On the Prowl (Alpha and Omega #1)

On the Prowl (Alpha and Omega #1) Page 12

"Keep talking," Kai said.

"This haunt has been trying to get my attention since last night." Jackie grimaced. "I should have listened, I guess. When I gave up and let him in, he didn't have much to say. Not even his name, which is weird. They're usually eager to give me their names, their stories. He did give me a picture  -  this place, filled with people like it is now. So here I am."

"He?" Maybe the message was from her father. A twist of longing tugged at her, because she wanted that to be true.

"Definitely he, though that's about all I know about him. 'Get her out of there,' he said."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Dammit, you'd think... but it's got to be either you or Ginger. I don't know anyone else here well."

"If something bad is going to happen  -  "

"See, that's just the thing. People think those on the other side have all this insight into events here, when half the time they don't have a clue. But... well, if a message is really specific, there's usually something to it."

Charley stepped up to the mike. His soothing voice drifted out over the crowd as he welcomed them, and the colorful soup began to settle.

"I take it this one's specific?"

"As such things go, yeah." Jackie chewed on her lip. "I'd better tell Ginger, too. Do you know where she is?"

"Up at the front. She's supposed to speak."

"Shit. She won't want to leave."

"I'll go with you."

"No, you won't. You'll leave, then I'll have one less to worry about. Go on." Jackie gave her a little push. "Go."

But once she was turned around, Kai saw what Jackie had come to warn about. Though the colors around the crowd had canned, a small group of men  -  maybe twenty  -  kept to themselves off to one side. Kai didn't like the look of their thoughts or the murky swirl they swam in.

"Jackie," she started, turning around  -  but her friend was gone, swallowed up in people.

It was Kai's turn for some lip chewing. Earlier she'd seen a couple of police officers over by the Midland Center, the brick building whose wall made one boundary for the plaza. Maybe she should find them, see if she could persuade them there was trouble brewing. Or maybe... no,, dammit. Don't even think about it.

Telling herself not to think about something was hopeless, of course. Don't think about an elephant inevitably conjures the image of an elephant. Once it occurred to Kai that she might be able to stop the ugliness before it erupted by calming those thoughts, she couldn't banish the idea by telling herself to drop it.

Okay, then. Consider it logically, pros and cons, she told herself as she began weaving through the packed bodies, heading for the Midland Center.

The pro was that she might be able to prevent violence. The con was  -  well, there were several. First, ugly thoughts didn't necessarily lead to violence. Second, she had no idea what she might do to any minds she tampered with. That was a good reason, an excellent reason, not to interfere. Third, she didn't even know if she could do it.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" someone yelled from the back of the crowd.

Kai turned  -  and those thoughts were roiling now, seething with colors that made her think of storms and blood. There were more shouts, the volume and venom in them mounting every second.

Someone cried out in startlement or fear, someone else in anger. Kai couldn't see what was happening, but the people near her started moving  -  most trying to get away from the commotion at the rear, some shoving their way toward the trouble. She heard Charley's amplified voice telling everyone to stay calm, stay calm, but no one was listening.

She heard screams.

And the patterns  -  ! The air was thick with the bleached yellow of fear, rippling with electric green and swirls of dark ocher, darker gray, mud brown. The wrongness of the patterns sucked at her. Kai breathed in raggedly  -  and let herself go, falling into fugue. She had to try  -

Someone bumped her, hard. She fell against another someone, which kept her from hitting the ground, and found herself engulfed in a moving knot of people. An elbow jabbed her ribs. She heard screams, cries, yelling., Panic sent her heartbeat rocketing. She fought to keep her feet.

Suddenly she found herself in a pocket of space left inexplicably open in the shoving crowd. She started to reach again for fugue  -  then saw the body lying on the ground.

It was Jackie.

Kai threw herself to her knees beside her friend. Terror keened her senses, drowning the immaterial in a flood of physical. She shivered as she reached for the pulse point on Jackie's throat... strong. Jackie's heart beat strongly.

Kai shuddered in relief. She ran her hands over Jackie's head, looking... there, yes, there. On her temple, a knot. The skin wasn't broken, but something had hit her, knocked her out.

