Dark Flame (Flame 3)

He’d heard of this kind of thing happening, but he felt sure his family was safe in Flagstaff. Most of the alter serum crimes occurred in the Phoenix area, not in the more remote satellite towns of Arizona.

But over the past thirty years, Phoenix had become an increasingly difficult place to live as had all the major cities of the U.S. A large portion of north Phoenix had become the province of Five Bridges where each of the five alter species had been segregated in order to protect the human population.

The U.S. had its own border patrol guarding the entrance and exit points of the five main bridges leading into his world. Human visitors could come and go at their own risk, but only a few alter species could leave and then only on official business. Most of the workers at the Tribunal, the main governing body for Five Bridges, had passports that allowed them to travel to the human part of Phoenix on limited business. Everyone else had to stay put or risk on-the-spot execution in the human part of the world.

Unfortunately, the full panorama of the flame drugs had become a highly popular recreational substance. And the three powerful cartels worked hard to keep the supply moving. Humans came into Five Bridges every night by the hundreds, and on the weekends by the thousands, to score drugs and to take advantage of the dozens of sex clubs scattered throughout all five territories.

The world he lived in had become a freak show of drugs and a nightmare of trafficked women who got used up in the clubs. Very few escaped. Most died at the hands of their captors.

He glanced back at the van. The women had emerged and Juliet stood with her arm supporting the one with the bruises and bloody nose. They were a quiet, broken bunch and would need years of therapy to recover.

Brannick shifted the last of the boxes away from the entrance to the tunnel. Moving close to the door, he knocked quietly three times, until he heard the answering response of one rap, a pause, then two rapid knocks. He changed the signal often to alert him to treachery. If he’d heard anything other than the correct order and frequency of knocks, he would have piled the women back in the van and taken off.

He glanced at Juliet and held up his hand to her. She understood and turned to the women, a finger to her lips. Silence fell; no one breathed.

The signal might have been correct, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He drew his Glock, standard issue for the Crescent Border Patrol, then pulled the door open.

Lily stood there. She was the dispatch operator at the station and smiled as she glanced down at the barrel of his gun. “Good evening, Officer Brannick. Good thing you don’t have an itchy trigger finger.”

Brannick relaxed and holstered his gun. He trusted Lily with his life.

The feisty woman had short, white-blond hair and gold-green eyes. She was tall at six feet and had one of the toughest jobs in Crescent Territory. She had to balance her dislike of half the officers who were on the take with the other half who tried to do some good in Five Bridges.

Their chief, Easton, was as corrupt as they came. He’d been sleeping with the cartels for a long time. Yet somehow, Lily combined pragmatism with a certain amount of stealth and made it all work.

He drew in a deep breath and smiled in return. “How you doin’, Lily? Are we secure below?”

“We are. We have a half-dozen female support staff in place ready to walk the women out. Our contacts are waiting at the other end with an emergency vehicle to transport them to the hospital in Deer Valley.” Lily glanced at the group and frowned. “They’re pretty beat up. Did they come from one of Roche’s establishment

s?”

“Yep.”

“He’s a real bastard, that one.”

“He’s at least that.”

Neal Roche ran one of the biggest sex and drug trades in Revel. He was hooked up tight with the cartels and was rumored to have a large, underground manufacturing set-up that produced dark flame. The powerful drug supposedly helped some of the more gifted fae in his employ to engage in an intoxicating form of sex during dreamgliding, something peculiar to Revel Territory

Roche also had a reputation for dropping off female corpses at the Graveyard every single night.

Brannick gestured for the women to come forward. They moved slowly, shuffling and in pain, a sight that made him wince.

He moved himself to the far side of the garage as the women drew close. They’d been handled so badly by men that he didn’t want to add to their current distress. He waited as Juliet and Lily ushered them through the door, down the stairs and into the tunnel.

Juliet returned a few minutes later. She appeared at the threshold, her eyes brimming with tears. She crossed into the garage, then turned and closed the door firmly behind her.

He drew close and kept his voice low. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

She shook her head and pressed the crook of her finger beneath each eye. “Nothing. I’m so happy for them and for a stupid moment, I felt sorry for myself.”

“What? Why?”

She turned to face him more fully. “Honestly, once I saw the tunnel, all I wanted to do was keep walking. They’ll be free, but I won’t. I’m an alter fae. I’ll never be free again.”

A feeling of familiarity swamped him once more, as though they always talked like this, like she’d said similar things to him before. Yet he’d only met her once at the club.