“You sure executing us is the best way to tackle this, Mister The Devil, sir?” I took a step forward, putting myself in front of Irish and, hopefully, in the way of any oncoming fireballs. I had a better chance of surviving one than he did at the moment, and I was going to need him alive if any of my carefully laid plans were going to work. “I mean, you’ve got a hell of a situation on your hands, and there might be something we can do to help with that.”
“Oh, really?” Leonard studied the floor, rubbing his chin in thought, as though he were actually considering it. He smirked, but while his expression was mocking, I could see wheels turning in his eyes. “A used-up Orderman and a sociopathic hollowman. Yes, definitely my first two choices for allies.”
“Better than the ones you were going with,” Tyler muttered, and gave Leonard innocent eyes when the Major shot him a hard look.
“’Used up?’” I repeated, arching an eyebrow. Was that dissension in the ranks I was seeing there? “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were listening. Did you miss the bit where Owen was explaining the whole nephilim breeding program? Because, and maybe you didn’t catch this part so I’ll go over it again, slowly: that means my friend here is just as potent as he ever was.” I turned a look over my shoulder at Irish, who was still looking pretty shell-shocked. That was helpful. Thanks, Irish. “Or at least, he will be. He just needs the right kind of pep talk. Years of therapy, maybe, or five minutes with Grace. Besides, Lenny,” Lenny scowled at the nickname – or maybe it was my flippant tone. I made a mental note to dial down the snarky. A little bit. “It sort of looks like you boys are outnumbered and could use our help. I’d think that a powerful and resourceful artificer and an Orderman would come in handy right about now.”
Leonard treated me to a steady, skeptical gaze, very much like the look I used to get from “Randall” when I was bragging up my goods or dickering over his prices. How much of Leonard was in “Randall?” How much of that was a part played, and how much just a different name for the same man? How well did I know this guy, really?
“Outnumbered.” Leonard sighed and rolled his eyes, which managed to convey in one elegant gesture exactly how full of shit he suspected I was. I was familiar with that look, too. I wished I could tell if he was using that familiarity against me or not. “Whatever would make you think that?”
“Well…” I held my hands out, as if I were loath to cast aspersions, but since he insisted… “Seems to me like someone thought they were going to be clever and put an extra outlander in their pocket. You sold Carl that summoning treatise and you figured you’d either snag the outlander or have Carl under your thumb.” Tyler hissed between his teeth and his fireball flared a touch brighter. Damian, with his usual impeccable poker-face, gasped out loud and actually backed away from Leonard a step or two. “Ah. Didn’t share that part with the troops, eh? Anyway, that hasn’t worked out very well. In fact, you’ve kind of made a clusterfuck of the whole attempt. Carl prepared better than you expected, and dotted all his ‘i’s’ and crossed all his ‘t’s.’ You should have expected better of him, really. Geomancers are methodical sorts. Pity he didn’t do better background checks on his associates, eh?”
“The deAngelo fellow. Grace shared your theory. He’s dead.”
I blinked. If Leonard looked for somebody, he found them. Period. Dowsers were creepy like that. “Never said he wasn’t. But you might want to look again. Benny deAngelo’s body is the problem now, not Benny.” Leonard’s scowl told me all I needed to know. He hadn’t looked for the shell, just the man.
“I sent a message to the Eldest. If one of his vampires is acting up, it’s his job to deal with it.”
My mouth gaped like a fish for a beat or two. “Uh, have you met Duane? For one thing, he’s an idiot. For another, he’s out of his weight class, here. He was actually there when Benny’s body rose, and from what I heard, he got his ass kicked.”
“Our people are on it,” Irish said. I looked over my shoulder at him, and he was standing very close behind me, shoulders squared and jaw set. He was still too pale, but he was doing what he could to back me up. “Aye,” he smiled. “We have people, too. They’re organizing the Eldest’s people now, seeking out the recently-turned undead army the Carlgeist in Benny’s body has been building. They’ve also been following the hollowman and dealing with the corruptions he leaves in his wake.”
“I knew there had to be more of them!” Damian said, pointing an incriminating finger at Grace while he spoke to Leonard. “Didn’t I? It didn’t make sense, what it did to Grace! Setting a trap like that? It didn’t fit any kind of a pattern at all, and if was an accident, then there had to be others out there!” Leonard held up a hand in a sharp gesture, silencing the Knight of Pentacles.
