Insidious Winds (15 page)

The man laughed and I waved away the officer who was
trying to talk to me. “Bring Henry to me by one o---”

“Can’t you see I’m on the phone?!” I interrupted him
to bark at the cop, who was still trying to talk to me. “I’m not going to the
hospital, so leave me alone.” Instead of letting him argue, I used my power to
force him. I put the phone back to my ear. “Why would I bring Henry to you?
You’ve already lost your card with him.”

I spotted a couple of street cameras pointed at me
and the building. It was a good thing Scott went underground. At that time, Henry
and Darwin emerged from the library, still looking very worried.

“
Don’t let on that you know Scott escaped. This
wasn’t an accident and the person responsible is watching us
,” I told them
in their minds.

“
We figured as much
,” Darwin responded. “
Libraries
don’t blow up on accident
.”

“
You’re sure he’s safe
?”

“
Completely. He got out through an underground
tunnel
.” I shook my phone at them as if to tell them I was talking to the
bad guy. They were intercepted by a police officer, but it only took a moment
for them to get past him, after which they joined me and I put the phone to my
ear.

“Stop getting distracted,” the man on the phone
snapped at me. “You’re going to bring Henry here or your friend will die.”

“Which friend? I have several of them.”

“He’s lying! It’s a trap!” I heard Marcus yell in the
background. I then heard the man smack my friend. Marcus tried to scream
something else, but it sounded like he was being gagged.

“If Mr. Lycosa isn’t home by one, Marcus’s blood and
brains will paint the walls.” He hung up.

I checked my watch. “We have half an hour to get to
your place.” They got in the truck without arguing. My calf was still sore, but
it wasn’t bleeding anymore. Those healing potions were fantastic. “The guy on
the phone blew up the library with the intention of killing Scott. It sounds
like the guy who broke into your place and attacked you wasn’t happy with you
getting back up,” I said as we started heading back to Henry’s place.

“How did he know Scott would go there?”

“I don’t know. There are cameras around the town, so
I’m assuming he’s been watching. Come to think about it, I doubt this is the
first time Scott has gone to that tower. I’ve had several cases in which foster
kids would run away. Most of the time, the parents go to the police. When they
come to me, it’s because they have something to hide.”

“Like they were abusing the kids?” Darwin asked.

“Sometimes, but I’ve always turned those people down.
In one case, a boy didn’t know he was adopted, he just knew his parents were
lying about something. Once, a young woman came to me because she wanted me to
kidnap her child from his abusive father. The man planted drugs in her
apartment and got her arrested because she threatened to call the police when
he beat their daughter.” Many of my clients were high-profile, paranoid, rich
people who didn’t want word getting out that they were afraid. I’ve dealt with
a lot of stalkers.

“How are we going to find Scott now?”

“The same way we just did, but we need to save
Marcus.”

“You’re sure he thinks Scott is dead?” Henry asked.

“He said so. Whether he knows or not, I think Scott
is already out of town. I’ll read this guy’s mind when we get there and find
out for sure.”

With three minutes to spare, we pulled up into
Henry’s driveway next to a stretch limo. I pulled my mini notebook and pen out
of my jacket pocket and wrote the license plate number down. It was a local
plate, but I was pretty sure it was a fake or that the limo was rented under a
false name.

“What’s the plan?” Darwin asked.

“We go in there, talk the creep down, and get Marcus.
Remember, we’re dealing with a human.”

“A human who was able to shoot me in the head,” Henry
reminded me.

“Just try not to kill him. I’m sure once we know what
he’s after, we can find evidence to get him locked up. If not, we can take him
to the school.”

“To feed to the vampires. Got it,” Darwin said.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of
locking him in the dungeon, but I didn’t want to spoil Darwin’s fun. We went up
to the front door and I peeked through the window next to the door. It occurred
to me I should learn magic that could push the curtains of a window aside
without touching them. As it was, I couldn’t see anything but a couple of dark
shapes moving.

I pulled out my gun before opening the door slowly.
Before I could even see inside, a shot was fired and Darwin grunted. Blood
splattered on me, but the bullet only grazed his arm and shattered Henry’s
passenger window. Darwin growled and his eyes started changing to a deep red
color. I entered the room, saw who had a gun to Marcus’s head, and sighed.
“You’re kidding.”

