Dead Heat (Taz Bell Book 1) Read online

  "Yes, I've done this before, but not with a SWAT team," I continued. "I was on the job in New York City, and we didn't know what we were looking for - or about to come up against. If the harpy hadn't been young and slow on top of that because of her recent meal, we would have lost more than the two men we did lose."

  "Yeah, we need to hear about that," Dan agreed, his attitude subtly changed. I wasn't SWAT, but I'd survived a situation like the one he and his people were about to walk into, so I was definitely someone who had to be listened to. "Let's get you ready, and then you can tell us all about it."

  Dan called over one of his men to get Allen and me outfitted, and as soon as the SWAT team leader walked away Allen stepped a little closer to me.

  "Isn't wearin' Kevlar a waste of time?" he asked softly. "That harpy isn't likely to be carryin' a gun, is she?"

  "No, the harpy won't have a gun, but there's no guarantee that James won't be armed," I pointed out, smiling only on the inside at the word picture Allen had drawn. "And there's also the possibility that one of our own will panic and start shooting at the wrong time. It won't hurt to have the Kevlar, and it might even help."

  Allen nodded, immediately putting aside any other protest he might have had. He didn't believe that James had a gun any more than I did, but he obviously intended to go along with the suggestion to avoid the other, more likely possibility. SWAT team members were more stable and reliable than your average police officer, but we all have things that go right past ordinary courage and fill us with terror. There was no certainty that someone around us would lose it, but it would have been foolish to ignore the chance that they might.

  Once Allen and I had closed the Kevlar vests on ourselves and had inserted the earpieces with attached mikes, we were handed shotguns. The Remington model 1187 pump is a nice gun, holding six rounds and having a 14" short barrel. Anything under 16" is considered a short barrel, and both the border patrol and DEA used this same gun. We were also given extra shells for the guns, and I took mine without comment. Saying that if we didn't put the harpy down with what we had in our guns we might not have the chance to reload wasn't a point I wanted to make right now.

  When we were set, Allen walked away to find out if Dan and his people were ready for my lecture. As soon as he was gone, George moved closer to me.

  "You know, it still strikes me as odd when you tell people you worked in New York City," George commented. "It feels as if you should be able to say 'the city' the way we always did, but the people down here would have trouble knowing what you were talking about, wouldn't they?"

  "They sure would," I agreed. "Like the time I forgot and said something about 'the Island' and was asked if I meant Staten Island. The man had no idea that it's always Long Island you mean when you say 'the Island…' Please don't worry, George. This shouldn't be any more dangerous than the other things we've done."

  "Was that comment supposed to be comforting?" George asked with what sounded a lot like a snort. "Just promise me you won't decide to keep everyone back while you do it all yourself. And don't tell me that that's not the plan. I think we both know how fast plans can change, especially when you're involved."

  "George, I promise I won't go up against a harpy alone if I have any say in the matter whatsoever," I stated, giving him a shake of my head along with the words. "Do you think it's safe enough now to tell me exactly where the harpy is taking her beauty sleep?"

  "Happily, these houses don't seem to have basements," George answered after a tiny hesitation. "You can tell Detective Allen and the others that I went inside once we had the search warrant, and the harpy's nest is in the back bedroom on the right. That also happens to be James's bedroom, and it looked like he's still sleeping in the room. I would have expected him to move into the master suite, but he didn't."

  "Of course he didn't," I said, shaking my head again but in a different way. "I'd be willing to bet that he'd stay in his own room even if he lived in that house until he was ninety. Even with his parents dead, moving into their part of the house would be totally out of the question. Will you do another recon right now? We'll be best off if we know where James is before we break down his door."

  "I was going to suggest the same myself," George said, sadness now clear in his dark eyes. "In spite of everything, I can't keep from feeling sorry for that poor soul. I'll see you and the others when you reach the grounds around the house."

  I had just enough time to nod before George disappeared, and a moment later Granger Allen was back.

  "Where did George go?" Allen asked as he glanced around. "The SWAT team is ready to hear about takin' down a harpy."

  "George went to find out where James is right now," I answered. "The harpy is in James's bedroom at the back of the house, so it looks like we'll have to divide our forces a lot more carefully than usual. Instead of most of us going in through the front, we'll have to have the stronger segment going in through the back. When the harpy wakes up and rushes out to do battle - when, not if - she'll most likely go after the closer force first."

  "And we've got to get a move on," Allen agreed, shifting the shotgun he held. "We've still got a few hours until dark, but the closer we get, the stronger she'll probably be."

  I didn't know if that was true, but I felt nothing of an urge to argue the assumption. Instead I led the way back to the people who were waiting to hear about the beastie that would do her best to kill us all, and then started the lecture. I told them the important part first - that we had to keep shooting until the harpy was dead - and that was when Dan interrupted.

  "We can't go with a strategy like that without makin' an exception or two," he stated, his tone flat and final. "If that thing gets one of my people down and is on top of him, for instance, we can't just keep blastin' away."

