Page 12

CHAPTER 12

CHARLIE

W ith Baelen gone into the glowing, swirling blue portal on my kitchen wall, Clawdia’s shoulders relaxed a little, and Dralie stopped yelling at the akari from inside my head.

I need to have another chat with him about indoor voices. Not that I blamed him.

I didn’t like the way had Baelen deliberately ignored her, either. She seemed to sink into herself every moment he didn’t look at her. I hadn’t lived Baelen’s life; I didn’t know why he was so triggered by this news, but it was very “crybaby, me-me-me, only child” of him.

Clawdia was the one to gain a power so great and scary that three immortal titans used to do it. She was more scared now that her soul mate wouldn’t support her. As she cried herself to sleep last night, I wanted to punch him in the bollocks, but more arguing and fighting was the last thing any of us needed.

Especially when Dralie and I were hiding our own discovery. Now definitely wasn’t the time to reveal that.

“I’d prefer if we never mentioned it. Our mate will only hate us,” Dralie whispered.

“She’s only hateful when she’s fluffy.”

“Wake those lazy bastards upstairs, would you? I’m going to make a call,” I told Clawdia and Zaide as I headed into the office, already pressing the green button on the screen of my phone.

I nodded along to the dial tone as the door shut behind me, and I waited for Adam to pick up. Once he did, I didn’t waste time fucking around and got right to it.

“You found him?”

Adam let out a satisfied huff, and I smiled. “I would not let that little prick think he got away with it, so I’ve got you a folder he was guarding with his life. I figure it’s important since the surrounding security took me a good few days to detangle. I haven’t accessed it since it might be a trap, so I don’t know what’s in it. But it’s yours if you want it.”

I punched the air. Fuck yes. This could save me hours of work.

Adam continued, “I’m satisfied with taking that and proving he didn’t get the best of me. But I’m not getting involved any further. This is the last thing I do for you, Charlie. I’ve got to think about my business, and I can’t have anyone taking it down like that again.”

That dampened my enthusiasm, but I understood. “Totally fair. Send me the details securely, and I’ll do the rest.”

“No problem.”

Despite us both being easygoing about everything, the pause felt awkward. Usually, I’d hang up. Or he’d hang up. But knowing that this might be the last time we spoke, I wanted to say … something.

“Hey, Adam, I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me, you know. Not just recently, but before. You’re a good one. So, I just want to leave you with a word of wisdom. If you see a blue flash of light, head in the other direction like your arse is on fire. Tell your family to do the same. It’s not aliens that’ll get you, but it might as well be. Same for interacting with the arrow insignia people. Stay away from them too. They are bad news.”

The silence on the other end had me checking to see if he’d hung up. He hadn’t. Finally, he said, “Right. Well. Thanks for that.”

I laughed. He probably thought I was a lunatic, and a few weeks ago I would have agreed, but he knew the rumors mentioned the blue light, so I knew he’d take the warning seriously. He just didn’t know how to respond to my outburst. “Good luck out there. See you around.”

An hour later, I was looking through the folder the hunter hacker had been guarding. Adam was right not to look at it. It was booby-trapped to high heaven. But I found a backdoor, which also got me a backdoor into the hunter’s main server.

Sometimes my talent and brilliance shocked even me.

Clawdia entered the office, and without even thinking about it, I pushed my chair out from under the desk so she could sit on my lap as I continued to click, just like I used to when she was a cat.

“Where is everyone?” I asked as she curled up on my lap and I nuzzled into her hair.

“Daithi and Savida have gone back to the guest room after eating. Apparently, they’ve not been having as much sex as they’d like because of the stress of everything, so they are taking this interlude as a holiday until they are needed.” We exchanged an exasperated glance before she continued. “Zaide has gone for a run. He is feeling rather useless at the moment.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked.

“He’s promised to check in every few minutes,” she replied, but the look on her face told me she was also uneasy about it.

“You’ve opened the bond back up? Why can’t I feel you?”

“I’ve opened it to Zaide and you, but I can’t feel you either. That's why I came in.” Her hand stroked my neck, and her brow furrowed with worry. “Do you think I’ve damaged our bond by shutting it down? Is Dralie angry with me?”

“Never. Perhaps it is my betrayal which has broken us.”

“Dralie says he thinks our bond is fine and functioning perfectly.”

“That is not what I said.”

“Do you want her to know or not?” I growled at my dragon. To Clawdia, I was the picture of calm. “Maybe the mate bond with Dralie has affected the familiar bond?”

She frowned. “Aren’t they the same thing? I just assumed it strengthened the familiar bond.”

I shrugged and smiled to reassure her. “Let’s not worry about it right now. If Dralie’s not concerned, I don’t think we should be.”

“I don’t enjoy lying to her.”

“It’s not forever. Let’s just deal with the current situation and confess later.”

She smiled and rested her head against mine, her hand continuing to stroke the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine. “I’ll just have to stick close so I know you’re all right.”

