by Elisa Paige
“Stop,” Siobhan called after observing her guard’s ineffectual efforts. Her lilt remained thick, clear evidence of her roiling emotions. “I will hear this proposition.”
I allowed myself to solidify, but remained poised to shade again on an instant—fae were not the only supernaturals renowned for treachery.
Hissing when she saw my features, Siobhan drew breath to speak.
Before she could, I said wearily, “I’m not fae. Okay? Let’s just get that over with right now.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Wi’ yer silver eyes, I know well enough what you are, bittern.” Quickly, she warned her males not to bite me. “But that doesn’t mean we canna snap yer neck.”
Not taking well to threats, I bared my sharp teeth. “If you know my people’s history, then you have an inkling why I want Reiden dead. Your captive over there,” I tipped my head at Philippe, “holds the key.”
Staring at me with open curiosity, she crossed her arms. “Reiden and his ilk brought yer kind into being.”
I’d be damned if I’d explain myself to her. “Do you make a habit of questioning help when it’s offered?”
“When it comes from anythin’ touched by fae? Damn sure I do.”
Koda moved up to cover my flank and the two bitterns unshaded to stand at my other side. Which, of course, escalated Siobhan’s aggression and set her vampires poised to attack. Philippe, on the other hand, looked delighted.
An explosive blast erupted somewhere east of us—at my startled expression, Koda muttered something about a power station going up. The thunderous, rumbling reverberation rolled across New Orleans as every light I could see died and the city was swallowed by darkness. The tornado sirens’ eerie wail wound down to nothing, leaving my ears ringing with the sudden absence of noise. At some point since we got to the mansion, the church bells had stopped ringing—in all the excitement, I hadn’t really noticed. The inferno’s roar as it consumed the upper stories was more pronounced, although the place was so big, we weren’t in any immediate danger.
In addition to the gunfire and screams outside came the growing sound of a lot of people headed our way. I didn’t think it was another group of humans being herded to Philippe’s mansion—the voices rising above the tramp of a helluvalot of feet were not raised in terror.
They sounded angry. Very angry.
I saw from the others’ expression that they were just as leery of this new development as I was, so I got right to the point with Siobhan. “You care about your kind, so maybe you can understand that I want Reiden dead to protect my own people. There isn’t time to get into the hows and whys. But it all starts with killing Philippe.”
Her head came up. “Ah well, now we have a problem. While little would please me more than to stake this one meself, I’m under orders to return him to Abasi for punishment.”
“Abasi is your leader?”
“He is our eldest, aye.”
I thought for a second. “Okay, this can still work. If Philippe’s people know he’s been captured, they’ll abandon their posts guarding Reiden and the others….” My words faded as Siobhan shook her head.
“I’ll no’ broadcast the capture.” Her eyes flared with anger and her accent was so thick, I had to concentrate to understand. “I want all of his people. Every last damn one of ’em. If they know he’s been caught, they’ll all go into hidin’ and it’ll be that much harder to root the sods out.”
Forcing my tone to sound reasonable when all I wanted to do was shriek and curse the obstinate female, I crossed my arms over my chest to keep from reaching for my daggers. “Look. Not five minutes ago, you yourself described the threat Reiden poses. If he’s dead, that threat goes away. The supernaturals who support his goals now, including some of your own people, will give up in the absence of fae support and without Philippe to egg them on.”
“But there’s where we part ways, bittern,” Siobhan said, giving me a very unpleasant smile. “We’ve no intention of letting them give up and go away. We will root every last one of the bastards out and unleash vengeance on them of a kind even you canna comprehend.”
I breathed in and out like I’d run a punishing race. “You would refuse a chance at ending the war so that you can exact revenge on pawns rather than the bastard who started it all?”
