Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (13 page)

“I’m sorry.”

The words sounded ridiculously inane, but at them, Harris turned back to the window, his rage seeming to slowly sink back inside.

“If there’s
anything
you know…” the man sighed, frustration mingled with a sort of exhausted desperation in his tone.

Cole’s gaze fell to the ground, his eyes tracing the patterns on the tightly woven carpet tiles. “Brogan’s people are going after her,” he admitted. “I gave my dad all the information I had.”

Harris appeared to relax a bit. “Is the little girl with her?”

“Yeah.”

At his tone, Harris glanced to him.

“You think she’ll hurt the kid.”

It was only partly a question, but at the words, Cole looked away.

“Ah,” Harris said.

Silence fell between them.

“You know,” Harris said. “It took me almost six months to track that girl down after what she did to Scott. And I’ll tell you the truth. Every so often – even with everything I saw that she’d done – I still found myself wondering how it could be possible. She looks like a kid. Hell, she makes you think she
is
a kid. And she’s responsible for more deaths than most serial killers can claim.”

Cole shifted uncomfortably in the stiff-backed chair.

“It’s not always easy,” Harris continued. “Doing what you have to. Doing the right thing. Sometimes, it hurts like hell. But I can tell you… it’s worth it. For every life that girl doesn’t have the chance to take… it’s worth it.”

Cole was silent, uncertain how to respond. He remembered the girl at the farmhouse; the white-faced kid running as her world burned. But he hadn’t witnessed the rest of it. The dead cripples or all the hell she’d wreaked in the months since. He’d only seen part of this.

And so maybe he needed to trust the calls of those who had. It’d be hard – unbelievably hard – to explain this to Lily, given what might happen when Brogan’s men found her. But it wasn’t all on them. Or him. Ashe’d made her choices and she’d keep making them, and he couldn’t be responsible for that.

He could only do whatever it took to get Lily to the end of this safely.

“How’d you get involved with her, anyway?” Harris asked.

The question jarred him from his thoughts. He scoffed. “Long story.”

“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”

He glanced over. Harris raised an eyebrow.

Cole grimaced. “I got in a fight with my… with Robert and Melissa. And when I left, I ran into Brogan’s men and overheard them say they’d found some guy and his girls. From their tones, I could pretty much guess what they planned to do. So I followed them. I was going to call the cops once I found out where they were headed, but instead, I got there too late. They’d already killed the guy. But I managed to get the girls into the car and drive the hell out of there.”

He fell silent for a moment and then gave a small, humorless laugh. “And yeah. She just seemed like a kid. Just some scared kid.”

A moment slid by. He looked to the man in the other chair.

Harris was motionless, his gaze lost in thought, but at Cole’s glance, he appeared to unfreeze.

“So then what was all that about a diary and her plan to kill her family?” the detective asked, his tone giving no sign of whatever he’d been thinking.

“You mean the diary about how I was supposedly planning to sell a little kid for sex while getting her sister hopped up on drugs?” Cole replied, old anger threading through his tone.

Harris waited.

Cole drew a breath, letting it out slowly. “Brogan’s guys wanted to find those girls, so they spun the fact they’d just killed their dad into a story that’d be sure to make the whole world try to track us down.” He paused. “For all the good it did. But regardless, they fed the news a total crock. I’d never met Ashe or Lily before that night.”

Harris returned his gaze to the window, saying nothing.

The detective’s phone buzzed.

Blinking, Harris drew himself from whatever thoughts he’d been having and tugged the phone out.

“Harris,” he said.

Cole watched, but the man gave no indication of what he was hearing.

“There in a minute.” He thumbed the phone off and then returned it to his pocket. “Sorry to cut this short,” he said, rising to his feet, “but I’ve got to run.”

Circling the chair, he paused briefly and then reached into his sports coat.

“Listen,” he continued. “If you think of anything else or just need to get some more air sometime…” He extended a business card. “My cell’s on the back.”

Cole took the card and Harris gave him a nod. “Good talking to you,” the man said.

“Yeah,” Cole replied.

The detective was already heading down the hall.

