Page 28 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

“L et who know?” They were back in a vehicle, this time with Dee alone in the back seat.

But Chief Grimes, again behind the wheel, didn’t answer—which wasn’t exactly a shock—and Achilles, in the front passenger seat, only shrugged. From what Dee could see, Achilles looked drawn—maybe from pain, or exhaustion, or anxiety, or the aftermath of the battle, or maybe from all of the above.

After Tenrael had flown away, the sight of which under other circumstances would have left Dee stunned, Grimes had urged the rest of them to move quickly.

They’d abandoned the four very human-looking corpses and, after some quick touchups from a first aid kit in the Jeep, had chosen one of their pursuers’ Toyotas.

Which was fair enough, since the pursuers had shot up the Jeep, and anyway none of them needed a vehicle anymore.

The key fob was in the center console, and Achilles did something to the Toyota that he said would disable tracking.

He also collected all of the bear shifters’ cell phones, extracted their SIM cards, and crunched the phones to bits.

Dee felt a little as if he’d walked into a Mission: Impossible movie, only with demons and were-creatures. And genies—no, djinn.

Once everyone was buckled in, Grimes drove off cross-country, quickly but not as death-defyingly as before.

They arrived at a road about forty-five minutes later, which eventually took them to a highway that finally delivered them to something resembling civilization.

They took turns washing up in a McDonald’s bathroom, and then Dee—at the moment, the least disreputable-looking of them—ducked into a Walmart with Grimes’s money and came out with replacement clothing for those pieces that were bloody, ripped to shreds, or covered in desert grime.

“Get comfortable,” said Grimes as they got rolling again. “We’ve got a long haul ahead of us.”

Achilles suggested that they take turns driving, and once that was settled, everyone was quiet. Dee slowly processed everything that had happened over the past days. He’d been through some rough spots in his life—some of which had landed him in jail—but none of them held a candle to recent events.

But not everything had been awful; there was Achilles.

Dee began to laugh. At first it was a small chuckle, but the more he tried to suppress it, the more insistent it became, until Achilles twisted around and looked at him with concern. “Are you having a breakdown? Do we need to?—”

“N-n-noooo,” said Dee through guffaws, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Then what?—”

“I want to live!”

Achilles was still clearly puzzled, understandably so, but it took several minutes before Dee got himself sufficiently under control so he could explain. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Sorry. I haven’t lost my marbles. It’s only…

when Abe showed up at my door, I was barely skating by.

Hell, for most of my life I was barely skating by.

There was no real reason for me to get out of bed each day.

If I’d been hit by a bus while crossing a street, my last thought would have been, Well, at least that’s over with.

” That part wasn’t really funny—he knew that—but he laughed anyway.

“And?” Achilles prompted. He still looked worried.

“And now if I got hit by a bus, I’d be really pissed off. I mean, evil people are sending homicidal were-bears to catch us, the entire world is close to spiraling down the drain, but now I want to live. I really do. And that feels… good.”

Maybe he was losing his marbles after all.

But Achilles smiled. “Hope. You’re feeling hope.”

Grimes, who’d been silent throughout this interchange, briefly caught Dee’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“There’s a seesaw. Do children still play on those?

On one side is hate, rage, greed, prejudice, cruelty, apathy…

all of those ugly, heavy things that live within each of us and within our society as a whole.

But on the other side is hope. Love. Empathy.

Openness. Joy. Generosity. Kindness. Every one of us struggles to keep the heavy things from overbalancing the light ones.

It’s hard work. But it feels so good when the light prevails. ”

Dee frowned. “Do you struggle? You’re an angel, right?”

“Half.” Grimes’s laugh was bitter. “And sometimes I think I struggle more than most. Ten says if I live another couple of centuries, maybe I’ll gain a little more… solidity. But he may be overly optimistic.”

“Then what are those of us with ordinary lifespans supposed to do?”

“The best you can, Dee. The best you can.”

* * *

They drove all day and into the night, and although the terrain varied, it was desert for a good chunk of the way.

They stopped a few times at gas stations in towns too small to deserve the name.

They’d gas up the Toyota, grab snacks, and swap drivers.

