Hand of the God Read online

  I stepped out into the foyer in time to catch Taeral rounding the foot of the stairs with Sadie right behind him. He looked about as happy as a bear roused from hibernation, and Sadie just seemed annoyed — mostly with my brother.

  “What is going on?” Taeral said, trying to look past me. “I heard shouting.”

  Sadie huffed a breath. “Sorry about this, Gideon. If it’s just you and Calla —”

  “It’s not.” I sighed and glanced over my shoulder. “Chester’s here.”

  Taeral frowned. “Who?”

  “Chester Rigby?” Sadie said at almost the same time. “That nutcase who lives out by my pack?”

  “Oh. Him,” Taeral said, pulling a face. He was probably remembering the all-natural, MSG-free squirrel meat Chester fed us when we first met him. “What is he doing here?”

  “I don’t know yet, but maybe we’d all better find out together,” I said. “Come on.”

  They followed me into the living room, and I sat with Calla on the love seat while Sadie and Taeral took the couch. “Chester,” Sadie said warily by way of greeting, while Taeral just glared at him and grunted. “How’s … things?”

  “Hey, Sadie. And Terry, right?” he said.

  “Taeral,” Sadie corrected him, giving Taeral a sharp nudge when he bristled.

  Chester shrugged. “Knew it was a weird name,” he said. “Anyway, I guess you could say things are interesting. Enough that I thought you should know what I found out. And, er, I was hoping for your help with something.

  “It had better be important, for you to wake us at this hour,” Taeral grumbled. “And if you so much as think the word ‘aliens,’ I will gut you with that bottle in your hand. Which happens to be mine, by the way.”

  Aliens? Calla mouthed at me.

  I shook my head slightly. I’d have to explain Chester to her later.

  Chester swallowed and set the half-empty beer carefully on the side table next to the chair, avoiding Taeral’s gaze. “Uh, yeah. Well. It is about the — Milus Dei,” he said as he turned to me. “See, I’ve been monitoring their back channels. At least the ones I can decrypt. And they’ve got something big going on, out in New Mexico. Right around Roswell.”

  I held back a groan. This already sounded like one of Chester’s conspiracy theories. “Yeah, like what?” I said. “Are they getting ready to welcome the mothership?”

  “You know, you’re actually pretty close.” Chester leaned forward, hands on his knees. “One of their bigshots just came in, and he’s got some kind of nasty weapon. He brought it so they could make more of whatever it is, at their facility out there.”

  Calla shot him a look. “Bullshit. There is no facility in New Mexico,” she said.

  “Yeah, there is.” Chester snorted. “That’s why they’re a secret society, lady. Because they have secrets. Even some that the Feds don’t know.”

  “Who said I was a Fed?”

  Chester smirked. “You’ve got federal agent written all over you,” he said. “Too jumpy for CIA, not stiff-necked enough for FBI, so I’m guessing you’re NSA.”

  I took her hand and gave it a small squeeze, hoping she’d get my meaning and just hear him out. I knew he’d get to some kind of point eventually, but I could sense her getting agitated. What I mostly wanted to avoid was Chester finding out that she wasn’t just a Fed, that she also worked for the “aliens.”

  “Look, Chester,” I said. “I’m not sure what this has to do with us. Or anything, really.”

  He looked at me like I’d lost several IQ points. “I told you, they’re mass-producing a nasty weapon—”

  “Milus Dei is always creating some horrific method of mass murder, or taking and torturing Others, or plotting to destroy someone or something,” Taeral interrupted with a snarl. “That is all they do. You are wasting our time, when I could be sleeping.”

  “But it’s a weapon to kill fairies,” Chester said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Sadie grabbed his arm before he could go off on a we-are-not-fairies tangent. “Maybe you should just tell us everything you know,” she said to Chester. “Including why you want our help.”

  “Yeah, okay. Here goes.” Chester blew out a breath. “Some guy that’s real high up in Milus Dei, like he works directly for the big boss, flew into Roswell this morning.”

