Chapter 24
I headed out onto the balcony and looked down on the street that fronted my building. An unmarked Dodge Charger rolled to a stop in front of the building. A large black van followed the Charger. Walt and Crystal climbed out of the Dodge. A tactical squad piled out of the van. It consisted of twelve heavily armed men dressed in black uniforms topped with Kevlar vests and helmets.
I took a deep breath, grabbed a bottle of drinking water from the fridge, and headed downstairs. I didn’t bother to lock the door. What was the point, they would have no trouble breaking it down.
Breaking into my vault, well, that was a different matter. They would have to blow up the entire building to get in there. Even then, I’m not sure they would succeed.
The tactical team had formed a semi-circle in front of my building. Each man was on one knee. Each man had his rifle raised and ready to fire. Half of them lowered their guns when I stepped out the front door. That would be the half whose lives I saved when I was with the department.
Walt and Crystal were standing behind the Dodge. Walt had a bullhorn in his hand, an honest-to-god bullhorn, like he was about to negotiate with someone that had tried to hold up a bank, bungled it, and had been forced to take hostages.
I stopped in front of my building, opened the water bottle I was holding, and took a drink. “What are you doing here, Walt?”
“Crystal says that you’re protecting the dark elf.”
He was actually talking to me through the bullhorn, even though I wasn’t more than fifteen feet away. That was one of the reasons Walt and I never got along when I was with the department. Walt was a by-the-book kind of guy, no matter how ridiculous it looked or seemed, he always followed the book. That way, if he screwed up, or things went sour, he could shift the blame to whoever wrote the regulations.
“The dark elf is gone and she’s not coming back.”
“Crystal says that she’s with you, that you’re protecting her.”
He was still talking to me through the bullhorn. I figured I better help him out, since a television film crew had just arrived and was about to start filming. If people saw Walt using a bullhorn to talk to somebody that was only fifteen feet away, he would become the laughing stock of the force, not to mention the Internet, and that would mean a call from my father, yelling at me for embarrassing his friend. He would expect me to diffuse this situation without hurting or humiliating anyone.
I had no intention of hurting or embarrassing Walt or the other officers. The siren, well, that was a different matter entirely. If dad tried to yell at me for hurting or embarrassing a siren, he would get more than a earful from mom.
I ordered the water in the bottle I was holding to fly out of the bottle and saturate Walt’s battery powered bullhorn, short it out so it wouldn’t work.
A second later, the water flew out of the bottle, past the sidewalk, past the hood of the Dodge Charger, and into Walt’s bullhorn. When I was sure the bullhorn would no longer work, I ordered the water to return to the bottle I was still holding.
“Was that necessary?” Walt tried to say it into the bullhorn. When the bullhorn didn’t work, he was forced to lower it and talk to me face to face. “Was that necessary?”
I nodded in the direction of the television crew. “They’re filming this, which means dad will see it. He wouldn’t be too happy if I let you make a fool of yourself.”
When Walt first joined the force, dad was his training officer. He was the one that taught Walt the ropes, taught him how to survive the streets. Dad wasn’t as by-the-book as Walt, but then few people were.
Walt tossed the bullhorn into the Charger just as the cameraman raised his camera and started filming. “I don’t think he’d be too happy to learn that you’re harboring a dangerous fugitive.”
“I’m not harboring a dangerous fugitive. The dark elf is gone and she’s not coming back.”
“Crystal says you're lying.”
“Do you know that a siren doesn’t actually have to sing to you to make you fall under her spell. All she has to do is whisper in your ear.”
“This has nothing to do with Crystal.”
“She wants my treasure and she’s using you to get it. It’s how her kind survives. They get others to do their dirty work for them.”
“Turn over the dark elf, Low, or we’ll be forced to take her from you.”
“Send the siren home and we’ll talk,” I said. “As long as she’s by your side, controlling you, I can’t cooperate.”
I spoke up when I said that, so the television crew could hear what I was saying. I had two goals in this confrontation, protect Gladrielle and humiliate Crystal. A news story on how she was controlling a police captain, getting him to do her bidding, would not help her image.
