surprise. “I thought production was on track?”
“A rift in New Mexico took out a train carrying critical components. Whole goddamn train is gone.” General Starr scowled. “I don’t know if the demons knew about the cargo or just got lucky, but either way it set us back months. Those nets might as well be made from Elvis Presley’s hair for what they’re worth now.” He shook his head. “We’ll have to figure out another way to deal with the fuckers. When you get a chance, write up your report on this incident and then one with projections for anticipated SkeeterCheater need and possible alternatives.”