“This is what I’m talking about,” I went on, smiling and nodding at The Devil. “Clusterfuck. You’ve been so busy with the damage control, guarding your secrets and your reputation, that you didn’t have any time left over to treat the disease. Just the symptoms. I’m so sure you don’t want that sort of news getting out, I’ll bet no one’s called for any Arcana backup yet. Which would explain why you’d take Tanner up on his offer of a truce, because seriously, Leonard. You have to know that guy is planning on fucking you over.”
“I don’t see why he would be,” Leonard said, and I let my dubious double-take speak for itself. “He’s in as bad a position as I am. He was sent here to deal with a traitor, and instead of taking care of that fairly simple chore, the traitor got away from him, and convinced a second Inquisitor to jump ship while he was at it. And if Owen’s information proves true, well, I have to imagine his superiors are not going to be at all happy with him. It’s in his best interests to get this little situation tidied up as quickly as possible. If working with me accomplishes that…” Leonard smiled.
“You can’t possibly believe that,” I said in a flat voice. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve pretended to be a lot of things while I was here, but stupid wasn’t one of them, so I have no idea where people keep getting that idea from. Irish and Cat know too much, and any Ordermen Tanner calls in are in danger of learning the truth, too. He doesn’t dare use his own people. He’s using you.”
“My dear, this is a deeper game by far than you’re used to –” Leonard jerked and twisted to the left, as though someone had grabbed his arm, and before anyone could do much more than open their mouths in surprise, a wide red slit opened up in Leonard’s throat from ear to ear. Arterial spray splashed across my face and I jerked back, slamming into Irish.
“Leonard!” Damian lunged for him while Grace let out a horrified squawk of surprise, mostly drowning out Irish’s “What the hell?” as he grabbed my shoulders. I’d barely got my balance back, spitting out a disgusted mouthful of blood, when Tyler let out a rusty cry of pain and dropped to his knees, clawing at his back. A knife hilt stuck up from under his shoulder blade, bubbling blood. Punctured lung, I guessed.
I started forward, one hand scrambling under my jacket for a gun, but there was nothing to shoot at, nothing at all. The shadow unfurled as Tyler’s fireball guttered and died, filling the darkness, looking for something, anything, for us to kill.
“Ty!” Grace’s shriek reverberated in the cavernous entry hall, and I was slammed to the ground as she bowled me out of the way to get to Tyler. I’d known she was coming – she was just so damn fast I couldn’t get out of the way in time. Can’t say I liked that idea much. For a moment, I considered shooting her, while I had a chance. It might be the best call in the long run, but for now I needed her to fix Irish.
“What is it?” Damian shouted, and the light came back, bright clear white this time. Damian held a globe of light the size of a basketball in one hand as he knelt next to Leonard, who was gurgling and choking and looking rather annoyed with the whole thing. Ribbons and smoky curtains of darkness were sharply illuminated in the radius of his light, and my shadow thinned them discreetly. She maintained her presence, and her search, but left Day’s island of light clear enough for us to see each other. Leonard clutched at his throat and was digging around for one of the blood-soaked pendants on his chest, gritting his teeth as blood streamed between his fingers.
I levered myself up on one elbow, head spinning, and a gunshot rang out. Irish who had just knelt down beside me, went flat down on his back without making a sound, and it occurred to me that if there was ever a good time to active my shield, now would be it. I scrambled up to a knee running the fabric through my fingers, looking for the circuit bridge. The golden wiring hissed and sparked as the scarf activated, and I went straight back down as a pair of bullets slammed into my side. The scarf superheated, scorching my neck and emitting angry red sparks and my head bounced off the tile. The shadow cooled the wiring in the soft linen, and cooled my burn without diverting attention from the search. She seemed pleased with herself. She had something. What?
Grace let out a guttural cry of pain as more shots rang out, Damian tossed a hand up reflexively as bullets bounced off his shielding, and the shadow silently snarled in victory. There. The shooter was there. She’d felt the path of the bullets in midair, and tracked them back to their source. I shoved myself back up, gun wobbly as I tried to make my eyes focus. Three concentric black circles pulsed in midair around nothing, a target made of living shadow. I felt the shadow flooding my veins with ice, settling in behind my eyes, showing me where to point the gun, coils of darkness wrapping up my arm in an attempt to steady my hand. Icy cold coursed through me, deadening the shaky nerves and leaving my hand steady as a rock.
“Alice, what is –” Day spun on his knee to look at me.