Another shiver hit. The air was freezing all of a sudden. Jackie had on a warm jacket, but was it enough? Maybe  -

A woman built like a small rhino lumbered into the open space around Jackie. Kai pushed to her feet, thrusting out a hand and calling out for her to stop. Her voice was lost in the din.

The woman's face crumpled in fear. She pushed right back into the crowd.

Kai blinked. She'd never scared anyone off by waving at her before. What in the...oh. The cold. The cleared space. Even nulls sensed ghosts sometimes. Kai imagined spirits ringing her and Jackie, pushing back at everyone. She'd have to tell Jackie her ghostly friends weren't useless after all. Once Jackie was... oh, God. She had to be all right. She had to.

A sudden surge of people broke past the ghosts' ability to frighten  -  a mob with neither intention nor control over where it went, pressed willy-nilly by others behind them. The blood drained from Kai's face. She shoved a man aside. Another, a woman, was pushed almost on top of them, but saw Jackie at the last second and managed to stagger over her body without stepping on her.

Too many. There were too many, pressed by too many others. She couldn't  -

Then a man in a khaki uniform slipped through the rush of people streaming the other way. Nathan. He bent and scooped Jackie up in his arms. "Get behind me!" he shouted. "Hold my belt."

Kai all but plastered herself against him. She gripped his belt as if her life depended on it, and rode in his wake as he cut sideways through the mob.

They broke out of the crowd near the fountain. Nathan didn't stop, but stepped up into the first stone tier, drained and dry now for winter. Carefully he laid Jackie down, running his hands over her much as Kai had done, then lifting each eyelid. "Concussed," he said, voice raised enough that she could hear. "What happened?"

"I don't know! It happened so fast  -  these people, the ones with ugly colors, they started yelling at us. At the Gifted, I mean, but I couldn't see what they did. Something that scared people, because all of a sudden everyone was  -  it was  -  " Kai found herself horribly close to tears. "I couldn't stop it. I couldn't."

He gave her a look, then rose and wrapped his arms around her. She started shaking.

He lowered his head so he could speak softly, close to her ear. "Adrenaline. You'll be okay in a minute."

"Jackie  -  "

"Can't do anything for her here. She needs the hospital. It's emptying out now," he added. "We need to go."

"Go?" She lifted her head to stare at him.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't prevent it. I..." He sighed. "A judge has issued a warrant for your arrest."

Nathan got Kai moving while she was still too stunned and shocked to protest. First he had to make sure her friend received care, though, so he carried the woman to the makeshift stage that had served as a podium. The speakers had made it to safety inside the Midland Center, but the television people remained, avidly filming. The local news anchor hurled questions at him, but she was easy enough to ignore.

Uniformed officers were clearing out the last of the crowd as he and Kai left, some tending the fallen. Sirens sounded. They reached Nathan's official car on Illinois Street just as a car he recognized pulled up halfway down the block. "That's Knox," he said as he shut his door. Kai was already in the car, but he suspected Knox had seen her. "He's got the warrant."

"He's got it? You mean... you mean you aren't arresting me?"

Stunned, Nathan forgot to turn on the ignition. How could she think that? "No. Good God, no." He pulled himself together and started the car. "I came to make sure you weren't arrested. The riot delayed me. Good thing it was a small one."

She made a choked sound. After a moment, he realized it was a laugh. He glanced at her, unsure whether this was a time when their humor diverged or if she was hysterical.

She seemed all right, though pale. "The riot delayed you. God. All right. If you aren't arresting me, what are you doing?"

"Keeping Knox from arresting you."

"But... Nathan, if they've got a warrant, I can't just hide. I don't want to be arrested, but it's a mistake. It's not like they have any real evidence against me. They can't, so they'll have to let me go. But if I evade arrest I look guilty, which will make it harder to persuade them..." Her voice wobbled. "How could they think it was me? This doesn't make sense. Are you sure there isn't a mistake?"

"I'm sure. The sheriff and I discussed the case with Chief Roberts. Roberts is deeply prejudiced against the Gifted. He knows about the meeting you had at your apartment last night, though he's mistaken about its nature  -  thinks it was a coven meeting. He has a witness who saw you leave The Bar with Jimmie Shaw last night just after midnight."

