The Undead Pool (28 page)

“Do me a favor,” I said, holding the door-close button down and smiling. “Tell Edden I'm on the way up? My calls don't seem to be making it through lately.”

Finally the doors started to move. The cops reached to hold them open, jerking back when Jenks buzzed them. The pixy darted back in at the last moment, and I exhaled, falling back against the elevator wall with a loud sigh. Trent was smiling as Jenks hung in the middle of the elevator in satisfaction, a pool of dusty sunshine growing under him.

“You can do bold,” Trent said in admiration, and I pulled myself straight, my worry for him flowing back. Why was I working so hard to get him up there? Bancroft had flipped his lid.

“You haven't seen anything,” Jenks said as he landed on the railing, feet pedaling to stay on when they slipped and his wings caught him before he moved a hairsbreadth. “I've seen this woman push her way into—”

“Jenks!”

Grinning, Jenks shifted to Trent's shoulder. “Ask me later.”

But Trent wasn't even listening, intent on the report that I'd taken. “This doesn't sound like Bancroft,” he said, brow furrowed. “Hostages?” He flipped a page, eyes widening. “Oh no.”

I leaned to look and Jenks whistled. It was hard to tell with the fuzzy, enlarged photo, but it looked as if a third of the walls of the entire top floor had been blown out to make a sheltered cave at the top of the sky. “Tink's little pink rosebuds,” Jenks breathed, hardly louder than his wings. “How much magic did you bring, Rache?”

“Enough?” I said, not sure as I tugged my shoulder bag up. I didn't have anything that would let me fly, and we were more than thirty stories up. “Is he making any demands?”

Trent flipped through the pages as the elevator dinged. “Not . . . yet.”

His words trailed off as the silver doors parted and the unmistakable scent of fresh air and broken concrete poured into the elevator and down the shaft. Almost immediately the doors began to close, and I put a hand out, stopping them. All three of us looked out into the alien-seeming, broken building as the wind pushed my hair back. The walls between us and the horizon were gone, and though there was still a ceiling, the Cincy skyline spread before us in magnificence unimpeded. Fluorescent lights, some on, some not, hung from the ceiling in a once-regular pattern. Desks and office equipment were shoved into haphazard piles. In one corner by the edge, a huge pile of stuff stretched to the ceiling. It had to be at least forty feet in diameter and was made of desks, pieces of wallboard, and twisted rebar. It looked like a nest.

Bancroft did this?
“Maybe we should keep the hard hats on,” I whispered. Between us and the clutter was a much more modest barrier of desks, and behind it with their backs to us crouched two officers and Edden. Almost at our feet and clearly waiting to be taken down were two ominous, coat-covered bodies. The ambulance crew and stretcher were nowhere I could see, but the second elevator was going down.

They're removing bodies,
I thought, inching in front of Trent.

“I don't know if I've got enough magic for this,” Trent said, and Edden turned, still in a crouch. When I gave him a little wave, he frowned and gestured brusquely for us to join him.

“You think?” Jenks darted out, immediately lost in the wind and glare bouncing into the open floor from the nearby building.

“Get over here!” Edden all but hissed, and we jolted into motion, hunched as we half ran. Rebar and wallboard littered the carpet squares, and cool air still flowed from the air ducts. Bancroft's voice was coming from the weird “nest,” shouting about the sun and having to go deeper.

“Oh, thank God,” Trent breathed when we got closer. “There's Landon. He looks okay.”

I pulled my gaze away from the covered bodies. Okay was a matter of interpretation. The young man was sitting on the floor, jaw clenched and eyes darting.
Doctor Tessel?
I wondered, eyes going back to the bodies by the elevator. Not good.

“What took you so long?” Edden demanded as I stepped over the thick extension cord snaking through the rubble to power the monitor the two officers were staring at.

“Took us so long?” I said, peeved as I sat on a prone file cabinet. “We had to romance our way over the bridge and bull our way up the elevator.” Miffed, I sat hunched over on the cabinet to stay hidden. “I swear, Edden, if you keep ignoring my calls—”

“I told them to let you through!” Edden said, and the two officers fiddling with the equipment shrugged as if it wasn't their fault. Immediately my anger vanished, and seeing it, Edden sighed. “Mr. Kalamack, it isn't safe up here. I understand your relationship to Bancroft and I appreciate the offer, but I'd feel better if you'd go back downstairs.”

