Summoner of Storms (15 page)

They made it to Kaniyar’s office without
further incident. The desk where her secretary normally sat looked
suspiciously clear of any papers, and his computer was missing. Had
poor Edward gone on the run, or was he cooling his heels in a cell
somewhere? Or hell, maybe Forsyth just quietly carted him off
someplace, as with Tiffany’s relatives.

At least the door still bore Kaniyar’s name.
Probably to keep from contradicting the special assignment story
Forsyth put out. Was she even still out there, or did Forsyth have
her locked away in a cell somewhere?

But hell, if any of them were going to
survive this, he’d bet on Kaniyar. He’d hate to be her enemy, that
was for damn sure, even
with
Gray in his head. An ordinary
guy like Forsyth ought to be shitting his pants at the thought of
her on the loose and gunning for him. So yeah, Caleb would damn
well assume she was out there until he had proof otherwise.

Sean jiggled the door handle. “Locked.”

“Let me.” Caleb reached past him and twisted
the handle sharply. The lock gave way under his strength, and he
pushed the door open. It wasn’t subtle, but hopefully they’d be
long gone before anyone realized the office had been broken
into.

Darkness shrouded the room. Caleb could see
easily, thanks to Gray’s enhanced vision, but Sean immediately
stumbled into a chair. “Hold on a sec and let me get the computer
powered up. The monitor will give us a little light without turning
on the overheads.”

A few seconds later, the soft glow of the
monitor filled the room. Caleb waited impatiently until the log in
screen appeared. “Here,” Sean said, passing him the thumb
drive.

According to Tiffany, the program on the
drive would crack Forsyth’s password and get them access to his
files on SPECTR’s data servers. “How long do you think this is
going to take?” Caleb asked as the drive came to life and began to
do its thing.

Sean shook his head. “No telling.”

The minutes ticked by heavily. Caleb
inspected the office, but its spartan appearance offered little of
interest. Kaniyar wasn’t the type to put up pictures of her kids.
Did she have any? A husband? He didn’t have the slightest idea, let
alone what might have happened to them if they existed.

Caleb slid open the desk drawers one at a
time, in case there happened to be something of interest inside.
Say, a folder labeled “Forsyth’s Evil Plan.” But he found nothing
even remotely interesting, just the usual junk like rubber bands
and dried-out pens.

The ventilation units hummed in the distance,
the only sound in the silent complex. There must be security guards
patrolling, though. How often would they come through and check on
things?

“Wish I could light up down here,” Sean
muttered.

“Don’t—we can’t risk drawing attention.” Not
to mention Caleb didn’t feel like sneezing his head off. Jesus, how
long was the damn program going to take?

The computer chimed softly. The log in screen
vanished, and a desktop came up. Sean hurried around the desk and
leaned over Caleb’s shoulder. “There—go to his files and start
copying.”

Caleb dutifully clicked through. A list of
folders came up. Most of them bore labels like Expenses or Time
Sheets. Once again, nothing conveniently titled My Evil Plan.

“Drakul,” Caleb read, and hurriedly marked it
for wholesale copying. It might not tell them anything about
Forsyth’s scheme, but Caleb wanted to know what the guy had on him
and Gray.

Another folder caught his eye as well.
“‘Baikal.’ Why does that sound familiar?”

Sean shrugged. “It doesn’t to me.”

Caleb started to scroll past, hesitated, then
went back and marked it for copying anyway. Something about the
word nagged at him, even if he couldn’t remember where he’d heard
it before. Then he went into Forsyth’s email and set the program to
copying everything from the last three months. With any luck there
would be something incriminating in one of the messages.

“How long is this going to take?” Sean
groused.

Caleb pulled up the progress bar. “Just a few
more minutes.”

The door swung open behind them, and too late
Caleb realized it had blocked out the sound of footsteps
approaching. He spun the chair and found himself staring down the
barrel of a gun.

* * *

The hanger’s side door opened onto a vast,
shadowy space. Echoes ran up to a far-off ceiling, and the heavy
scent of dust and old incense filled the air. Despite the trapped
heat of the day inside, John felt suddenly cold.

