Ascension: Nate Temple Series Book 13 Read online

  Alucard pursed his lips and shoved the doll back into a pocket, buttoning it up carefully. I bit back my smile to see how protective he was of it. It had taken him a while to figure out how to conceal it as anything other than a Mask, and he’d seemed just as surprised as me to find the object he’d chosen.

  “Where did this lead come from again?” he asked.

  “The same nefarious woman as the last few.”

  He shot me a grim look. “And we’re trusting this to not be a trap? Don’t we have enough paranoia already?”

  I shook my head. “Oh, no. I’m definitely thinking it’s a trap. And this paranoia is the perfect cover for our other…mischievous activities. Anyone asks what we were up to tonight, we have an alibi,” I said, pointing at the warehouse.

  He studied me with a resigned look. “As long as we’re on the same page, I guess.”

  “Go team—what the fuck?” I hissed, abruptly pointing at the entrance to the warehouse.

  A bear cub was ambling up to the door, seeming to have appeared out of nowhere. It plodded up to the door, lazily weaving back and forth before it swiped a small paw at the door. The door exploded into the building and the bear casually turned to look directly at us.

  Then it winked at me. Shouting and cursing rolled out from the dim interior and I cursed, jumping to my feet. The bear blinked out of existence, and I realized he hadn’t been wet, despite the heavy rain.

  “You are fired from the team’s asset acquisition department,” I snarled at Alucard. “That was a goddamned magic bear.”

  Alucard’s jaw was clenched in concentration as we ran towards the open door. So much for stealth. “Starlight’s cave was empty. This is probably a result of your lover’s quarrel—Callie showing you how pleased she was to be so highly respected by her new boss.”

  I grunted. “After I just told her how important and discreet I needed to be? She wouldn’t do that.”

  Alucard snorted. “All’s fair in love and war. What’s the plan to deal with this newest batch of assassins?” he asked, eyeing the open doorway.

  “Hurt them indiscriminately but try not to kill them. Not yet. We need answers. These assholes keep dying on me before I can question them, but they’ll be Freaks of some sort.”

  “Number one stunner,” Alucard murmured. Before I could ask what he meant, he suddenly kicked the side of my ankle hard enough to tangle my feet together so that I cartwheeled and splashed into a puddle and then the side of the goddamned building with a loud, heavy bang on the aluminum siding. It sounded exactly like a struck gong.

  I whipped my head around and wiped the water from my eyes only to see Alucard disappear through the open doorway. He was singing at the top of his lungs, but he put real effort into it, like he was trying out for a part in a play rather than taunting those inside the building.

  “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!”

  The shouting intensified, and I heard Alucard laughing before a blinding flash of light erupted within, blowing out a dozen of the windows on the upper level.

  Chapter 7

  I ran for the door once I was certain Alucard’s blast of light was finished. I didn’t want any friendly fire to blind me.

  I flung up a shield, in case any of the alleged assassins had guns or projectile magic, as I tried to gather my bearings. I stood in a wide-open space with crates, pallets, and long-defunct machinery collecting dust. I saw warning labels on the equipment—peeling and covered in cobwebs—but they were all written in symbols that resembled Chinese or Japanese. The warehouse looked like it had once been some kind of fabrication shop where they made metal parts for boat engines, but I was no mechanic so that was just a guess. It had obviously been abandoned a long time ago, and hastily enough for the workers to leave behind their valuable tools and half-finished projects. And they hadn’t returned later to reclaim them.

  Alucard stood near a long conveyor belt that led to a large machine press of some kind that was at least twenty feet tall. He had one foot firmly planted on an unconscious man’s back, pinning him to the ground. Another slumped form lay sprawled across the conveyor belt—dead or unconscious, I couldn’t tell.

  Because my attention was drawn to Alucard—he was pointing at a man about twenty feet away who had his back to us, staring attentively at the burning warehouse wall.

