He’d gone to my house? While I’d been off at the spa and … the winery? I couldn’t help but flick my eyes over his shoulder to where a somber and serious John Creede was standing with arms crossed over his broad chest. He was watching every move I made. Was I going to have to decide between them right here and now?
No. First things first. “The flowers were gorgeous, Bruno. Really. They arrived just before I went out of town.”
“Out of town? Working?” He was fishing, but I had no duty to check in with him and would not be bullied or guilted into being embarrassed.
“No, actually, I was at a spa in Napa Valley with Dawna and Emma. It was an early Christmas gift.”
A tremendous howl of inhuman rage and pain filled the air. Bruno abruptly released me and I dropped nearly a foot to the ground. Matty turned and we all watched a flare of fire shoot up nearly a hundred feet. Heat hit us in a wave, so strong that I was surprised my hair didn’t catch on fire. I pushed Bruno away. “Do your job and I’ll do mine. We’ll deal with things later.”
He nodded once sharply and gave me a fierce press of lips against mine that sent tingles all the way down my spine. He put a hand on my arm and we started down the path.
John gave way, but only slightly. I was both shocked and terrified when his arm went around my waist, pulling me away from Bruno. John’s passionate magic-laden kiss added shivers to the tingles. He pressed his car keys into my hand. “Be careful. Get out if you need to.” He didn’t look at either Bruno or Matty, just stalked away with intense determination and quickly blended into the crowd of magicians and witches.
Matty’s brows rose. Bruno was literally speechless, his face completely blank, and I took full advantage of his shock by running away, racing down the pathway past him toward the second right turn, where Alex would be. I needed an armed policeman close by right about now. I tucked the car keys into my back pocket as I went.
In a sea of black jackets lit with red flashing lights and the fires of hell, it wasn’t too difficult to find one small blonde woman in the uniform of our local finest. “Alex!” I shouted, but she didn’t hear me above the noise of chaos. I pushed my way past both uniformed officers and detectives I’d seen on the street and caught up with her before she disappeared underneath a line of yellow tape. The heat underfoot felt like it was going to melt my shoes any minute. I pulled on her sleeve and she turned.
“Jesus, Graves. It’s about damned time you got here.” Oh good. I had been hoping her response wasn’t going to be, Someone get her out of here.
Alex is surprisingly strong for her size. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away. It was only when we were safely in a car with the doors locked and windows up that she spoke again, her forehead resting against the steering wheel: “I had no idea how bad this was going to go. They must have known we were coming and waited until we had all of our people positioned around the wall. Then they blew the place using car bombs on the other side of the wall. The press thinks we lost five people. It’s probably closer to fifty. Then the rift opened and … heaven help us, Celia. I don’t know how we’re going to close this thing up.”
“What have you tried so far?” It’s not like I had any better answers than the experts they’d probably already consulted, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
She lifted her head and shook it wearily. “We’ve got a ring of warrior priests around the facility, coordinating exorcism rituals. Mages are at work to create a spell that can be simultaneously cast to put a wall around the breech. That will at least keep the demons inside. A few imps have already wormed their way through gaps in the temporary barrier, but sharpshooters armed with silvered holy-water bullets are keeping anything from getting past the second perimeter. If they don’t die of heat prostration first, that is.”
Wow. I couldn’t think of anything really useful to add. There were already more mages and witches here than I’d ever seen in one place. “What about escapees? Any idea how many got out?”
She grimaced. “A bunch. We don’t really know how many yet. We might never know because of the blast and the lava. It’ll be nine-eleven all over again, trying to identify fragments by DNA.”
There was a tap on the driver’s side window and Alex turned. A man I recognized, wearing an FBI jacket, was motioning for her to lower the window. She reached for the handle and started to crank it down. The problem was that I only knew one FBI guy—Rizzoli—and this wasn’t him. It was one of the guards who had been inside the prison, and why he didn’t recognize me I didn’t know. Or maybe he did and was going to get to me through Alex. The police car must be magically spelled so that he couldn’t get inside. But if she opened the window—
“Alex! Down!” I pulled her by the hair down to the bench seat just as the man reached into the car. I pulled one of my knives and lunged forward over Alex, effectively shielding her with my body. I thrust the knife into his stomach and he screamed. Heads turned at the sound and a dozen people headed our way. But it was too late. If he had been a normal human, he would have fallen to the ground with a horrible gut wound … which could have been treated by the EMTs. And I would have gone to jail.