“Right there!” I shouted at Day, and pulled the trigger twice. The cannon boom of my concussion rounds thundered through the hall much louder than the earlier gunshots, and something slammed off the far wall in a shower of plaster and marble tiles, thudding to the floor.
“Nicely done, Alice.” Damian stood, caressing his light globe and whispering something in Arabic. A coil of shimmering white light spooled off the globe, reminding me of pearlescent cotton candy, and when he pointed to the wall, it lanced out with the speed and precision of a striking serpent. The impact shook the building, and bits of plaster and tile rained down all over the chamber. Forty-one separate fragments of varying sizes, by my shadow’s count. A nimbus of light clung to the wall, like a film of luminous paint, and Tanner heaved himself up on his elbow, snarling at us and kicking some shattered molding off his legs.
His left side gleamed in the shadows, coated in the residue of Damian’s strike. It nicely lit his eye, in which his pale blue pupil floated in a sea of crimson. Ew. His eye had filled with blood. That always squicked me out. He was cradling his arm against his stomach. The fingers were clearly broken, and I wondered about the wrist. Damian swirled his hand around the globe again, coming away with a hand wreathed in shimmering silvery strands of light. “Tanner. Don’t move.”
What was that supposed to accomplish? I shot him again, the reverberating boom immensely satisfying as Tanner was slammed against the wall again.
Impossibly, he came down in a crouch, glaring pure murder at me as he spat out fragments of his own teeth. He wavered for a moment, and vanished again.
“Gods dammit.” I lowered the gun and staggered to my feet again. Unless he sent another bullet flying, I had no way to find him again.
Damian was gaping in open-mouthed horror at me. “I had him covered! I told him not to move!”
I shrugged. “I insisted. I’d kind of hoped another direct hit and he wouldn’t be able to move.” I stumbled over to Irish to see if Tanner had managed to kill Irish. I was going to be very annoyed if, after all this, the big guy went and died on me.
No blood, the shadow already told me that. I dropped to a knee by his side just as he managed to pull in a whole breath. He let it out in a long, angry groan, hands clapped over the middle of his chest. “You okay?”
“Tanner!” Day shouted. “What the hell! We had a deal!” I rolled my eyes. Good point, Day, I thought. You done told him. He jogged over to the wall, looking for a trace of the Confessor.
“Ow,” Irish growled, eyes squeezed shut. “Fuckin’ ow.”
“Move your hands,” I snapped, pulling at his hand. “Did it punch through the vest?” Irish shook his head, letting his other hand fall away as I tore his flannel shirt open to reveal his bulletproof vest, now featuring a big dent with a flattened bullet buried in it. It’d hit one of the strike plates.
“Forgot how much that hurts,” he wheezed, levering himself up on one elbow before dropping back and grabbing his chest again. “Fuck, think it’s broken.”
“What? What’s broken?” Irish shook his head at my question, trying to get another whole breath in, and not having a lot of success at it. “Okay, come on, on your feet.” He gave me an aggrieved look, as though he couldn’t believe I was being so insensitive while he was laying there with a broken sternum or something equally unpleasant, and I rolled my eyes. “You heard what Owen said! Laying there isn’t going to help any! Get up!” I hooked an arm under his shoulder and hauled him up to a sitting position. “Come on!” I bullied him to his feet and he leaned on me, gasping for breath.
Damian was striding back through the room, face set in grim lines. “There’s nothing there. No blood, no hair; nothing I can use. Hold this.” He tossed the glowing ball at me and I jumped to fumble it into my arms, leaving Irish to stagger on his own two feet. The ball was almost weightless, and it made my fingertips tingle, like an electric soap bubble. “Leonard.” He dropped to one knee to check on his boss, who was still clutching his throat with a gold locket wrapped around his hand, which was pretty interesting, considering Leonard should’ve been dead by now. I’d cut a few throats in my day. It didn’t take this long for someone to bleed out.
I stepped over for a better look as Damian helped Leonard sit up. Leonard’s shirt and vest were drenched in blood, but as he pulled his hand away, I saw his throat was just fine. I put my eyebrows up, and Leonard grinned a gruesome bloody smile, holding the locket up so it swung from his fist.
“Nice,” I said. It was tarnished now, used up, bits of metal flaking away as I watched. I looked past Leonard to Tyler, sprawled on the floor. His face was a twisted grimace, skin gone ashen. Grace huddled over him, holding a wad of her dress around the knife, for all the good that was going to do.
