I picked it up from the kitchen table and turned to her. Her face showed puzzlement, then as I put my hand on the hilt and began to pull it from its sheath, I saw the light go on in her eyes.
“He glamoured it? Nice. You can carry it anywhere,” she said. She looked it over, spending a lot of time studying the hilts of both weapons. “He has always been artistic.”
“Have you known him for a long time?” I asked.
She shrugged. “All my life. I guess he’s a cousin or something. His father is my father’s great-uncle.”
“You warned me to be careful because he’s Unseelie. What exactly did you mean?”
Lizzy sighed. “The Fae look at humans as an inferior species, and many of the Unseelie see them as prey. A lot the way vampires do, you know? And like vampires, they don’t think consent is necessary if they want something.”
“So, Oriel might not understand the difference between consensual sex and rape?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure he understands the difference, or at least he understands that you think there’s a difference, but I doubt that he really cares what a human, or any female, considers important. If you don’t want to screw him, you’ll stop him, and if you can’t, then why should he worry about it? Who’s going to punish him?” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Why? Are you attracted to him?”
“He kissed me. And then he let me go and warned me that he wouldn’t stop at a kiss the next time.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Is that how you really look?” I was fairly certain that she didn’t have another form, but meeting Oriel made me wonder.
She laughed. “Yes. Pink hair and all. No glamour. The Seelie tend to look more human. Some of the Unseelie are truly bizarre. But Oriel can change his appearance. Not just a glamour, but a true shapeshift into a human form. I don’t know why he has chosen to show you his Fae form.”
“So, he could pass for human?”
“Sure. He went to Oregon State University. That was before I was born, but I’m sure he didn’t attend classes with horns growing out of his head.”
“How old is he?”
Lizzy shook her head again. “Age for us, even a half-Fae, doesn’t mean very much. Oriel is still considered an adolescent, like me. Well, older than me. I mean, he’s older than I am, but whether that means he’s fifty or two hundred, I have no idea. Did you get the car registered?”
“Registered?”
I had suspected buying Oriel’s car was too simple and painless. I had rented cars dozens of times. My Illuminati credit card and a signature—usually false—had been all I needed. Owning a car turned out to be far more complicated. Lizzy found the title and the bill of sale in the glove compartment. She told me where I needed to go to register the car in my name and get my license plates. But first, I had to go get insurance.
I ended up spending most of the following day running around and standing in lines so I could give people money in exchange for pieces of paper. But in the end, I was legally licensed to drive my new car.
Chapter 4
I drove out to the sword club that evening to see Gilles Prudhomme, the ancient vampire swordmaster Michaela Gallagher’s father had brought to Westport almost a century before. Gilles was one of two vampires I had met who were true independents. The other one was my friend Shawna. They never swore fealty to a vampire master, and seemed to have no interest in the kind of power such masters wielded. They didn’t create children, so they had no followers.
Michaela’s country club was private and open exclusively to paranormals and supernaturals by invitation only. Lizzy told me it was one of the few places the Fae could golf outside of Ireland and Scotland. The sword club was a nondescript one-story building off to the side of the fancy mansion holding the restaurant, ballrooms, and a golf club.
Michaela and David Cunningham, the only male dhampir I had ever met, were sparring when I arrived. They left off their practice and drifted over to where Gilles and I were talking. I showed Gilles my new sword, and I thought he was going to have an orgasm.
“Oh, mon dieu, this is the finest sword I have ever held,” he said, swishing it back and forth, lunging with it, and swirling it over his head. Since Gilles was several centuries old and had been a swordmaster prior to being turned, I considered that high praise.
“I can introduce you to the smith,” I said, and watched his eyes light up even more.
Michaela reached out, and Gilles handed the sword to her.
“You don’t see workmanship like this anymore,” she said, studying the hilt. “Lovely.” Michaela was more than a hundred years older than I was, and since paranormals and vampires tended to live a very long time, many of the people who trained at the club had grown up when swords were commonly used. She handed it to David, whose hand was large enough to cover the hilt.
“This does have nice balance,” he said, “but it’s a little light. Do you mind my asking, how much did it cost?”
“Uh, I traded for it,” I said. “I think you’d have to talk to the smith about the price.”
Michaela nodded. “Do you think he could do a custom job for me?”
“I’m sure he could. What I need is a harness so I can carry it. Do you know someone who works leather?”
The sword was forty-two inches long from tip to pommel—five inches longer than my Hunter’s sword, with the blade two inches longer and the grip lengthened so it fit both of my hands—and it would drag the ground if I wore it at my belt. I wanted a harness so I could wear the sword on my back. I wouldn’t be able to draw it from that position, but I had a solution for that.
I explained what I needed, and Gilles gave me the address of a leather worker—a shifter—who could fashion the harness I wanted.
I still didn’t know if the spells I had cast into the sword would work properly, and there wasn’t a good way to test them. My major concern was about the null-magic spell. A Hunter’s sword could cut through most personal shields but not through a ward. Asking someone to cast a personal shield to test if I could cut through it was out of the question.
