“We obviously all have some very strong opinions about this,” Sloan said, eyes glittering as he looked at Mark and Samson. “This is why I wanted your input. If you’re going to be our front line in this fight, I want to know where you stand.”
Nathan rubbed a hand over his face, leaning forward to brace his elbows on the table. “With all due respect, commander, I think our time and resources would be better spent focusing on the demons who are actively harming innocent people. Yes, halflings are demons.” He gestured to Mark. “But halflings don’t kill people. Andbecausethey don’t kill people, I think it’s safe to say focusing on them would cause more innocents to be hurt in the long run, because we aren’t doing what we can to protect them. We’re letting our personal feelings about what happened with Hawk and Morgan and Faer get in the way of our duty.”
“I agree,” Nicolas said softly.
Nathan inclined his head in gratitude. Now was his chance to push for more. He could ask Sloan to grant the traitors mercy. With a fortifying breath, he forged on. “I would even take things a step further, if you’d allow it.”
“How so?” Sloan asked. It was begrudging—but he was still listening. That had to mean something.
“The—traitors,” he didn’t like the word, but that was what most people called them, “are still fighting demons. They still patrol just as they did when they worked here. If they’re still protecting people, regardless of the other choices they’ve made, we might even be able to make allies of them. At the very least, we could maintain a ceasefire. A truce, if you will. We won’t attack them if they keep their demons in line, and maybe we wind up with a few extra people out there fighting the good fight, keeping an eye out when we can’t.”
“What do you mean, ‘when we can’t?’” Joseph asked, his face a mask of distaste.
Nathan gestured to the room around them. “We are very good at what we do, but we’re still sheltered behind our walls most of the time. The traitors, they don’t have that luxury. They’re out there in the thick of it at all times. If we had a truce with them, they could bring cases to us that they can’t handle on their own. They could be eyes and ears that we wouldn’t otherwise have out there. With their connections to the demons, they might hear about rising threats before they’ve had a chance to gain strength. Maybe we could use this as a way to do more good instead of letting them become our enemies.”
Sloan rubbed his jaw. There was no warmth in his calculating gaze, and Nathan wondered if he’d pushed too far. Mark was shaking his head in disbelief. Nicolas watched warily, his face half-hidden behind his styrofoam cup of coffee.
And then Sloan relaxed back in his chair, threading his fingers together over his stomach. “You know what, Captain Accardi? If this is something you feel so strongly about, I’ll let you pursue it.”
A jolt went through Nathan. Really? He hadn’t expected that at all.
“What?” Mark exclaimed. “You can’t be serious.”
Sloan waved him down. “Contact the traitors and see if they’ll be willing to meet. We’ll see how receptive they are to the idea. You’ll run point and speak on behalf of the guild with them.”
Samson’s face twisted in shock. “You’re really allowing this?”
Sloan raised a finger. “That brings me to my next point of order, actually. I’m allowing this for a reason.” He opened up the laptop in front of him, then stood to fetch the remote that controlled the projector. A moment later, his screen appeared on the wall to Nathan’s right. “There’s a new case that’s cropped up. One of my contacts in the police brought it to my attention. I had an email from them this morning.”
A curl of unease went through Nathan as Sloan clacked away on his keyboard for a moment, pulling up a video of what looked like CCTV footage of a street view. Sloan knew a handful of police officers who were aware of the supernatural and the guild’s real work fighting demons. It was rare that their paths crossed, though.
“You haven’t had a big breakfast this morning, have you?”
The captains all shook their heads.
“Good.”
Sloan pressed play. On the screen, people were milling up and down the sidewalk. The sun was shining. The date in the corner was from two days ago.
“Watch that young man with the red backpack,” Sloan said as a young male, probably college-aged, appeared on the screen, looking down at his cell phone. Was this near the college campus? When he neared the middle of the screen, he stopped. His shoulders hunched, and a moment later his phone tipped out of his grasp. Trembling violently, he fell to his knees, clawing at his chest. People on the sidewalk stopped, giving him a wide berth as he screamed. The silent video somehow made it even worse. Dark blood bloomed on the front of his shirt, and he fell onto his back, his body arching unnaturally.
“My God,” Nathan breathed.
His chest burst outward, like something out of a horror movie, ripping his shirt and spewing blood and viscera around him.
Nathan covered his mouth, and the video went dark. Nicolas turned away, his face pale.
“What…” Joseph stopped, shaking his head helplessly.
Sloan sighed. “That was twenty-year-old David Simms, a student at the local college. Local media has been blessedly quiet about it, because despite the weirdness and the goriness, there’s no evidence of foul play. The official word from the coroner is a… freak heart thing of some kind. It looks like his heart exploded—to them.”
“What does it look like to us?” Mark asked.
Nathan wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“One of the eyewitnesses—who will likely be paying for a lifetime of therapy—swears she saw a hand burst through the victim’s chest. From the inside.”
“A ha…” Nathan’s voice gave out.
