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A year down the road, I shouldn’t need to remind everyone of the hierarchy, but it felt necessary on this night.
I looked to Cora. “What the fuck did you do?”
“EMP blast. We need to get out of here. Kirsten’s on her way with Mordecai.”
She barely had the words out of her mouth, and the outside scenery changed. Cora and I were still in the wreck of the SUV, but we were now in someone’s garage.
“You’re safe,” Mordecai told us, and then I saw the old god and Kirsten, and the scent of the building told me we were in the Homewood underground.
“Thank you,” I told Mordecai, and looked back to Cora. “You carry an EMP device in your purse?”
Rather than answer, she asked, “Any idea who just lobbed the opening offensive of what might turn into all-out war?”
Now that I had time to consider all possibilities, it seemed most likely someone had hacked the Maserati in order to open the accelerator all the way and disable the brakes.
I looked to Mordecai and back to Cora. “Strigorii don’t often hack vehicles as an opening shot. The goal is to weaken the leader enough you can take them in a challenge, so you gain their assets when you take over.” I considered my options. Odds were, Cora’s contacts would track the hacker faster than our people, but I still needed to go at it from all directions.
I looked in Kelsey’s head and saw that Nathan already had her looking to see who’d hacked us, and I set a program in her mind so she’d telepath me first if she found something. She was my vampire and Drake’s employee — they knew there’d be conflicts of interest when they hired her.
I telepathed Patience, Please have Winston begin looking to see who hacked the vehicle. For now, let’s keep our newest hacker out of it from our end.
Of course. I’m glad you and Cora are okay.
I telepathed Josef next. I assume Cora’s contacts will be able to track our hacker faster than our people?
In all likelihood, but let’s go at it from both directions.
Etta sent a polite telepathic knock, and when I opened the connection, she told me, I was with Ryan when Venom ushered me out, so the slayer will know something’s happened. It’s only a matter of time until his sources come through — or however the fuck he gets his information.
Was this a problem? It could be, or he could be a help. I’ll deal with Ryan later. You handle your other responsibilities, but keep me apprised of further possible issues with him as they come up. Most everything else can be routed through Patience.
I pulled my cellphone out, but it wouldn’t tap on. I pushed the button. Still nothing.
“EMP,” Cora reminded me.
Damn, the electromagnetic pulse had killed everything electronic. “Fuck.” I wanted to look at the camera feeds at all our locations. I knew our control room people would be doing so, but I wanted a quick glance. I put my bricked phone back in my pocket and told Cora, “Etta’s found the one person I’d have a hard time killing if he dares hurt her.”
“I think it’s possible he’s just as vulnerable as her, maybe more so,” Kirsten said. “Also, I feel I should point out that Ryan’s helped us more than he’s hindered us.”
“He killed one of my guards. He wasn’t wrong to do so, but he didn’t talk to me about it first, and that bothers me. I’ve taken a deep dive into the memories of every one of them in the past couple of days, to make sure they’re being good little boys and girls, so hopefully it won’t be a problem in the future, but I had the idea he’d come to us with a problem, before taking one of our people out.”
“He’s never needed to take any of my personal pack out, but when he’s taken out a wolf in one of the distant packs, he’s never told me ahead of time,” Cora said. “Actually, I take that back. He once warned me another slayer was looking closely at an Alpha in South Georgia, so I guess that was a heads-up, but I have somewhat of a relationship with him. We worked together, long ago, before I was Alpha. We spent a week together in Africa a few years before you and I met, and I think of Ryan as — not quite a friend, but not far from it. I know he’ll do his job and take me out if I’m a danger to humans, but I’m actually okay with that.”
I was absolutely not okay with that, but there was no need in having that discussion, so I asked this wolf I’d fallen head-over-heels in love with, “Any other surprises you carry around I need to know about? Who the fuck carries around an EMP device in their purse?”
“Need to know? No, and that’s the important word. Nathan is allowing me access to some Drake toys, and he can legally do so because I still do enough work for them to stay active on their top-operator list.”
“Wait,” Kirsten said. “Nathan let you keep one of the mini-EMP devices? Just, carry it around with you?”
“Yeah, can you bring him here, or us to him, please? I don’t think we were within a quarter mile of anyone’s house when I activated it, but if we were, he’ll need to mobilize, and someone’s going to owe the homeowner a great deal of money. That would be me, probably, unless I can find whoever hacked our vehicle and get it from them.”
Right, because Drake Security would be legally liable for damage created by a device under their control. There would probably be fines imposed for impacting civilians with it, too.
“I’ll pay anything necessary, if it comes to it,” I told them, “but there were no people in the vicinity. It’s possible there was an unoccupied home, but I don’t believe that to be the case along that stretch of road.”
“He’s on his way down,” Kirsten said, and she met my gaze. “We need to know whether this was against Cora, you, or the two of you together.”
It was an excellent question — one we were still debating when Nathan walked into the garage a few minutes later. He looked Cora and me over, then circled around the trashed Maserati. He looked to Cora and said, “Report, please.”
