Banshee Hunt (26 page)

“Oh.” Yasmin's cheeks reddened some more. But she didn't seem upset. And then her smile grew even broader.

She stood up suddenly and came around the table to stand right in front of him and all James could see was the womanly shape of her body, scarcely concealed behind the shimmering white satin. Then she grabbed the hem of her night slip and started swishing it around just a little bit. Teasing him.

“So you like this?”

James' mouth went dry. “Oh dear God woman, have mercy! You know I do! That's why you wore it. I'd have to be half dead not to want to have you here and now. Fortunately for both of us I'm about three quarters dead at the moment. Though that may be unfortunate, depending on your point of view.”

“That's … interesting.”

“Interesting? Wear that for me again in three or four days and I'll show you just how interesting it is.” He meant it too. He might not know exactly what she wanted from him. And he really had no clue about women. Not anymore – assuming he had ever had a clue. But he knew what he wanted.

“Is that an order?” Yasmin blushed brightly as she said it. But there was no doubt that she was enjoying the power she had over him as she kept showing him everything he wanted to see.

“A challenge? An offer? A heartfelt plea? You decide. I’m just hoping you decide to follow through.” That last James was very clear on. But he was unfortunately also very clear that he had to go. Before he did something they might both regret.

“But I need to get a move on.” He gulped down the last of the coffee and crammed the last piece of toast into his mouth before standing up and heading for his bag.

“No.” Yasmin was suddenly standing between him and the bag looking worried. “Others can do it. You're in no shape. You need to rest.”

She shouldn't have done that – or perhaps she should have – as James instantly gave in to his desires. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her close, and started kissing her. Letting his lips enjoy all of her face. Maybe it was a mistake – he didn't know – and it hurt like hell as his bruised skin protested, but it felt so good. She felt so good. Warm and soft and shaped just right. And she smelled so nice. But more than that she was melting into him, sinking into his embrace, kissing him back. He had no doubt where she wanted this to go. The same place he did. Unfortunately he hadn't been kidding when he'd told her he simply didn't have the strength. And eventually when he needed to breathe and came up for air he had to tell her that.

“I'm sorry. I'm just too weak at the moment.” But his hands didn't want to let her go. In fact they'd lowered a little so that he was holding her buttocks as he pulled her tight. And no matter the pain, his body was telling him that this had to happen.

“I think you've got all the strength you need.” She laughed softly in his ear knowing she had him. “And I can be gentle.” She whispered it into his ear just before she started kissing him hungrily again. Then her hands started working away at his belt. It wasn't long before she had it undone and was desperately pushing his jeans down.

James was in pain, but that couldn't stop him responding to her. Nothing could. Hunger had come from nowhere and it completely possessed him. As it had her. He quickly stopped trying, knowing it was already too late. He was going to do this if it killed him. Instead he simply started hobbling toward the couch with her, his pants around his ankles and Yasmin urging him to hurry. Once they made it, he laid her down and took her in a desperate heated rush.

It was wild and exciting. Hurried and frantic. Desperate. Almost frenzied. Something completely animal and completely wonderful. And at the end when they reached the inevitable conclusion, they both cried out uncontrollably.

Afterwards, James was exhausted. He was supposed to be fit, and yet his heart was thundering in his chest and his breaths were coming in gasps as he lay there, collapsed on top of her. Yasmin looked to be no better. But she was smiling a little. Not giggling and laughing uncontrollably, but at least not looking upset. Not like the last time. In fact her hands were stroking him, exploring him, enjoying him and there was a dreamy look in her eyes. She was happy, and that was good. He wanted her to be happy. And above all else he never wanted to have to go through another morning like the last one they'd endured together.

But he still had to go. And that he suspected, was not going to be well received.

“Yasmin?” He brushed a few locks of her lustrous dark hair out of her face so he could kiss her a little more. And drink in her natural perfume. God she smelled good!

“Yes.” She answered him on automatic, clearly distracted, her attention not really on him, but on what had been. She was breathing heavily and perspiring a little as well. And the smile on her face was positively indecent.

At least the smile told James that Yasmin was happy. For the moment anyway. It made him feel proud and he would have loved to see that smile grow broader. But he still knew he couldn't stay for that. And he had a horrible feeling that very shortly he'd be wiping that smile off her face forever.

“You know I can't stay.”

The smile abruptly vanished from her face to be replaced by tiredness and she stopped stroking him as her eyes opened wide to take him in. “You want to go? Now?”

