Page 59 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

D ee had experienced a lot of weird lately, but this topped it all.

As soon as Abe finished his prayer, or whatever it was, he started glowing in a way that was impossible to describe.

He wasn’t like a lightbulb or anything like that; in fact, maybe glow wasn’t the right term for it.

It was a sort of buzz, although Dee couldn’t hear or feel it.

Maybe it involved a sense he’d never used before and that had no name.

In any case, Abe glowed, then dozens of sparks appeared in the lobby.

They zoomed around for a few seconds, as if searching for something, before each one disappeared into a particular person.

Immediately, each person was… expanded? It was as if they had gained an extra dimension.

Dee could see a shadowy figure overlaying each one of them.

Oddly, none of this frightened him. It was beautiful, in a way.

Especially when each person’s face alit with wonder and, in some cases, joy.

Dee actually felt slightly envious of them, although everyone had agreed that it was best if he remain unpossessed—in part because he was already drained and in part because nobody knew how possession would affect a djinn. Assuming it was even possible.

Tenrael, Ish, and Henry also remained fully themselves, although Ralph, Jerry, and the other not-quite-humans in the room welcomed the ibburs.

Charles, however, was even more remarkable, because he had not one shadow, but two.

One of them was rounder and balder than Charles and, even from several yards away, smelled of cigarette smoke.

The other was slender. Dee couldn’t discern the shadows’ facial features, but he had the definite impression that the slender shadow was grinning.

Achilles seemed to be in a conversation with himself.

Or, more likely, with the shorter shadow that had attached to him.

Dee, who couldn’t muster enough energy to move a muscle, strained to hear what Achilles was saying.

Something about a bear. Ah, his ibbur must be the agent who’d been killed when Achilles was so badly mauled.

Dee wondered whether the ibburs chose hosts who were specifically connected to them in some way. It would make sense if that were so. And, Dee hoped, it might make the union stronger.

Then Keaton shouted and Dee had no more time to wonder.

The dual front doors burst open violently, wrenched from their hinges.

Several men stampeded inside and then began committing the most ordinary act of violence imaginable: they opened fire on the Bureau agents with some very large guns.

The noise was deafening. Agents shouted, blood spurted crimson against white marble, and Dee tried desperately but uselessly to crawl away.

He couldn’t cry out, not even when several agents fell to the floor. Not even when some of the fallen were people he knew and had started forming friendships with: John. Kurt. Dash. Isaac.

No! It couldn’t end so easily. So stupidly.

But before grief could begin to set in, two things happened. First, a dragon, a demon, and a very large dog set on the shooters, stopping the carnage while creating new carnage of their own. The blood that flowed now did not belong to Bureau agents.

And at the same time, the agents who had fallen rose to their feet.

Although their clothing was bloody, they didn’t move as if they were injured.

Together with the other agents, they formed a tight semicircle, shoulder to shoulder, their backs to Dee and their fronts toward the door.

Achilles was among them. When he shot a quick look over his shoulder at Dee, he was grinning wildly. Dee tried to smile back.

Within moments, the shooters were nothing but gory corpses. Dee didn’t rejoice in their deaths—they might have been ordinary people simply trying to pay the bills—but he wasn’t sorry about it either.

The room was quiet now aside from heavy breathing, the air thick with anticipation. Dee managed to move his legs a little, then considered an attempt to sit up but discarded the idea. He was marginally less vulnerable while horizontal on the floor.

Charles spoke—only it didn’t sound like him at all. “Keaton, son, are you ready?”

Keaton sounded shaky when he answered. “I can’t find… can’t find a target. There’s nothing out there but sunshine.”

“They’re out there, boy,” said Charles.

Abe moaned loudly, cursed in Yiddish, and then spoke in strangled English. “It’s trying… to get in me.”

Charles ran over and grabbed his shoulders. In a new voice, this one with an English accent, he spoke again. “Tommy? Tommy, protect him.”

“I’m trying,” responded Abe—also in an English accent.

Then Abe spoke again, in his own voice. “Kill me! Kill me before it gets in.”

“No!” shouted several people at once.

