Page 123 of Grave Beginnings

“Vests behind you,” Wade said. “Full arsenal onsite.”

Angel reached over the seat, tossing me a Kevlar vest before grabbing his own—oddly contoured.

I frowned.

“I’ll be in my cat form,” Angel said to my unasked question.

Was that safe?

“I’ll shift once we’re onsite. Bobby will go through the gear breakdown.”

I nodded, swallowing down coffee despite the burn, desperate to break my mind out of its sleep-filled fog. Victor wove through thickening traffic like a man possessed, sirens screaming as early commuters scrambled out of our path.

“You’re on rear guard,” Victor said, eyes glued to the road. “Newbies stay back.”

I swallowed a protest. “I could have used some training if this was going to be a thing.”

Wade sighed. “We were hoping to start that next week, but I guess the Veil had other plans.”

“The good news is that we knew within minutes that the Veil opened, so the tear is fresh and only half an hour old,” Victor said.

“We may save lives with this much notice,” Angel agreed.

“Why does that sound like there is bad news too?” I asked.

Wade’s grip tightened on his own coffee. “Ezra was inside. His call is the only reason we got a heads-up. The Veil split minutes after his warning.”

“He was supposed to have gone home,” Angel cursed.

“Sounds like he was trying to find a lead on his own.”

“Or debunk me,” I said, A chill crawled down my spine. “Is he out?”

“Signal died mid-transmission. He’s missing,” Victor said. “His locater isn’t working either.”

The coffee turned to acid in my throat. Did that mean he was dead?

“He could just be on the other side of the Veil,” Wade said. “Electronics are notoriously unpredictable on the other side of a fresh tear.”

“Can one of the vampires track him? Or another shifter?” I wondered if he had some sort of tie like Angel did.

“Ezra is very much a lone wolf,” Victor said.

I studied Angel’s worried expression. “We can find him though, right?” If he was alive. If he was dead, well, maybe I’d be the one stuck finding him. That did not sit well.

“The practitioner Hanna hired is missing too. Vanished right out of the field he was reviewing like he’d been sucked through a black hole,” Wade added.

“What the fuck?” How big was all of this?

The tires crunched over cracked asphalt as we neared the site. A heavy and eerie weight lingered in the air, like the entire block held its breath, fearing the tear would spread. Firetrucks and squads lined every road, blocking it off as a long trail of ambulances began to line up as far from the tear as they could.

The scent hit me first, slipping through the vents of the SUV in a thick layer of burnt ozone, sharp and wrong. But I was beginning to understand what it meant. The Veil had a distinct scent, or, at least, the wriggling magic within did. Maybe that was what Angel meant when he said he could smell things most couldn’t.

As we pulled in close, the air shimmered unnaturally with energy I wasn’t certain anyone else could see, and some power crawled along the edges of my skin like ants. Did Angel smell the change?

The building itself looked normal enough, a high-end condo complex with fancy balconies and more than a dozen floors. But the air crackled with energy, the rip in the Veil going rightthrough the center as if reality itself had broken apart at the seams. As I stared up at the building, the flickers of energy surprised me. Not the central, purple slashes of lightning at the tear itself, but the pops of chaos around the entire building as if the whole thing would be swallowed any second.

“I need you to trust me,” Angel said as Victor parked the SUV in a long line of other SED vehicles. “Jude,” Angel repeated after a long minute, the air heavy between us.