But as it was, the lead policeman threw out his arms to stop those behind him when he saw flames lick out of the wound and eat the man alive, leaving only a few tatters of black nylon to float away on the breeze.
I crawled off Alex and she sat up, one hand to her nose. Blood was running between her fingers and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. She didn’t look at me or thank me before she was out of the car. “Davis, go find one of the priests. I want everyone at this site to pass a holy-water test. Barnes, clean up this mess before it infects anyone. I want people in full magical armor from now on. We’ve got rogues among us. LaFuente, find the FBI SitCom and get him over here to see this before we bag it up.” She turned to me and let out a sigh. “Graves, go … just go do whatever you’re going to do. I don’t even want to know how you did that.”
“No creds,” I said as I got out of the car and stopped, resting my hands on the roof. “I’ll get hauled out of here by my teeth. I need to stick with you. At least you know me.”
“I know you, too, and trouble isn’t ever far away.” I smiled at the familiar voice. Rizzoli was walking up behind the man Alex had called LaFuente. He stepped lightly over the pile of still-smoldering ash and handed me a piece of plastic over the hood. “Put this on and start ferreting out more of the bad guys. You’ve got talents we don’t. Use them.”
I looked at the tag he gave me. On one side it bore the seal of the FBI. On the other, underneath the plastic laminate, it said: Celia Graves, Special Consultant.
“How cool is this!?” I put the little clip on my shirt, unsure which side should show out. “Thanks, Rizzoli.”
“No,” he said very seriously. “Thank you. There’s a boat captain at Smallmouth Harbor who was very grateful we showed up last night.”
My jaw dropped. I’d completely forgotten Maria’s problem with the drug lord. “Did you get him?”
Rizzoli smiled and it had a satisfying dark edge. “Red-handed. He’ll be behind bars for a very long time. The judge agreed he was a flight risk. No bail.”
Awesome! “You rule, Rizzoli. So you got promoted to situation commander?”
Now his expression wasn’t so pleased. The muscles in his cheeks and forehead tightened. “Field promotion … to replace the two guys above me who are in pieces. Now I’m the lucky guy in the line of fire.”
Ouch. “Sorry. Anything I can do?”
“Yeah. There is.” He stepped out of the way as a hazmat-suited team came up behind him with a body bag. “You have the strangest group of contacts I’ve ever seen. Call them. See them. Find out why this is happening. I don’t want to know how to seal the rift. There are a thousand people behind me who can do that. I want to know why it’s here—in this place, at this time. There’s never been a problem before at this prison and the area got a seal of approval from the MPRC after a five-year white-paper study. I want to know that when we close the rift it won’t show up somewhere else next week.”
That was surprisingly forward thinking and I was flattered that he’d asked it of me. Of course, I might be one along with 999 other people whom he’d also asked. But it still felt nice. “You’ve got it. Do you want me to start right now? Because I’d have to leave.” And I didn’t know if I wanted to. There were people here I cared about. Alex and Rizzoli, Matty, Bruno, and, yes, John.
Wait. When had I started calling him John? I thought back and realized it was right after the grotto. No wonder he’d been smiling in the car. Shit. Still, there were demons afoot, plus vampires and werewolves who might well be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pick off stray cops who wandered off to take a leak.
Rizzoli nodded thoughtfully as the hazmat team used an ordinary-looking broom and dustpan to scoop up the bits of demon-infested guard and pour them carefully into a black zippered bag. “Stick around for a bit. Stay with the guys who are doing the holy-water tests. Anybody who doesn’t pass goes to you.”
“So you’re sanctioning me to … kill people?”
“No,” he said seriously. “I’m sanctioning you to keep the demons from getting out of this zone. If you know a better way to do that with every priest in Southern California already busy, I’m open to suggestions.”
I touched my pocket and felt the press of hard ceramic. “Well, if there aren’t more than five of them, I might have a solution.” I walked around the car and whispered in Rizzoli’s ear about the charm balls John had made. Damn it. Creede. Creede had made.
“I like it. Give them a try. We can put them in containment then and keep them from escaping until a priest is available.”
All of a sudden a hum rose into the air. It was an airy, light sound, very much like the children’s choir I’d heard on the call with Mr. Murphy. It caught everyone’s attention and we all turned as one. A blue light rose into the sky like a beacon until it dwarfed the fountain of lava that was spewing from the earth. The air felt immediately cooler and I could finally take a deep breath that didn’t scald my lungs. Everybody waited anxiously as the blue shield began to round over at the top. Some demons can fly, so it can’t just go straight up. It has to close and lock.