“Kill me! Please!” Abe collapsed to his knees, holding his head in his hands as if to keep it from exploding. “You can’t let this happen.” He made a keening sound, a terrifying growl, a string of words in a tangle of languages. “Catch the bullet, catch the bullet, let me catch the bullet.”

Then his English-accented shadow spoke again, voice tight. “Do it, Birdie.”

And Charles pulled a handgun from his pocket and shot Abe in the heart.

Dee cried out. Surely there must have been another solution. But already Abe’s body lay crumpled on the blood-streaked floor. He didn’t get up again. He was a small man, short and wiry, and in death he seemed diminished. An empty shell.

To Dee’s considerable surprise—and perhaps everyone else’s—Tenrael knelt beside him and uttered a brief prayer in Hebrew. Still on his knees, he looked up at Charles, whose expression was stricken. “Thank you, Master, for sparing Birdie the burden of this act.”

“May his memory be a blessing,” Charles said. In his own voice.

“I don’t understand,” Dee whispered. But nobody heard.

Three men entered through the doorway, apparently unarmed. One of them was Spurling, and Dee recognized the other two from the conference room, both in their forties, white, and dressed as if they’d stepped off a golf course. All three of them appeared annoyed but not especially worried.

Spurling chuckled. “This is what the mighty Bureau has come to? A handful of has-beens in workout clothes?”

“We never claimed to be mighty,” said Charles. No, Dee realized. That had to be Chief Townsend.

“A waste of taxpayer dollars. Coddling monsters. Colluding with them even.” Spurling sneered in the direction of the dragon, who looked very much like he wanted to bite Spurling’s head off. “And now you’re trespassing on federal property. Authorities are on the way to take you into custody.”

“He’s lying,” Keaton said. “They’re scared and?—”

Keaton collapsed, writhing and screaming. When Owen ran to his side, he collapsed too. Dash and a couple of other agents pulled out handguns and fired at Spurling and his companions, but the only result was that the three of them rocked back slightly when struck. There was no blood.

“Guns are useless,” Townsend rumbled to his agents.

At which point several of them—Ralph and the dog included, leapt forward, no doubt intending to repeat their previous mayhem.

But all it took were careless little gestures by the three men, and those agents joined Keaton and Owen in shrieking agony.

Nonaffected people had to rush to get out of the thrashing dragon’s way.

“Stop it!” bellowed Charles in his own voice. “None of this is necessary.”

One of Spurling’s pals huffed a laugh. “No, but it’s fun to watch.” He made another motion and fully half of the agents were in agony. As were Tenrael and Ish. And it wasn’t stopping—their pain went on and on, and anyone who moved to help was immediately on the floor as well.

Dee put his hands over his ears, blocking the terrible sounds that echoed off the hard surfaces.

This small gesture signaled that he’d regained enough energy to move a little.

Sitting up, he scooted backward until he was flush against a wall.

He looked to see what Charles was doing, but the chief simply stood there, expression grim.

Dee couldn’t even see Achilles anymore. He’d never felt so terrified and helpless. Hopeless.

He knew that hope was the best weapon—he’d had that hammered into his head repeatedly—but he couldn’t muster it. And he didn’t see the point in trying, seeing as Keaton, their jumper cable, was either unconscious or dead.

Jesus, what was the point of it all anyway?

His own people, whom he’d barely known, were now functionally extinct.

The only person he’d loved was fighting a losing battle.

Spurling and his buddies would win, and with the exception of a few elite assholes, Homo sapiens would soon go the way of the dinosaurs.

And shit, maybe the rest of the world would be better off for it.

Humans certainly had made a mess of things.

Maybe it was best if their time was ended. Maybe Dee should?—

Dee gasped. The trio near the front door weren’t just felling agents with pain.

They were also doing exactly what Dee’s side had planned: blasting the enemy with emotions.

They were spewing despair like a crop duster dumping poisons, and there was nothing he could do about it.

If he drew attention to himself by speaking out, he was likely to end up tortured or worse.

But he couldn’t just sit here, dammit.

What if he could muster enough energy for a wish?

He wasn’t at all sure he was capable, and even if he were, he couldn’t think clearly enough to devise an appropriate one.

What he wished was that the screaming would stop, the bad guys would disappear, and everyone would be safe.