“Sinclair?” Henry asked as he and Darwin came in. His
expression was something between shock and disgust. “What did I ever do to
you?”

Simon Sinclair was standing behind his son with one
hand on Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus wasn’t tied to the chair, but the gun pressed
against his temple was motivation enough for him to hold completely still. The
small living room was very cramped, because eight other men forming a line had
their guns pointed on me and my friends. They were waiting for an order.

So I decided to give them one.

“Which one of you shot Darwin?” I asked, taking a
firm hold of their minds. It was almost too easy; the hardest part was leaving
Marcus’s and Simon’s alone. When I felt the answer in their minds, I didn’t
wait for him to fess up. “You, put your gun in your mouth,” I said. The man’s
eyes widened with fear, which was almost amusing seeing as how he was twice my
size.

“Dev, it’s okay,” Darwin said. “I’m not hurt. I’ve
had worse injuries tripping over wires in my bedroom.”

I ignored him. “The rest of you, aim your guns at
Simon. If he pulls the trigger, so do you.” The seven henchmen immediately did
as I demanded. All but two of them were as confused as Simon. The smallest one,
who was still by no means a small man, actually seemed to be perfectly happy
with this change of plan. Although his brother was just as pleased, the older
man hid it better.

Mind reading and mind control removed a lot of the
guess work in these matters.

“What the hell is this?!” Simon yelled.

“What this is, is I have two problems endangering two
of my friends. You appear to be both problems. The solution is simple,” I said.
Actually, it wasn’t. If I used the lightning I learned or any other magic, the
man could shoot Marcus before I could incapacitate him. Even if I took control
of his mind, there was a split second between the moment he could feel it and
the moment he couldn’t do anything about it, which was enough time to squeeze
the trigger.

And I had no doubt Simon Sinclair would kill his son
in a heartbeat.

“Devon, I hope to hell you know what you’re doing,”
Marcus said.

I noted that there was no laptop or television, so I
could only surmise that someone else was watching the explosion and informing
Sin of what was going on.

Sin ignored the men aiming their guns at him and
tried to stare me down. “I’m willing to let Marcus go if you give up Henry.”

I glanced at my friends, who were both watching me
expectantly. I rolled my eyes. Sin seemed to think I owned Henry, which I could
understand. He believed he owned the people who worked for him, so it made
sense that he assumed other employers were the same. Henry and Darwin were
waiting for me to give them the “kill” order or whatever plan I had in mind.

I really wanted to take the easy way out, which was
to give in just long enough for Sin to take the gun off Marcus, and then kill
the drug dealer. But no, I had to try to do this without bloodshed.

“Are you okay?” I asked Darwin. Blood had seeped
through his fingers, but his eyes had returned to their blue color.

“Tis but a scratch.”

“A scratch?!” Marcus asked. “Your arm is bleedin’!”

“Oh, god, please don’t,” I said.

“No, it isn’t,” Darwin said, his accent suddenly more
English than Australian.

“Well what’s that then?” Marcus continued.

Darwin moved his hand and let more blood spill down
his white hoodie sleeve. “I’ve had worse.”

“Can we gag him?” Henry asked. As if waiting for the
chance, Sinclair pulled a cloth out of his pocket and stuffed it in Marcus’s
mouth. “I meant Darwin.”

“What did you do to piss Sin off so bad?” I asked
Henry.

He shrugged. “I stole a painting. He had lots of
money, but my mother just wanted the painting. I’ve only seen Sinclair in
pictures. That’s why I recognized his scent at your office and Marcus’s house;
I had smelled it when I took the painting.”

“That’s not all you did!” Sinclair yelled, pressing
the muzzle of the gun harder against Marcus’s temple.

“I don’t even know what…” Henry trailed off as it
dawned on him. “I stopped those sex traffickers a few weeks before I was
attacked.”

“Do you know how much that cost me? Not just in
losses, either! I had to kill half of my men to keep the feds from catching
them and tracing them back to me!”