Grace looked up to me. She wasn’t crying. I doubted she could. She didn’t need to. I could see the panic in her eyes.
“Uh, Leonard?” I cleared my throat politely, and jerked a thumb at Tyler. “You’re about to lose another Knight over here.” I stepped over Leonard to kneel down at Tyler’s side, beside Grace. Her makeshift dressing was already soaked in blood. I didn’t have anything on me for a wound that serious.
“Guard us.” Leonard stood up, gesturing at Damian to keep an eye out. Day tossed his hands up, but he started muttering under his breath anyway, possibly trying to get some sort of shield up over everyone.
“Tanner.” Leonard squatted next to Tyler, pushing Grace’s hands and dress out of the way. “He seems to be invisible. How very interesting.” He growled the last word like it was the most vicious cuss word he could think of.
Tyler half-laughed, and spat a bloody gobbet out onto the tile floor. “Catholic ninjas,” he wheezed. The punctured lung made his voice come out wheezy and wet. “You don’t see that every day.” I grinned.
“Of course not. They’re ninjas. You aren’t supposed to see them.” Tyler laughed, dribbling blood and wincing at the pain as every chuckle shook him. Grace smacked me, hard enough to make my scarf sputter and spark a little. Leonard apparently didn’t think it was funny, as his face was stony as he grabbed the knife and jerked it free. He tossed it aside and pulled Tyler’s jacket and shirt up as he sorted through his pockets. He came out with a vial of dull brown dust and pulled the cork with his teeth. It smelled like cinnamon and metal filings. “He’s still in the building, you can count on it. Alice. Find him.” Leonard cut his eyes at me as he upended the vial into Tyler’s wound. Tyler screamed.
“Sorry, no. Can’t.” I held Day’s glowball up for better light. The brown powder had turned black as it touched Tyler’s blood, and seemed to be crawling into the wound. Tyler was still screaming, but he’d run out of air, so it wasn’t much more than an open-mouthed silent hiss.
“Can’t, or won’t?” Leonard snapped at me as Tyler did us the favor of passing out and shutting up.
“Both,” I said cheerfully. Leonard turned a hard, cold look up at me, and I smiled. “As a dues-paying member of the Arcana, I’d be happy to help my local Knights however I can. As a criminal facing execution? Not so much. Kind of a moot point, though, since we can’t see him either.”
“You found him well enough to shoot at him.” Leonard’s glare narrowed.
“We tracked his bullets back to the source. You’ll notice nobody’s shooting at us at the moment. Makes it tricky to track bullets when there aren’t any.”
“I’d be more worried about what he’s getting up to next.” Irish was pale and sweating, but still on his feet, good for him.
“Good point.”
“Place is too bloody big.” Irish shook his head and made the mistake of taking a deeper breath, which made him wince. He waited a second, then managed, “Did ye hurt him at all?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I handed the glowball off to Grace as Leonard stood up, dusting off his pants. “Shot him dead on, a couple times. Concussion rounds don’t make a hole, though. No blood trail, assuming that would even be visible. But all his internal organs should be jelly, unless he’s as tough as you.” Speaking of which, I popped the barrel open on the Colt, tipped the expended rounds out on the floor, and reached into a pocket for some more bullets.
“Confessors aren’t fighters.” Irish watched me reload my gun, face furrowed into a frown that was a mix of pain and thought. “They’re more like… advisors.” He sighed. “Or Internal Affairs, I suppose. They monitor the Inquisitors under them.”
“Oh really?” I glanced around. Grace had a neat hole in the center of her chest, just below her throat, though it wasn’t bleeding and didn’t seem to be bothering her. Leonard was on his feet and angry, but pale, and his hands were shaking. Blood loss. Tyler was out cold, but his wound had stopped bleeding, and it wasn’t making that godawful bubbling, sucking sound anymore. Day and I had come through unhurt, but Irish looked like just taking a breath was making him see double. “Oh, yeah, Tanner sucks at this game. They spy, Irish. They watch, and evaluate. This fits their M.O., and you know it.”
“Is he even still here?” Day eyed the room, shaking his head. “I hit him pretty good too, but Ordermen and magic…” he shrugged. “The spell could have completely grounded out. I don’t know.”
“I’ll find him.” Leonard straightened his shirt and vest, plucking the sodden fabric away from his chest with a little moue of distaste. He pulled a compass out of one of his vest pockets, and a white hanky out of his trouser pocket. He started wiping blood off the compass, muttering under his breath in annoyance.