Clearly not accustomed to having her decisions challenged, Siobhan growled a low warning. “What you propose would take a miracle to pull off. Sneakin’ onto the fae plane, somehow gettin’ into Reiden’s keep, past all his guards. Then not only fightin’ the man himself, but killin’ him, too.” She shook her head. “Nay. I’ll stick with a sure t’ing, that I will. I’ll deliver Philippe to Abasi, alive. No’ a word of it will be spoken of by any of my kind. So if I should hear tale o’ this anywhere outside this room, I’ll know its source.”
A growl of my own rumbled in my chest. “Is that a threat?”
She ripped out a snarl. “Whether or no’ I sympathize with your interests, ye don’ want to be makin’ an enemy out o’ me. Because it’s no’ just yerself I’ll be comin’ for.” She eyed Koda and the others pointedly.
I stared at the redhead, fury tinting my vision. The thought crossed my mind that I could quickly shade and just kill Philippe—right here, right now—while the male vampires held him upright. I’d no sooner calculated my line of attack and how fast I’d need to spin back and shade Koda when Siobhan gave an infinitesimal nod to her guards. Moving at top speed, the four literally disappeared with their captive, the direction they’d taken betrayed by the huge floor-to-ceiling window exploding just off the foyer where we still stood.
“Churrashme!” I cursed savagely, whirling to go after them. I’d come so damn far, risked everything, literally bled for the moment that had just evaporated in front of me. All that I’d worked toward, my entire plan, had been casually tossed aside by Siobhan’s intractability and indifference. Rage flooded my veins as I growled to myself, No way in hell! My breathing kicked into high gear along with my heart rate and the world began to dim around the edges as my senses ramped up for the hunt. Instincts goading me on, the frenzy’s violent haze flooded my mind, shouldering aside all intellect and reason.
Then Koda was there, his arms banded around my waist, holding me in place despite my effort to lunge past him. “This isn’t the way, Sephti. No one can take on an Ancient and four Elder vampires, in addition to Philippe. Let it go. We’ll think of something else, you and I. Okay? But not this…”
He kept talking in a low, soothing voice. His singular scent and the warmth of his embrace eased the growing frenzy enough that I could focus on the logic of what he was saying. Could cram the instincts down deep enough to think. Which was when I realized that I’d never been able to pull back from the precipice like that before. Koda’s helping was secondary to the fact that it wasn’t even supposed to be possible.
I drew a deep, shuddering breath, needing to focus on one monumental issue at a time. “Philippe was so close. So damn close! Now what am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll figure something out.” Koda brushed a kiss across my forehead, loosening his grip around my waist to look down at me.
I remembered with a start that we weren’t alone. Whirling toward Onas and Târre, I’d expected them to be out of control. Instead, I was astonished to see them standing dull-eyed, almost swaying on their feet they were so relaxed.
Koda said, “I reinforced your effort to keep them calm. They’re fine.”
“When did you do that?” I asked, a bit put out that he’d had to.
“You were pretty distracted at the time.” He smiled but there was a world of worry in his eyes. “You okay?”
I nodded, reluctantly leaving the shelter of his arms. The din from the approaching crowd had grown in volume, drawing us to the window to cautiously peer through its wavery old glass.
“What the hell?” I whispered for at least the fifth time that night.
The enormous crowd gathering on the front lawn was so startling a si
ght that the remaining combatants separated, chests heaving from their violent exertions and guns falling silent. Of those I could see, not one form was unbloodied. Corpses of several species littered the ground, an appalling number of them, but I knew it was the tiniest precursor to what Philippe and Reiden had in mind.
Carrying lit torches and every kind of weapon they could lay their hands on, the human mob was seething with rage, fed by a dangerous underlying current of terror. Screaming profanity in at least three languages—if nothing else, racial differences were inconsequential when faced with extinction—a group of men ran forward and flung a mannequin onto the grass. The fake fangs and the stake driven through the plastic chest proved the humans knew who—or rather, what—lived in the mansion. Another guy ran up and doused the figure in gasoline, then tossed a match to it. As the thing burned, the crowd pulled back from a wildly gyrating man and a handful of dancers surrounding him. Eerily, the mob fell silent, which allowed us to hear the group’s rhythmic chanting.
