all. I really did want to talk to her and find out what in the hell had gone wrong.
Because it was hell on earth. When we got out of the car, the true extent of the situation became dreadfully clear. The fervent chanting of priests in Latin couldn’t quite block out the growls and unearthly screams that made my skin want to crawl off my bones. The ground was rumbling with an eerie intensity like the beginning of an earthquake but worse. I felt my muscles seize, and though I struggled to move, I couldn’t. Creede took my arm and pulled me forward a few feet and I suddenly felt better. “Outer barrier to keep the curious away. You going to be okay? Sure you don’t want to take the car back? I won’t think any less of you.”
I opened my mouth to reply when I heard a voice to my left: “Celia? What in the name of everything holy are you doing here?”
Creede and I both turned to see Father Matteo DeLuca, Bruno’s younger brother, storming our way. “Good to see you, Father,” Creede said with an outstretched hand.
Matty shook it absently, because his whole focus was on me. “It took me five
If he thought guilt was going to work on me … well, he’d known me long enough to know better. “If I remember right, it took four hours to clean
Creede was struggling not to smile. “As much as I’d love to see who wins this tug-of-war, I’d better report in.”
He hadn’t walked two feet before he nearly ran straight into Bruno. Oh no. I could fight vampires, I could battle demons, but I didn’t want to face both Creede and Bruno in front of a priest.
My former fiance’s face lit up when he saw me and he broke into a run. He nearly tackled me and swept me into his arms. The scent of him, the power that flowed over my skin, felt good and right. He was as handsome as ever, and having him near me made my heart beat an extra thump. “Thank heavens you’re safe, Celie! I’ve been worried sick. You didn’t call and the house was empty.”
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,
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:
“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