“What’s he even doing here?” Irish caught my gaze, and nodded slightly towards Grace, who was still crouched over Tyler, shaking her head. I gave a slight nod, and Irish turned to Leonard, hands on his hips. “Did Tanner come here with you and your Knights?”
Leonard looked up from his compass, eyes narrowed. “No. He was awaiting word from his superiors. Authorization for reinforcements.”
“Lies.” Irish set his jaw in a scowl of his own. “Confessors don’t need authorization. They deal with Inquisitors on a close and personal level. If they call, we come. He must have been following you.”
I watched Grace. She was muttering under her breath. Leonard processed Irish’s words, weighing them in his mind, deciding how much he should believe. “No. He did not follow us. We came by… unconventional means.” He finished wiping his compass, letting it sit flat on his palm as he concentrated.
Grace was whispering, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. He said he wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’m so sorry,” softly enough that if I didn’t have the shadow to help me listen I wouldn’t have heard. I suddenly remembered I’d thought she’d been on the phone with someone before she came down to join us with Owen. Had she been on the phone, or had she been talking to someone the shadow couldn’t see or hear? I heaved a tired sigh, rubbing my face.
“He hasn’t left the building. He’s close.” Leonard stared at his compass as it spun, ignoring north to turn circles around the dial. Tanner might be a tough bastard to spot, but he was facing off against the best dowser on Earth. “Damian, with me. You –” he looked up at me, and followed my gaze to Tyler and Grace. “Do try to keep Tyler alive for ten or fifteen more minutes until he comes around.”
“Me?” I put my eyebrows up, all innocence. “Why would I do that?”
“Are your dues current?”
I grinned, feeling the weight of several problems sliding off my shoulders. “Why yes. Yes they are.”
“Then stop arguing with me and do as you’ve been told. ”
I sketched a little bow and Leonard turned on his heel, striding into the darkness towards the concourse with Damian in tow. As they walked away through the shadows, I tracked their progress. At the same time, my shadow formed her substance into a dome over and around us, heavier and thicker, layer after layer, with a gap between layers of about half an inch. It wouldn’t be enough to impede anyone’s progress, but she seemed to think she’d feel the air they moved. I sat Day’s glowball down, impressed with the idea, and the shadow purred under my approval as I appraised the matte black interior of the dome with a smile.
“Okay, Grace, let’s talk brain surgery. What’s it going to cost me to get you to fix Irish up?” I crouched down next to Tyler, across from Grace. “I don’t think I can fix that,” I said, gesturing at her, “but I might be able to come up with something else.”
“He followed me. No. He came here with me. I brought him.” She stayed next to Tyler, not even looking up at me, stroking his back and shoulders, long talons trailing over his skin and clothes. “Tanner said he had to find Irish, and if I helped, he’d help me, and… and… He said they had exorcists who could make me human again, and they could…” her voice caught with a hitch that sounded more like a click. “Tyler won’t even touch me anymore,” she whispered.
“Hey,” I said, waving my hand to get her attention. “Up here, Grace.” She looked up at me, eyes wide and desperate and horrified. “Stop being a stupid twat.” She flinched, and I shrugged. “So you’re not the prettiest little princess in school anymore. Get over it. So Prince Charming liked your tits more than he liked you. Cope.”
She recoiled from my words as though I were slapping her repeatedly. “What kind of monster are you?”
My eyes swam black, I knew, as I felt the shadow peer at her through them. I leaned in close, and let the shadow chill my exhalation so it breathed cool air into her face with my words. “Grace, we’ve already been over that. The question now is what kind of monster are you?” She flinched away, landing on her rump and scrabbling awkwardly with those long limbs of hers. It caused her skirt to ruck up around her hips, and when I saw she was still wearing lacy pink panties, I sighed. “You might not want to admit it, but you’re better than you’ve ever been. I bet you could chase down and disable a freaking Buick with your bare hands. You can climb or jump off buildings like you’re strolling to the mailbox. You got shot, Grace, did you notice that? And thanks to Damian’s timely work, you still kept all your own magic. Most folks will never even see what you’ve become. When you’re done with your little pity party, you might come to appreciate that. But I don’t have time to wait. It’s go-time, and I need you on your game. So shelve it, you prissy, whiny, selfish bitch. Tanner ain’t done yet, and we need all the help we can get.” I waved back towards Irish. “Now. What do you want in return? It’s all on the table. You want something I can make? There isn’t much I can’t make, if you’re patient. You want someone dead? That’s faster. Whatever you want.”
