“I don’t care what you did. How did you catch him?”
There was a tense silence. “Our losses have affected us all,” Lori finally said, as though Tayla’s snappish tone could be so easily explained. Her smile was brittle as she answered Tay’s question. “Stephanie latched onto the tracking signal you placed on him, but she lost it for a couple of hours. She picked it up again, exactly where she lost it. Now we know approximately where the entrance to the hospital must be. We traced the signal to a residential neighborhood and picked this demon up in his house. He was a shapeshifter.” She sat down next to Tayla, never taking her eyes off the body. “What was his name again? He told us, but by then, Jagger had broken his jaw, and it was hard to understand anything.”
She didn’t have the luxury or even the desire to feel sorry for the creature on the floor, but she did feel relief that at least it wasn’t Eidolon Lori was so casually talking about. She also didn’t have the luxury of the truth. If they knew the dead demon wasn’t Eidolon, they’d want her to get to him again. Taking out the hospital was one thing, but torturing Hellboy was another. So, as though she were overjoyed that he was dead, she smiled and said, “Eidolon.”
“And that’s him, right?”
“No doubt. Did you get any hospital information out of him?”
Lori shook her head. “He denied its existence no matter what we did to him. So what we need you to do is get back into the hospital. You said he gave you a way to contact them, right?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, wary of where this was going. “But I’m not sure what you expect me to do once I’m inside. You said you lost the tracking signal, so we can’t find the hospital that way.”
“You’ll call us from inside.”
Tayla gaped. “You’re kidding, right? Do you think hell has its own cell towers?”
“Of course not. Jagger will explain when he gets back.”
That’s when Tayla noticed that Jagger had gone, but when, she had no idea. The door opened, and he entered, carrying her leather jacket.
“All set?” Lori asked, and Jagger nodded, reached into the coat pocket.
He pulled out a cell phone and held it up. “This, Tayla, is your secret weapon. Did Lori tell you about it?”
“She said I’m supposed to call from inside the hospital. But what if there’s no signal?”
Jagger grinned, and she supposed most women found him attractive, but there’d always been something off about him, something that had never allowed her to look at him with physical attraction. Then again, very few men had ever done it for her. The one who did do it for her wasn’t a man at all.
“That’s the beauty of this little device. All you have to do is flip it open. There will be a countdown on the screen. Before it gets to zero, dial one-one-nine.” He stuffed the phone into her coat pocket.
“That’s it?”
“Yep. When you dial, it’ll blast out a tracer spell. Everything within a hundred-yard radius will be contaminated, and as the demons leave the hospital, they’ll leave trails that’ll be visible to our diviner for days.”
“Kinda like ants,” Lori said. “And if the hospital is in this realm, we should be able to see it with the spell almost instantly.”
Jagger handed Tayla her jacket. “Once the countdown is activated, it can’t be stopped, and the phone will self-destruct if the number isn’t dialed.”
Man, this was crazy. The words “suicide mission” kept flashing in her head. Shuddering, she shrugged into her jacket. She had to get out of here, get some fresh oxygen into her lungs and into her brain so she could think.
Lori nodded at Jagger, a tiny motion Tayla almost missed, and Jagger came at her as if he’d been launched from a cannon. Before Tayla could get her arms free of her coat sleeves, he grabbed her, slammed her back into his chest, and kept her immobilized.
“Hey!”
Lori’s foot crunched into her torso, and Tay’s breath exploded from her lungs with such force she couldn’t even groan at the searing agony. Jagger released her, and she sank to her knees, cursing herself for being so weak as to show pain, but cursing Lori and Jagger even more.
She clasped her hands over her stitches, felt warm, sticky blood flow into her palms. The wound itself stung, but the pain radiated deeper, so deep it felt as if her organs were shifting and imploding.
Lori knelt beside her, all fuzzy pinks and blues through Tay’s watery vision. “I’m sorry, hon. I figured faster was better. Like pulling a tooth.” She stroked Tay’s arm gently. “I know this seems excessive, but we’re at war. War means sacrifice. We’re all that stands between humans and hell on Earth. Are you willing to do whatever is necessary to take these beasts down? Are you willing to give your life if it comes down to it?”
Her life, yes. Her spleen, no. She didn’t have enough breath to say any of those things, so she jerked her head in a nod.