By the time they hit the Central Valley, where it was too dark to tell whether the fields were green, Dee felt as if he’d been in motion forever.

Charles—they’d been calling Grimes that for the past several hours now—took the final shift.

There was little traffic at this hour, even once they got close to San Francisco, and skies were clear.

As they zoomed over the western span of the Bay Bridge, Dee marveled at the beauty of the water and city below.

“Looks different now,” mused Charles.

“Compared to what?” Achilles yawned through the final word.

“My first visit, almost a century ago. I nearly died here once, in the forties. Merfolk.”

Achilles nodded as if that made perfect sense, while Dee tried to process another new nugget of information. “Did they lure you into the water with their singing?”

“Something like that. And then they bit me. They’re venomous.”

That would have put an interesting twist on the Disney movie. “I thought you were immortal.”

“I’m not. And at the time, I was more vulnerable than I am now.”

Although Dee would have liked to hear more of the story, he didn’t ask.

Off the bridge and now in the city proper, their route twisted and turned on surface streets, going uphill and down, until they reached a neighborhood with century-old houses of wood or stucco mixed with apartment buildings and newer glass-and-concrete boxes.

In most cities, this might have been a comfortable working-class neighborhood, but Dee, who’d occasionally lived in San Francisco for short periods, knew that these modest homes would probably sell for well over a million bucks.

Charles pulled the Toyota to a stop in front of one of them, apparently not caring that he was blocking the driveway.

But he didn’t cut the engine. “Townsend knew for years that things were… working up to what we have now. He refused to tell me many details, the old bastard. Something about free will. But one thing he did say was that he’d been developing a safety net of sorts.

A network of people we could rely on when things went bad. ”

“Like the coyotes and the aliens,” Achilles said.

“Yes. And like the gentlemen you’re about to meet. One of them was an agent for a while, so you probably know him, Achilles. Clay White.”

Achilles made a startled noise. “He got kicked out of the Bureau after a colossal fuck-up. Children died.”

“Yes. But Townsend retained contact with him, and White and his partner agreed to help if needed.”

Dee was uneasy. There was clearly something that Charles wasn’t telling them; Dee could tell by the way Charles stared resolutely through the windshield.

“Can we trust him?” Achilles apparently shared some of Dee’s trepidation.

“Townsend thought so. And we don’t have much choice.”

They all sat in the car for a few moments, until the front door of the house swung open. Silhouetted in the light from the interior was a large winged figure. Charles immediately turned off the car and got out, swiftly followed by Achilles. Dee hesitated only a few seconds before following.

In the dark it was hard to discern many exterior details of the two-story house, but it had wood siding and was probably painted white or light yellow.

A flight of steps led up to a small front porch and the open door, and to the left was a bay window with closed curtains.

Tenrael stepped aside so that Charles and Dee could enter; he nodded at Dee, and Charles gave Ten’s arm a stroke as he passed.

“You can fly that far and that fast?” Dee asked. “Even after being shot and mauled?”

Tenrael gave him a very sharp-toothed grin.

They were in a hallway with wooden wainscoting and old-fashioned wallpaper.

Tenrael slid open a pocket door and ushered them into a living room where two men stood, waiting for them.

One was very tall and muscular, with close-cropped blond hair, a square jaw, and a scowl.

Wearing dark slacks and a white shirt, he looked like an extra in a mob movie, one of the main star’s hired goons.

The other man was shorter, slender, with reddish hair and high cheekbones.

He was dressed like the front man in an emo band.

“White,” said Achilles, nodding at the big guy.

The man nodded back. “Spanos.” Then, maybe a little reluctantly, he gestured toward the other man. “Marek.”

Marek looked amused, as if he was used to White’s gruffness, and stepped forward. “You are welcome in our home, Achilles Spanos and Damnation Martell.” He had an accent, maybe Eastern European. “You have had a long and difficult journey. Please sit down.” He waved toward a couch.

It all felt really awkward, but Dee sat and then so did Achilles.

As their hosts regarded them, Charles and Tenrael remained in the hallway, speaking softly.

Although neither White nor Marek seemed hostile, there was something sharp and considering in their gazes.

Dee felt a little like a sheep being sized up by a pair of wolves.

“This is a nice house,” Achilles said suddenly.