Trent gingerly sat beside me, checking to see that his head was below the level of the piled desks. Reaching out across the space, the two men shook hands. “I've known him all my life and I think I can help.” But doubt was creeping into his eyes as he followed Bancroft's voice over the demolished floor open to the wind on two sides. I was starting to have serious doubts myself. The man sounded nuts.

Landon stirred. Stubble shrouded his face, thicker than Trent's and somehow ugly. “I can't believe you brought her,” he said, his voice flat and his eyes malevolent. “Are you intentionally being contrary, or is this the famed Kalamack pride I'm seeing?”

Trent's expression darkened, but it was Edden who shoved between us, his face red as he exclaimed, “Landon, you're here as a courtesy! One more word, and you go down with the next body. Got it?”

The elevator dinged, and everyone looked as the plainclothes man and two of the officers came out of the second elevator. Lips tight, Landon averted his eyes, his show of contriteness just that. “Sir?” the man from downstairs asked as he looked at me.

Edden's frown deepened. “Just take the bodies down,” he muttered. “And someone post a memo that Rachel Morgan can see me any time the thought enters her head, okay?”

Mollified, I eased closer to Trent, watching Landon closely as Edden took his hard hat off to run a hand over his hair. He looked tired as he put it back on and turned to the nest. Behind him, one of the bodies was lifted onto a gurney and taken downstairs. “I don't know what you think you can do, Mr. Kalamack. We brought in Bancroft and Landon early this morning for breaking curfew, releasing them once we realized they were collecting data about the waves. We didn't know Bancroft was, ah . . . an elven holy man.”

It had been hard for him to say, and I understood. How do you easily acknowledge a religion that's been in hiding for two thousand years?

“I thought that was the end of it, but I came in this morning to find they went to the top floor to take more readings.” Edden gestured at the destruction. “And then this happened. There should be thirty people up here handling this, and I've got two. I was lucky to get the dogs up here to look for survivors.” Softer, he added, “Most of our resources are at a gymnasium full of high school kids being detained by vampires because some idiot kid yelled ‘Free Vampires rule.' I'm running out of lies, Rachel, but the truth will ignite forty years of hidden hatred and fear.”

“My God,” I whispered, thinking of Ivy, and Edden held up a hand.

“We've got it under control,” he said, but I didn't feel any better. “The I.S. has a couple of agents over there helping us defuse the situation, but eventually someone is going to do something stupid we can't come back from.” He looked over the pile of desks and chairs to where Bancroft shouted. “It was a mistake to name the Free Vampires as the reason for the masters being asleep. I don't know why I went along with it except that everyone is afraid of a plague, and only half the population is afraid of vampires.”

My eyes slid to Landon, who was ignoring me with a stiff-jawed determination. I could tell by the slant of his shoulders that he'd pushed for it. My frustration deepened, tinged with fear for Ivy. We had to find these guys and get the master vampires awake before the vampires started staking each other first and asking questions later.

Trent's feet shifted, the thick grit soundless between his feet and the flat carpet. “Edden, can I talk to him? Something triggered this. Maybe I can find out what.”

“You're not going closer,” I said, glancing up at what used to be the ceiling. “Jenks?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a bullhorn?” Trent said as the pixy dropped down.

“Rachel is right,” Edden said as he gestured for one of the officers to hand it over. “It's unclear if he killed the negotiator intentionally or not, but I don't like his talk about goats. Newman, call and stop the ambulance crew from coming back up. I don't want any misunderstanding.”

Goats?
Trent took the bullhorn, and I put a hand on his arm, stopping him. “Hold on a sec. Jenks? What does it look like in there?”

The pixy's face was screwed up in a puzzled expression. “It's as weird as a troll living in his mother's basement, Rache,” he said, and the officers working the monitor turned to him. Even Landon was watching, and knowing it, Jenks's dust shifted to a nervous pink. “That pile of stuff is a big hollow ball, with lights inside everywhere making it brighter than day.”

“Hostages?” Edden asked.

“No. Just him.”

