Thankfully, I didn’t have to. Maria had reached the cave entrance ahead of me. She’d pulled herself together, and though there were tears streaming down her snarling face, she stood, gun drawn, feet solid. She wasn’t aiming at me. “Go, Graves! Get Serena to safety. They won’t follow. I swear.”
She waved me past, giving me a shove in the back with preternatural strength that sent both me and Serena sprawling a dozen feet from the tunnel exit. I pushed to my feet and screamed, “Maria! Get out! You can still make it.” Even as I yelled, the bats leapt toward her. Crap.
She didn’t go down when they hit. They hung on her, fangs embedded in her snarling form. One hand braced over the other, she took careful aim and sent a tracer round back into the tunnel. I followed the blaze of fire as it flew straight and true, right into the tank of her brother’s flamethrower.
I threw myself over Serena to shield her from the blast, but I had to look back. The explosion was pretty spectacular, imprinting red onto my retinas and turning Maria, Luis, the guards, and a dozen bats into charcoal.
Yes, she’d betrayed us, but Maria Ruiz Ortega had found her path to redemption from Paulo and his cartel.
2
The explosion attracted the notice of the U.S. authorities. They arrived in record time: Border Patrol, DEA, CIA. The hole in the desert floor was a popular place for the next few hours. I didn’t know any of the agents, but I had a few friends in high places I could call on to convince the guys on-site that I was trustworthy and on the side of the angels. It also helped that I had my current passport, concealed carry permit, and FBI consultant badge hidden in zippered pockets sewn into my pant legs. Modesty be damned. I was out of those jeans in two shakes to get to my IDs once I was in custody and in a clean, well-ventilated holding cell.
The paperwork helped more than the friends, I think.
“Just one more time, Ms. Graves. How were MagnaChem and the drug cartel connected?”
I sighed. “As I have said to the last four people who asked, they weren’t. I was guarding new management who were sent to the MagnaChem plant after the CEO was arrested and her board was replaced. Paulo Ortega just happened to decide to use the same town as a base, so the arrival turned into an evacuation. Serena Sanchez was the last employee out. Paulo was very annoyed that I managed to keep him from getting his hands on rich Americans to use as hostages. He’ll also likely be annoyed that I told the agents on the scene how to find the drugs and guns I spotted in the tunnel.” The man questioning me nodded, just as the four other agency representatives had. Then he left, and I sat, waiting for the next interrogator.
Finally, a day later, after painfully thorough debriefings by each of the agencies, I was allowed to go home. The agent who escorted me out of holding let me know that Serena had been airlifted to a hospital and undergone surgery on her broken leg.
I nearly wept when I saw my beach house, I’d been gone so long. This was probably my longest out-of-town job to date and it had definitely been one of the most tiring.
My first call was to my attorney, Roberto Santos. When I’m traveling out of the country and have no idea when I’ll be back, I have my mail forwarded to his offices. For a hefty fee, the nice secretaries and accountants attached to his firm pay my bills, respond to crank letters and fan mail, and deal with most other types of problems. Roberto was one of my friends in high places—he’s a very well-known attorney in government circles, which is why he’s my attorney.
“Anything to report, Roberto?” I couldn’t help but smile as I sank into my favorite recliner with a tall glass of crystal-clear water. After weeks of drinking liquids that I tried not to think about too hard, I was thrilled to have water without things floating in it. I mean, really. Water shouldn’t come with chunks.
“Nothing other than what you already know. You certainly caused a stir this time. Three different agencies are torn between giving you a medal and charging you with obstruction of a government operation.”
The water took on a bitter taste. “I hope you convinced them a medal was more appropriate.”
He chuckled. “What I convinced them is that with you involved, all of the agencies had both plausible deniability of the deaths at MagnaChem and access to a large cache of weapons and drugs to splash on the front pages. I also suggested that you wouldn’t claim any credit in the press. I hope I can count on that.”
A snorting noise came out of my nose and I nearly spit water across the floor. Instead, I swallowed and replied, “No problem. They’re welcome to the credit. I’d rather nobody even knew I was there.”
“I thought that might be the case.” I heard a voice in the background and realized I might have interrupted him.
“If you have an appointment, we’ll talk later. I need a few days’ rest anyway.”
“That sounds perfect, Celia. I’ll get your mail service restored and include our bill in the first batch. Be warned, it’ll be rather large.”
That made me laugh. He’s nothing if not honest. Another reason I like him. “Well worth it, in my opinion. I’ll be adding your bill to my bill to MagnaChem. Charge what you will.”
I drank my water slowly, savoring it, and turned on the television to catch the latest news. Big shock—there was no mention of a small town being overrun by drug cartels just over the Mexican border. No breaking-news alerts about the murderous bastard who intentionally herded people into tunnels to be slaughtered by vampires. There were stories about similar atrocities in Africa, Indonesia, and the Middle East. Just not too close to home. Heaven forbid.
I nearly turned off the set, but stopped when the next story came on: an update on the M. Necrose pandemic that had begun sweeping across the country a few months earlier. I’d been one of the first victims of a bacterium that turned people into zombies. I turned up the sound.
“Mortality rates have dropped for the first time since the outbreak started,” the silver-haired anchor read from his prompter. “Los Angeles General reported only five new cases this month and all were in early stages, treatable with antibiotics. The crematorium here in Santa Maria de Luna had only one disposal this week.” The anchor took a breath as a graphic appeared on the screen: a color-coded map of the United States, showing the heaviest concentrations of the disease. “Every U.S. state now has reported cases, with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii. Officials at the Center for Magical Disease Control speculate that extra security measures for flights into Anchorage and Honolulu might have stopped the mages who were hired to infiltrate the schools.”
Wow. The CMDC had gone mainstream since I’d been gone. That’s the problem with having no access to television for weeks. It used to be that the magical branch of the CDC in Atlanta operated in secret. I hadn’t even heard of it until I was exposed to the disease. The general belief was that the public would panic if it learned there were magical diseases that could spread to the human population, so nobody had ever mentioned that the agency existed.
It was true that there had been mass panic when the first cases appeared and there was no cure. People died. Lots of people. But we’d adapted. It had taken months, but parents were sending their kids back to school. Church attendance was up and telecommuting was giving way to heavy traffic. Pity about that part. I had liked the lack of traffic jams.
“The M. Necrose pandemic has now become the fourth deadliest disease outbreak in history, surpassed only by the Black Plague, the Spanish Flu, and the Bird Flu. Next up, sports on News Center Eighteen.”