  “The big boss,” I said. “You mean Dante?”

  Chester stared at me. “You know his name? How?” he said. “No one’s ever been able to find out anything about the big guy — and I mean nothing.”

  “I had an inside source,” I said, keeping my tone vague. “But I don’t know anything more than a name, so … you were saying?”

  “Uh, yeah.” He frowned. “So this guy came in this morning with a big load of stuff, all hush-hush. I don’t just know this from the chatter, either. A buddy of mine flies a charter plane, and they hired him to pick up the bigshot at the airport and fly him out near Basin Springs. That’s the town where my buddy lives. Runs a motel there.” Chester paused and glanced at the ceiling, like he was trying to remember something. “One of the things he’s got is a weapon called the Answerer. That’s the one he wants to make more of.”

  Taeral jolted slightly. “I know this name,” he said. “But I cannot recall why it’s familiar. What is this weapon, exactly?”

  “I’m not sure,” Chester admitted. “They called it something else too, but I picked that part up in a voice conversation and it didn’t make a lot of sense. Kind of a gibberish word. Give me a minute, it’ll come to me,” he added quickly when Taeral gave him a sharp look. “Anyway, the problem is my buddy picked the guy up and took off with him, but now he’s missing.”

  “Your friend lost the guy on a charter plane?” I said.

  Chester shook his head. “No, I mean my buddy’s missing. He hasn’t been in contact with me since he took off from Roswell, and the transponder on his plane isn’t responding.” He clenched his hands together between his knees. “I know something happened to him,” he said. “And I need your help to find him. Plus I figured if you help me with Rex, while you’re there you can take out this bigwig and get the weapon. Before they make more of them.”

  I’d been considering the idea ever since Chester mentioned that a big Milus Dei player was in a known location. Hearing about the weapon and Chester’s buddy being in trouble made up my mind. “Okay. We’ll do it,” I said. “Or at least, I will.”

  “What?” Calla blurted over Taeral and Sadie’s almost identical gasps of protest. “How can you possibly believe a word this guy says? No offense,” she said with a glance at Chester, “but your friend’s a few cards short of a deck. I mean, come on. You’re telling me that he hacked into Milus Dei’s network?”

  I sighed. “Calla, he helped us take out the Pennsylvania site. He may be a little unorthodox, but he’s legit.”

  “Really.” The look she gave me bordered on cold. “Well, then. I guess you should listen to the expert and run off to New Mexico.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d done here, but I’d definitely pissed her off. I should probably apologize for something.

  If only I knew what.

  “Gideon. Even if he is correct about all this, we’ve no need to involve ourselves,” Taeral said. “Milus Dei possessing weapons to use against the Fae is not a new development. After all, they managed to capture our father and hold him for years. That was no easy feat. As for Chester’s friend—”

  “He needs our help, and Chester helped us,” I said quietly, though I didn’t feel like being quiet. “We owe him. And besides that …” My jaw clenched. “Look, I’m tired of sitting around and waiting for Milus Dei to do something awful, just so we can clean up the mess. For once we have the chance to stop them before they start killing. Maybe even to do some real damage to those bastards, if this guy’s as important as he sounds. And I’m taking that chance.” I looked straight at Taeral. “With or without your help, I’m taking it.”

  Taeral gaped at my outburst, and the
n smirked and shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder which of us is the elder brother,” he said. “I suppose you are right. Do you agree, my love?”

  “You know I’m always up for ripping a chunk out of Milus Dei’s ass,” Sadie grinned.

  I nodded and turned to Calla. “Listen, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s fine,” she said curtly. “But if you’re going out there, I’m going with you.”

  A protest rose to my lips, but I bit it back. She was already pissed at me. If I told her not to go, especially because I was worried something might happen to her, she’d probably shoot me just for the hell of it since she knew it wouldn’t kill me. And she’d go anyway.

  “All right. Thank you,” I said.

  She snorted. “Don’t thank me. I’m only going so I can say I told you so in person.”

  Actually, I kind of hoped she got the chance to say that. But I doubted it.