“Alice!” Irish exclaimed, shocked.
“Clutch your pearls later, Irish, this is important.” I fluttered a hand at him to shut him up.
“Nothing.” Grace shifted, gracefully bringing her haunches under herself and suddenly, just like that, she was poised to leap at me. All she had to do was stop trying to move like a human being. Even after she finished speaking that single word, her teeth were still showing. She couldn’t narrow her eyes at me, but the stare was cold and angry nonetheless.
“Is that a no? Because refusing this little job isn’t an option, Grace.”
“It won’t cost you anything. Either of you. Owen called his favor in. He told me to ‘fix’ Irish, and how to do it.” Her tone was flat, and cold as ice, and she was still crouched there like spring-loaded dynamite and razor blades.
“Oh,” I said, and my stomach did a nervous flip. I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Doing anything to Irish’s mind on Owen’s terms? Potentially unwise. Grace looked up at me and smiled her tight little smile at the look on my face, as if she were agreeing with me.
“Maybe it’s us outlanders all together,” she offered. “Well. Outlander, hollowman, corruption and nephilim. We’re all different flavors, but we’re none of us normal. Maybe he’s just showing solidarity.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I shifted to look up at Irish, who didn’t look any happier about it than I felt. I wondered if he knew what this meant. Now that Owen had called in his favor from Grace, she didn’t have the option of refusing. That meant he didn’t, either.
“He’s got plans for me.” He set his jaw, went to cross his arms, decided that hurt too much, and put his hands back down. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. In the meantime, Grace, have at it.” Irish blanched, and I hip-checked him her way. “Now.” Grace stood up to her full height, which was another foot taller than me, before hunkering down some again. She flexed her hands, eying Irish. He looked distinctly unhappy. “Best to get it over with fast,” I told him. Besides, this way he didn’t have time to think about how fucked he might be.
“You should sit.” Grace approached him, that bobbing walk of hers like a raptor stalking prey, and for some reason, that completely failed to put Irish at his ease.
“I’ll stand.” He had to force himself not to take a step back as she reached for his face, her claws catching the light as she moved. He let out a sudden hiss of pain, followed by a short “Ow!”
“Oh, she’s not even doing anything yet –” I started, rolling my eyes.
“No, not her!” He shoved a hand in his jeans pocket as Grace stuttered back a step, and pulled something out, fumbling it with another hiss and dropping it.
“What?” Whatever he’d grabbed caught the light as it fell, flashing red, and then it hit the ground, where it smoked. “Oh, shit,” I exclaimed as I saw the ruby, glowing a dull red with heat and power. “That’s not good!”
“Jaysis, it’s on fire!” He held one hand in the other, rubbing his palm. He’d only held the stone for a second, but it had managed to burn him,and singe his jeans.
“Yeah. I did say I stripped of a lot of its protections, right?”
“Alice!” That was Damian’s voice, sounding alarmed. “Alice! Come here!”
“Shit! Shit!” I snatched at the ruby before it could catch the floor on fire, bouncing it in my palm like a red hot penny. Power broke over my skin in a gush of pins and needles, and Grace let out a startled little gasp as she felt it too. I squeaked, bouncing it to my other palm, not daring for a second to ask the shadow to cool it off for me.
“Alice!”
“Coming!” I let the shadow send them my voice, leveling a finger at Grace. “Do it!” I turned on my heel, running through the wall of darkness.
A short hall led past crumbling ticket windows to the concourse, and something out there was glowing, a hot red light that turned the corridor lurid, made the ticket windows into hungry gaping mouths, lined with broken-glass teeth. I ran past them, clenching the ruby in my hand. It was cooling now after that first hot burst of power, but the magic levels were still building, like a huge wave growing taller, approaching the shore.
I skidded into the concourse, washed in a hellish light. Leonard and Damian were running back towards me, away from Tanner, who stood dead center in the concourse surrounded by a pulsing red nimbus. He held one hand clutched in the other, head back, mouth open in silent scream. He was smoking. The air was vibrating as the power built, and the whole place reeked of ozone. Tanner was a wavering image, distorted by the heat in the air.
“What the fuck?” I grabbed Day’s shoulders as he blundered into me.
“Some artifact! He triggered some artifact – I’ve never felt anything like it!”
“It’s one of Carl’s rings! Where did he get one of those rings?”