  "I think you're missing the point here, Dan," I said, speaking as gently as I could. "If the harpy gets one of your people down, the only thing that will save him is if we don't stop shooting. Kevlar won't stop talons or razor-sharp teeth, and if you all hold your fire your man will have his throat torn out before you know what's happening. Not shooting won't save a life, but keeping up a rate of fire just might. If that particular scenario comes to be, you'll want to aim at the harpy's head."

  There was a very heavy silence at that point, so I went on to describe what happened the last time I went up against a harpy. Harpies seemed to have some kind of … personal magic, maybe, that made them very hard to kill, but it was possible to wear the beast down.

  No one had been able to get a floor plan of the house in the time we had before we needed to break in, so in effect we'd be going in blind. Dan didn't much like the fact that most of his people would be going in the back, and that turned out to be because he'd be going in the front. There was no real guarantee that those of us going in the back would be attacked first, and since I'd made it clear that I'd be with those in the back he couldn't in all good conscience leave his people on their own in the front.

  Allen spent some time arguing about being relegated to the back of the group going in the front, but he finally had to give it up to keep from wasting all the time we had left. I couldn't be made to trail along behind everyone else, of course, not when Allen had so kindly made it official that I, as the rogue hunter who had tracked down this rogue, was asking the assistance of the police. This was my hunt, so I got to go in first.

  Lucky me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The houses in this neighborhood were all spread out and standing on their own pieces of real estate. Most of the houses had gates and/or walls in front of their driveways, and some even had walls around the property. The grass was well-tended just about everywhere, and that included James's property. We all went over the low wall instead of going through James's gate, those going in the front over to the right, the rest of us to the left. No one was assigned sniper positions, not in this kind of situation.

  Dan Newsom led Allen and the rest of his people up the right side of the driveway to th
e front of the house, while I led the way up the other side of the drive on our way to the back. It was late afternoon and hot, making those in full body armor sweat, even making a simple Kevlar vest uncomfortable. It was also beginning to look overcast, as if the weather had decided it was time for rain. I'd been worried that the back of the house was fenced off in some way, but George had appeared in time to set my mind at rest.

  "No, there's no fence around the back," George assured me when I asked. "There are higher walls around the property than the one in front, but nothing separating the front lawn from the back. And James is napping in his bed only a few feet from the harpy."

  I nodded to George, then spoke into the very thin mike near my lips.

  "Good news, Dan," I reported. "James is apparently napping near the harpy, so he isn't likely to spot us and alert the target. You know your man is going to try picking the lock on the back door, which will let us get into the house and be in position before you break down the front door. I'll let you know when we're in."

  "We'll be waitin'," Dan answered, then added to his teammate, "Watch out for an alarm, Weems."

  I'd already thought about intruder alarms, but I didn't say so as we edged around the very large house toward the back. There probably was an alarm system in the house, but whether or not James had it turned on was another question. If he hadn't been allowed to touch the alarm system while his parents were alive, he certainly would not be using it now. All I could do was hope that his harpy made him feel safe enough that he considered the alarm unnecessary even if he had used it before acquiring her.

  Happily, the garage was on the other side of the house. A short distance away from the back of the house on our side was a full-size swimming pool, but there were only a few shallow pools of water in its bottom. In fact there were more leaves than water in the pool, suggesting it hadn't been used in years. The chairs and lounges near the pool also looked neglected, as did the lawn furniture arranged a short distance away in the grass. The items standing at the back of the house were meant for entertaining guests and a family's relaxation, but James obviously never had guests and his new family didn't use chairs or a pool.

  The seven members of the SWAT team going in the back with me followed without hesitation and with a minimum of noise. Dan had the other five members of the team around front, along with Granger Allen. I'd been almost holding my breath until I saw the back door, an actual door rather than one of those sliding glass monsters. We couldn't have gotten through a glass door quietly without more equipment than Weems, the team member designated as burglar, had, but now we had a real chance to get inside without warning our quarry.

  Weems handed his shotgun to the man next to him before going to one knee in front of the door. Everyone else including me was on high alert, watching in all directions for any kind of attack. George had gone inside the house to make sure there wasn't any noise that would warn James and the harpy, but he intended to make sure he stayed away from the room where the two were. The harpy hadn't detected his presence until now, and we wanted to keep it like that.

  It couldn't have been longer than five to seven minutes before the door was open, but the wait felt like hours. Every SWAT team member was completely alert and ready in their silence, but they were also radiating fear and anticipation so strongly that the scent threatened to knock me over. Not that I was doing any better. The memory of the last time I'd faced a harpy had my insides in knots, my nerves strung tight and my spine encased in ice. If someone had tapped me on the shoulder during that wait, I'd probably have had a heart attack and then blown them away even before I knew who it was.

  But there wasn't anyone around to lose their life to fear, and as soon as the door was unlocked and Weems had reclaimed his shotgun I used my mike again.

  "The door is open and we're going in," I reported to Dan, speaking very softly. "Give us a full five minutes to get into position."

  "Will do," Dan answered, and then it was time to get moving. Weems had left the door very slightly ajar, so I pushed it open slowly and eased into the room. The door opened to the left, so the first thing I saw in the dimness was the arrangement to the right. An armchair stood in front of a large television set, with a microwave and a small refrigerator arranged to either side of the set.