“I won’t complain about that.” I chuckled and squeezed her thigh before returning one hand to my mouse while my other hand stroked the side of her thigh.

She turned her attention to my screen. “What are you looking at?”

“Hunter shit.”

She smiled proudly. “You always find what you’re looking for.”

“They’ve got profiles on all of us.” I opened the information and showed her what I’d been scrolling through. “They’ve got the most correct information on Zaide, but the captive witches must have given them accounts of everyone else. Honestly, the witches are more trouble than they are worth.”

“You are part witch, remember?”

“I don’t claim that.”

I gasped when I spotted what they’d written for my height. Five feet, seven inches. “I’m not that fucking short, you bastards. I’m fucking deleting that.”

She chuckled, and I watched her face, feeling all warm and fuzzy. “This is kind of surreal, you know.” Her brow raised questioningly, and her smile remained. “You sitting on my lap, me petting you like I used to pet you when you were just a cat. Only difference is you aren’t purring.”

Her eyes widened even further, and then a cheeky smile crept over her face. Her voice was husky and seductive when she whispered inches from my lips, “I can think of a few ways you can make me purr.”

My dick twitched, and I closed the gap between us, kissing her hard.

“Are we interrupting something?” a familiar voice asked, laughter in his voice.

I cursed under my breath as we parted and looked toward the door where Arabella, Isaac, and Omaira stood, smirking.

“You were actually, so if you could just…” I shooed them away, and Clawdia hid her face in my hair.

“No time for that, I’m afraid. You’ve got a long list of things to do,” Arabella announced and made herself comfortable on the sofa. “Have you found the hunters? Do we know if Fafnir is still with them? Or if they are looking for us? Fafnir handed us over to them on a silver platter and gave them the tools to hurt even more of us when we’re fighting battles on all fronts. We need eyes on them.”

“I’m working on the eyes, but I’m taking care of us first. Look at the guys they’ve got tracking us. Fucking amateurs.”

I was in their directory and filtering based on the project. Our project was called “Dragon.” The hunters they had assigned to us looked no different from Jeff across the street. It was only when I clicked into their profile that I saw their previous missions, kills, and training. Some were like Homer Simpson with a gun, but others were deadly assassins.

Maybe they aren’t amateurs after all.

I hadn’t noticed that Isaac and Omaira stood behind me and were staring at the screen with me. “You’ve found their directory.”

“I can’t take all the credit, but yes. That and all the information they’ve been gathering on us, too. Complete bullshit, of course.”

“It’s on their server? If you delete it, they would lose it too without a backup?”

“I’m in their server. I found a backdoor.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Excellent. Can you send all the information to me? This could be essential to future task team missions.”

“Sure. I wouldn’t delete without taking a copy myself. We’ll need to cloak it, though. We can’t have them finding copies.”

“Let me work on that while you … do whatever it is you’re doing.” He pulled out his laptop and sat next to Arabella.

“Where’s your shadow demon?” I asked Arabella.

“Asleep,” she said and glared at me, so I asked nothing else.

I eyed the other task team leader, one I’d had the least interaction with, as her eyes devoured the information on the screen like she was looking for something. “What brings you here, Omaira? I rarely see you around.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m usually with the teams on the ground. My combat skills and unique gifts make me more useful with them, but I have a keen interest in the hunters, so I want to know what you find.”

“We’ve all got an interest in the hunters.” I looked back at my screen and began sending the hunters looking for us fake notifications on our whereabouts. “Follow that red herring, dickhead. Goose chases for everyone. Should keep them busy.”

Arabella asked, “Do you realize you’re using magic when you do that?”

“What?” I looked at her over my screen.

“It’s coming off you in waves. You aren’t doing it on purpose?”

“No. I’m just doing what I always do.” I rearranged Clawdia, who was falling asleep in my arms, to relieve my dead leg.

She gaped at me. “Your magic is aiding you technologically. Automatically. Without training. There’s definitely something interesting to explore here.”

“Well, whatever magic tech store you create based on my genius, I’ll expect royalties.” A shame because I’d love to be the one making magic tech gadgets, but my future isn’t here. Then an idea hit me. “I want to track the origin of the hacker. He might have been defending the compound, but he wasn’t in it. I want to know where he is.”

“Is that relevant?”

“You want eyes? You want to know what they are up to, who they are targeting, and if Fafnir is with them? This guy is the one doing all the watching and protecting and data harvesting for them. If I can pop a few little viruses on his computer, they could tell me everything he is doing. Or we try doing a location spell like we did last time again, but using the code location of this folder as the source.”

“Let’s do it.”

I retrieved the code, pasted it into a Word document, and printed it. “You do it.” I nodded to my sleeping familiar. “Everyone knows you don’t move when there’s a sleeping cat on you.”

She rolled her eyes and retrieved the printout. Arabella didn’t waste time. She performed the spell, the pendent moving wildly until it landed heavily on the map. Still in Sweden, but far from the compound. Just like we did last time, I used the coordinates she gave me to find it on Google maps.

