Bruiser focused on me intently. “He’s in sub-five basement. He’s too far down to be, do, or feel anything. As far as I know his brain is still trying to regrow.”
“Huh. Yeah. When I first saw him, he was clawing into the copper wiring. It was doing something to him, giving him a jolt of power. What if the storm is jolting him. Hitting his magic.”
“Accelerating his regeneration,” Bruiser said, evaluating my theory. “I’ll take a look.”
The limo swerved and accelerated. Bruiser hit a switch. “Shemmy?”
“The Council Chambers is under attack by revenants and members of the Bloods and the Crips. The gangs are working together, more or less, which Derek says is nearly unheard of. He’s called in reinforcements.”
“A ruse?” I asked. “Another one? Or the purpose of the riots, resources already divided, and so they strike at their central target.” The two gangs were Derek’s old enemies, and they had been fighting over his neighborhood way back when.
“Two enemy gangs working together?” Eli said. “What? Under some kind of truce? Or did some vamps pay them? Or drink them down and roll them?”
The limo swerved and slid on the water in the streets, hydroplaning, headlights bouncing across the buildings and reflecting from vehicles nearby. We sideswiped a car parked on the side of the street, fishtailed, and hit a second one on the other side. The impacts sent us grabbing for the emergency straps overhead. Mildly, Bruiser said again, “Shemmy?”
“I’ll come back and call the police, leave a report and my card. Cops won’t come, not for something small like this, but at least there’ll be a record at dispatch.”
Two blocks later, Shemmy roared up under the porte cochere and we boiled out of the limo to see people running away, into the dark. HQ’s security team was pulling two wounded in through the back entrance. The attack seemed to be over. The thought was half formed when I saw a human shape dressed in black pants and red jacket roll across the top of the brick fence and drop to the ground. Then two more. So the attack was coming in waves. Slight forms, short and skinny, underfed. Teenagers. Maybe hopped up on meth. Or spelled by the storm to more extreme and violent tendencies. And there was zero chance that the cops would show up here.
As Eli and I watched, Derek, Wrassler, and a full security team dashed from the entrance and through the porte cochere, carrying truncheons and leather saps—handheld weapons made of leather with sand or lead pellets inside to knock someone silly. HQ’s people were wearing vests under winter coats. Better than armor and guns. The attackers might be ready to rumble, but they were still kids.
The security team waded in and hit and smacked, going for kneecaps, elbows, and fists instead of faces and the sides of heads. Minimizing long-term injury, preventing death. They were trying to stop the kids without gunfire because they were kids.
Shemmy lowered the passenger window and shouted, “Security woman monitoring the cameras just saw someone go in a side gate? But we don’t have a side gate.” He pressed fingers to his earbud. “She says it’s a revenant and six gang members.”
“Side gate,” I whispered. “Oh crap.” To Bruiser I shouted, “Get to Leo’s office! Incoming!” I pulled on Beast-speed and raced out the gate and around the block. The rain was pattering, but the fog was growing denser. There were cars and media vans arriving up and down the street, as if they had been alerted. I tilted my head away from any cameras that might be able to focus through the heavy mist and darkness.
It was hard to spot the small gate in the brick fence. It was overgrown with vines. A dark hole resolved out of the whiteout and I stepped inside. The rain stopped instantly. The silence was intense after the constant sound of drumming downpour. It was darker than the inside of hell.
The gate had been propped open with a long block of wood, allowing for egress. Ahead, flashlights revealed a revenant racing through the blackness, chasing a dozen older teenagers wearing gang colors just like the ones at the porte cochere. The rev was tracking them by scent, running blind. The group dashed ahead, waited until the revenant almost caught up, and dashed ahead again. They were leading it inside. I was reminded of Leo’s comment about revenants being bodies a commander was willing to lose.
Beside me, a few feet inside the door, stood Rick. His hands were empty. Dangling. His face was hard with horror. He knew this gate because he had been carried out through it by werewolves when he was kidnapped. After which he had been tortured and raped by a werewolf bitch and her pack. But he seemed frozen, standing, doing nothing. PTSD. Eli, now Rick. The horror of memories that had broken them. The magical storm was affecting everyone.
I walked up to him and seized his face in one hand. Pulled him close, until he had no choice but to look in my eyes. “You can beat this. You beat it the first time. You can beat it every time.”
He gurgled a laugh, sounding like a death rattle. “Beating I can do. But am I going to have to relive it every damn time?”
“Probably. But you’ll survive that too. Beat that too. And you can have a good life.”
“Without you.”
“Without me.” I let his face go and walked into the dark. But not before I saw movement in the gate. Carolyne Bonner and a cameraman, filming me holding Rick’s face in what had to look like a lovers’ tryst. “Well, crap.” I adjusted my weapons and took off after the rev and the kids.
CHAPTER 12
A Six-Foot Snowfall in Hades
Eli had followed and he fell in beside and slightly behind me. The passageway was narrow and stank of mold and kids, their sweat laced with violence and adrenaline. There was a faint reek of rot from the rev. They took the winding passageways through the place but bypassed the entrance leading up to Leo’s office. Instead, we came out in the ballroom. In front of us, the group had raced across the wide space and ducked into a small set of hidden stairs leading down to all the basements. I stopped Eli, a hand on his arm. In Beast-vision, the room was silvers and greens. Empty. But something was wrong.
I sniffed. Again. We were definitely alone in the ballroom, in the dark, and the stink of the rev was strong, but there was something different beneath the other stinks, something that hadn’t been there during the last inspection. I had smelled this scent recently. “Plastic explosives,” I whispered. “If you wanted to destroy the ballroom where the EVs and Leo will meet to obstruct or delay the parley, where would you plant them?”
“The columns,” he said, just as soft. “Bring down the roof and take out the windows. It could be repaired, but likely not in time for the EuroVamp visit. Plus it’s quick. Strap explosives to the columns and bug out. Detonation from offsite.”
“I smell magic too,” I said.
“No reason magic can’t be added to bombs. Military postulated magical weapons decades ago.”