Phoenix Inheritance (23 page)

“Now, we just have to get the cat inside it. Uh, I don't have much experience with cats. Will this be hard?” Alec asked.

“Let's just say your TK will come in handy otherwise we'll get scratched up pretty good, especially given Odin's a stray who doesn't seem fond of anyone except my son.” Daz pulled his gloves tight, just in case. “Let's start looking in Charlie's room.”

He unlocked the door from the garage to the mudroom. Daz froze. Something was off. Movement when there shouldn't be any.

A crash echoed through the house. Daz set down the crate and drew his Glock. He glanced over at Alec.

Alec nodded, knowing what to do. He closed his eyes, focused on sending his TK through the house, using it as a kind of radar to find whatever was moving around. Alec would also be able to sense size and weight and know if they were dealing with the cat or something else.

He tapped Daz's shoulder, pointed to the right and signaled threat.

Intruder, not cat. Damn.

Daz gestured at Alec to go right, while he went left. Alec passed through the mudroom and to the hallway. Daz cut through the kitchen toward that entranceway to the living room, on full alert. He strained to hear the smallest sound. He homed in on the rustle of clothes and the low growl of a cat.

It could be that Odin's master had come back for the cat for some reason. Maybe he knew the cat could identify him.

Daz turned the corner into the living room, his weapon up and ready. A man all in black, wearing a long coat, held Odin in his arms.

“Put the cat down, get on your knees, hands on your head,” Daz ordered.

The intruder stared at Daz with unnerving dark eyes that held no irises. Daz suppressed a shiver. Rasputin's people had the same kind of eerie stillness in them, and the immortal Mad Monk had the most terrifying stare of all. Fuck. This was the worst-case scenario.

“Why should I obey you?”

“Because you'll be dead if you don't,” Daz said. Let the guy talk. They'd find out more if the intruder felt he had the upper hand. When it was time, Alec would take him out.

“Do you really want to save this grungy animal?” The gravelly voice sounded as if were scraped over sandpaper. There was a trace of an accent, possibly Eastern European.

“He's
my
cat.”

“No, he belongs to me. As does your son.” The intruder advanced a step.

“Stop,” Daz said through gritted teeth.

“You didn't want your son from the start, Montoya. He's an obligation to you. And his mother is overwhelmed by him. He's much better off with me. Us.” The intruder smiled again.

They were only words. But this guy said them in the same way as the guys who had tortured Daz in Germany. The fear flooded back, and the memory of the searing agony from the hand pressed into his shoulder sent cold sweat down Daz's back.

Alec appeared at the other side of the living room, one hand raised. “Surrender.”

The intruder raised one dark eyebrow. “No.”

The cat sprang from his captor's hold, ruining Daz's line of fire. He sidestepped, only barely missing Odin's claws. The cat hit the floor and skittered away. Daz fired but the shot went wide.

The intruder chuckled, an unnatural sound.

Alec flicked his hand. The enemy flew backwards into the fireplace, and hit hard. Daz's little paper origami figures floated to the floor.

“Stay right there!” Alec ordered. The fireplace poker flew into the air. Alec moved a finger and the poker pressed against the intruder's throat.

They had him.

Daz and Alec stalked forward, wary. This could be a trick. It'd be safer to just shoot this asshole but they needed to know why he was in Renee's house. Charlie's future depended on catching not only this guy, but whoever he was working with.

A roar sounded from outside. The intruder grinned.

A roar?

A large, brown bear burst through the glass door that led to the deck, flinging sharp shards all over the living room.

Daz threw up his hands to protect his face. A bear. A freakin' bear! Fuck, did it have to be a bear again?

He kept his eye and his gun on their captive. This had to be a calculated distraction. He wasn't going to fall for it.

Alec tackled the bear, sending him and the crazed animal to the floor. Daz had to jump out of the way of flailing claws, giving the intruder an opening. The asshole took off and ran outside through the hole just created by the bear.

Fuck.