The graphics were terrible, and the entire area was a pixelated mess. Someone had obviously protected this place better than the compound. “What needs more protection than the compound?”

Arabella hummed thoughtfully. “Somewhere where they are vulnerable? A hospital? Or somewhere that needs the extra security. A place of government.”

“Or an academy…” Omaira muttered.

I looked at her questioningly. “You know about a hunter academy?”

“We’ve been aware of it but never found the location.”

I shook my head decisively. “A child couldn’t hack the way I saw that hacker do.”

“A teacher could.”

“A teacher has enough on their plate. They aren’t doing a full-time job and monitoring cameras and communications and battling cyber-attacks away from the compound. It’s not possible. It must be some kind of control base. Let me keep digging.”

An hour later, I was getting frustrated as my search began coming up fruitless while Isaac and Omaira whispered excitedly about the hunter information I’d sent them. They were looking at the project names attached and trying to discover what they were related to, but they were annoying me.

Clawdia woke up as I was contemplating my issue. “What did I miss?” she asked with a yawn.

“I’m about to do something stupid.”

Her violet eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t find a way into this place, but I could contact the hacker. Not directly, but I could send him something, a test, and see if he wants to talk.”

“And you think that’s stupid?”

“He might not want to talk. He might track the message and send people after us. He might realize I’ve got his directory.”

“Charlie, you always find what you look for. Trust your gut. If you think this is going to get you the information you want, then do it. I’m on your side.”

“You can’t peek into the future and tell me what will work?” I asked with a wry smile.

She shook her head slowly. “You know I can’t see our future unless we are in danger. We aren’t in danger yet.” But we both knew a decision from anyone could change that. She whispered, “If you talk to the hacker, could you ask about the other hunters, Jack and Michael? They weren’t sure what they were going to do next, but I want to know they aren’t being hunted down. I owe them. I promised I could find Alani for them.”

Like an owl, Omaira’s head turned. “Who?”

“A girl who disappeared with her family.”

“A hunter asked for Alani?”

“The one who helped me. The one with a drop of supernatural in him that Fafnir was going to sacrifice.”

“You know her?” I asked.

Omaira hesitated before saying, “No.”

Clawdia and I exchanged a glance, and I drawled, “Alrighty, then,” before pretending as if that wasn’t weird.

Clawdia kissed my cheek before announcing she was going to make lunch, which helped clear the room.

Then I got to work comprising a coded message, all beautifully gift wrapped with different puzzles for him to solve. Like peeling an onion if each layer gave you a different problem to solve and unlock before it slid away to reveal my message.

I sent it and waited.

It didn’t take the hacker long to respond. Impressive.

His reply was gift wrapped as tightly as mine, and once I completely unraveled it, it read, “You’ve sent the hunters at the compound into a meltdown. Why would I want to speak to you?”

I’ve got him. At least, I thought it was a him. I couldn’t tell. But I assumed, and maybe that was sexist of me, but if I had this much of a crush on a girl, then Clawdia would tear my balls from my body and wear them like earrings. So, for my safety, the hacker was a guy. I just need to decide how best to go about this.

Trust your gut.

“Because you’re just as impressed by my hacking as I am with yours. You want to know more about me, and I have some questions to ask. Nothing that will endanger your people, but something that will help mine.”

“I don’t care about your people. I’m a hunter. I don’t want to help you.”

“You saw one of your own almost sacrificed for a drop of supernatural blood. I don’t think it sat well with you either, or you’d have given our new location away already.”

“How do you know I have it?”

“Because I have yours.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know if the two hunters who left with us, the one with supernatural blood and his friend, are being hunted. And I want to know if Fafnir or Mr. Darren Jensen is still associating with the hunters.”

“The man is long gone with his witches and his dragon. It was completely unheard of that they could be within miles of the compound anyway. I can’t see any of us working with him again.”

“Fafnir is very persuasive. What about the sacrifice and his friend?”

“I can’t be sure. I helped them with new IDs, but I don’t know where they are now. Why do you want them?”

“We owed them something. If they contact you, can you pass along my number?”

Risky, risky. My arse clenched, but I didn’t think he would hurt me. We had a kind of mutual respect for each other. A brotherhood among hackers. Thou shall not sell out a fellow digital wizard.

“This is your number? You’re giving a hunter your number? Aren’t you afraid I’ll find you and kill you?”

“You’re welcome to find me, but killing me will not be as easy. There’s a queue. Plus, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m trying to clean up a mess that’s damaging humans and supernaturals, so killing me would only mean the hunters are the only ones left to defend the world, and they are drastically underprepared for that.”

“You don’t know what we are prepared for.”

“Sure, kid. Get back to class.” I was fishing, and it was a long shot, but his messages gave off the impression of youth, and since I was trusting my gut…

I was holding my breath when I opened the next response. “You know I’m at school?”

Fuck. Omaira was right when she thought it was an academy. Do I tell them?