Shattered (Alchemy Series Book #3) (8 page)

"
Because I don't even want you to know where it is. And I still don't want you to know." Burrom grumbled to himself, still agitated by the new turn of events. "Besides, what would you have asked for in return?"

"I would've worke
d with you," Cormac replied noncommittally.

Burrom snorted.
"I know what your favors have cost me in the past."

Cormac relaxed his stance a bit and walked closer to me. "So what do you know? What happened today?"
he asked Burrom.

"I can only speculate on my limited…"

"Tell me what you think. You made the deal. Honor it."

The little man walked further into the
room, blustering the whole way about how Cormac shouldn't be getting involved. We both watched as he fussed about for a few minutes and then he finally sat on the couch and looked at us.

"I know
how she was conceived. Her mother was barren. I think the senator used magic to jump start her. A magical in vitro, you could say. And not the weak magic, like Vitor has, but the strong stuff that comes from Earth, like I have."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
I asked.

"You didn't ask," he explained. "I had no obligation to tell you my hypothesis."

I saw how this game was going to work. "Okay, little man, I'm asking now. What else do you know or think? I want everything."

He pursed his lips and puffed on his pipe. I noticed he did that whenever he didn't want to talk.

"Burrom?"

"Fine.
I think the rippers stayed away from you because of the amount of magic you have."

"Why?"

"Because, to them, it would be cannibalism."

"But
why do they flock to me?" After everything that happened, it was pointless to deny it. I couldn't leave the drapes open without waking up to a slew of them.

"That I don't know."

Cormac stared him down this time.

"
I really don't know." He waved his pipe in the air as he threw his hands up. "I think they find her to be an oddity. They recognize the magic she carries, even more so than mine, but their reaction is still strange," Burrom said.

"Can you help her?" Cormac asked.

"He tried to jump start me."

Burrom nodded, "I think it will help but we won't know for sure. It
looks like it's going to take a while."

I made my way down to the conference room where we were meeting Oslo this morning. Our time was up. The plan was to send him back, agreeing to the truce, but without the insurance and let the chips fall where they may.

W
e all agreed, the senator was bluffing. He was afraid of an all-out war with us. If he could have killed me, he would have, but that didn't mean he couldn't inflict a whole ton of damage if he wanted.

I kne
w there was a problem as soon as I stepped into the hallway and saw Dodd and Buzz lingering outside the conference room door. Dodd looked like a can of gasoline with a lit fuse that was about to set him off. The moment his eyes met mine, and I saw the raw pain there, and I knew it was something to do with Sabrina.

"What's wrong?" I asked even though I was scared to find out
. I wanted to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over my face and pretend I was back in my trailer a year ago. But I couldn't do that. This was life, and when people looked upset, you asked what was wrong. The fact that lately, everyone was upset about something didn't seem to change the protocol. If things kept going the way they were, you had to wonder if at some point people would stop asking. Maybe, in a year or so, you'd only ask what was good when somebody looked happy.

"Oslo is gone and so is Sabrina and e
very other person on that list," Buzz explained. Dodd was too flustered to speak.

"Gone how?" It was a stupid question but sometimes when you are shocked
, that's all you've got until the logical part of your brain starts back up.

"Gone! What do you mean how? We don't know," Dodd snapped and I let it go. I knew all about being snappy when you were stressed out. It was one of my specialties.

"We've got to get a group together and go after them." I looked at my funny phone's clock. "They can't have been gone that long. It's only eight a.m. they haven't had that much daylight yet."

"Cormac is going over the
surveillance camera footage. If we can get a direction, it'll be easier," Dodd replied, finally finding his voice.

"I agree," Cormac said
startling me as he approached from behind.

"I'll go
," I said. "And I'll ask Burrom." An awkward silence fell over the four of us as it was painfully obvious after last night, why I'd be the first to volunteer and want Burrom as well. We were the only confirmed people the rippers hadn't wanted to eat.

"Dodd, you stay behind and
keep things under control here," Cormac said.

"No, not on this
, Cormac. You can't ask me to stay behind this time. This means more to me than you."

"I don't think either of you should go," I said. They looked at me and continued on
when neither of them liked what I said.

"
Fine, but I want the group gathered and out within the hour. Everyone back before nightfall, whether you find them or not," Cormac said.

"Done," Dodd said. "I'm going to go gather supplies and volunteers. Meet me in the lobby in forty-five?"
he asked, including me again now that my distasteful suggestion of him staying behind was off the table.

"Got it," I replied
. I was going to head out and try to get Burrom on board when Cormac's hand on my arm stopped me. "I've got to go." The longer I have to negotiate with Burrom the better. He might want my first born, this time.

"Back by nightfall."

"I'll try."

"No, you'll
do it."

"I'm not making
any promises."

He
pulled me into a windowless storage closet, stacked with shelves of paper and office supplies, across from the conference room.

He stood silent for a moment and that thing I couldn't put my finger on tugged at my brain. He seemed tenser than normal
, even with the circumstances. "What's going on with you?"