He reached out blindly along the wall, first
to one side, then the other before finding the light switches. For
just a second, he hesitated, unsure he really wanted to see this.
Some of the bottled demons held here were ones he’d exorcised. Ones
he’d condemned to an imprisonment, which might be nothing to
them...or might be the horrific torture of solitary combined with
sensory deprivation.

Steeling himself, he flipped on all the
switches at once, like ripping off a band aid.

High overhead, enormous fluorescents buzzed
to life one by one. The sterile, white light revealed an enormous
room making up the entirety of the hanger. A few wooden pallets lay
to one side, but otherwise the only contents of the room were row
upon row of steel shelves, stretching high overhead like the
skeletons of metal dinosaurs.

Each unit bore a marker indicating its row.
The shelves were categorized by number, and each one bore a
plethora of smaller labels for individual slots. No doubt a master
list somewhere identified each and every bottle: Row 52, Shelf 8,
Slot 73 - ghoul, Charleston SC, exorcist John Starkweather, case
file 6823-B.

Spirit bottles were small, no larger than a
beer bottle. Every shelf could have contained twenty, every unit
ten times more. A hanger of this size might store thousands of NHEs
with room to spare.

The shelves held only dust. Forsyth had taken
every last bottle.

* * *

“Don’t move!” the guard barked. “Hands up,
now!”

Sean let out a hiss but did as ordered. Caleb
followed suit. Damn it! They’d been so close. If only he’d paid
more attention to their surroundings instead focusing on the
computer screen.

The guard flipped on the overhead light.
“Back away from the desk and come around this side. Nice and
slow.”

Caleb nudged Sean into movement. As they
moved to the front of the desk, the guard kept his eyes on them,
but thumbed on the radio at his belt. “This is Walden. I’ve got two
intruders in the—”

Caleb didn’t think, just acted. He sprinted
across the room faster than any human could move, Gray rising up to
help him. His TK slapped the gun free of the guard’s startled hand.
Before the man could react, Caleb’s hands closed on either side of
his head. Short hair bristled under Caleb’s fingers, and the guard
let out a startled intake of breath.

Caleb twisted once, hard. The wet crack of
bone sounded, loud as a gunshot. The guard went limp, head flopping
to one side as he fell. The smell of piss stung Caleb’s
nostrils.

God. He’d never killed anyone directly. Gray
had always been in control before, whether they fought demons or
Forsyth’s goons. His hands shook, and the remnants of his last meal
clawed at the back of his throat.

“
It was necessary. He would have given us
away.”

Yeah. I know. But it still feels wrong.

“Walden?” the radio squawked. “You still
there? Report!”

No time to freak out—it would be only minutes
before someone else came to investigate. He turned back to the
desk, to find Sean already at the computer, yanking the thumb drive
free. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sean said, slipping the
drive into his pocket.

As they exited the office, the overhead
intercom clicked on. “Alert. Possible intruders in the building.
All personnel return immediately to your assigned areas to await
the all-clear.”

Sean swore and broke into a jog. Caleb
stretched his longer legs to keep up. “Now what?”

“The elevator will be on lockdown. We still
might get through this, if we head to my office right now and
pretend we’ve been there the whole time. There’s nothing to
implicate us. Maybe—”

They rounded a corner, and Sean bumped into a
woman who seemed oddly familiar to Caleb. “Sorry, Agent Hale,” Sean
said.

“No problem. Did you hear—” Her gaze went
from Sean to Caleb, and she froze.

Hell, now he remembered where he’d seen her
before. She’d been one of the exorcists at RD who’d run the tests
on Gray.

Hale spun and ran, shouting at the top of her
lungs. “The drakul! It’s here!”

Shit.

Sean started after her, but Caleb grabbed his
arm. “Let her go—it’s too late.”

Sean swore and drew his Glock. “We’re trapped
down here.”

“Not yet. Follow me.”

Caleb broke into a run. They had to get out
of the building before security had an opportunity to organize. He
and Gray might smash their way through just about anything, but
given enough bullets and guards and only one exit, even they could
be stopped. And Sean didn’t have their ability to heal.