  “Thanks, guys. Really, thank you,” Chester said when the debate was apparently settled. “Rex is a great guy. He knows all sorts of shit, too. He should be able to help take this guy down and get — oh, damn, I almost had it. Hang on.” He held a finger out, closed his eyes and tipped his head back. After a minute, he looked at Taeral. “The other name of the weapon,” he said. “It’s, uh … Fraggle Rock. Or something like that.”

  I’d never seen the color drain faster from Taeral’s features. “You cannot mean Fragarach,” he rasped.

  “That’s it! Fragarach the Answerer.” Chester’s brow furrowed. “Guess you’ve heard of it, huh?”

  “I have.” Taeral’s lips barely moved. He dragged a hand down his face and let out a long, shaking breath. “Do not take this the wrong way, a’ghrael, but I am going to need one of those beers.”

  Sadie’s eyes widened. She gave a slow nod, and Taeral held his normal hand out. Chester took the hint and tossed him a bottle.

  That was when I knew we were in more trouble than I thought. But I also knew that going out there was the right decision.

  Whatever this Fragarach was, we had to get it away from Milus Dei.

  Chapter 4

  Taeral caught the beer, cracked the top off and drank half in one swallow. When he met my gaze, his eyes were troubled. “Fragarach is a legend,” he said. “A cold iron sword, said to be able to kill a Fae in a single blow. They say it was made by dwarves and used in the Great War, but … it has been lost for thousands of years.”

  “Hold on. Dwarves are real, too?” I said. “And what Great War?”

  The noise Taeral made was almost bitter. “So it is said. The Great War was between the dwarves and the Fae, fought for control of the Veil. It was before my time, before my father’s time and his father’s before him.” The corner of his mouth twitched, and he took another drink. “When the dwarves lost, despite having created Fragarach, they were driven underground. Where they apparently chose to remain. No one has seen a dwarf in centuries, and most believe they have died out.” He offered a grim smile. “But if the legends are true, then I suppose their weapons must have existed. And if Milus Dei truly possesses Fragarach, and can reproduce it …”

  “We have to stop them. Right now,” I said. “Before they get to the reproducing part.”

  “Aye, we do.”

  “Excuse me,” Calla said abruptly, standing from the couch.

  Everyone watched her walk out of the living room, and I felt a frown tugging at my lips. “Sadie, you’re a woman, right?” I said under my breath when she’d gone. “Do you have any idea what I did to piss her off?”

  “Not really.” Sadie gave me a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry, though. Whatever it is, she’ll tell you about it eventually.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered as I stared after her, and then turned back with a sigh. “Okay, so I guess we should head out first thing in the morning,” I said. “Driving is probably out, since that’ll take days.” I stopped as a thought occurred to me. “Chester … how did you get here?”

  He shrugged. “Uber.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You took an Uber here from Pennsylvania?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I took eighteen Ubers. Used fake cards and burner phones. Plus I walked a few miles, here and there. Makes it harder for anyone to trace my movements.”

  “Er, okay then. Guess that’s out. We’re not taking five hundred Ubers to New Mexico.”

  “We could fly out, maybe,” Sadie said. “Only that might take all day, especially if there’s no direct flight. Depends on how many airports we’d have to go through. And we’d have to rent a car in Roswell to get to this town.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “No, that won’t work,” I said. “We can’t take a commercial flight. Taeral doesn’t have any identification, and airport security’s a bitch. He’ll never be able to get through.”

  Taeral grunted. “We can go through Arcadia,” he said. “I’ve no idea where this Roswell place is, but I am certain I can get reasonably close.”

  “Yeah, and what if ‘reasonably close’ ends up being in the middle of the desert? There’s a lot of that in New Mexico. Besides, if we run into trouble over there, like we pretty much do every time—”

  “What’s an Arcadia?” Chester said.

  “It’s a place we’re not going.” I shook my head when Taeral opened his mouth to protest. “Too much could go wrong, and I don’t think we have a lot of time to stop this. There has to be another way.”

