Chapter 27: Gone

  During the night, the kids had vanished. Someone had taken them. No one was quite sure how, but the who was obvious.

  The settlement didn’t wake up so much as it snapped awake.

  Doors opened too hard. Footsteps ran instead of walked. People who usually spoke in low voices suddenly had nothing left of that restraint. There was a frantic edge in every sound.

  Cole got there fast, staff in hand, the exhaustion from the last few weeks still sitting in his bones. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the fact that the kids were gone.

  “It had to be Tanner,” Alina said, looking horrified.

  Her eyes were red already. Her hair was messy. She kept wringing her hands together, then stopping, then doing it again.

  “How so?” Cole asked.

  They were in the room with the others, Seth had his palms pressed against the table.

  Seth’s knuckles were white. His shoulders were up around his ears, his teeth were clenched.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that git!”

  His voice came out rough, too loud for the room. The word git carried years of contempt with it.

  “You didn’t say so at the time,” Alina shot at him, expression turning from horrified to a sharp glare.

  Seth’s head snapped toward her, eyes flaring. He looked like he wanted to shout again.

  “And I was wrong! I should have said what I felt. Should have known something was off!”

  The air in the room felt thin. People were too close. Too much grief and fear packed into too small a space. Cole could feel it trying to turn into something ugly.

  “Enough,” Cole spoke calmly, but authority rang in his voice.

  Quiet descended instantly on the room.

  It was the weight in his tone. The way his authority stat made people listen when he decided they were going to listen. Even Seth froze, breath still heavy, eyes still wild, but silent.

  Cole didn’t waste the silence.

  “Arguing amongst ourselves won’t help anyone. Now, Alina, tell me why you think it was Tanner?”

  Alina took a deep breath.

  She held it for a beat. Then she let it out slowly and forced herself to speak like an adult instead of a mother on the edge.

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  “He’s the only one with an ability to obscure things. He can’t do it for very long, but it was long enough. It’s the only way he could have gotten those kids out of the settlement without being seen by any of the night watch.”

  Cole nodded once.

  That fit. Too cleanly.

  “Fine. I’d rather not just assume it’s him, anything else that implicates him?”

  Naomi spoke up, her voice quiet.

  She looked tired in that way that didn’t come from missing sleep, but from being the one who always had to count what was left. Her clipboard wasn’t in her hands. That meant this wasn’t inventory. This was personal.

  “He’s not in the settlement. We looked.”

  Seth growled, but said nothing, just shook his head.

  It was the kind of shake that said he’d already decided what he wanted to do to Tanner if he ever saw him again.

  Cole felt the room tighten at those words.

  “Yeah,” Cole said slowly, “That’s pretty damning. Okay, where would he have taken them?”

  “Probably to the demons,” Alina supplied.

  Cole watched her face as she said it.

  “What makes you say that?”

  The doctor closed her eyes. Seth and Naomi looked away. Cole looked at them all.

  The silence went heavy again.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Alina blew out a slow breath, blowing away strands of her hair.

  Her hands trembled as she pushed the hair back.

  “When the waves first started, there was this…boss demon? It spoke. It told us if we gave it our kids the attacks would stop. We refused of course. I didn’t think a lot about it until-”

  “Tonight,” Seth snarled, “When that bastard vanished with the kids.”

  Cole didn’t answer right away.

  He could hear the settlement outside the room. People moving. People crying. Someone shouting a name down a hallway. The sound of a door slamming. The sound of another door slamming harder.

  Cole sucked in a slow breath.

  “Okay,” Cole said, and his voice came out steadier than he felt. “That’s probably where they are.”

  He didn’t like saying it. It made it real. But tiptoeing around real didn’t save anyone.

  “I don’t want to assume Tanner is just a monster, it is possible the demon or something is controlling him. Either way, I’m going to go to this parking garage where you told me earlier that the demons appeared to be coming from. If there is any kind of leader amongst them, it will be there.”

  That had been the plan anyway. They’d talked about it in meetings, in low voices, in careful words.

  Now there was no time for polite.

  They were planning on hitting the garage soon anyway, to see if they could permanently stop the waves.

  “You should bring people with you,” Seth said.

  His voice was rougher now, lower, but it had a desperate edge. He wasn’t offering tactics. He was offering fear.

  “No. It’s just more people to worry about. I’m doing this alone,” Cole stated with finality.

  He could already picture it if he brought a group. Panic. Someone freezing. Someone dying because they weren’t ready. Someone else dying because Cole tried to save them. The kids didn’t have time for that chain reaction.

  The others looked to complain, so Cole shook his head and left.

  He didn’t argue. He didn’t justify it. He’d already made the choice.

  The hallway outside was crowded. People turned toward him with faces twisted in hope and terror. A few reached out almost grasping at him.

  He kept walking.

  As he strode to the gates, Caleb came up to him.

  Caleb didn’t hesitate.

  “I’m coming,” he told Cole simply.

  Cole didn’t stop walking. He glanced at Caleb, then forward again.

  “No, I will do better alone for this.”

  “One of those kids is my nephew. I’m coming.”

  Caleb’s voice had gone hard.

  Cole studied him.

  Caleb’s eyes were red from lack of sleep and the intense focus. His jaw was clenched. His hands were empty, but Cole knew he’d arm himself the moment they stepped outside. He wasn’t posturing. He wasn’t trying to be a hero. He was a man with family on the line.

  Cole exhaled.

  “Alright. Fine. But no one else. Let’s go.”

  Caleb nodded once.

  Cole pushed open the gate and stepped out into the ruined street, staff in hand, authority settling around him like a familiar weight.

  They had kids to save.