Shifting around in the chair, Cole tucked the card into his pocket and then looked back out the window. White clouds drifted across the sky, forming shapes his imagination was too tired to name.

Harris was right.

He sighed, hating the thought despite knowing it was true. It sucked beyond words and made his skin crawl, but Harris was right. Whatever happened, whatever it took, saving Lily and bringing this whole nightmare to an end would be worth the price.

Even if it meant Ashe might die.

*****

Harris reached the elevator before he remembered to breathe, and when he did, he felt his brain start buzzing like a bag of angry wasps.

Jamison’s men had been at Ashley’s home. Jamison's men had destroyed the farm. Jamison’s men concocted the whole diary and its tales of Cole being her boyfriend, which meant they may well have fabricated the story of Ashley murdering her family too.

And they’d never once mentioned it to him.

He blinked, realizing he’d yet to summon the elevator car. Swiftly, he jabbed at the down arrow, and then had to hit it again when his fingers missed the first time.

It didn’t make sense.

Unless they deliberately wanted to mislead him.

Or Cole was wrong.

Harris cast a glance down the hall, but no one was coming. The boy had obviously decided to stay where he’d left him.

There wasn’t any reason for Cole to say he’d seen them when he hadn’t. What could he gain by lying? But even if the Blood had been there, Cole could have misunderstood the situation. Or he’d missed part of it. He said himself that he’d only come in for the last few minutes, and he’d only assumed Jamison’s people killed everyone based on what he thought he’d overheard.

But he could have misconstrued it. Jamison’s men must have known what they were heading into. Cole could easily have mistaken their preparedness for intent, and come to the conclusion the Blood were the ones planning to kill the whole family.

Of course, that didn’t explain the diary.

The elevator arrived and distractedly, he headed inside, scarcely sparing enough attention to find the button for the parking garage. He hadn’t given much thought to the diary in the past months; everything she’d done since had driven it mostly from his mind. But when they first met, Jamison corroborated the story that Ashley killed her family. He’d been foggy on how Cole was involved, but about the murders there’d been no doubt of the girl’s responsibility.

So…

Exhaling, Harris rubbed at his eyes as he worked to find stability amid the chaos inside his mind. Ashley could have imagined everything in the diary, though nothing he’d seen of her thus far seemed to indicate she was remotely delusional. A killer, yes. Cold as hell, absolutely. But delusional? Not so much.

Though, now that he thought about it, that last bit directly conflicted with the diary, which seemed to point squarely to a girl approaching terminal velocity for psychosis.

He dropped his hand back to his side. Cole had to be right. Jamison and his men made up the diary. But at the same time, the reasons may not have been quite what the boy thought. Ashley could have killed her family. Probably had, given everything else she’d done since that night. Meanwhile, Cole said he’d arrived late, so he had no evidence one way or the other as to what the Blood had found when they first arrived. And for their part, the Blood hadn’t known who grabbed the girls. They’d just been trying to cover their bases, with the goal of protecting as many people as possible.

So just the part about Cole may have been a lie.

Except then there was also the part about her plan to burn the house down, which didn’t fit with what Cole said he saw at all.

Harris dragged a hand over his hair as his brain tried to pull itself apart to make the pieces he’d thought he had in place suddenly fit again. Jamison’s men needed to protect their people if they were going to accomplish anything. He knew that. So for them, burning down the house could have been a self-protective measure. They’d found the bodies. They’d found everything Ashley had done. And… what? They covered it up for her? They didn’t even have a reason for being there in the first place. Why would they…

He paused. Tanya. Or, more specifically, her late husband. Though most of the time, Harris avoided the widow on account of her being the angriest and possibly the most deranged woman he’d ever seen, he’d still overheard her stories of why Howard Bartlow died.

Howard had worked with the Blood. He’d hated the war and he’d tried to bring it to an end. But he was still from Ashley’s side, originally one of the ‘Merlin’ group who seemed to be responsible for all this, and he’d been a doctor of some kind for the little girl. Tanya even said he’d been killed by Merlin the same night Ashley’s family died.

