Elliot grinned, revealing white teeth and a cute, boyish charm that probably got him into loads of girl trouble. “That’s really code for she loves me.”
Liz snorted and swayed on her feet. Her fingernails dug into Elliot’s arm. “Okay. Wow. Seeing stars here.”
“Come on, let’s get you out of this room and into some fresh air,” Elliot said.
After they were gone, I stepped to the built-in shelving unit and snagged the video camera, leaning my hip against the counter and rewinding the tape, trying to concentrate on the task as the guilt formed in my gut. “I should’ve known she was a mage,” I said.
“It’s a risk every necromancer takes. No one can see auras on dead people, Charlie. Not even you. And it’s not like we had time to find out who she was beforehand. If we’d done that, we wouldn’t have gotten any information from her at all.”
Hank wasn’t looking at me. He was staring down at Daya’s corpse. I knew how he felt. Powerless. Daya wouldn’t have died in the first place if we’d been able to do our damn job and figured out who was kidnapping and killing Elysians. Seeing her wanting her life back, wanting what anyone would want … Yeah. Been there. Knew what that was like.
“At least we got the call instead of the ITF,” I muttered. Score one for the new federal agents.
Except for one “capture alive” case, the only other case we’d worked since taking on our new role two months ago had been a “kill or be killed” situation. Sounded harsh, but I—and obviously a lot of other people—believed that what we did was a necessary evil. There were things, even after thirteen years of integration, that posed too much of a threat to society, things that didn’t require capture or a trial, things that often preferred to fight to the death, things better left to … well, us.
The tape stopped rewinding. I turned the power off to save the battery.
“So now we know where our missing Adonai went. This”—Hank stared down at Daya—“is the seventh body in less than two weeks. Dumped in the trash … discarded.”
His profile went grim and utterly determined, lips drawn into an angry line, the muscle in his jaw flexing beneath day-old stubble. He dragged his fingers through his hair and then propped both hands on his hips. The air became charged with rage for these victims. He stood there like some dark avenging angel.
Like all sirens, Hank’s beauty bordered on fantasy, and he oozed masculinity like a sweet, beguiling perfume, but the last few months of being cut off from his siren power, had done something to him, had made him colder, harder, unpredictable, and, if I wanted to be honest with myself, scarier.
My friend at Animal Control arrived as Hank and I were leaving the warehouse. After showing Tim the hellhound and making him swear on his entire collection of autographed Atlanta Braves baseball memorabilia to send the beast back to Charbydon, I joined Hank in the parking lot with Liz and Elliot.
It was drizzling.
I sensed it before I ducked under the lopsided door.
Interesting phenomenon, the rain. It had to pass through the darkness, and each drop carried with it some gray, some primeval Charbydon power. When a drop hit the ground, it dispersed the darkness in a tiny puff, like smoke. The thing was, there were so many drops going on at once that it created a fog over the ground. And as long as it rained, those little whiffs of “smoke” kept being hit back down, or trapped once more into the rain. The more rain, the more “Charbydon Fog” as we’d begun calling it.
I turned up the collar on my jacket and hunched my shoulders, not happy at the thought of darkness splatting on my head and shoulders, not happy that my body responded, got a little energized by the raw, arcane power around me. Part of me was Charbydon now. And there was nothing I could do about the near-constant tingle I got from the darkness overhead. Made me wonder how all the other local Charbydons were feeling. Probably pretty damn good.
Atlanta had become a paradise for the Charbydon races; the forty-mile radius of darkness that spread from the grounds of Mott Technologies and outward made the city a dark replica of their home world. They’d tolerated the sunlight before, but this … this was like their own little hell on earth.
My feet stirred the thin layer of fog on the ground as I made my way across the derelict parking lot toward the dark silhouette of Liz’s van and the small overhead light spilling out from the vehicle, leading me like a lighthouse beacon. I rolled my neck, trying to ease the anxious feeling the darkness spawned in me.
All I wanted was to get out of this and somewhere I could think straight without this constant reminder that I was different, genetically altered to bring darkness to Atlanta.
Yeah. City in crisis? That was me.
Despite the press conferences and the constant assurances that the darkness had been the work of one power hungry Charbydon noble, many here held the entire Charbydon race responsible. And that idea was constantly fanned by those who’d been against the integration of our worlds from the beginning.
The tension wasn’t as bad as it had been in the first few weeks, but two months wasn’t a long time; the tension was still here like a living current just below the surface. Recently the focus had turned to asking: how does a city survive without sunlight? And that question was being addressed by the world’s best and brightest—Titus Mott.
Since most of our food sources came from other places anyway, we didn’t have to worry about produce and fresh foods; those continued to be trucked in as usual. But we did have to worry about sunlight deficiencies, the effect on sleep cycles, and the constant drain on electricity. The government was urging citizens to take frequent trips outside the forty-mile radius, and depending on where you were, that could happen almost daily or only on the weekends. The point officials tried to make was that it was doable. We could handle this until a way to get rid of the darkness was found. Travel outside the city. Sunlamps. Vitamin D pills, mandatory lights-out for residential districts and businesses on off-hours to save on power … Whatever it took.
And I refused to believe that Atlanta had become the new hell. The light would come back. My genetically altered blood had brought the darkness into this world, and it would be my job to take it out. I just wasn’t sure how to make that happen … yet.
Liz sat in the passenger seat of her van, Elliot hovering nearby. Her white throat bobbed as she chugged the OJ, drinking like a person starved. A third of the gallon was gone before she stopped and noticed me standing there. “What? I need vitamin C.”
A deficiency all natural necromancers were born with and one that got worse after a ritual. She seemed none the worse for wear except for the big elephant lurking over us that no one spoke about—how much of her life force this had cost her.
“You get a picture of her death?” I asked, folding my arms in front of me and trying not to look like I was hugging myself against the drizzle.
Liz angled in the seat to face us, took one more long drink, then: “Just flashes that corresponded to the things she said. Her life force was sucked out of her body. I felt that part. The ring Daya mentioned could be an object of power, the murder weapon possibly, a container for her life force.” Another long drink. “Didn’t get a face. I did get a halo of red. Fiery red. Power. Aura. Can’t say for sure.”
“What about location?” Hank asked.
“A terrace, definitely. Downtown view. Didn’t see the actual building, but the view was downtown. And I didn’t get a sense if it was her apartment or just the place where she was killed. That’s it. I wish it was more.” Another drink. “Oh, and guys? She wasn’t just a mage—she was a Magnus.”