The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(74)
Author: Kim Harrison

“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.”