Daz vaulted over the couch and leapt through the broken glass door to the ruined deck. Though he was a few seconds behind his quarry, the debris in the yard worked to his advantage. Instead of making a clean getaway, the intruder's black trench coat snagged on a branch from a fallen tree.

Daz jumped to the top of the deck's railing, aimed, and fired. The intruder crumpled to his knees as blood spread over his lower left leg.

Got you.

“Firefly, you okay?” Daz yelled.

“Uh, we're having a stare-off,” Alec said. “Damn, he's bigger than the ones in the zoo. Or maybe he looks bigger because he's out in the open.”

If Alec was making jokes, he wasn't in immediate danger. Good.

Daz sprang from the railing to the yard, carefully picking his way toward the man. His quarry clutched his leg and screamed something in another language. That had to be Russian. This was definitely connected to Rasputin and his people.

And they tended to travel in packs.

Daz scanned the yard, Glock ready to fire, searching for other enemies and ignoring the wounded man's curses and screams. Or perhaps he was pleading. Not that Daz cared.

The intruder took a swing at him as soon as Daz was in arm's length. Daz clocked the motherfucker on the jaw. He crumpled, hands wrapped around his wounded leg.

But his eyes stayed focused on Daz.

“You bear our saint's mark. He will kill you.”

Those utterly dark eyes stared up at Daz, as if they could see right through him.

Saint's mark. The handprint scar. Daz dug his fingers into the intruder's coat and put the gun against the man's throat. “What's your name? Why are you here?”

The ebony eyes stared, unblinking. Daz felt cold sweat drip down his back again. It was like this guy's brain wasn't really there. Wait, he knew that look. Beth got that faraway look when she was communicating telepathy. Daz punched him again to break his captive's concentration and sever his telepathic link. “Tell me who's at the other end of your conversation.”

“We'll take all you have, including your son.” The intruder stuttered out the words, went limp and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Dammit. Fuck.

The man sagged, inert, and the weight of his body pulled Daz to his knees. Daz searched the Russian for a pulse with one hand. He kept the gun steady in his other hand. This could be a trick.

No pulse at the throat. Daz put his hand over the chest. No heartbeat that he could tell either. Suicide? Had Daz hit the femoral artery and caused him to bleed out?

Daz examined the gunshot wound. His bullet had gone through the calf, not the upper thigh. Painful, for sure, but not a fatal hit, at least not this fast.

But something had killed him.

The bear roared from behind him.

Daz dropped the corpse and turned. The bear scrambled over the railing of the deck, rumbled across the yard and disappeared into the trees.

“Bears. Who knew.” Alec walked out onto the deck. “Status?”

“Uninjured. But our intruder appears to be dead and I'm pretty sure I didn't kill him.” Daz glanced around. Too many tall trees around, even after the storm. Too much cover for an enemy. He hated being out in the open like this.

“He was talking to someone telepathically, Alec. Let's get back in the house. No, better yet, the garage. It's defensible if there are more of them.”

Or more bears.

“Right.” Alec waved a hand and the dead man rose into the air, over the top of all the storm debris. Daz followed, gun still out and ready. The scar on his shoulder still itched. Though maybe that was just his paranoia.

“I'll scan the area with the TK,” Alec said as they entered the garage.

Daz wished he had his M1 Carbine instead of the Glock. Bears. Telepathic monks. He should have brought his new gadgets. At the very least, one of the flash-crash grenades.

“I found a few squirrels, but nothing big enough out there to be human,” Alec finally said.

Daz knelt over the intruder's body for a final check. “Yeah, he's definitely dead. But the bullet wound wasn't enough to kill him that fast. I think he suicided. Or whoever was talking to him telepathically killed him.”

“Do you know who he is?” Alec asked.

“Not him particularly but I'm sure he's part of Rasputin's crew,” Daz said. “The arrogance and the Russian accent are the same. At least one of his buddies is out there, somewhere. We need to get going.”

“We still have to get the cat. All our answers could be locked up in his brain,” Alec said.

“If he didn't run off.”