  Alucard grinned at me and then motioned for me to watch as he lobbed a wrench over the wizard’s head, striking the far wall with a metallic clang. The man instantly responded by screaming and hurling a trio of fireballs at the sound. I blinked incredulously, realizing that the pyromaniac was still blinded by Alucard’s night light impersonation and that he was trying to use his hearing to locate the invaders—us.

  I rolled my eyes and waved a hand at Alucard to knock the wizard out before he hurt himself or burned the building down over our heads. The man beneath Alucard’s boot suddenly shouted and squirmed—obviously not unconscious—as he attempted to spin into an offensive position. Alucard instinctively picked him up and bodily threw him at the pyromaniac—who had turned around at the sudden sound, already lifting his arms to light us up. The blinded wizard let loose a roiling ball of flame that engulfed his airborne ally in an instant. Except the suddenly-screaming, now-burning body slammed right into him, sending him hurtling into the aluminum wall where he struck head-first, his neck letting out a sickening pop. He crumpled limply to the ground, landing in the inferno he had created near the wall, his arm extended in the air like a flag of surrender.

  My eyes widened as a sudden weaker ball of fire squealed pathetically up into the air in a sad arc from his outstretched hand—like when you thought a firework was finished, only to see it unexpectedly let off a surprise dud round that scared the hell out of everyone.

  “Whoops,” Alucard mumbled.

  The man on the conveyor belt—apparently stirring awake from the brief encounter—began unsteadily climbing back to his feet, blinking wildly as if still blinded by Alucard’s initial flash of light. I saw magic begin to form around his fingers, and Alucard instantly picked up a threadbare bag of metal parts from the ground, flinging it at him in hopes of knocking the guy down from his perch before he let loose with his magic. It worked like a charm, except the bag ripped, sending the contents hurtling like buckshot. A large object struck the man in the forehead, but a rusty pipe stabbed into a nearby circuit panel with an eruption of sparks.

  The conveyor belt kicked on—much faster than it probably should have—like a rug yanked out from beneath the man’s feet, sending him crashing onto it with a pained grunt. And it was a one-way ticket that swiftly carried the poor bastard towards the suddenly active metal press that rattled and groaned as loud and as rapid as automatic gunfire. I was sure it had initially been designed to crush large hunks of solid steel into flattened disks without ever slowing down. But right now, it sounded ready to implode as it picked up speed, its rusted parts squealing and groaning in protest against the cold start without any lubrication whatsoever.

  Which could get a man brutally killed in multiple other situations.

  Before either of us had time to react, the Murder on the Orient Press came to its last stop for the man, and the machine pulverized him with a sickening squelch that sounded like a crushed melon, painting the interior compartment of the press in blood and gore.

  I realized, with a disgusted thought, that the press no longer squealed as loudly. In fact, it practically purred in comparison, its parts freshly oiled and primed with wizard innards. Still, it was loud enough to make me think we were at a military firing range.

  “Jesus!” I hissed, shaking my head at Alucard. “Stop killing them, man!” Three dead in less than a minute.

  “I’m not trying to!” Alucard snapped, sounding baffled at the man’s unfortunate luck. I swallowed audibly, careful to keep the contents of my stomach where it belonged, but the smell was impossible to ignore. The man hadn’t even had time to cry out before he was transformed into industrial past
e.

  Alucard ran up to the circuit breaker and simply tore it from the wall, disconnecting the power. The press kept on running, though, obviously on a different breaker. He next slammed a large door closed over the machine’s opening, leaving only a small window for items on the conveyor belt to enter the press. The noise-dampening doors worked like a charm, cutting the noise down in half.

  Gunfire abruptly opened up on me in continuous triplets, striking the shield I had thankfully left up. Bullets hammered into it, ricocheting everywhere, and Alucard and I ducked down behind the shield as I strengthened it in case the bullets packed more punch than my initial defenses could handle.

  I saw a man’s pockmarked face under the brim of a plain black cap. He was wielding some kind of semi-automatic rifle, clenching his jaw as he calmly walked closer, squeezing the trigger in good form rather than in an erratic onslaught. He was experienced. I readied myself to counter his assault the moment his clip ran empty, but the shooter suddenly gasped as one of his own bullets ricocheted back to hit him in the face, painting the wall behind him with crimson gore as he stumbled and fell backwards.