“You got sixty seconds to turn over the dark elf,” Walt said. “Otherwise we’re going to take her by force.”
“The dark elf is gone, Walt, and she’s not coming back. You can come up and look if you want, but you can’t bring the siren with you. She stays here.”
Crystal whispered something to Walt, who nodded and turned back to me. “Thirty seconds, Low, turn over the dark elf, or we’ll take her by force. This is your final warning.”
My building was at the end of the block, near the corner, where a fire hydrant sat. I reached out with my mind, to the water inside that hydrant, inside the pipe connected to the hydrant.
I ordered the water pressure to build up. And up. And up. Then I ordered it to burst out of the hydrant and soak the twelve members of the tactical force kneeling in front of my building.
A second later, a cap burst off the side of the hydrant and water sprayed out, knocking half the tactical squad off their knees and forcing all twelve men to retreat behind their big black van.
While they were recovering, I ordered the water still pouring out of the hydrant to rise up and form a wall between me and the cops. Then I ordered that water to freeze, forming a wall of ice between me and everybody else.
As water continued to pour out of the hydrant, that wall got thicker and thicker. One inch thick. Two inches thick. Three inches thick. Six inches thick. One foot thick. That’s when I heard gun fire.
Walt had ordered the tactical squad to open fire, to bring down my wall of ice. It didn’t work. My wall was too thick for their bullets to penetrate and the water rushing out of the hydrant enabled me to replace the ice faster than they could shatter it.
After a couple of minutes, the gun fire stopped. Then I heard Walt yelling, “All right Low, you win. Crystal’s gone. Get rid of the wall of ice and we’ll talk.”
I didn’t get rid of the wall of ice. I did the opposite, I kept making it thicker and thicker.
At the same time, I reached out with my mind, using the water inside their bodies to count how many people were on the other side of the wall. I counted fourteen. Thirteen were standing on the street. One, probably Crystal, was sitting inside the Dodge.
“She’s not gone,” I said. “She’s sitting inside your car.”
Walt didn’t reply. But I could feel Crystal moving, climbing out of the car and rejoining Walt behind the hood of the Dodge. A second later, an ear piercing scream could be heard. It was so loud and high pitched it that forced me, and I suspect, everyone else, to cover their ears with their hands.
In addition to shattering ear drums, it shattered my wall of ice, which broke into thousands of tiny pieces that collapsed onto the sidewalk.
I didn’t wait for Walt to say something before making my next move. I ordered the water that was still gushing out of the hydrant to drench Crystal, and more importantly, pour into her big fat mouth.
The water hit Crystal with such force that it knocked her off her feet, not to mention back several feet. She ended up lying on her back in the middle of the road, coughing and gagging and spitting up water.
Walt rushed to her side and knelt down to make sure that Crystal was okay. He said something to her and she nodded. Then he stood bac
k up and returned to his spot behind the Dodge.
“You could’ve killed her,” Walt yelled at me.
“It’s not against the law to kill supernaturals,” I yelled back.
“No it isn’t,” Walt said through clenched teeth.
Walt turned to the commander of the tactical squad, pointed at me, and yelled, “Shoot her!”
Fortunately for me, the commander of the tactical squad was one of the men whose life I had saved when I was on the force. It was also fortunate, at least for me, that he wasn’t under Crystal’s control, not like Walt was.
When Walt gave the order to shoot me, the commander, just looked at him and said, “I can’t do that sir.”
“Why not?” an angry Walt yelled.
“She saved my life. She’s one of us.”
Walt grew red faced, marched over to the commander, and grabbed his rifle. “Then give me your gun and I’ll do it myself.”
Walt tried to yank the rifle out of the commander’s hands, but the commander refused to let go. The commander was bigger, younger, and stronger, so Walt failed.
“Give me the damn gun,” an angry Walt said.
“I can’t do that sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think Low is right, I think you’re under the siren’s control.”
Walt finally gave up, reached inside his suit jacket, and pulled out his own gun. A police special thirty-eight. The bullets inside the rifle were big enough to penetrate my dense muscle tissue and kill me. The bullets inside Walt’s thirty-eight weren’t. Even so, I had no intention of letting him shoot me. I had already been shot twice in the last couple of days and it hurt like hell. I had no intention of letting it happen again.