And do I care? It would serve the asshole
right to have somebody gun
him
down this time.

Except Sean was helping them now. And even if
Caleb wouldn’t shed a tear to see him go down in a hail of bullets,
they didn’t have enough allies to throw one aside.

The lobby guard who had let them in earlier
stood in front of the elevator, looking nervous. He turned at the
sound of running feet and took aim with his gun. “Stop!”

Caleb
pushed
with his TK, slamming the
guy back against the elevator doors.
Huh. I’m getting better at
this.
Unfortunately, the guard kept a hold on his gun, and even
as Caleb closed with him, he fired.

The bullet almost missed, drawing a line of
pain across Caleb’s thigh. Sean returned fire, and the guard let
out a gurgle, slumping to one side.

Caleb knelt by the body and found the guard’s
key card attached to his belt. Caleb shoved the body aside and hit
the call button for the elevator.

Of course the damn thing wasn’t on their
floor. Caleb wanted to scream with impatience. As for Sean, his
face turned the color of old cheese, and he stared fixedly at the
dead guard. Had Sean been friends with the guy? To hear John tell
of it, most of the paranormally-abled in the office had known each
other since high school. What would it be like to kill the person
you’d sat beside in tenth-grade algebra?

Running footsteps echoed from the hall
leading away from the lobby. “Fuck—someone heard the shots,” Caleb
said.

To his credit, Sean immediately dropped into
a crouch and brought up his gun again. A group of guards rounded
the security barrier, their own weapons out and ready. “Stand
down!” one of them shouted. “Drop it or we’ll shoot!”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid
open.

Caleb lunged inside, key card at the ready.
“Sean, get in here!”

Sean dove inside. Gunfire spattered the wall,
and Sean leaned out to return fire. Caleb swiped the key card and
punched the button for the ground floor. The doors began to slide
closed; Sean waited until the last second before pulling his arm
inside.

“Damn it.” Sean sagged against the wall. The
stink of cordite now mingled with cigarettes and sweat. “This is
bullshit.”

Caleb watched the numbers tick past. “Welcome
to my world.”

Five floors to go. Four.

Would SPECTR have guards waiting for them in
the parking garage? Probably. But how many?

Three. Two.

The elevator jolted to a halt.

* * *

Gray slides easily to the surface of their
shared consciousness, Caleb gladly yielding. Behind them, the
treacherous mortal Sean gasps.

“We will have to fight,” Gray explains,
because they don’t need Sean shooting them from behind while other
mortals shoot them from the front. “Caleb is better at some things.
I am better at this.”

“Oh. Uh. Okay.”

Gray stretches up and pushes aside the access
in the elevator roof. Fortunately no one is yet coming down from
above. Perhaps the mortals mean to trap them here while they gather
their forces. If so, they have made a mistake.

Gray climbs out, before reaching back in and
hauling Sean up. Once the mortal is standing again, Gray turns his
attention to the shaft. The exit is only a short distance overhead.
“I will go first. You may retrieve your vehicle while they shoot at
me.” He wishes they had their coat, to take some of the impact of
the bullets.

Sean stares up at the doors. “I don’t think I
can climb up there.”

Gray breathes out an impatient sigh, shaking
his hair back. His scalp tingles as the hair grows instantly,
falling in a long arc to...there. Sean seems taken aback, but he
nods. “Good thinking. Might as well scare the piss out of them if
you can.”

What does the mortal mean?

“
All the hair flying around looks, you
know. Impressive.”

Ah.

“You may hold onto me, and I will climb,”
Gray says, although he would prefer not to touch this mortal at
all. But John would likely not understand Gray abandoning this one
at such a moment.

He kneels, and Sean hesitantly slips his arms
around Gray’s shoulders. “Hold on tightly,” Gray advises. He rises
to his feet, Sean pressing his knees to either side of Gray’s hips
for extra grip.

Claws find traction in every crack and
crevice, and Gray hauls them up, until they reach the door. Sean
carefully grips the cable, bracing himself between it and the
tracks to keep out of the line of fire.

Gray takes a deep breath, anticipating pain.
Gripping the closed doors, he shoves them open with a single
heave.