Night Shadow (17 page)

guys—you’d better cool it as wel . Here.” Alex tossed the sat phone across

the table to Daklin. “I’l be back after I’ve reamed him a new one.”

He attempted shimmering to intercept Ginsberg. Couldn’t teleport. “God

damn it.”

Kiersted, who’d moved to an easy chair and a three-day-old newspaper,

glanced up. “What?”

“My powers are FUBAR. Just tried to shimmer. Can’t do it.”

The newspaper was put down, as Kiersted gave him a narrow-eyed look.

“You’re shitting me. Why not?”

Alex shrugged. “Anything like this ever happen to you?”

“No, thank God. Has it happened before?”

“Has what happened before?” Lexi asked, arms laden with white paper

bags. She headed to the table, followed by Lu, similarly burdened. Alex’s

mouth watered at the savory aromas of the food.

Christ. He hadn’t wanted to make this public knowledge—but . . . What

the hel . “My powers are flickering.”

Lexi’s head jerked up, her gray eyes concerned. “What does that mean?

Does it hurt? Is it serious . . .”

“I don’t know how serious it is,” Alex admitted. “I wasn’t actually going to

fil you all in on the situation while we’re here. This has been going on for

the past several weeks. Not just my ability to teleport—Remember when

we were outside the National Palace Museum? Tried to shimmer before

the explosion. Couldn’t do it.”

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He stuffed his fingers into his front pockets. “I’ve had problems off and on

with invisibility, too, of course. Every power is apparently short-circuiting

to some degree. Turned down an op in Greece because my amphibious

powers didn’t work at all for a while. Yet I was able to make use of a small

amount in Rio. Unpredictable, to say the least.”

“What about your Temporal acceleration?” Kiersted asked with a frown.

This revelation had more impact on Kiersted, a fel ow wizard, than it

would have on either Lexi or Daklin.

“Hasn’t worked—at all—” he admitted. “Not even a flicker for three

weeks.”

“Holy hel .” Kiersted slid his chair back. “Think this is contagious?”

“Not that I know of.”

Lexi hadn’t moved from her position on the other side of the table, but he

felt her empathy as if she were physically touching him. “Alex, what are

you going to do?”

He blew out a deep breath. “I sent a message to Duncan Edge, Head of

the Wizard Council, when we got to Germany last night. I was hoping this

would pass, but it’s—Shit. It’s getting worse, not better. I can’t depend on

my powers.”

Her brows puckered. “Do you have a—wizard doctor of some sort?”

“Yeah, there are doctors who are wizards, and of course I’l consult

someone.
After
I talk with Edge and see if anyone else has reported this

anomaly. Also left a message for Mason Knight. He might be able to shed

some light on this.” Alex shook his head. “Look, let’s eat. My power

outage won’t be resolved here, and we could get a call and have to

mobilize any minute.”

“How wil you mobilize if you can’t teleport?” Lexi asked reasonably.

“Same way you and Daklin do, if I can’t manage it.” He could practically

hear her agile brain working as she finished hauling take-out boxes out of

the bags.

Her eyes were clear and direct as she asked, “Want me to go and tell

Ginsberg the food’s here?”

“No.” Alex pulled out a chair for her. Out of sight, he brushed his

fingertips across her back as she sat down and was rewarded by her small

shiver. “He was sent to his room without dinner as punishment for being

an ass.”

Turning to look at him over her shoulder, Lexi grinned. “Bad Ruben, bad

bad
Ruben, no
Ling Mung Gai
for him.”

Her smile did something weird to Alex’s insides. His heart double-clutched

and an unfamiliar warmth seemed to permeate his entire being.

He was so fucked.

Ten

Sydney Opera House

Daklin, their bomb expert, was off inspecting nooks and crannies with his

toys, hunting traces of any explosives secreted away. In what amounted

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Night Shadow

to eleven acres of floor space, including six thousand seats in five

theaters, several restaurants, rehearsal halls, sixty dressing rooms,

extensive plant and machinery rooms and all the admin offices, it was a

monumental task.

Good thing he had a large chunk of Sydney’s police force and a dozen

bomb-sniffing dogs, as well as the building’s excel ent security people,

working with him.

Lexi stood with the rest of the team in the back of the Concert Hall,

watching the people and dogs scattered across the building scurrying

around like ants. She shoved her fingertips into the front pockets of her

baggy black cargo pants. “I don’t want to sound pessimistic,” she said

soberly. “But even with all that manpower, I don’t know how they’d find

an explosive device in such an enormous structure. This building is packed

with thousands of hiding places.”

“No idea if the tangos already planted an incendiary device, or not. But I

sense the Trace, indicating the presence of a large number of Halfs. And

recently. They weren’t visiting to hear the symphony. Still, it’s a

challenge,” Alex said dryly.

No shit, Sherlock.

“A wizard can go through this place in less than half the time,” Lu told

Lexi, obviously reading her skepticism. “And we have about a hundred

wizards with the Sydney PD. If anything’s here, they’l find it. Quickly.”

“Or the whole fucking place wil blow, and the city wil lose a landmark.

But there won’t be any people kil ed,” Ginsberg said, rubbing his forehead

as if he had a headache. “That’s gotta be a plus.”

Lexi didn’t think Australians would be quite so blasé about their precious

Opera House being reduced to rubble. She gave Ginsberg a considering

glance. He was an ass. She hated to complain, but if he kept on the way

he was going she was going to take him aside and have a serious

operative-to-operative chat. Maybe Alex hadn’t been able to give him an

attitude adjustment yet. Or didn’t want to. She figured she could give it a

shot.