“I don't want to go. Believe me. But I have to go.”

“It's a love them and leave them sort of thing isn't it? That's who you are, the Iceman. I should have known better.”

“No!” James did his best to stop her thinking that. But that was where she was going regardless and he couldn't stop her.

“It's just … I keep thinking that there's more. That you're this lost, broken puppy I can nurse back to health. I don't know why I keep thinking that. Stupidity probably.”

“No, no, no! Please!” James tried again. “It's not that sort of thing at all. I'm not like that. And I don't want to go.” James needed desperately to defend himself, even though he didn't know how to. He didn't know what he could say that would make things better. All he had was the truth. “You have to understand. It's me and my daughter that this bitch is coming after and I have to stop her. You know that.”

He tried to make her see that. To believe. And maybe it worked. Maybe. She didn't argue at least. She just lay there, studying him. Looking for the truth perhaps. Or maybe for the lie. He didn't know which.

“I know.” She sighed eventually, not happy, but at least the hurt seemed to have eased. She was just sad and disappointed from the look on her face. “Anyone who would stand guard over their daughter like you did can't be all ice.”

“But your timing really sucks!”

“I know. I'm sorry.” And he was. More than he could say.

“Just don't get yourself any more beaten up.” She sounded sad. Not angry at least. Not even upset. Just disappointed.

“Yasmin.” James tried again. He had to. He couldn't leave her thinking that he didn't care. He couldn't leave her hurting. “I'm not who you think I am. I'm not this cold, heartless monster the warden thinks I am. I just do what I have to do. And with women I am broken. I'm bitter and suspicious and I don't really know what's going on. I can't help that. But until you I was nothing at all.”

“Now I'm torn. I find this … difficult. Confusing. It makes no sense to me. And everything in me tells me it's dangerous. That I'm going to be hurt again.”

“I don't know if I can get past that. But that doesn't mean I want it to stop.”

“Then what do you want?”

James shrugged helplessly. “You're asking the wrong person. I haven't got a clue.” And as pathetic as it was, it was the truth. “All I know is that if I had a choice I wouldn't want to get off this couch at all.”

“I don't want you to get off,” she told him simply.

“But I don't have a choice. You have to understand that. This is my daughter she's coming after.”

Was that what he needed to say? Had he said enough? James didn't know, and it worried him. But then she suddenly reached out with her arms, pulled him back down on top of her, and kissed him, and in that moment he knew he'd finally said something right. It was a good kiss.

“Go. Protect your daughter.” She rubbed his cheek lightly when she finally let him go and a smile had returned to her eyes. Only a small one, but it was a start. “We can work out the rest of this later.”

“Thank you.” It was a dismissal, but a better one than James had any right to expect. And so much better than the last time. He almost felt good as he pulled up his pants. But then he turned back to her.

“You're okay?” Despite everything he was worried about her.

“I'm okay. Now that we've worked out what really matters.” She was lying there, and unexpectedly smiling as she looked up at him.

“Alright, I'll bite. What have we worked out?” James sensed a trap coming. But at least she was smiling. And dear lord did she look good lying there with a come hither look on her face!

“That you're worse than a horny little teenager. You have no self-control whatsoever. And you really can't keep your hands off me!”

James wanted to deny it. To pretend that he really was in control of things. But then he sat down beside her as she lay there, took her hand and kissed it. “You're probably right.”

Chapter Twenty

It was late in the afternoon by the time James made it to the veterinary clinic. It had been a long drive. Longer than the actual miles he'd driven or the hours that had passed. Because most of the time when he'd been driving, instead of focusing on the road, or thinking about the case, he'd been thinking about Yasmin. He'd told her the truth. He simply didn't know what was going on between them. And she'd told him the truth in turn.

He literally couldn't keep his hands off her.

Whatever this was between them, it was powerful. Whether it was love or lust, it possessed him. And he suspected it had possessed her too. Because the truth was that like him she didn't know what was happening between them either. And neither could she keep her hands off him.

Could it be some sort of magic at work? He kept wondering about that. But they were both supposed to be warded against any magic that could affect their thoughts. Added to that he was completely immune to it as well. So was it simply the result of hormones running wild and desires that had been pent up for too long being released? He had no answer, but he kept thinking he should have one.

Still, as he drove into the parking lot of the clinic, James knew that he would have to put her out of his mind for a bit. Because this was where he had to start concentrating. This was where he returned to the hunt.