“Bokor,” Koda murmured, towing me away from the window.
“What’s that?”
“A voodoo sorceror. The city’s pulled out the big guns now.” Grimly, he began tugging me in the direction Siobhan and the others had gone. “Once the bokor gets going, we need to be as far from here as possible. The spell he’s wielding won’t differentiate between vampires and other supernaturals.”
“Nasty stuff?”
“Judging by what I sense of him, the worst. Philippe really kicked over a hornet’s nest.”
The bitterns compliantly kept pace with us as we hopped out the broken window and sprinted at full speed across the formal gardens behind the mansion. For good measure, I took Koda’s hand and shaded us, watching approvingly as Onas and Târre also hid themselves. We ran about a mile before Koda let us slow to a walk.
Unshading, I sagged onto a concrete bench beneath a huge magnolia. Inhaling lungsful of the damp New Orleans night air, I leaned against the tree’s rough bark. The bitterns knelt next to me, their heads hanging as they panted. All three of us were spent.
Koda dug in his jacket pocket and handed me a fistful of jelly beans. “This is all I brought.”
“It’s more than I thought to get,” I answered, smiling wearily. “Thanks.”
Keeping myself from falling ravenously on the candy, I divvied it up into three shares and gave Onas and Târre theirs. While the sugar helped, it was nowhere near what we needed after tonight’s escapades.
Sirens screaming, four police cars, a fire truck and two ambulances roared down the street, blowing past us on their way to the mansion. I could only imagine that by now more than half the city’s emergency services had been committed to dealing with the nightmare we’d left behind. On the heels of this thought, I grimaced as two news vans with satellite dishes on their rooftops flew by in the same direction.
Thinking about all the corpses on the mansion’s lawn, both supernatural and human, I grimaced. “As bad as things are now, imagine what it’ll be like once those images get broadcast around the world.”
Koda made a pained noise. “I wonder, though, if any of the other cities that came under attack tonight had as much resistance as New Orleans. Maybe if humans can see that other supernaturals are trying to help, it will give them hope.”
He didn’t really seem to expect an answer. Which was a good thing. I didn’t have one.
Shaking himself, Koda stood, offering me a hand up. I got the bitterns vertical too and the four of us set off in the general direction of the little yellow house. I so hoped Ahanu was no longer there—I just wasn’t up for another run-in with the arrogant jackass.
Koda pulled out his cell phone. “I’m calling a friend named Diego. He’s got a cabin he rarely uses, way back in Bayou Teche. I’m hoping we can stay there the next day or two.” Koda’s call was answered and he spoke briefly before hanging up. “We’re on. He says the cabin’s ours as long as we need it. Next step is to get the hell out of town. I suspect the officials, when they can get organized, will close the city to all traffic. We should be gone before that happens because if tonight was bad, I can only imagine what tomorrow will be like.”
The next ten blocks passed in a blur of overturned cars and skirmishes between increasingly large groups of humans and supernaturals. That some of the supes under attack had actually fought against Philippe’s forces made me feel ill.
“Looks like we have our answer,” I muttered, standing over a dying female aughisky. “Dammit.”
Koda knelt and ran a kind hand down the creature’s sweat-soaked neck. “Humans are in panic mode right now. Maybe in the daylight, when they have a chance to calm down and consider all that happened…maybe then, they’ll understand that not all of us are their enemy.” He shook his head over the aughisky’s ghastly condition—she looked like a Mack truck had hit her doing ninety. “Can she understand us?”
I nodded and bent over the aughisky. She rolled a red eye at me, the breath laboring in and out of her lungs. In Fae, I said, “Fighting tonight was a brave thing. A noble thing.”
A groan shook the aughisky’s horselike body and bloody froth flowed from her dilated nostrils. With great effort, she bared her throat to me.
Bowing my head with sudden understanding, I squeezed my eyes shut.
Koda touched my shoulder. “I’ll do it if…”
I shook my head. Drawing my blade, I ended the aughisky’s suffering quickly, cleanly. Rocking back on my heels, I stared off into the ravaged neighborhood. “Damn, I hate this,” I whispered.