That’s why I ordered the water gushing out of the hydrant to soak Walt, knock the gun out of his hand, and knock him off his feet. Which it did.
The spray of water hit Walt with enough force to knock the gun out of his hand. It flew through the air and landed in the middle of the street several feet behind him. A second later, a drenched Walt landed on his back, a few feet away from his gun.
Before Walt could get back to his feet, another unmarked Dodge Charger came roaring up, its siren wailing and its lights flashing. Stringbean got out from behind the steering wheel, his hands still bandaged. Frat Boy climbed out of the back seat. The chief of police climbed out of the passenger’s seat.
The chief marched over to the commander of the tactical squad and said something to him. The commander nodded, lowered his rifle, and said something to his men. The men lowered their guns and climbed into the back of their van. The commander and a second man climbed into the front of the van and it roared off.
That was when I ordered the water that was still gushing out of the hydrant to stop. It did and things quieted down considerably.
“Mind if I come up?” the chief asked me.
“I’ll meet you halfway,” I said.
I stepped off the building’s stoop, which was only two feet high, and met the chief on the sidewalk directly in front of the building.
“Officer,” the chief said. Nodding at me.
“Chief,” I said, returning his nod.
Even though I was no longer with the department, he still addressed me as officer. One of the advantages of being the most decorated officer in the history of the department, I guess. When you take a bullet for someone, they tend to remember you. When you take over a dozen bullets to save a dozen different people, well, a lot of people remember you.
“I’m told this is about an elf,” the chief said. He was in his mid fifties, tall and lean and hard, with silver hair cropped short and a silver mustache that hid his upper lip. He wore a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. His loafers were polished with a spit shine.
“There was a dark elf in town, but she’s gone now.”
“I have your word on that?”
“Mermaid’s promise,” I said.
The chief nodded. Once. “Good enough for me.”
He turned to head back to his car, stepping in front of me in the process. At the same time, Walt scrambled to his knees, pulled out a second gun, and fired it. I barely had enough time to push the chief out of the way before Walt got off three shots, pop, pop, pop.
Three bullets hit me in the stomach, knocking me off my feet.
“Lower your gun, captain,” the chief yelled. “That’s an order.”
“She needs to die,” Walt replied. “She’s dangerous. Deadly.”
“Take his gun,” the chief yelled.
I heard the sound of a scuffle, followed by Walt yelling, “No. She needs to die.”
I couldn’t see what was happening, since I was still on my back on the sidewalk, but I assumed that Stringbean had grabbed Walt’s gun from him.
I pulled my tee shirt out of my jeans and pulled the hem up, baring my stomach. I reached for the bullets, intending to pull them out, only I couldn’t find them. All I could find was blood, way more blood than there should’ve been.
The bullets went in deeper than normal, way deeper than thirty-eights should have, which told me that something wasn’t right. Maybe Walt had switched from regular bullets to hollow points.
I wondered if he reached that decision on his own, or if Crystal had suggested it. Probably one of Crystal’s suggestions. I knew one thing. Actually, I knew a couple of things.
First off, I knew that Walt’s career was over. You didn’t almost shoot the chief of police on live television and keep your badge. Secondly, I knew that dad was going to be pissed at me for destroying his friend and partner’s career. Not just destroying it, but destroying it on live television.
Before I could decide how pissed dad was going to be, Frat Boy knelt next to me and pressed his jacket against my stomach, trying to slow the loss of blood.
There really was a lot of blood. No big surprise. My heart was twice as big as a human heart and could pump four time faster. Kind of necessary when you swim at speeds in excess of seventy miles an hour.
“Hang on,” Frat Boy said. “Help is on the way.”
He looked scared, probably wasn’t used to seeing so much blood. Truth be told, I wasn’t used to seeing that much blood.
I forced myself to smile at Frat Boy, trying to get him to relax. “Not going anywhere.”
I’d like to report that it worked, that he relaxed, but I can’t. Truth be told, I don’t know what happened because I passed out.