“We got it off the body of the head of the city surveyor’s office. Tanner said it might be significant, so we, ah…”
“You just gave it to him?”
“We didn’t know it was an artifact? How is he even activating it? That shouldn’t even work!” Day snapped, pulling away to look back at Tanner. “What’s it doing?”
“Of course it works, you fool,” Leonard grabbed both our arms, hauling us around the corner like we were running from a bomb or something. For all I knew, we were. The power was pulsing now, sending ripples of heat and crimson light past us, where we were sheltered by the marble column at the corner. “They were made to be used by mundanes.”
“I thought we were calling them ordinaires? Didn’t we just have this talk last night?” I fumbled for my Baby Eagle, jerking it from the holster.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Leonard grabbed my arm again, like he was going to drag me away. I pulled loose.
“Ruining somebody’s day,” I said, leaning around the corner. I lined up a shot. I only had two rounds left, and one of them was not getting used, so I needed to get this right the first time. I pulled in a breath and held it, squinting against the energy pulsing against my face like I was facing into a windstorm. The heat distortion was ridiculous, but the nice thing about void rounds is that your aim doesn’t have to be precise. I put a slow, easy squeeze on the trigger. There was no flare from the muzzle, no report. The gun bucked, and a second later, a baby black hole opened up at Tanner’s feet.
“Oh my God,” Day whispered, paling as a sudden wind whistled by us, toward Tanner’s position. It was brisk, but not worrisome, at this distance. And surprisingly refreshing, after the hot pulses that had been coming our way a second ago.
The ugly red glare poured down the hole like so much water, Tanner’s eyes flying open as he flung his hands out, clawing for purchase as he was sucked after the glare. His fingers scrabbled across the floor and he was gone. I chucked my ruby at the hole for good measure, the suction catching it in mid-air. It winked and was gone.
I holstered the gun, dusting my hands together. “So much for that asshole.” I turned and found both Day and Leonard staring at me. “What?”
“You could have done that at any time?” Leonard raised his eyebrows, as though he were making some sort of point.
“Yep.”
“Then why didn’t you?” He jabbed one bony finger into my shoulder, eyes darkening.
I stared down at the finger, then up to meet Leonard’s dark, angry eyes. “Now that we’re friends again, Leonard, I thought you should see the benefits of that. Not before. And also, maybe now’s a good time for you to see what happens to people who piss me off.” I smiled sweetly at Leonard, and then turned to Day, gesturing with my thumb over my shoulder at the dimensional rift. “Keep an eye on that, would you? I’ve never put that much power down one of those before. No idea how that’s going to react. If it starts sucking down the whole station or something comes up out of it, give a yell.”
“What was the stone you threw in after him?” Day was still goggling at the black hole, and I could almost see him doing the math in his head, trying to figure out just how and what I’d done, so he could do it too. Good luck with that. Without the shadow to lend a hand, Day was going to have a hell of a time matching that trick.
“Another one of Carl’s rings. I got it off the Deputy Mayor, and stripped off the protections on it. It taps right into his geomantic power reserves. That hole opens into my shadow’s home plane. Her sister shadows can suck it, and the Carlgeist, dry.” I checked my watch. “That should be enough time. If he’s still around, he’s just another newbie vampire now. No more major mojo.”
“That’s… really clever, Alice.” Day’s eyes narrowed as he looked back to me, and he lifted his glasses to get a better look at me, as if he were weighing me up for the first time. Again.
Leonard whistled in appreciation. “And you waited to strip Carl’s power until now… just to make a point?”
“Yep,” I said, answering them both. I gave them my sweetest smile too, just to make sure they both got the point. “And, with any luck, I got the flare before the hollowman noticed it.”
Day shook his head. “Doubt it. That was a big flare.”
I frowned. Here I was, kicking ass, and Damian was pissing in my rainbows. “Oh, come on. It was only going for a second.”
He licked his fingers and held them up, rubbing them together and shaking his head. “The area’s still saturated with power,” Day countered, and my phone beeped with a text message.
“It’ll be fine.” I pulled my phone out, expecting Larry, letting me know they’d been successful in dealing with Duane. Instead, it was Pardell. I thumbed the screen to bring up the message.
Hllwman WAS holed up at boblo island, just tore outta here. dunno where its going.
“Fuck, I spoke too soon.” I tabbed the screen, replying with, Don’t worry, I do. Michigan Central Station. Call Larry, bring everything. STAT.
“Who are you talking to?” Leonard leaned to look at my screen.
