In the Shadow of Dragons (Aftermagic Book 1) Read online

“Not here, maybe,” Teague said. “But someone, somewhere.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it. You might be unique.” He grinned again. “Anyway, I’m glad we got this lead in time. Too bad Julian Bishop won’t be there, though. I’ve got another rock with his name on it.”

  Darby rolled her eyes. “You better be glad he’s not there. You know he’ll have it in for you, right?” she said. “You made the White Knight bleed.”

  “Yeah, and I’d do it again.” The good humor drained from Blake’s expression. “Those patrols that came for my folks, they made it a point to inform me and my brothers they were there on Julian Bishop’s orders. Right before they beat the shit out of us and killed Kevin. I still don’t know what happened to Nick.”

  “We’ll find your brother,” Darby said gently. “Noah has the word out to all his contacts.”

  “I hope so. I don’t even want to think about what they’ll do if BiCo finds him first.”

  As Teague listened to the conversation, she’d gone from throttling her instinctive defense of Julian to slightly horrified disbelief. “The patrols came to your house and killed your brother?” she said.

  “Well, my parents’ house. But yeah,” Blake said. “We’d all go over there Friday nights for dinner. That night … we never did figure out who called it in. Might’ve been that stuffy old bag next door. Both my folks had Magesign for a while, but they’d never hurt anyone, you know? Like most people don’t. And none of us boys had any, not then.” His jaw clenched. “BiCo says they protect everybody, but they only protect people with money. People in Bishop.”

  “But Julian wouldn’t have told the patrols to hurt people,” Teague said — and immediately realized she shouldn’t have when both Darby and Blake stared at her.

  “Right,” Blake said slowly. “Just like he didn’t authorize lethal force for this raid we’re going to stop.”

  Darby shook her head. “I knew you were green about the whole BiCo thing, but I didn’t know you were this green,” she said. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re coming. I think this is going to be an eye-opening experience for you, if you live through it.”

  “Yeah. Julian Bishop is the devil,” Blake said. “I thought I hated the guy, until I met Noah. Now that is some fucked-up shit.”

  “Which is not your story to tell.” There was a warning in Darby’s tone. “You know the rules.”

  “No stories, unless it’s yours. I wasn’t going to say anything else.” He smirked at Darby, and then faced Teague. “So, you feel like telling your story?”

  “I…” Panic nearly froze her.

  “She doesn’t have to, Blake. And you shouldn’t ask.”

  She’d never been so glad to hear Noah’s voice.

  “Hey, are we ready to move?” Blake scrambled to his feet, the conversation apparently forgotten already. “I’m pumped, man. Let’s do this.”

  “Almost.” Noah gave a patient smile. “It’s time to get dressed. We’ll head out soon.”

  Teague looked up at him. “Dressed?”

  “I’ll show you. Come on, Teague.” Blake held a hand out. After a brief hesitation, she took it, and he boosted her to her feet. “Bet you didn’t know this was a costume party.”

  “No, I didn’t.” She managed to smile despite the emotional storm brewing in her gut. She had a job to do, and she wasn’t supposed to like these people. Or feel sorry for them. But it sounded like they all had horror stories like Blake’s about what BiCo had done to them … and whatever happened to Noah, Julian might have been involved. Directly.

  Turning them over to the Knights might not be the best idea.

  CHAPTER 43

  Yukon Street Clinic

  August 12, 3:55 p.m.

  Naomi stood in her office, back to the door, stifling sobs with the heel of her hand. She’d come very close to closing the clinic today, but she’d realized it would seem suspicious. Aileen, at least, would ask a lot of questions. She couldn’t risk involving anyone else in this disaster — or getting herself questioned by patrols. Or Knights.

  The worst of it was having to distract herself from the grief with rage. She couldn’t mourn for Scott while she was around people. No one could know what happened to him. He wouldn’t even have a funeral, because Sawyer Volk had done God knew what with his body. Not that it would’ve been possible to have a funeral for a centaur. Every time she felt the awful, hollow ache that started the moment she walked into the barn last night, she channeled the feeling into fury at Sawyer.