The guy with the gun in his mouth was even more
terrified than Marcus, who just closed his eyes and waited. Marcus had been
running for years, always knowing his father would find him some day.

I opened a mental link between Henry and me,
purposefully excluding Darwin. “
Can you take a bullet
?” I asked.

“
In my jaguar form, as long as I’m not shot in the
eyes
.”

Still controlling the minds of the eight men, I
directed my order into the one who had shot Darwin. “
Take the gun out of
your mouth and aim it at Simon
.” He did with visible relief on his face. I
addressed my next demand to the rest of the men. “
Do not shoot if you might
hit anyone but Simon. Only aim your weapon at Simon Sinclair and don’t shoot
unless he moves his gun away from Marcus
.” Their guns all inched a little
higher.

If I tried to induce a vision, it would slow my
reactions. I had learned to defend myself during them, but not my friends. In
fact, if I did anything Sin didn’t expect, he was liable to shoot, so I had to
rely on my instincts alone. Marcus wouldn’t survive a bullet to the head.

Henry has once before.

“If it’s Henry you want, why don’t you shoot him?” I
asked.

“Because I plan on torturing him for a long time.”

“Then aim your gun at him so you don’t accidentally
hit Marcus.”

“I’ve already sent three of my best men after you,”
he said to Henry. “How are you still alive?”

“Because Devon’s best men are better than yours,”
Darwin said.

I overheard several of the hit men making assumptions
about me being a cop. “If you shoot Marcus on accident, you’re dead, so aim the
gun away from him.”

He glared at each of his eight men and then at
Darwin, me, and Henry. “Move this way,” he said to Henry. “You’re going to take
Marcus’s place and I’m going to cuff you.”

Henry glanced at me to make sure this was part of my
plan. I nodded and he started forward without hesitation. When he reached
Sinclair, he didn’t make a move. Sin grabbed Marcus by the arm and pulled his
son up to let Henry sit, but he kept Marcus in front of him like a shield.
Henry put his hands behind him in the chair, completely at ease and obviously
expecting to be cuffed.

Marcus took the gag out of his mouth. Sin looked at
me expectantly. “What?” I asked.

“Cuffs,” he answered.

“I don’t have handcuffs. I’m not a cop, nor kinky.”

Darwin nodded. “Yeah, Devon’s not a kinky cop.” As he
spoke, he pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his hoodie pocket.

“What the hell?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I’m not a cop. Here.” He tossed it
across the room.

Instinctively, Sin tried to catch it and his gun hit
the floor. Before the drug dealer even realized what happened, Henry’s elbow
slammed into his nose. The force of the blow alone threw Sin a few feet, where
he landed on his back with a painful grunt.

I expanded my magic to control Sin’s mind as well and
couldn’t hold back a grimace. He was very much as evil as John had been. I was
extremely glad I had learned to distance myself from the minds I controlled,
because I didn’t want to see his deeds for myself. If he had any magical
abilities at all, he would have followed the same path as John. Only for the
fact that he was human did I let him live.

Apparently, I’m racist
. “Get out of here,” I
told them. He really did believe Scott was dead. Marcus and Henry joined us and
Henry handed Darwin his cuffs. Three of the men who worked for Sin started
dragging the bleeding man out through the back door.

I was just about to take a look at Darwin’s wound
when my instincts fired up and one of Simon’s goons yelled. Because the living
room was still over-crowded, I couldn’t see what the cause of the commotion
was. I saw a flash of metal and formed a shield around us, but it was too
little too late. I heard the shot at the same time I heard Marcus shout. He
crashed into the wall behind us and slid to the ground, leaving a smear of
blood on the wall.

Simon had grabbed his gun. By the time I tried to
look for him, he and all of his men were gone. I knelt in front of Marcus and
tore his shirt open. The bullet hadn’t hit his heart, but it was right next to
it. He gasped, unable to catch his breath or speak.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” Darwin said.

“There’s no time. He’ll be dead before you hang up,”
Henry argued.

I took the last healing potion I had on me out of my
pocket and tried to make Marcus drink it, but he coughed, choked, and spit it
up. When his eyes closed, I knew he was seconds from death. He stopped
breathing. That wasn’t acceptable.