Of course he knew he was already the best part of a day too late. The banshee was long gone. The vets and their nurse were gone as well, some of them being cared for by the Illuminati – though they didn't know that – the rest having fled with their mistress. And the animals had been cleared out too – sent to another practice. That left an empty building with no one home and a pile of tape across the door preventing anyone entering. It also left an empty parking lot which meant he could park right in front of the door.

Officially the reason given for the practice's closure was that there had been a serious anaesthetic gas leak and the building was unsafe. As for the staff the official line was that a potentially rabid dog had gotten loose during the leak and bitten them, As a result they were all being treated at a specialist facility. They'd be back in a few days. And when they did come back they'd believe the cover story too.

But it wasn't the doctors that were treating them. Instead it was the fascinators. As dangerous as they were the Illuminati had their own fascinators for situations like these. It was the old story. Magic was temptation. Some gave into it, some didn't. And those who didn't could be useful. What one fascinator could do another could fix, more or less. They couldn't undo what had been done. So those who had been convinced that the banshee was an innocent woman who was being hunted would have to live with that conviction until the magic wore off. But they could be convinced that they'd been exposed to anaesthetic gasses for days and really that everything they thought they had experienced and done was unreliable. So they hadn't operated on a woman and hid a fugitive from the police. They'd simply imagined it.

Because of that the clinic wasn't a crime scene. It should have been. If the police had found out that the banshee whose photo had been plastered all over the nightly news for days had been staying in the clinic they would have been there. The crime scene technicians would have been everywhere. And then there would have been more people under arrest for crimes they didn’t know they had committed. Harbouring a fugitive carried a hefty sentence. They wouldn't be alone. They already had nine police officers in jail awaiting trial for crimes they had no idea they were committing. His brothers and sisters in blue. He wasn't happy about what they had done. But eight were dead and nine were in jail. That was enough.

He had to find the banshee before others ended up joining them in jail or on a slab.

James gathered himself and walked toward the clinic. Then he ripped off the hazardous substances tape covering the door and strode in as if he had every right to be there. If there was a clue as to where Soo Chi was, it lay inside.

Sadly there wasn't much to guide him. The clinic was empty, as silent as a morgue. No one was at the reception desk and no customers were sitting in the waiting area either. The animal enclosures in the room to the side were empty. The computers were down and the lights were off. James had no doubt that the IT people would have downloaded everything from the computers before they'd left – those they hadn't taken with them. But he also had no faith that there would be anything of use on them. Why would the banshee want them to document anything about her being there? She had been running. She still was.

One of the treatment rooms showed signs of having been used recently but not having been cleaned up. There were bandages and swabs in the bins, all of them covered with dried blood. The bench was covered with bottles of chemicals. Anaesthetics, antibiotics, anti inflammatories and sterilants. This he guessed was where the banshee had been treated. And by the amount of blood he guessed she'd been seriously wounded. It was probably here where she'd also been resting ever since she'd arrived.

A small kidney shaped steel bowl had two bullets in it. Bullets that had been removed from her. And sitting on the light box were x-rays of what he assumed was the human skeleton – complete with bullets.

Obviously the clean-up people hadn't been through yet. No doubt they were on their way. But James decided to give them a hand, and grabbed the x-rays, threw them into a steel waste bin, poured a little alcohol on them and then set them alight. He then put the jars of drugs away and stuffed the bullets in a plastic bag and then shoved it in his pocket. He could dispose of them later. He even wiped down the table.

It felt good to do something useful. And really, there were no clues here to tell him where she'd gone. Only evidence that could land her victims in jail.

But as he worked he realised that the mess did tell him something. It told him that she had left in a hurry. But the bottles of drugs were capped. Nothing was knocked over and there was no great disarray. All of which meant that while she had left quickly, she had not been in a panic as she would have been if the Illuminati had been pounding on the door. She'd had some warning. Maybe it had only been five or ten minutes. But it had been enough.

As before that raised an obvious question. One that had been overlooked by the others. How had she known that the Illuminati were coming? Because if she had gotten away then it was obvious that she had been given some warning. Enough to allow her to get away in time. So she had someone on the inside. Someone who had told her who he was, where he lived, when he went to the German, and even where his daughter went to school. It didn't matter that the people checking out the possibility kept swearing blind that they didn't have a mole. They had a mole. He knew it.

But how? Every member of the Illuminati was warded against magic. They could not be turned by her spell. Unless the wards were insufficient or in some way not able to deal with a banshee. In which case James realised he might actually be the only one who could stand against her.