  But just now she hadn’t been able to shift it away. When the grief struck, she barely got through the patient she’d been with, and then hurried to her office. A few minutes, she thought. She’d give herself just a few minutes, and then get back to work.

  Except it felt like she’d never stop sobbing.

  Gradually, she got her breathing under control. She’d hoped to be able to close early, after her last appointment at three, but there’d been quite a few walk-ins today. At least fifteen people waited in the lobby right now, and she had to get back to them. She might even end up having to stay late.

  It would’ve been funny if she wasn’t so devastated.

  Just as she pulled herself up to grab some tissues from her desk, there was a knock on the door. “Are you in there, sweetie?” Aileen called. “Mrs. Sturgeon said you rushed out of the room before you gave her the prescription slip.”

  Damn, she had. “It’s on the clipboard in room one,” Naomi said, trying to force some cheer into her voice. “Can you give it to her, please? I’ll be right out.”

  “Sure thing.” Aileen paused. “Naomi, are you feeling okay? I know I asked yesterday, but … you just seem off.”

  Yes, she was. Way off. “Honestly, I think I’m coming down with a summer cold,” she said. “Hopefully it won’t get too nasty.”

  “Let’s hope so. I’ll go get Mrs. Sturgeon’s prescription.”

  “Thank you.”

  She waited until she couldn’t hear Aileen’s footsteps, then grabbed a wad of tissues and blew her nose, a big miserable honk. Grabbed a few more, wiped her face, dropped the whole wad in the trash. No doubt she still looked awful, but there was only so much you could do to hide a huge weeping jag.

  After a quick stop in the staff bathroom to wash her hands and face, and confirm that she looked almost as bad as she felt, she headed back to the lobby. Aileen glanced at her from behind the desk and gave her a sympathetic frown. “Oh, honey, you really are coming down with something,” she said. “Let me fix you some tea.”

  “Maybe in a while. We’ve got all these people to see.” Naomi smiled as best she could and picked up the sign-in sheet from the corner of the desk. “Okay, who’s—”

  The front door of the clinic slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass, and a glut of BiCo patrol officers in riot gear poured inside, weapons drawn. “No one move,” the lead patrol shouted. “This is a raid.”

  Sawyer, you unbelievable bastard, Naomi thought.

  Most of the patients gasped. Someone screamed. They kept coming, strolling across the lobby. Pointing guns at the seated people — including a mother and her two small children, an elderly woman, and a teenage boy.

  “How dare you.” Naomi stalked out to meet the leader, too furious to think. At the same time, a man near the door tried to run out — only to have one of the officers ram his stomach with the butt of a shotgun, dropping him to his knees. “Stop that!” she shouted. “You have no right. These are innocent people!”

  The leader pulled a pistol, aimed straight at her head. She stopped walking.

  “This is my right.” He jerked his head, and four officers hustled past them. Toward the desk. “You’re suspected of aiding terrorist activity,” he said. “If we find any evidence of this, we’ll arrest you. If you fail to cooperate…” He gestured with the gun, his meaning clear. “We won’t arrest you.”

  “Get up. Now,” a voice snarled behind her.

  Aileen. Naomi looked back in time to
see one of the officers yank her terrified assistant out of the chair and fling her away. The woman hit the corner of the desk, cried out and fell to hands and knees.

  The officer pulled a baton and advanced toward her. “Move it, old lady.”

  “Leave her alone!” Despite the cold terror of the gun pointed at her, Naomi whirled and ran toward the desk, dropping next to Aileen to put an arm around the trembling woman. “We’re cooperating,” she said as she glared at the baton-wielding officer. “Just give me a minute, and we’ll get out of the way.”

  Another officer came up behind the angry one and grabbed his shoulder. “Ease off, man,” he said. “It’s not necessary.”

  “Yet.” Still scowling, the one who’d tossed Aileen put his baton back.