But I still needed to work with the sword and get used to it. I asked Gilles when he would have some time to spar with me. He was the only person I could spar with using a steel blade. His speed was blinding, and if I did happen to cut him, he healed with supernatural speed. I’d have to cut off his head to kill him.
He agreed to meet with me early the following evening.
I promised him that I would ask Oriel to stop by, then, silently thanking Lizzy and Oriel, I got back in my car and drove to the shifter’s leather shop on the other side of town.
Mike Spence ran a shop specializing in leather clothing for bikers and hunters called Wild Leather. When I walked into his shop, the first thing I noticed was the clothing made from deer and elk hides. I assumed he hunted those animals in his shifted form.
Mike was almost as furry in his human form, with long hair and a full beard that fell to his chest. After Sam, he was the largest person I had met in Westport.
I explained to Mike what I was looking for, and he took my measurements. The harness would go over my shoulders and clasp in the front under my breasts. The sword would then hang at belt level so it could be easily drawn. The scabbard would attach to a set of leather straps, and pulling on a ring set on a strap across my chest would pull the sword up and onto my back. Hooking the ring on a clip at hip level would secure it. To draw it, I would release the ring, and the sword would fall back to my hip. Re-hooking the ring would pull the scabbard onto my back and out of my way.
“Ingenious,” he commented, when we finally had a sketch of my idea. “Give me a couple of days, and I’ll call you when it’s ready for a fitting.”
In the meantime, I bought a leather underbust corset to use as a sword belt, and he assured me he could connect the harness to it when I came back. The corset provided a lot more support for the sword hanging off it than a belt would.
Ev
en so, I had to unhook the scabbard from the corset to get into my car. I wondered if I could rig something to hold it in a handy place when I drove.
The following afternoon, I went by Mikes shop and picked up the new harness. After a couple of adjustments, it fit perfectly, and worked exactly as I hoped it would. I stopped at a café and ate an early dinner. Then I drove out to the country club after sunset.
Michaela and David were there, along with a couple of other dhampir who were evidently curious about my new sword. David was probably the most handsome man—human-type man—I had ever seen, and he professed to have a mad crush on me. As far as I was concerned, his looks were the only thing he had going for him. I wasn’t interested in the least.
Gilles chose a sword that appeared to be an early form of a rapier, with a basket guard and a blade that was narrower than the blade of my sword but wider than that of a rapier. I shielded myself, and then we set to attempting mayhem on each other.
After half an hour, I was sweating like a race horse. Gilles, of course, looked as fresh as he probably had when he stepped out of his coffin at dusk. Vampires had incredible stamina.
But I felt pretty good about myself and my new sword. He had only touched my shield half-a-dozen times, and I had actually nicked him on his sword arm, right above the wrist. In all the times we had sparred, it was the first time I had touched him.
I was out for my morning run when the next disruption in the ley lines occurred. It was around noon, and I was only a couple of hundred yards away from home. I normally ran along the creek behind my apartment building, and a ley line ran along the creek—the same line that ran under Rosie’s.
Since that first disruption, the lines had returned to normal, and I had almost forgotten about it. Ley line magic surged, and it felt as though I was hit by a flood. One moment I was running along, and the next moment, I lurched, stumbled, and fell. My stomach rebelled, and all I could do was curl up and ride it out. The nausea and dizziness weren’t as bad as the first time, and they didn’t seem to last as long.
When the line settled down, I crawled to my feet and dragged myself the rest of the way home, wet and cold. March weather in Oregon wasn’t much different than it had been in February.
I crawled onto my couch and lay there shivering and sweating, gulping air and trying to keep my breakfast down.
Fifteen minutes later, an earthquake hit. A real earthquake. The building swayed and rolled, the furniture shook and moved around, and the dishes and food in the cupboards rattled. A glass sitting next to the sink fell and broke. I wondered if the building was going to collapse but was powerless to do anything. Touching the ley line for the power to cast the spell for my personal shield almost caused me to throw up.
The ley lines were total chaos. Instead of the orderly flow of power like a river, it felt like I was sticking my mind into a washing machine. I quickly withdrew.
Without the magic flowing through the ley lines, I was reduced to a half-trained and not very powerful witch. That could be deadly if I needed power, even a personal shield, at a time when the ley lines were unstable.
After I cleaned up the broken glass, I checked my phone and found that a six-point earthquake was recorded in California near a major nexus of three ley lines northeast of San Francisco. The shaking was felt all the way to Seattle. Experts were baffled, as the fault that slipped was supposedly stable.
I called Lizzy and got her voice mail, so I left a message.
Next, I went to the closet and I pulled out The History of the Illuminati. Since it required using ley line magic to open the warded magical box in the corner of the closet, I discovered that I could work with the chaotic magic, although it made me dizzy and I felt like I wanted to throw up the whole time.
The rest of the afternoon, until I had to put the book away and go to work, I spent poring through it to try and find anything that might provide some answers to the disorder occurring in the ley lines. I couldn’t find a single mention of the phenomena I had experienced. I couldn’t imagine such phenomena not being recorded if it had happened in the past. But the records I was scanning were only five hundred years old, so such events might have happened before that.