  Before I could take a breath, two more men popped up from behind an adjacent stack of pallets, holding out their hands, ominously. Rather than wait for Alucard to continue murdering the men I wanted to question, I flung out my hand, hurling a percussive blast of air at them. One man flew into a large pile of trash bags, but the other slammed into an ancient forklift—the pointed end—and was instantly impaled.

  By both forks, for crying out loud.

  I blinked incredulously. The place was a deathtrap. No wonder everyone had abandoned their tools, refusing to come back even to salvage and pawn the equipment. I know I wouldn’t have, in their shoes. After what I’d personally seen, I knew I had no intention of coming back.

  I glanced around warily, verifying that no more attackers were about to pop up. The fire still blazed at the far end of the room, but we had time before it became a concern. The space remained quiet and I let out a breath of relief. At least one of them had survived—the one I had knocked into the trash bags. He lay motionless, obviously unconscious.

  Alucard grunted, shaking his head as he walked over to an impromptu desk shoved up against an interior office wall. Taking one last look at the crime scene, I joined him, watching as he shuffled some papers stacked in messy piles. They all looked old and were covered in more foreign symbols. But the desk was littered with half-empty sodas and fast-food wrappers.

  I saw no hint of what they had been doing here.

  Alucard turned to look at me, letting out an annoyed sigh. “You see the scars on their faces? These guys were killers. Hitmen.”

  I nodded. “This was the largest squad I’ve run into. Six of the bastards.”

  Alucard shook his head angrily. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around this—that you’ve been taking out these hit-squads without telling any of us. I just thought you were hitting the bars more often than usual or doing some weird magic stuff.”

  “This is weird magic stuff,” I said, waving my hands dramatically. “And I couldn’t talk about it without all of you wanting to form a posse. I’m not some vigilante. It started out as me trying to catch one of them to interrogate. But they keep getting themselves killed when I show up.” I grimaced at the glistening crimson press.

  “You see,” he began, “you say that like it’s totally normal. That you aren’t bothered by them wanting to murder you, but more that they had the audacity to die before you could question them. That’s not normal, Nate.”

  I shrugged. “Normal is relative. If I would have thought we were walking into something like this, I would have brought backup. Sorry.”

  He waved off my concern. “And this nefarious woman, as you call her, just keeps sending you tips?” he asked suspiciously. “You don’t find that curious? That maybe she’s lying to you, sending you out to be her hired killer—one who works for free?”

  I sighed, nodding. “Yep, I’ve considered that. But she gets upset when I kill them. She tried to kidnap me, too, but she failed. She apologized for that, saying that she had only tried to kidnap me to interrogate me before one of these groups found me. I asked for proof, and she told me where to find one of these supposed groups. But they all died in the exchange, so she told me about another one. Rinse and repeat.” I held out a hand, gesturing at the dead bodies. “None have been as intense as this, and all of the other groups were trios.”

  “Wait. Gunnar told me about that—the person who tried to abduct you outside Chateau Falco. She’s the one giving you these tips?” he demanded angrily.

  “Yes. And your reaction is exactly why I haven’t told anyone about it. Rather than simply killing her, I wanted to see if she was telling the truth.” I locked eyes with Alucard. “And she’s been right every time. It’s not her fault they keep dying on me.”

  “Did they all have this bad of luck?” he muttered, speaking over the steady purr of the press.

  I shook my head, pointing at a nearby crate that had been used to collect trash. It was half-full. “They’ve obviously been here for a little while. They were perfectly safe until we showed up, so it seems their bad luck came with us,” I said, frowning uncomfortably. “Maybe it’s just because they were all half-blind.”

  Alucard nodded unconvincingly. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

  I turned, scanning the rest of the warehouse for any other desks or maybe a helpful map on the wall that pointed to Chateau Falco with a date and a time written in angry red ink.