  “There is another way.”

  Calla’s voice got everyone’s attention as she walked back into the room, tucking her phone in her pocket. “We’ll have a private jet waiting for us at Fort Bennett Field in an hour,” she said. “Five hours to Roswell, where we pick up a Hummer and head to your buddy’s town. We should be there by oh-eight-hundred, give or take.”

  After a brief, stunned silence, Chester blurted, “Fort Bennett’s been decommissioned as an air field for years.”

  “Yes, it has. But us Feds have a few secrets, too,” she said with a crooked smile. “So are we going, or what?”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “Don’t know about you guys, but all I need is about ten minutes to pack.”

  Taeral and Sadie agreed.

  I pretty much ordered Chester to stay in the living room, so he wouldn’t wander around the house and run into Grygg and Eli, and then headed for my room. Calla came with me. Once we were behind closed doors, she sat on the bed while I rummaged through the closet for whatever I could find. “Thank you for setting all this up,” I said, stealing a glance at her. She looked troubled. “Do you mind if I ask which set of strings you had to pull for this one?”

  “Strictly NSA.” She breathed out carefully and looked at me. “Sorry I flipped out back there,” she said. “I just … I don’t know. I guess I feel kind of useless in all this.”

  “What are you talking about?” I abandoned my packing and sat next to her, slipping an arm around her waist. “You just arranged everything we needed in five minutes, when it would’ve taken me all night to figure something out. Plus, you’re risking your ass every minute you keep working for Milus Dei.”

  “Yeah. For all the good that’s doing.” She stared at her hands, her fingers twining restlessly. “I have so much to make up for,” she whispered. “I just feel like whatever I do, it’s never going to be enough.”

  I took her hand. “Calla, listen to me,” I said, and waited until she raised her eyes. “You’re not them, okay? You are not your sister.” She opened her mouth, and I placed a finger gently against her lips. “You had no idea, and that’s their fault. Not yours. It’s what they do — they keep secrets, and they ruin lives. Every life they touch, including humans.”

  She shuddered against me. Her sister had worked for Milus Dei too, as a scientist at the Manhattan cite. Calla had been told that her sister was doing groundbreaking research, the kind of thing that was supposed to lead to curing cancer and other great leaps for humanity. And maybe that was partially true. But she’d also been part
of the team responsible for holding and torturing Daoin, along with countless Others they’d been experimenting on.

  And I knew Calla felt responsible for all of it, because she’d signed up to join Milus Dei for the paycheck. They never told her about their extracurricular activities and she never tried to find out. But really, what person in their right mind would think that the ‘unclassified branch’ they worked for actually was involved in hunting down creatures that weren’t supposed to exist? There’d been no way for her to even begin guessing that.

  “You couldn’t have done anything about it,” I eventually said to her. “Not alone. They would’ve killed you. But now, together, we can do something. And we’re going to, okay? We will stop them. Permanently.”

  Her shoulders drooped slightly. “I hope you’re right,” she murmured, and then straightened and flashed a smile. “Hurry up. We don’t want to miss our flight.”

  “I’m on it.” Giving her a quick one-armed hug, I went back to the closet, found a duffel bag, and tossed anything and everything that might be remotely useful into it. Despite the whole Fae-killing sword thing, I felt pretty good about our chances. After all, we’d gone up against Milus Dei plenty of times and come out ahead — and this time, we had the advantage. They had no idea we were coming.

  With a little luck, this so-called bigshot would never know what hit him.

  Chapter 5

  Things went smoothly for once. Probably because I didn’t have anything to do with planning them. The plane was waiting when and where Calla said it would be, with a pilot and co-pilot, neither of whom even looked twice at us, much less asked for ID. And even though only Calla had been on a private jet before, we all slept through most of the flight.

  I’d even remembered to call Abe before we got in the air and tell him we’d be out of town for a few days. He got worried when I disappeared, especially when I ended up calling him from the middle of some unplanned fight against evil — a thing that happened to me way more often than you’d expect.