I did find a couple of spells that could be used on mages to block their access to the magic of the ley lines. The Illuminati used those in preparation for torture and executions. Lovely reading. Storing those spells away in my mind for further study, I locked up my apartment, reset my wards, and drove to work.
When I entered the bar, one of the first things I noticed was that business was very slow. There were plenty of witches and a couple of dhampir but almost no mages. I checked on Sam, who was in his office, and he didn’t look good—pale and unsteady, but he said he was fine. Steve Dworkin, the head cook and a pyromancer, shuffled in almost an hour late. He was never late. Another of the cooks called in sick.
The TV in the back room was tuned to the news, which was dominated by coverage of the earthquake in California, one in Chile, and one in Japan. A tornado had hit downtown Houston, coming out of a clear sky.
Late that evening, Detective Sergeant Cindy Mackle dropped in with Shawna. Both looked a little harried.
“Dinner?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s been a long night, and I haven’t had anything to eat,” Cindy said.
Shawna ordered some uncooked blood sausage, which was about the only thing we had that was close to her normal diet.
“We’ve got vampire hunters in town again,” Cindy said after she ordered. “We found three decapitated vamps this evening, and there were two more earlier in the week.”
That wasn’t good. Westport had had that problem twice in the past. Once, ex-colleagues of mine in the Hunters’ Guild had caused major difficulties among the supernatural communities in the city, including vampires and werewolves. The second time was during the vampire war of succession, when Gabriel Laurent had allied himself with anti-vampire mages.
“We’ll be going over to the Wolf’s Den after we leave here to give them a heads-up,” Shawna said.
“We haven’t heard of any shifter deaths,” Cindy said, “but figured we should put the word out to be careful.”
The rest of the night went pretty quietly, but I was surprised when Shawna walked into the bar after midnight smelling of smoke and smudged with soot.
“What happened to you?” I asked as she sat down.
“Cindy gave me the rest of the night off,” she said. “Double vodka.”
I poured her a drink, and she said, “Remember that bar I took you to after Porgy and Bess?”
“The one the Hunter tried to torch?”
“Yeah. Someone did a better job of it tonight. Blocked the doors and tossed fireballs inside. We found twelve bodies after the fire department hosed it down.” Those would be human bodies. When a vampire burned, only fine ash remained.
The bar she was talking about was an upscale vampire hangout downtown, with a mixed clientele—vampires mostly, but some had human dates the night she took me there. If I stretched the definition of date, I would probably fit in that category.
She tossed off her drink, slammed the glass on the bar, and said, “Another.”
I poured it but said, “Are you sure you should be drinking that much?”
“No, but I’m off duty. I’ll probably get sick as a dog, but it can’t kill me.”
I stuck out my hand, and she handed me her keys. Vampires could get drunk, but their metabolism didn’t handle alcohol very well. Drunk and sick together didn’t contribute to safe driving.
“Any idea who?”
She shook her head. “Bailey said it had to be mages.”
“Some people hate vampires.”
“Yeah, some of the old guard here in town hate vamps and shifters,” she said. “The only good vampire is a twice-dead vampire, you know? They call us demons from hell.”
“You guys do have a public image problem.”
“It’s all those crappy movies. We’re actually really
sweet and cuddly.”
After three doubles, Shawna started slurring her words, and then she started singing. That wasn’t a problem, since she was a classically trained opera singer before she was turned. When I got off work and steered her out the door, the entire bar gave her a standing ovation.
We walked out of the alley and turned left toward the nightclub a block away where I parked my car. That was when three men wearing black uniforms with silver piping and a silver cross on the left breast converged on us. Although I had never seen them in the flesh, I recognized the uniforms as those of the Order of Knights Magica. A glance over my shoulder showed three more of them behind us. What in the hell were they doing in Westport?
“Oh, goodie,” Shawna said. “I’ve been wanting to kick the shit out of someone all night.”
“They’re mages and they’re shielded,” I said, drawing my main gauche from inside my coat and pressing it into her hand. “This might penetrate their shields, but don’t count on it. Stay behind me and keep your back to the wall, okay?” If she followed orders, I could probably protect her from any magical attacks.
I drew my sword and felt a bit of satisfaction when the men in front of me hesitated.
“Hot damn!” Shawna said from behind me. “That’s a cool trick.” She held up her cop badge and ID card above my shoulder. “Is there something we can help you with?” she called out to the men.
“Demon lover,” the guy nearest me said with a sneer.
“You shouldn’t believe all the rumors,” I said. “I do humans sometimes, too.”
Shawna giggled.
The Knight drew his sword, and the others followed him. I had never faced a Knight before, but I recognized their swords. Slightly curved with a basket hilt, the first six inches were double-edged and the rest of it was single edged. Sort of like a cross between a rapier and a katana, they were an adaptation of the sabers their ancestors had used fighting from horseback.
Well of Magic: An Urban Fantasy (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill Book 4) Page 3