So perhaps Howard had learned how brutal Ashley could be. Perhaps he’d gone to the Blood for help. Brogan had said they were trying to protect the little girl, that night in the police station six months ago. Howard could have learned of Ashley’s plan to wipe her family from the face of the earth, and perhaps that was why the Blood had been there that night.

But Jamison’s men would have needed to cover up their presence. Chances were, there would’ve been enough forensic evidence from their attempt to stop what Ashley did that if anyone found it, the Blood might have been exposed.

He exhaled as the elevator slowed. Fine. Dandy, even. Cole may well have misunderstood most of it, given that he didn’t see anything but the end, but that still left one problem. Brogan and Jamison had lied. And they’d kept lying, even after it was clear he was helping them.

Harris grimaced. He’d known they weren’t necessarily telling him everything, and to be honest, he hadn’t really cared. They wanted to stop Ashley and the creatures like her from killing innocent people, and they’d financed his efforts to do the same. That’d been enough.

But this was different.

The elevator slowed. Dropping his hand from his hair, he forced the scowl from his face, though when the doors opened, the expression nearly slipped back again.

“Hey, buddy,” Mud said, tromping into the elevator with a sub sandwich in each hand.

Harris didn’t respond.

“Off again, eh? I gotta say, it’s a pleasure watching you work. That last place ya’ll hit…” He grinned, his teeth full of lettuce and tomato. Harris winced, looking away. “Beauty of a thing.”

“Three of Jamison’s people died.”

“Eh, well,” Mud allowed. “True.”

“What do you want?” Harris asked tiredly, praying the elevator reached the parking garage soon.

“Who says I want anyth–”

He glanced to the little man.

“Okay, okay,” Mud surrendered. “Look, I just thought, seeing as how you’re so… useful, with your being human and all… maybe you could tell them they don’t need me to go out there anymore? I could stay here; coordinate prisoners or something. I mean, you’ve got the whole stealth reconnaissance thing covered. Wizards never even know you’re watching them. What do you need me for?”

It took everything Harris had not to comment on the last.

“So what do you say?” Mud pushed.

“It’s not my call.”

“Well, yeah, but I just thought that if you–”

“Ask Brogan yourself, Mud.”

The little man paused. “Yeah, well…”

With a quiet ding, the elevator door opened. Harris struggled not to bolt through the gap. The little man reeked of month-old produce. And that was the best of his qualities.

The smell of metal and engine oil surrounded him as he headed into the parking garage, and the sound of traffic filtered down the exit ramp. A few wizards glanced back as he came around the corner, but their attention returned swiftly to Brogan upon realizing it was just him.

“…apartment building on the southern outskirts of Atlanta,” Brogan said. “Tanya says there are at least three hideouts inside, though the Merlin may have added more since she was last there, so don’t assume anything. This building doesn’t connect to its neighbors, so we’ll use a standard approach, but be ready in case they try to use portals inside. Questions?”

Harris looked away. It’d only taken a couple days of helping the Blood hunt down Ashley’s hideouts to learn to hate apartment buildings, since they basically amounted to kids and families trapped in a box with wizards inside. The Blood had been lucky thus far, managing to take out the Merlin and keep them from harming their human shields.

But the chance that this would be the time an innocent got hurt always made his skin crawl.

“Good,” Brogan finished. “Move out.”

Grimacing, Harris headed for the car with Mud tottering behind in a cloud of stench and grumbling. The wizards ignored him as he swung into the back seat, though the disgust on their faces was damn near blatant as the little man followed.

His gaze returned to Brogan as the car started to pull away. Deep in conversation with another man, the giant paid the departing vehicle no attention.

Jamison and Brogan wanted to stop killers like Ashley, and that was good. With Cole back, their focus was now solely on ending the violence while protecting those caught in it, and that was good as well.

But they’d also lied to him. They’d misled him about their involvement the night Ashley murdered her family, and they’d kept him in the dark long after it became abundantly clear he was trying to stop her just as much as they were.

There had to be a reason. And when any sane person could see the Blood were the ones on the right end of this, he couldn’t imagine what might have been so damaging about that night that it was something they needed to hide.