  Naomi helped Aileen stand. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Whatever they’re doing, we’ll just let them do it.”

  “But this is insane,” Aileen whispered. “I mean—”

  “Captain!” an officer standing at the door shouted. “Darkspawn!”

  The bottom dropped from Naomi’s stomach.

  Pandemonium erupted in the room, from patients and patrols alike. The captain, the man with the pistol, waded toward the center and started bellowing. “All right! You people are damned well trained for this. You have guns. They don’t. So get out there and stop them.”

  It took another moment, but the patrols reversed course and started pouring out of the clinic. Almost immediately, shouts and gunfire popped outside.

  The captain grabbed two officers by the arms. “You two, stay here. Start searching. We’ll take care of this, and then finish up in here.”

  Naomi went cold. As the last of the officers left, and the door closed on the sounds of fighting outside, she helped Aileen to a chair and looked at the two patrols who’d stayed behind, at the terror-stricken patients in their seats. Many of them were crying — the old woman, the mother desperately trying to comfort her children, the man still on his knees from the rifle blow. The teenage boy looked furious and ready to do something stupid.

  Somehow, she had to protect them all.

  “Stay here and search,” one of the officers grumbled, glowering at the closed door. “Why do I always get the shit jobs?”

  “Man, I wouldn’t want to be out there,” the other one said. “Let’s just get this over with, huh?”

  “Excuse me,” Naomi said loudly.

  When they both swung toward her with cold expressions, her nerve tried to crawl out of her spine. But she squared her shoulders and said, “Most of these people need HeMo shots. So if you don’t mind, I’ll keep doing my job while you’re looking for something that isn’t there.”

  She held her breath, hoping none of the patients would contradict her.

  They didn’t.

  The complaining guard snorted. “They can wait.”

  “Hold on. Maybe we should let her,” the one who didn’t want to be out there said.

  “Yes, you should.” Naomi stared evenly at him. “Unless you want them to start Changing while your buddies are busy.”

  “We’re letting her,” he said, nudging his partner hard with an elbow. “Go ahead, Doc.”

  His partner frowned. “Fine, whatever. Make it quick.”

  She nodded and started toward the woman with the two children. Aileen caught her eye as she passed and mouthed, what are you doing? She shook her head. Apparently, she’d decided to commit suicide by patrols. But she couldn’t let them hurt these people.

  The woman’s eyes widened as she approached. “Can you all come with me, please?” Naomi said, forcing calm into her tone. “This won’t take long.”

  The mother nodded and stood, carrying the younger of the two little girls and holding the other’s hand. “Thank you, Doctor,” she half-whispered.

  Naomi led them toward the back. The officers were at the reception desk, one opening drawers, the other checking the computer. Griping about some inane workplace problems, as if this were just another day at the office for them. Maybe it was.

  They barely paid attention as Naomi walked past with the frightened family.

  Once she’d brought them down the main hallway, she held a finger to her lips and went to the back door, listening. There didn’t seem to be any activity out there. Cautiously, she turned the knob and cracked the door.

  Though she could hear the fight still happening around front, the back parking lot was deserted.

  “Okay,” she said. “Are you parked in the side lot?”

  “No,” the woman whispered. “We took a bus.”

  Naomi nodded. “Just head out straight through here. There’s a small walking path through those trees at the back of the lot, and it comes out on Palmer Road. You can get a bus from there.”

  The woman shivered, and tears formed in her eyes. “What are they going to do to you?”

  “Nothing. I’m not what they say, so I’ll be fine.”

  “Thank you,” the mother said. “Thank you so much.”

  “No problem. Go on.”

  Naomi watched until the woman and her children reached the path, and then closed the door and started back for the lobby. She’d keep sneaking them out one at a time, and hope the officers didn’t notice they weren’t coming back until it was too late.

  If they didn’t kill her first.

  CHAPTER 44

  Yukon Street Clinic

  August 12, 4:05 p.m.