  And I saw the damned bear cub sitting on a pile of old wood. He slowly lifted a paw to point at a stack of pallets, and then drew a line across his neck.

  Chapter 8

  Alucard opened his mouth to shout out in alarm at the silly old bear, but I slapped a hand over it to silence him. He stared at me, his eyes still wide, but I mimed taking a deep breath for him to compose himself. He did so, and then gave me a reassuring nod. I released his mouth, and he carefully bent down to pick up a wrench without making a sound.

  I faced the indicated hiding spot and spoke. “I think we’re all done here. No one else to—”

  A grizzly man jumped out from behind the machinery, and Alucard flung out his hand, underhanded, as I swiftly sidestepped. A blast of dark green power slammed into the spot where I had been standing as Alucard’s wrench clocked the wizard right in the nose, knocking him down to the ground with a gurgling shout. A second ball of flame in his hand immediately splattered to the ground, catching him and a pile of wood scrap on fire.

  Alucard grunted. “Henchmen these days,” he muttered, shaking his head in disappointment. “How do they expect to move up in the ranks if they can’t take a wrench to the face?” he complained, shambling over to the fallen man. He began stomping on the flames while I turned to face the bear. The bear nodded at me, and then began chewing on a stick clutched in his paws.

  “That it?” I demanded, not entirely sure whether or not I could trust him. This had to be Starlight—the mysterious wizard bear from Kansas City. I heard he had a penchant for drugs and mischief, but that he was generally a likable…creature. Being a local celebrity, I didn’t believe everything I heard, so I highly doubted he was an actual druggie.

  Except I couldn’t afford to play the trust game right now. And I’d just indirectly robbed him.

  He nodded placidly. “Seems that way, Catalyst. Seems that way.”

  I waited for him to reprimand me for thievery, but he just continued to watch me and gnaw on his stick, angling his jaws to get a better angle on the slobber-coated end. “Well, I appreciate the warning. You must be Starlight,” I finally said, hoping to strike up some dialogue and find out why he was here if he wasn’t going to chastise me.

  “Oh, heavens, no,” he said, plucking the stick from his mouth. “I’m a bear, Manling.”

  I nodded stiffly, attempting to rein in my impatience. “A bear named Starlight, then.”

  He shrugged, opening his j
aws wide as he prodded at his mouth with his stick as if he was trying to clean his teeth. “Sure. Sometimes, Tiny God,” he admitted.

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “I get it. You’re referencing my various titles and names to prove that Starlight is just a shirt you sometimes wear. Is there a point to this?”

  “I’m sure there is, godkiller. Somewhere. There usually is.”

  “Okay. So…”

  He studied me thoughtfully, cocking his head. “Did you hear that?” he suddenly whispered, leaning forward interestedly.

  I steadied my breathing, concerned by his sudden focus. “Hear what?”

  He cocked his head. “They’re stuck at the bottom of a well, praying. They have answers, but they’re scared of the questions,” he whispered, one of his ears twitching.

  I felt the hair on the back of my arms stand up. “Who?”

  “The Elders…”

  And the hair stood even straighter, my pulse suddenly quickening. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They miss their chains. Life was better, then.”

  I stared at him, confused. “Slavery was better?” I asked, not having known they had been slaves. Carl had never mentioned it.

  “Chains gave them freedom. Independence gave them banishment. Their temples grew dark and drafty, their prayers unanswered when their masters abandoned them.”

  I stared at him. “Do they need help?”

  He suddenly snapped out of it, shuddering. “Who dares help the Elders? Who dares wear the bone crown? Not me. Not any god I know. Too risky.”

  I nodded in understanding and, perhaps, agreement. “What is the point of this, Starlight?”

  “Bear. Call me bear. It’s easier with you. Starlight can mean so many other things when it comes to you.” I narrowed my eyes to hear my suspicion confirmed—that Starlight’s name might not be a coincidence, or that Pan’s parting message may hold a deeper meaning.