Clearly relieved, Trent rested the bullhorn on the top of the uppermost desk. Landon was watching him with an unnerving intensity that tightened my suspicion. The elf knew something. He just wasn't saying. Frowning, I toyed with the idea of asking Edden to beat it out of him before his silence killed us. Instead, I inched closer to Trent and renewed my grip on the ley line.

The bullhorn popped as Trent thumbed the circuit open. “Bancroft?”

“Too bright!” Bancroft was shouting, his voice muffled. “Need to be higher, higher than the light. Must get between it where it's dark. Stop looking at me, you damn harlots!”

Trent's brow furrowed, and I edged even closer. “Bancroft, it's Trent.”

“Trent?” Bancroft's tirade cut off. From the pile in the corner came a sliding crash. “Trent! Did you bring your goat?”

The officers swore as Bancroft stumbled out. He was ragged, his face stubbled and his cylindrical hat sitting askew. His hands hid his eyes as if the light pained him. “Trent, we were right,” he said as he tripped over the debris, seemingly oblivious that he could walk around them. “The mystics have splintered, gone insane. I can hear them. They have to be freed so the Goddess can make them whole again.”

Jenks's wings hummed. “He's nuts,” he said. I agreed, but when the officer next to me rested a long-range dart rifle on the desktop, I turned to Edden.

“You're going to dart him?” I said, appalled.

“Easy now,” Edden said, his eyes on Bancroft. “It can take thirty seconds to work. I don't want tomorrow's headlines to read ‘Elven Holy Man Jumps from FIB Tower.' Wait until he's away from the edge.”

“He's not an animal!” I protested, and Edden's eyes flicked from mine to Trent's.

“The last person who tried magic on him is dead.”

“Well, thanks for the heads-up,” I said sarcastically, seriously thinking about dropping the line, but I didn't. A protection circle was fairly innocuous. My skin was prickling. Bancroft had stopped moving and was tugging chairs and chunks of wallboard into a circle around him as if instinctively starting another nest.

“Rache, something wicked is coming,” Jenks said as he tucked back in at my shoulder.

I stifled a shudder as the feeling of cat feet walked through my soul. “I feel it too.”

“It's coming from Bancroft,” Jenks said, and Trent swore. “Use your second sight,” the pixy suggested. “That's what your aura looked like, Rache. Right before those waves hit us.”

My lips parted when I pulled up my second sight to find Bancroft's aura was a harsh white, flaring as if his soul were on fire.
A wave?
I wondered, and Jenks shook his head at my unspoken question. He was just covered in mystics.

“Is he close enough?” Trent said, and the man with the rifle shook his head, his gaze never shifting from Bancroft as the man dropped a monitor on top of a new wall of trash. Trent tightened his grip on the bullhorn. “Bancroft? We can get you some help.”

Bancroft patted the broken monitor, pleased with where he'd put it. “Help? Nothing can help me. I hear her eyes. All the time. Whispering, prickling through me,” he said, and a chill dropped through me when he looked up, his eyes reflecting the light like a cat's. “I'm hers,” he moaned, weaving on his feet. “I'm her chattel,” he said, heedless to the tears making shining tracks through his stubble. “It's too bright. Too bright,” he chanted, and then he wiped his eyes, his face becoming crafty. “She's coming. I have to be free of them or she'll kill me to get her eyes back!”

The man with the rifle shook his head, still not having a clean shot.

“Bancroft! Wait!” Trent shouted, but the man was climbing over the broken ceiling and walls back to his larger pile.

“Not enough goats,” the man was mumbling, picking up a ream of paper and dropping it on the pile. “Not enough goddamned
goats
!”

“Give me the gun.” Trent shoved the bullhorn at Edden. “I can get closer than your men.”

My stomach clenched and Jenks's wings clattered.

“With all due respect, Mr. Kalamack,” Edden said. “No.”

My heart thudded, thinking first of Trent, angry and unafraid, and then what I'd risk to keep him from doing something dangerous. “I'll do it,” I said, voice sounding hollow.

“Rache,” Jenks protested, and Edden shook his head.

“Who do you have that's better than me?” I said. “A splat ball will drop him instantaneously. I'd do it from here, but my range sucks.”