  The attack came on fast. One minute they were by the clinic, a bunch of figures in biker clothes and bandannas over their faces with Noah directing them to take cover positions around the sprawl of BiCo vehicles clogging the street and parked randomly, some of them crowding the sidewalk.

  The next, armed patrols poured out of the building and started shooting.

  For some reason Teague wasn’t as prepared as she should’ve been. The gunshots startled her, and a bullet careened off a steel light post not five feet from her before she dove for cover behind the nearest squad car.

  She wasn’t all that used to fights involving guns. They didn’t work during an Eclipse.

  And part of her hadn’t really believed the patrols would come out shooting. Not with innocent people in there.

  No time to think about that. There was a lot of shouting, blasts of magic flying around. A few patrol officers fleeing the scene, running toward the barriers that the county sheriffs had set up at either end of the road. Noah had them avoid that by coming from the next block up, where they’d parked the vehicles in the lot behind the deserted office building across from the clinic.

  Teague unstrapped the crossbow and looked over the trunk of the squad car. Noah might’ve said to use weapons as a last resort, try to incapacitate the patrols with magic rather than kill them, but her magic wasn’t the incapacitating sort. Arrows were cleaner. She drew a bead on an officer aiming a shotgun at Blake, put an arrow through his arm near the elbow, and dropped back down as he screamed and dropped the gun.

  There, she thought as she reloaded. Incapacitated.

  She’d caught glimpses of most of the Darkspawn out there. Noah blasting faces, making the patrols drop their weapons and wander off. Blake tying one down with a bunch of thick roots he’d made erupt from the ground. Isaac spinning an officer in the air like he’d been caught in a very small tornado. Darby was using her guns, but not killing anyone. She fired at their feet to move them in the path of a magic user, or winged them just enough to startle.

  The only one she hadn’t seen was Diesel.

  This time when she came up over the trunk, she spotted the big man on the other side of the tangle, throwing a blast of white magic. It hit a patrol officer and knocked the man flat on the ground. He didn’t get back up.

  Jesus. Was he killing them with one blast?

  She shook it off, targeted an officer on the walk leading to the clinic and fired an arrow into his leg. Just as she moved to duck down again, something familiar caught her attention. A face she’d seen before. She scanned back and saw one of the
officers who’d arrested her in the Warrens by the open door of an armored truck, talking on a handheld. The third one she attacked, the one who didn’t quite go down.

  The one who’d kicked her until she couldn’t breathe, and then Tased her twice for good measure. Who’d called her a slutty little bitch, actually groped her, and gave a sickly graphic explanation of what else he wanted to do.

  Absolute rage filled her, leaving no room for bullshit like incapacitation. He was wearing body armor and a helmet, but his throat was exposed.

  She put an arrow through it, through the window behind him, cracking the glass into bloody spiderwebs and pinning him there as he gurgled and died.

  Again she ducked down, aware that Noah had seen the execution. She didn’t care. Didn’t even understand why he tried not to kill them. They were the enemy — his enemy, anyway. Not worth the trouble of saving. Especially that one.

  She heaved a breath, reloaded the bow and sprang back up. But before she could settle on a target in the confusion of the battle, someone rammed into her from behind. The breath whooshed out of her. She tried to turn, but two patrols were already on her, wrestling her to the ground. Cuffing her.

  Okay, so she was using magic after all.

  She’s started to call on it when one of them said harshly in her ear, “Mr. Bishop wants to speak with you. Don’t struggle.”

  She went limp, more out of surprise than any desire to follow the command. Her mind raced as she worked out the probability that they knew who she was, versus that Julian wanted to take one of the Darkspawn alive.

  Finally, she decided he must have told them to take the one using a bow. And if she was wrong ... well, she’d just have to blast them. Nodding her assent, she let the officers drag her to one of the armored trucks and throw her in the back.

  There was another one waiting inside. With a phone.

  CHAPTER 45

  Yukon Street Clinic

  August 12, 4:10 p.m.

  They were almost through it when Noah saw Teague kill an officer with a single shot. Which could in no way be an accident, since she’d been easily hitting limbs before then.