Koda helped me to my feet and took my hand. Without a word, we returned to find the now-empty yellow house one of the last few on the block not in flames. Muttering imprecations, he lifted the garage door while the bitterns and I climbed into his truck. As he got us rolling, I pulled two unopened one-pound bags of jelly beans out of my backpack and split up the bounty among the three of us.
Getting to I-10 should’ve taken maybe twenty minutes. But with all the back-tracking to avoid downed power lines, fallen trees and overturned vehicles, not to mention out of control fires and rampaging mobs of humans and supernaturals, it was closer to three hours before the truck climbed an entrance ramp. Even then, the highway was an obstacle course of crashed cars and jackknifed eighteen-wheelers and people wandering back and forth across the grassy median. There were signs of fighting for the first few miles, then we put New Orleans’s insanity behind us. Koda picked up I-90, and after an hour took a series of increasingly smaller, rougher roads into dense bayou country. The trees formed a heavy canopy overhead and the air almost crackled with living energy, generated by the abundant plants and animals that called the swamplands home.
Eventually, Koda parked in front of a small cabin, its cypress sides silvered with age. We all climbed out of the truck and looked around. The full moon’s bright beams penetrated the overhead canopy just enough that we weren’t in total darkness, illuminating the ground fog that crept at knee height as far as we could see. It should have seemed creepy, but felt magical instead, like we’d stumbled upon an ethereal oasis.
“It’s just as Diego said it would be,” Koda murmured, breaking a silence that had lasted most of the drive here. At my quizzical look, he brushed a strand of hair back from my face. “Isolated and in one of Louisiana’s most remote bayou areas.”
Onas came to stand before me, lifting his fists in a warrior’s salute. “Nomad-shakti, may I speak?”
Not understanding Fae, Koda stiffened. “What does he want?”
I shrugged in response. “What is it?” I asked Onas.
Deepening his bow, he said deferentially, “I have sufficiently healed from our combat, Nomad-shakti, to present myself to you. As ritual demands, I am doing so at the first opportunity.”
Stunned, it took me a second to get my thoughts in order. It was true the bittern was no longer walking bowlegged, but I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d expect…that he’d think he had to…Clearing my throat, I said fi
rmly, “I declined First and I do not require your services.”
His silver eyes flicked up to mine, so great was his shock. “But…you defeated me. I am rightfully yours to—”
I interrupted him in a harsh tone. “I do not require anything of you, Onas.” I stressed his title. “I told you. I am outside bittern law and rank. That includes the traditional presentation.”
Following our conversation with increasing tension, Koda growled, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing!” I said too quickly. His eyes narrowed. “It’s just a misunderstanding. Everything’s fine.”
Onas dropped to his knees before me, his hands rising to tug off his shirt. “I most humbly apologize, Nomad-shakti, for not making the proper obeisance. Please, let me try again.”
Backing away from him, I shouted, “No! That isn’t necessary!”
The bittern lifted his head, confusion rampant on his features. “My form is displeasing?”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I swore under my breath.
Koda stirred. “Is he…is he offering himself to you?” There was a world of disbelief and anger in his voice.
I wanted to wail. Couldn’t I just face a pack of bodach rather than deal with this ridiculous situation?
Opening my eyes, I looked down at Onas. “It may not make sense right now, but I hope some day it does. Your body is yours to do with what you please. I don’t require—”
A smile trembled at the corner of his lips, the first time I’d ever seen such an expression on his perfectly smooth face. Rising to his feet, he dared to meet my gaze. “Then it would please me to couple with you. You are a strong female. As is proper, I would show you honor for your combat skills. It is only right that I should give my body to you.”
Koda may not have understood the words, but he sure got the intent. “Onas either backs the hell down or I’m putting him on his ass. Tell him, Sephti.”
The bittern’s face hardened as he, in turn, correctly interpreted Koda. The air thickened with testosterone and the threat of violence.