That was, of course, far beyond the realm of possibility.

He gathered his will and, using the wall against his back for support, slowly rose to his feet.

Everything looked worse from this angle.

Abe dead near the center of the room; what was left of the original intruders near the door.

Blood smearing the white floor like morbid abstract art.

Agents unconscious, or thrashing on the floor, or frozen in place.

Spurling and his companions looking on with expressions of smug satisfaction.

Achilles stood very still, hands fisted at his sides, face turned away from Dee. At first Dee was slightly hurt by this, until he noted the stiffness of Achilles’ posture and realized he was deliberately trying to avoid drawing attention to Dee.

It didn’t work. Spurling cocked his head and caught Dee’s eyes. “Well, too bad. You could have had everything.”

“Irina?” Dee asked through gritted teeth. He saw Achilles turn to look and wanted to say something to him, but held his tongue.

Spurling huffed a laugh. “We never needed her. Or you, for that matter. You might have eased a few things along, but….” He shrugged. “No big deal.”

Dee took a page from Charles’s book. Not because he expected it to do any good but because he had to make the effort. “You can still turn back from this. You could do so much good if you tried. You could be heroes. You could love and be loved.”

A flash of emotion showed on one man’s face, but Spurling and the other man sneered. “Love is for weaklings,” said Spurling. Then he made a gesture that felled every agent and sent Dee to his knees, blind with pain.

When Dee could register his surroundings again, Spurling and pals were gone, and everyone was shakily rising to their feet. Achilles came stumbling over at once. “Are you hurt? What did he?—”

“I’m okay.” Dee took a few breaths. “But they’re not done with us, are they?”

Achilles mutely shook his head.

As if the question itself had summoned bad news, someone shouted, “We’re locked in!”

The doors had been somehow replaced on their hinges, and no amount of force or stabbing at the keypad would open them.

“Back doors!” Charles roared. “Get out!”

It wasn’t a stampede—the agents were too well-trained for that. The ones who were in better shape helped the ones who could barely walk, Achilles put an arm around Dee’s waist to support him, and everyone moved quickly toward the hallway that led to the café.

And then the explosions began.

For a brief moment, Dee’s addled brain assumed they were experiencing an earthquake.

But reality broke through a split second later, and he realized that something was hitting the building with tremendous force, making it shake, causing chunks of the ceiling to fall.

The electricity cut out, plunging them into complete darkness, and somewhere in front of them, the walls collapsed with an ear-splitting rumble.

Dee choked on air thick with dust and he clutched at Achilles. Agents shouted, and Dee couldn’t tell whether they were cries of pain, surprise, or anger. The ground shook so violently that he fell, pulling Achilles down with him.

Then he smelled the oily chemical reek of synthetic objects burning.

“We’re trapped!” someone yelled.

“They’re bombing us!”

Several people shouted, “Fire!” just before alarms began to shriek.

Heart pounding, lungs straining, Dee knew they were all about to die.

He took the only option remaining, holding Achilles tight and speaking into his ear. “I love you. I don’t regret anything. I love you.”

“Gods, I love you,” Achilles replied hoarsely. Instead of breathing, they kissed ferociously.

Dee didn’t want to die, but knowing that he’d tried to help, knowing he was loved—those things gave him a sense of peace.

And a final bit of hope rose within him like a champagne bubble. He franticly tore at his shirt. “Make a wish. Wish for an escape.”

“But you?—”

“Wish!”

Achilles’ throat sounded shredded, but he whispered, “I wish we could all get out of this place.”

The familiar tingle ran down Dee’s spine, exhilarating even amid the devastation, even as the building burned and collapsed around them.

If anyone had been able to see him, they would have been appalled at his ghoulish, manic grin.

He thrust a piece of fabric into Achilles’ hand and repeated: “Wish.” He added, for good measure, “Master.”

It sounded as if Achilles laughed before he made his wish.

There was another boom! , louder than all the rest. Dee felt it in his bones and waited for everything to fall on them.

Instead, an entire wall collapsed outward, blinding him with sudden light.

“Evacuate!” yelled several people at once.

Dee was smiling as he lost consciousness.