Of course there was another possibility as he suddenly realised. What was put on could be taken off. All she needed was access to someone with the right magic, and so far she had seemed to have no shortage of gifted people she could force to her will.

It was a light bulb moment as people said. As he understood the truth. As the complex pattern of riddles made sense. Why she had come after him so hard. Why the information they had got from the Illuminati had been so poor. And how they could have a mole and yet not have one. And it had been staring him in the face from the start. The banshees were something the Illuminati had never prepared for. And it wasn't their magic. It was the organised crime. They were organised. They knew their enemy and they had a plan. They had contingencies. Contacts. A strategy for getting whatever they wanted done. At that point James reached for his phone and called Will.

“James?” The cowboy answered him on the first ring. He sounded irritable. No doubt the case wasn't going as he would have hoped. He'd probably hoped to have had the banshee in his custody before now, and when she'd got away it had felt like failure. And it was a failure. But it wasn't his fault. He didn't want Will throwing himself on his sword as the captain had.

“Are you in the office Will?” He should be James knew. They had a crisis on their hands and it wasn't that late.

“Yes.” Will answered him quickly.

“Are the others with you?”

“Yes. Out in the main room.”

“Good. Then can you bring them all into your office and put the phone on speaker so I can talk to you all.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a bit as the cowboy probably considered asking him what was on his mind. But eventually the silence was broken by the sound of Will going to the door to his office and calling everyone in. It took a moment for them to arrive. James heard chairs scraping against the floor in the distance followed by the sound of feet thudding on the carpet. He heard questions being asked of the cowboy and Will answering them as best he could. And then finally he heard Will tell him that everyone was now near the phone and listening.

“Good.” James didn't waste time with pleasantries. There was no time to waste. “We still have a mole in the office somewhere. And since I don't believe a single one of you would voluntarily work for the banshee, and you're all warded against magic there's only one possibility. Someone's wards have been removed.”

The response was of course confusion. Voices were raised in disagreement and disbelief. And naturally everyone started telling him he had to be wrong. All the checks had come back negative. None of them were traitors. James really did want to agree with them. He desperately wanted to be wrong. But he knew better. And he knew a quick way to reach the truth. Which was why he kept calling for quiet. And eventually he got it. But he doubted it would last long.

“Okay, now in a while you're going to have to call for a rune caster to double check everyone's wards. Tonight if possible. But before that happens I have a quick and dirty way of checking. Everyone's warded with the same spells. Right Peters?” Peters should know he figured. Wards and runes were his thing.

“Yeah.” Peters answered in his usual laconic fashion.

“And all the wards leave markings on the skin? Tattoos?”

“Yeah.”

“So everyone should have the same warding markings. Guys it's time to strip! One of you will have some markings that aren't like the others.”

“What?!” Will was the first to protest, but far from the last as everyone realised what he was asking them to do. And no one was happy about it.

James had expected that. But he stayed on the line, waiting for the commotion to die down. Because in the end he knew it would. They all knew what he was suggesting was simply common sense. But more than that they all knew that to object too loudly might be to make the others wonder if they were the mole. That was why he'd had everyone come together in the room. So that no one could make some excuse to leave and not be noticed. Because he was certain that if any of the banshee's victims had guessed his plan that was exactly what they would have done.

When this was over James figured, there would only be two people left to be checked. Him, and everyone knew he was naturally immune to the magic of mind bending. So did the banshee which was why she'd come after him so aggressively. He was the one man she couldn't bend. And Yasmin who he assumed was still not back. But he seriously doubted it was her after what they had done. Everyone else the banshee had sent after him had regarded him as the most evil man alive. They hadn't exactly been rushing to jump into bed with him.

So James stood there in the treatment room and waited for the calm to return. And then for the disrobing to begin. But that didn't happen. Instead he heard the sound of a door being ripped open followed by people yelling and feet thudding rapidly on the carpet. James guessed then that they'd found their man. And he understood who it was a few moments later when people started yelling at Daniels to stop running.

Daniels. Their Intelligence guy. The master of IT who could no doubt cover all his electronic fingerprints. The one whose magic granted them access to all their secrets. And the one who ahd delivered them no useful results from his interview with the priest, and probably slowed down their data matching by at least fifty percent. All those apologies he'd brought them about the difficulties his staff were having doing the facial recognition. The chances were that the only problem they had was their boss. James suddenly wanted to cry. They had been comprehensively out played.