He didn't answer but
closed the distance between us, pressing me back against the shelves. His hands slid up my arms and over my shoulders until they cupped my head, tilting it back. He just stared down at me, not speaking.

"What?" I asked again, not understanding the volatility I felt in him.

"Nothing," he said.

His one hand moved from my hair, trailing along my jaw and down my neck. Then something snapped in his eyes and his mouth was on mine. His hands
, so gentle before, roughly pulled me to him even more firmly.

His jaw moved along my neck
and I felt the scruff of his face before he pulled back, then he was gone without another word.

I found Burrom on the seventh floor, surrounded by his brethren as they looked over a deck of cards spread out on the table.

"I need a minute," I said when Burrom looked up.

"Almost done."

The clock was ticking but I needed him happy, or in Burrom's case, not grumpy, so I tried to keep my patience. The man across from him laid out another card as I tried to figure out what kind of game they were playing. It was nothing I recognized from the casino and I clenched my teeth together trying to hold back my desire to scream that they needed to get a move on. I didn't have time for card games.

Burrom looked down a
t the last card turned over which was the Joker, then looked back to me. "I'm ready."

"You're ready?"

"Yes," he said, walking out of the room as I followed. "You wanted me to come, correct?"

"Did the uproar around the casino and me tracking you down in your suite give me away?"

He simply shrugged.

"Did you want to bring anything with you?"

"I need nothing." He looked to where I had a gun slung in a holster over my shoulder. "That's useless."

"Against rippers, yes. Against other things, maybe not."

"You wouldn't need it if you could simply channel your magic."

"Which I can't do yet
."

"Because you are too in your head. You need t
o be of the universe to rule its powers."

"Okay
, Yoda, but since I can't, let's try to think more practically." I was alongside him so he couldn't see me roll my eyes. I was getting so sick of everyone telling me what to do, how to do it and everything in between. "Why did you decide to come?"

"The cards told me it was the right choice. When I can't hear what the universe is saying, the cards tell me."

"Did the cards mention whether or not it was going to have a good outcome?"

"Yes, but only for me."

We entered the lobby where humans were clumped into groups of threes and fours. None of them said anything but their eyes spoke volumes as they surreptitiously glanced at me.

"Stop being silly," Burrom said to me.

"What are you talking about?"

"You didn't think they were going to throw you a party after you trashed the world, did you?
"

"No, obviously not."

"You made a choice and you knew what might come of it. Don't be stupid about it now. You did what you thought was right. You had no way of knowing what closing the wormhole would do and if you hadn't, we wouldn’t even be here. They just need to hate someone. Look, they hate me too. I don't go getting all mushy about it."

They probably did
hate him. I didn't know if I liked him either. Difference was, I felt responsible, where he didn't seem to care one iota, just like Cormac. It made me wonder if I lived forever, if I'd be half dead inside too.

Dodd was waiting by the door with
Dark and the resident wolf, Abby. Two more Keepers were also there, Donald and Alisa. Alisa didn't bother me but I hated Donald. Ever since the ride to NY, when he was laughing as the world was crumbling, he had rubbed me the wrong way.

Dodd's eyes shot over to Burrom for
a second before coming back to me. "You ready?"

"We're h
ere, aren't we?" Burrom answered the question for me.

"The footage showed
Oslo, Sabrina and the others leaving and heading northeast on foot." Dodd was checking the ammo he had packed while he talked. He'd need a lot if he planned on shooting the many guns strapped over his camo colored clothing.

"Let's get going the
n," I said, grabbing the backpack Dodd handed me.

He
offered one to Burrom as well. Burrom took his, rifled through it and extracted a water canteen. He then shoved said canteen into my backpack. "Here," he said, as he shoved the backpack at a human passing by too close to avoid him.

"Happy Holidays,
" Burrom told him.

The human took it because I think he was too alarmed to
not
take it.

"Seriously
, dude?" Dark asked of Burrom. "You could have at least said happy birthday. Then you would've had a shot of being correct. It's not even winter."

"I'm not a
pack mule," Burrom replied, lifting his chin.

Dodd shook his head and
the rest of us shrugged it off as we headed out the door.

I knew we could have taken a car for this
, even though there wasn't a lot of gasoline available to waste. Gas was being reserved for supply scouting. At our current calculations, if the scouts didn't find more, we would be in total blackness sooner than I wanted to think about. Even still
,
the bigger issue was it would be easier to track them on foot. Tracking them by car would be nearly impossible.

As soon as we got a good fifty feet from the casino, Dark let
Abby off her lead. The leash was just for show inside the casino, so the humans didn't run screaming every time they saw her, and let her pick up the trail. From what I knew, Abby's sense of smell was comparative to Dark's in his wolf form. When Dark was in human form, Abby was stronger. I'd never seen Dark in wolf form but I'd seen others. Even if it was Dark, it was a scary scene to be sure.

"Did you see the footage? Did they look like they were somehow coerced?" I asked Dodd
as we fell into a pace everyone was comfortable with, not too far behind Abby.

"I
t didn't look like it." There was disappointment in his voice and a wounded look in his eyes.

"You know
, she did it for the good of the group."