Through the doors opening into the outside lobby Lexi heard several of the

dogs barking. Bomb-sniffing dogs. The place was being gone over with a

fine-tooth comb. And then again with an even finer comb that could

cleave a nit’s ass in half.

“Possibly, they want to demolish a world landmark, not the people inside.”

Kiersted rested a hip against a seat back. “The planet would definitely sit

up and take notice if the Sydney Opera House went bang.”

Lexi frowned. “It seems like being here’s a stretch. It doesn’t fit their

MO—”

“Nothing’s a stretch as far as tangos go,” Alex said curtly, cutting her off.

“Everywhere else they’ve hit has seen extensive property destruction
and

massive collateral damage. Something doesn’t fit.” A persistent itch was

building on her neck.

She was stil surveying the activity when Alex muttered something in his

sat phone, then clipped it to his belt.

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Night Shadow

“Ginsberg. Stone. Go help get them out of here.” Standing in the middle

of the tiers of velvet-covered seats in the empty Concert Hall, Alex

indicated the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir rehearsing onstage. The

kids and adults making up the group were here an hour ahead of

schedule, Lexi knew. The place was supposed to be empty.

Alerted by Alex to the potential terrorist threat, in-house security had

called in reinforcements to assist the team with evacuation of all

personnel and performers as quickly and quietly as possible. Uniformed

police officers and Opera House security personnel moved with purpose

through the auditorium. Weapons and bomb identification equipment were

everywhere.

Lexi ran her gaze over the men searching each row of the large theater,

the people milling about in the aisles, the choir stil in rehearsal, and

apparently—so far anyway—oblivious to what was going on beyond the

lights onstage. No one moved quickly. No one was panicking.

She frowned. This was way too laid-back. Way too easy.

Dealing with tangos was never this clean and neat. She’d studied enough

data to know that. Had their conclusion been wrong? They’d had the bar

code on the guy’s arm. No mistaking the lon gitude and latitude. That was

all they had to work with. The Sydney Opera House was an international

landmark . . . She saw the logic in the Opera House as the possible target,

but the pieces didn’t match. It was like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where

the pieces all fit, but the images on top weren’t lining up correctly. The

picture just didn’t make sense.

Evacuating a couple of hundred people in six hours was nothing. Yet her

stomach and her gut told her not to dil y-dal y. Lexi trusted her instincts.

The same instincts had served her wel as a kid. They’d warned her hours

before her parents made a middle-of-the-night, one-step-ahead-of-the

creditors run for it. That sixth sense had allowed her time to grab up a

favorite toy, or article of clothing in the nick of time.

One part of her was sure that she and Alex and the team were in the

wrong place at the wrong time. The other part of her wanted everyone out

of the building ASAP because something unimaginable was about to go

down. And why was Alex sticking her with Ginsberg when he knew they

were having issues?

Was he trying to have them tough it out or put her in her place as a

rookie? Perhaps the amazing, illicit sex in the early hours of the morning

had fractured her brain, because none of it made sense.

“Got a problem, Stone?” Alex asked, shooting her an indecipherable look.

He looked tall and grim as he addressed her. Like the rest of them, he was

dressed in black, his weapon holstered in plain sight. At least the Glock

was in plain sight. His other weapons were more discreet. And not all of

them had been issued by T-FLAC.

They might both be all business, but having Alex’s hot green gaze focused

on her made Lexi vividly and viscerally remember where his hands, his

mouth, and his penis, had been mere hours before.
Got a problem?
Hel

yes. She did. But since she couldn’t figure out what her problem
was,
she

shook her head. Ginsberg was way ahead of her and close to the

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Night Shadow

orchestra pit, while she was forty rows back trying to analyze her

screwed-up instincts.

Focus, Stone.

“No problem. I’m gone.” She hauled ass to fol ow the other operative, her

steps accompanied by the young soloist singing the “Breton Fisherman’s

Prayer” up on the stage. Still oblivious to the activity around him, the

boy’s piercingly sweet treble soared over the voices and shouts in the

enormous auditorium as he stood, eyes closed, completely transported by

his music.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Lexi jogged down to the front of the

theater. The afternoon performance wouldn’t start for six hours. Logically,

the tangos would have timed their strike for the sold-out evening

performance when all two thousand, six hundred and seventy-nine seats

would be fil ed. And that was just in this one theater. There were several

more venues in the Opera House scheduled to hold evening performances

that night. So potential y upward of five thousand theatergoers would be

their target. That’s when the frankenvirus could do its worst.

But that wasn’t going to happen. There was plenty of time to evacuate

everyone with time to spare. Plenty of time to cancel performances. Plenty

of time to cordon off the streets and surrounding area. Plenty of time. And

that was precisely what bothered her.

Tangos didn’t do black-and-white, they did red all over. A hit here would

grab worldwide attention, but not if everyone were evacuated. Tangos

weren’t above picking a secondary target if the primary was a bust. What

if this was a decoy? What if the Trace they’d fol owed on the Halfs was

just a planted trail to lead them astray?

What if Alex was wrong about the target? They didn’t have sufficient intel

to back this up definitively as the target. But orders were orders, and she

was going by the book. Stone had ordered them here to do a cleanout.

Not a bad idea, erring on the side of caution.

She’d do it, even if she had to do it with Ginsberg at her side. The notes of

the child’s voice faltered to a discordant halt as the stage was swarmed by

uniformed security personnel. Lexi jumped up onto the apron, and started