“Should you be doing that with your injury?” Cyrus asked.
“I’m fine,” he ground out. “Answer the fucking question!”
He wasn’t even lying. His arm was healing. Despite the multiple people he’d beaten up since it happened, it was doing a-oh-fucking-k. It was tender, but a wound like that for a Cryptid, while it had required surgery, the healing afterwards was fast. Likely it would heal faster than his nose had when Seri had broken it.
“Fine!” Cyrus growled. “While we know that Seri doesn’t want to be there, Preston just convinced the rest of the universe that Seri is there of his own free will. Us breaking in without a warrant will only work against us.”
“That wasn’t Seri! The man wouldn’t willingly be caught dead in those clothes, or as a woman. To add on, he is injured and has short hair. Hell, half of his head is basically shaved!”
“Us knowing that doesn’t matter. It’s what everyone else thinks. It will make things difficult for the Bureau without one.”
Severo was about to say he didn’t give a damn how difficult it was for the Bureau, when another agent spoke up.
“Severo, Boss is right… You may have noticed something off about Seri, but no one else will. Maybe other Shadow Dwellers will, but looking in from the outside, if I didn’t know he’d been taken, I wouldn’t question any of it,” Ludvik said hesitantly.
Despite being a Fire Sprite, the man was as tall as Severo, with dark brown skin, and fiery red hair.
“I agree. Your powers are freaky convincing. I’ve seen you manipulate shadow puppets before. I couldn’t tell them apart from real people,” Mason drawled. The muscular blond Centaur was an agent who usually handled mostly narcotic related crimes.
The others in the room murmured in agreement. He eyed them. Severo struggled to quell the rising panic that them all being there was causing him. He had to trust them. He knew he had to. And Severo had in the past…yet now…
Ugh—fuck! It didn’t matter, because trust or not, he couldn’t break into Preston’s property alone. The Shadow Realm was no doubt blocked from him there. And the number of guards…
Severo took a deep, calming breath. “We are putting Skya at risk talking to all these damn judges, Cyrus. Right or wrong. Either find one who will do it, or fucking drop it and let’s set the plan in motion.”
“The ones we can trust, and were just cowards, I made sure their silence was guaranteed,” Cyrus said, before continuing with a smile. “The ones we couldn’t trust, I arrested. Now that Jorah is no longer actively blocking us, Killian easily found their connection to Preston.”
Jorah…the bastard. They’d discovered that not only was the man better skilled than he let on, but that from the very beginning, he’d been in Preston’s pocket. Jorah had been doing all he could to prevent anyone from uncovering the bulk of the man’s financial corruption.
They’d uncovered hundreds of thousands of transactions and links to various politicians, agents, police, judges, and more.
Then there were the cases the Harpy had been involved in. After all this was over, they’d have to check each and every one to make sure he didn’t lie and manipulate shit for Preston.It was a big fucking mess.
“I have one judge I think will do it… It’s a cousin.”
“Why didn’t you ask them sooner?!” Severo snapped.
“Same reason why you aren’t answering any of your family's phone calls, even after telling Ender to inform them about what was going on.”
Severo winced… He’d forgotten about that. Him not answering the phone was more about Severo not wanting to waste time talking to anyone, when he could be working instead.
“Yeah, fun times are headed your way, buddy. They are on their way here,” Cyrus said with way too much amusement for his liking.
“Just my way?” Severo smirked. “Have fun answering why you didn’t tell them the truth.”
Cyrus blanched.
That’s right, fucker,he thought. If he was going down, Severo wasn’t going alone. Even though it had been a week…he still felt…this intense, consuming anger anytime he looked at the man. Severo wasn’t sure he could trust Cyrus again…which sucked. They’d been friends since they were children… Yet, now he felt off around him.
Killian cleared his throat.“So… You are Skya, huh?”
He eyed the baby laying back in a… Was it a car seat? She narrowed her eyes at him.
He narrowed his eyes back.
“No Dah-Dah. No Oh-Oh. Hmph!” she yelled, turning her little noggin away, as if he had insulted her.
“W-well, excuse me for not being either of those people!” Killian spluttered.