“Pardell.”
“What, the piper?” Day blinked at me, his expression surprised.
“Yeah. He’s been coordinating the team tracking the hollowman and dealing with the corruptions for us.”
Day stared at me like I’d said it Russian. “Wait, Pardell?”
“Your problem is that you don’t give anyone enough credit,” I said, poking his chest. “He’s had some help, but yes. Pardell and the rest of the B-List brigade have been cleaning up Leonard’s mess all day. Now, if you’ll excuse me, an angry hollowman is on its way here, and I need to see what Grace is up to.” I turned on my heel, heading back down the now-dark hall.
“It’s coming here now?” Leonard called after me, and a moment later light flared behind me. “Wait, where’s the mick? He’s back there with Grace? Alone?”
“Yep, don’t worry. Cavalry’s on the way.” I left Damian minding the black hole, while Leonard spent some time practicing his creative profanity. Now, with any luck, the cavalry was going to be some use. It was only a short walk back to the main waiting room, where I waved a hand to dispel the shadow-walls, and the light from Day’s glowball spilled out. Tanner gone, we didn’t need the security system over Tyler and Irish anymore. Somewhat less impressively than I’d hoped for, I found Irish flat on his back, out cold, Grace crouching over him.
“I told him to sit down.” She huffed an irritated sigh as she shook her head.
“He’s unconscious?” I stopped dead, a bad feeling crawling up my spine.
“Yes indeed. He went out like a light. I barely caught him.” Grace glanced up at me. “Where’s Tanner?”
“How the hell long is that going to last?” I spluttered, shoving both hands through my hair.
“Oh, I don’t know. Minutes. Hours.” She shrugged, a rippling shift of her slat-thin shoulders. “Days?”
“You must be fucking kidding me. Tell me you’re kidding me.” I held my hair out of my face, staring down at Irish.
“What did you think was going to happen?” She stared at me with one eye, watching Tyler with the other as he stirred and groaned. “I just did a hard reset on his brain, Alice, and played with his startup menu without referencing the manual. That’s not exactly gentle.” She stood, in that unsettlingly graceful way she had when she wasn’t thinking about it. “Essentially, he’s reliving every day of his life. And everything he’s done, he’s seeing it through new eyes. It’s not God giving him those abilities, it’s just him. He’ll remember the propaganda, of course, and how he participated in it. But that’s all it will be. Lip service.”
I went cold. “What?”
“Not how I would’ve done it, but Owen was quite clear.” She stepped over Irish and crossed to Tyler as he started to come to.
“Oh, fuck. Oh. Fuck.” I scrubbed my face with both hands. “You took away his faith in God?”
“Well…” she cocked her head to one side as she thought it over. “Not exactly. Well, maybe. More like I shunted most of it into faith in himself. Self-confidence.”
“Arrogance.” I thought of all the things he’d done in the name of his God. Now, they’d just be things he’d done. Period. What sort of man did those things? “Merciless arrogance.”
“Probably, yeah. What’s your point, Alice?”
I pointed at Irish, where he lay twitching on the floor, eyelids fluttering in REM movement. “When he wakes up, who is he gonna be, Grace?”
She went still, and leaned closer to me. “Does it matter? It’s what you asked for. Cope.”
“Alice?” It was Day, again. He sounded strained. I ignored him as Leonard reached my side, staring in at Irish. He turned to me, his face fixed in a pleasant smile that did nothing to hide his smug amusement.
“Problems with your plans, my dear?” he sneered at me. “I do hope it’s not more clusterfuck.”
“Alice!” Day barked. “Problem!”
I ground my teeth and stretched my lips in something less like a smile and more like a snarl. “No, not at all, Leonard,” I lied. “I figured it’d go pretty much like this.” Irish had been a prejudiced, close-minded, fundamentalist prick sometimes, but I’d gotten used to that. What would he be like without that? What else was there to him?
“Alice!” An explosion sounded on the concourse, and a backflash of that white silvery energy from Damain’s spellwork reached us.
“What?” I shouted, whirling as Day sprinted out of the hall, his sunglasses missing, his hair disheveled, and his eyes huge as saucers.
“It’s Tanner,” he gasped. “He’s crawling back out of the rift!”
This article, 40) Foreplay, was written by Marci Sischo & James Agle. If you're reading this somewhere other than Marci Sischo or Marci Sischo's RSS feed, please visit the post on my site (40) Foreplay) and leave me a comment to let me know. Thanks!