"The Bar?" She was bewildered. "But I don't go there. I've never been there."

"I told them I was with you at that time. The sheriff believed me. Roberts didn't. He said a jury wouldn't accept my testimony since I'm not human."

"You told them... but I was home at midnight, asleep. Asleep alone. You didn't get there until two o'clock."

"Yes," he said, patient. "But they can't know what time I arrived. Do you mind if they believe we're lovers?"

She waved that away. "That's not the problem. You tried to give me an alibi, and you meant well, but that witness  -  she couldn't have seen me. It's someone else, someone who looks like me."

Someone who looked like her, yes. Or something. "He. The witness is Ed Bates. He was your patient, I understand."

"Soft tissue trauma to the neck and shoulders. We had several sessions... but Ed knows me. He must know that wasn't... was he drunk? That's it," she said, sounding pleased that something at last made sense. "He must have been drunk."

"Three other witnesses gave descriptions of the woman who left with Shaw. I spoke with one of them. She has a poor memory for names, but a good one for faces. She described you perfectly."

Kai didn't say anything for several moments. He wanted to take her hand, to reassure her with the alchemy of touch. That was what he would have needed at such a time, but he didn't understand human rules for touching, which changed from one culture to the next, from one decade to the next. He wasn't sure when touch was welcome between friends in this era.

If they were lovers...

She spoke before he could make up his mind, looking down at the hands she'd pleated together in her lap. "Do you think I did it, then?"

"No." He was glad to be able to reassure her of that much. "You've never killed."

"Hey. The telepath's sitting over here, not behind the steering wheel. You can't know that."

But he could. He did. Nathan struggled to find words for this knowing, but it was woven of so many threads... Some killers possessed a psychic scent, but not all. Not even most. And some humans who had never killed smelled like killers because the potential ran high in them. Those were the ones who wanted to kill, wanted the blood and power and destruction of it. Many killed without having that need  -  in war or to protect another, because of hunger or fear or a fleeting rage.

And some killed as Nathan did, as part of a hunt, though they hunted nonsentients  -  deer, rabbits, birds. A very few hunted and killed their fellows, but not as Nathan did. For them, he felt pity. They seemed to have some of the same instincts he possessed, yet they lacked others, those that should have connected them to their fellows, leaving them twisted and terrible. They killed because it was the only connection they understood.

A hellhound did not kill for that reason, but he understood the need for connection, the depth of that need. He'd hunted serial killers because they couldn't be stopped otherwise, but he'd killed them cleanly.

How would Kai feel when she understood that Nathan, too, was a killer? It was a question he didn't want to find in his head, and he tried to shove it out. But it clung like a bramble to the furry underside of his mind. Humans had so many moralities, some of them contradictory.

She would be distressed, he thought. He hated to distress her.

"I know you," he told her at last. "If you had killed for any reason, you would be a... a different version of Kai. You would still be my friend, but different than you are now." He slowed the car as thoughts and questions pinged and bounced around inside, making his head noisy.

"Nathan," she said in a surprisingly steady voice, "why are we stopping at a car lot?"

"I'll get a license plate here. The car... no, I haven't explained, have I?" His eyebrows twitched into a frown. "I'm making decisions for you. That's wrong. I'm sorry." He unbuckled his seat belt and turned to her. This time he went with his impulse and took her hands in his. "I want to hide you so you aren't arrested while I hunt the real killer, but I need another vehicle. Knox saw me with you. So did the television reporter. Once Knox realizes I didn't bring you in, they'll look for this car."

"But this is crazy! You can't throw away your career, and I don't want to be hidden away!"

He wasn't explaining well. "I don't have a career. I hunt. Working as an officer of the law suits me, but I can do that elsewhere, under another name, if I'm allowed to stay here. Here in this realm, I mean. If you don't want to hide..." This was difficult. He swallowed. "I respect your. right to make your own choices, but you need to know you aren't safe. The chameleon wore your face, your form when it lured Jimmie Shaw out of the city and killed him. You may be able to help me catch it."