  To the left of the chair was an oversized garbage can, but it was still overflowing with all kinds of take-out packaging. Pizza boxes and Chinese food cartons, Styrofoam cups and Styrofoam meal-holders, hamburger wrappers and boxes and paper cups of all kinds. The place looked as if it was originally intended to be a small family room, but none of the furniture to the left seemed recently used.

  As I moved cautiously toward the door leading out of the room, the team members ghosting along behind me, I wasn't surprised that James had a nest of his own. It was fairly obvious that he took his meals and did most of his living in that one small corner of the world, but the arrangement led me to wonder how James had forced himself to go out looking for women. He shouldn't have had the nerve to approach a woman - unless his being a shapeshifter had something to do with it. I really did need to find out what "going out looking" was all about…

  But that was for another time. Right now I had to pay attention to the surprisingly wide hall outside the room we'd entered through. There was a closed door to the right and across the hall from the doorway I stood in, and halfway to the left was another hall that probably went into the rest of the house. Beyond that point, all the way to the left and what would be "next door" to the family room was another door, and that one stood open. From the front of the house that room would be on the right, which meant it was where James and the harpy were.

  George floated in the middle of the hallway while I just peered around the door frame, but George was so faint that he was practically invisible. I pointed toward the doorway I could barely see and raised my eyebrows, and George nodded. That was it, all right, and it was a miracle that both James and the harpy weren't already awake from the sound of my heart thundering in my chest.

  But I could hear the soft and steady sound of someone breathing in their sleep, a small comfort in the midst of potential chaos. It was really dim in that hall, the only light coming from the two open doorways, but since it wasn't electric light it didn't help much. I would have still been able to see even if it had been darker, but the SWAT team members weren't shapeshifters. They'd almost certainly have trouble seeing clearly, but there was nothing I could do about the problem.

  Nothing I could do but lead the way out into the hall. When the first members of the team followed me, I waved a hand to get their attention, pointed to my eyes, then pointed to the closed door. It's never a good idea to leave uninvestigated places behind your back, but charging into the room in order to shout "Clear!" was a worse idea right now. As long as two members of the team watched that doorway until the fighting started, we would hopefully be all right.

  We lined up against the walls on both sides of the hallway, four to a side, then carefully moved up to the place where the hall leading to the rest of the house began. I'd originally intended for us to wait there until the front door was broken down, but from where I stood at the wall opposite James's bedroom I could see very faint light coming from the room that was electric in nature. It was most likely a night light, and most likely for James's sake rather than for the harpy. The team was at a definite disadvantage out here in the almost-dark hallway, but inside that room it would be a different story. Even if the room wasn't very big, it would still let the team see what was happening…

  "There's light in that room, so let's take the fight to our target," I whispered into the mike, needing everyone to hear me. "Preferably before she's fully awake."

  Those two points, the presence of light and the fact that the harpy wasn't awake yet, dissolved whatever reluctance the people behind me might have felt. As I began to run toward the lighted doorway I heard Dan start to say something, but I wasn't the only one who didn't wait to find out what his comment would
be. The team followed right behind me, and then we were rushing into the room.

  I only had a couple of seconds to look around as I cleared the doorway to let those behind me come through, but the picture etched itself into the file in my head - right next to the smell of the place. I'd been aware of the smell out in the hall, of course, but inside the room the stench was almost overpowering. Worse than rotting garbage, more specifically like rotting meat, making me wonder how James could sleep in the room.

  And James was asleep, in a single bed over on the right, the bed having been pushed up against the wall. The door into the room was two-thirds over toward the same righthand wall, giving James about a third of the room. The rest of the room had been given over to the harpy, and she'd made a nest of torn up material and paper - and a good number of bones. Some of the bones probably belonged to animals, but the rest… Had James ever actually gotten a woman to leave the bar with him…?

  There was no knowing without checking the missing persons reports, and right now there wasn't even time to think about that. Our rushing into the room woke the harpy almost immediately, and she scrambled out of the midst of the filth she called a nest and began to spread her wings. She was about to take to the air for a better angle of attack, but it would have been stupid to let her do that. I fired at her before she was airborne, and an instant later there were other shotguns joining mine.

  The heavy barrage staggered the harpy, but it didn't actually stop her. She screamed out her rage and launched herself into the air, not very high but definitely up. She was the size of a medium dog with large, leathery wings and brown scales covering her body, darker brown legs ending in talons, her eyes a burning red above a mouth filled with pointed teeth like serrated knives. Larger than the last harpy I'd seen, and not weighted down from a recent meal.

  But there were eight of us firing shotguns at her without hesitation, and whatever damage she'd taken from the first barrage began to affect her. She tried to dive at one of the team members with mouth spread wide and talons ready to bury themselves, but almost everyone seemed to remember what I'd said about anyone she reached. One or two of the shotguns went silent as she tried to close with her target, but the way I continued to fire encouraged the others. After the short hesitation there were eight guns firing again.