Once I was certain she was down, I backed away to retrieve the gun and held it trained on Famine from a safe distance. About the time my arms started trembling, men and women dressed in FBI tees and black fatigues swarmed the living room. Weapons trained on me, the only threat left standing, they barked orders I couldn’t hear over the pounding of my heart.
The shotgun was pried from my grip with such force I suspected the crack I heard was the pinky on my right hand breaking. A swift kick to my knees took out my legs, and the floor rose up to meet me, impact with the hardwood a slap in the face. I didn’t fight as my arms were wrenched behind me or when I was cuffed at the spine. I understood the NSB agents were panicky over being crammed into the same room with two of their legendary boogeywomen. At least with my head angled this way, I saw Wu and not…
I swallowed hard and tasted bile as the cold place shattered around me, slicing me up on the inside as its slivers migrated through my bloodstream. Hot spikes of emotion simmered in my veins, thawing me enough to register the horrors of the room anew.
Uncle Harold was gone. Gone.
I had… No. What I had done, I had done to Famine. Not him.
Paramedics barreled in and carried Dad and then Wu out of the house.
A woman knelt beside my head, her lips moving, but the dull roar in my head deafened me.
Hours or years or maybe minutes later, the warmth of a wide palm cradling my cheek melted the remaining frost crystalizing my vision.
“Cole,” I rasped. “You’re here.”
“Of course I am.” He traced the curve of my jaw with his scarred knuckle. “Where else would I be?”
Straining, I lifted my head. “Is everyone else —?”
“Sir,” a young man’s voice broke when addressing Cole. “You need to step away from her. She’s not to be released until Special Agent Kapoor arrives.”
A prehistoric growl rumbled across the room to vibrate the agent in his boots. Or maybe that was just his knees knocking.
“Apologies, sir,” he squeaked. “I don’t have clearance to release her.”
“I do,” Cole snarled in a bass voice that rang through my bones. Leaning over me, he snapped the chain at my spine then popped the cuffs from my wrists before rubbing them until the circulation returned. “Now, leave us alone.”
With a panicked nod, the agent vanished into the bowels of the house.
I willed my eyebrows higher to draw Cole’s attention back to me, away from that poor guy just doing his job, and to get my answers.
“Rixton is fine. Sherry and Nettie are too.” He supported my elbows, easing me upright. “Look at me, Luce.” His voice held such tenderness, I ached as he murmured a soft warning. “I’m going to hold you now.”
There was no fight left in me when he sat on the floor, none when he hauled me onto his lap, or when he wound his arms around me in a protective cage that insulated me from what I had done.
Thom prowled in sometime later and settled beside us on his haunches. “Your father is stable.”
Lifting my head required help from Cole’s shoulder. “His heart?”
“Strong and steady,” Thom assured me. “He’s resting comfortably.”
“Mrs. Trudeau is secure.” Santiago took position behind Cole, his eyes going cold when he noticed the twisted metal they had used to secure me. “She’s at the church.” My blank stare must have told him I wasn’t tracking. “She had choir practice tonight.” He gathered what remained of the handcuffs. “There’s no safer place for her now.”
And no better support system after the news broke either.
“Wu is being admitted to a private facility.” Miller, who arrived last, took position beside Santiago. “The blade Famine used was coated in a neurotoxin. The paralysis is spreading, and respiration is shutting down. His nervous system is on the brink of collapse.”
“Let me up.” I shoved off Cole’s shoulder. “I have to see him.”
“They’ve already left.” Miller gentled his tone. “There was no time to spare.”
Sinking back against Cole, I wrapped my arms around my middle in a weak attempt to hold myself together. “What will they do with Famine?”
“Contain and isolate.” Santiago kept busy with his hands. “She’s a hostile and will be treated as such. No doubt she’ll end up in some government facility without a name, staffed by people with barcode tattoos on their wrists, who dress for work in hazmat suits.”
“That’s not what I meant.” My fingernails bit into my elbows. “What about… her host?”
Calling what remained of Uncle Harold by his name nauseated me. I couldn’t do it.
“She will remain with her host until they figure out a way to separate the two,” Miller told me. “She has a form she could assume in this terrene, but it would impede her ability to communicate.”
“She killed him because of me,” I murmured. “He’s dead because I loved him.”
Thom stroked the top of my head the same way I often petted him. “You can’t go down that road.”
Too late. I had been set upon that path, and I had no choice but to walk it to its conclusion.
A steady vibration sparked in Cole’s chest and was echoed by the men surrounding me. The reason soon became clear as Special Agent Farhan Kapoor strolled into the room, pinpointed our small gathering, and invited himself to join us.
“I’m sorry about Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Boudreau. He was a good man.” His advance stalled out when Miller placed a warning hand on his shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do for you or your family, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
I’m sorry.
Two little words, morsels really, barely a mouthful, hardly a taste.
I’m sorry.
“There is something you can do for me.” I unlinked my arms and sat upright on Cole’s lap. “You can let me skip to the head of the line for quarantine. I want to enroll in the academy by the end of the week.”
“There’s no need.” He was already shaking his head. “After your meeting with Deland, the brass decided to treat your hiring as a lateral transfer. You won’t be attending the academy. You’re moving straight into OJT under Adam Wu’s supervision.”
That left me with one big question. “What about the testing?”
“With a new specimen in containment, the brass isn’t going to be looking as hard at you. I suggested you be allowed to submit to the required procedures in stages, as an outpatient, and they’ve agreed.” He pointed a finger at me. “Keep your appointments, and I’ll do my damndest to keep you out of a hospital johnny.”
Gratitude tightened my throat. Maybe as far as bosses went, he wasn’t a bad one to have after all. “Thanks.”
“Get her out of here,” he told Cole. “The cleanup crew is about to come in and stage the place.”
Climbing off Cole’s lap, I shoved my feet under me. “What are you going to tell Aunt Nancy?”
“A home invasion gone wrong fits best, and we try to keep it simple.” Experience led him to answer my next question without prompting. “There will be a slip-up at the morgue, and a body will be cremated before anyone can view it. His family will never know the remains aren’t his.”
The Trudeaus had his and her plots in the cemetery behind their church. Would we bury an empty casket? The urn? The ashes? Or would Aunt Nancy sprinkle his ashes at his favorite fishing hole? Would she keep them on the mantle? Save a portion for herself then divvy the rest up among their children? Would she offer me some? Did I want any?
Shaking off the morbid bent to my thoughts, I attempted to zone back in. “What about Dad?”
“He’s been taken to the same private facility as Wu for testing and treatment.” Kapoor raised his voice to drown out my protests. “The Trudeaus have been acting as caretakers for your father. We have no idea what Famine might have done to him or given to him during that time.”
A greasy ball of fear curled in my gut at what he left unsaid, that he might not be human any longer.
“I would have tasted the sickness in him when I bit him, and there was none,” Thom said. “His symptoms worsened after he settled in at the Trudeaus’. Famine must have already been in place at that point. She kept him dazed and compliant. She never let him rise from the healing fugue where I left him.”