But they went back inside the house and found Odin hunched and shivering at the back of the dog crate.

Daz knelt down. “You are a smart kitty. This was a good place to find cover.”

Odin blinked but otherwise didn't move. Daz closed the crate door and locked the cat in. “Nice that something was easy.”

Alec looked around. “Yeah.” He frowned. “Too easy.”

“You think our dead intruder told Odin to go in there?”

“The cat seemed to be following orders to jump at you. Maybe his master told him to stay there while the bear was around and now he's too scared to move.”

“In that case, our benefit.” Daz lifted the crate. “I'll take the cat, you get the body and then we get the hell gone.”

“Right. One second. I don't like the idea of leaving a big hole to the outside in Renee and Charlie's living room.”

Alec walked out to the living room and put up both hands. Shards of glass rose from the carpet and furniture at his command and took their previous places in the doorframe.

Alec closed his eyes and waved both hands. A wave of heat brushed Daz's cheeks. He blinked and when his eyes refocused, the door was back the way it had been.

“Damn,” Daz breathed out.

Alec went down on one knee.

“Helluva thing, Firefly,” Daz said. “Did that take all your oomph?”

“Yeah.” Alec straightened. “I usually do this kind of thing with Beth helping augment my TK. But the door will be stronger than regular glass now.”

Again, Daz knew he'd have to up his game if he was going to play in this league. What Alec could do was way beyond him. So was what Rasputin could do. He needed to stop thinking of countering strength with strength and figure out how to attack Rasputin's weakness. If he could figure out what that weakness was.

He glanced toward Charlie's room and caught a glimpse of the Batman poster. Renee had teased him about being Batman, but that was exactly the type of warrior he had to become to fight these people. “Let's load up and get the fuck out of here,” he said.

Too bad the cat had to ride in the back with the corpse.

Daz only began to relax when they reached the highway. This attack could have been worse. Charlie could have been with them. No telling what the bear might have done to a little boy.

“So what happened with the bear? Why'd he run?” he asked Alec.

“I kept him at arm's length with the TK. He was so beautiful I didn't want to kill him. We had a staring contest for a few minutes until he went down to all fours and waved his head from side to side as if shaking something off. Then he roared at me and took off. He seemed more concerned with getting away than continuing the attack.”

“Our dead guy was controlling him, I think,” Daz jabbed a thumb at the dead body in the backseat. “If the ‘mean man' Charlie mentioned is another animal telepath, we just found him.”

“And the bear was freed when he died, which explains why it ran off.” Alec took a deep breath. “Bears are scary.”

“You're telling me. I had one knock me over once and…”

“And what?” Alec asked.

“And I had a bear come out of nowhere and knock me over once before. Just like this. Now I'm wondering if that was a coincidence.”

“When was this?”

“On a rescue mission in Turkey to find a missing plane. The same hike where Renee and I first got to know each other.”

“Is it related?” Alec asked.

“Weren't you just saying that even Lansing hiring me wasn't a coincidence? I bet two bear attacks aren't either.” He stared at the road ahead. “We should search that guy one more time before we take him inside the Institute. He might have booby traps or even an electronic tracker on him.”

“Good idea.”

They pulled over at an open highway rest stop. The place was deserted. Just as well because Daz didn't want questions about the dead guy in his van. They stripped the corpse and rifled through the clothing. He'd looked supernatural in life but very normal in death. His clothes contained no wallet, no keys, nothing to indicate his ID.

“Nothing dangerous on him,” Alec said.

“Keep all the clothes. Maybe your lab people can discover something about him from them. Same for the body.”

“Yeah, we're going to definitely need one of our doctors to do an autopsy. I'll call ahead so they're ready for us.”

“You sure you can trust the doctors?”

“Beth checked them all out when I first took over the Institute. And we rechecked them again after the break-in last year.”

“Good enough.” Daz pulled out onto the highway again. The cat meowed, a sad little noise.

“What does that mean? Do cats always do this?”

“A lot of cats hate riding in cars and will meow the whole way. He's pretty calm, all things considered.”