by L. A. Banks
“Esmeralda, Esmeralda, please open the door!”
The locks to the town house quickly turned, and the witch opened the door for Sir Rodney, hustling him inside.
“This is a quiet neighborhood, Rodney, I’ve never—”
“Have you been watching the news?”
“No. Why?”
He yanked his cell phone out of his trouser pocket and opened it. “Have you seen this girl before?”
Esmeralda took the phone from him and studied the image hard. “Yes . . . she’s new. She just came to our second night of full-moon rituals and was immediately invited to join our coven. Her energy was so strong, surprisingly so for a girl of so few years.”
“How long did she attend?”
Esmeralda gave him a quizzical look. “Why?”
“It is of vital importance, love. Please do not be difficult.”
“She came at sundown, as is customary,” Esmeralda said, growing peevish. “She didn’t come with an escort or a mentor. She just seemed to know where to find our meeting, which portends that her psychic abilities are extremely strong. She stayed until sunrise, when we all dispersed.”
“You are sure about this?” he asked, now holding her by her upper arms.
“Yes, why? And you’re hurting me.” Esmeralda pulled out of his grasp. “I’ve never seen you like this, and you’re scaring me.”
“Do you know where she lives . . . where she sleeps by day?”
“Oh, come on,” Esmeralda said with a smirk. “She’s not a Vampire. That much we know for sure. She has a strong life force and knew all the rituals by heart.”
“You said you trusted me, so I’ll ask you again. Do you know where she sleeps by day?”
Esmeralda shook her head no. “But now that she’s taken the coven ritual, I can consult my crystal ball and possibly find out.”
* * *
Shogun sat under a wide yew tree in the teahouse garden watching the miasma of sparkling light dance about his head like dust motes. The Faeries had gotten Sir Rodney’s Fae missive, and it was important to stay extremely still to hear what the tiny beings were saying. In his mind he blocked out distant traffic noise, becoming Zen—one with the peaceful oasis. This was the last place in the world he ever wanted to revisit . . . the place where he’d fallen so deeply in love with Sasha . . . the place where she’d allowed her shadow to dance with his.
For now, he couldn’t think about that. He had to hear what the Faeries were whispering. They knew the girl in the picture. She’d been here just the day prior to have tea. He would not tell them that inside the beautiful face and delicate body lived a feline monster that could take their tiny lives.
They led him to the salon where she’d been and then dispersed. That was as much as they knew. Shogun entered it and tensed. He could smell her light signature scent, the new one she’d stolen from the innocent Amy Chen. But worse yet, his aunt was toying with him, knowing he would try to track her by traditional Were methods. She’d come to the same private room where he’d been with Sasha, where he’d tasted her mouth for the very first time.
His aunt was such a bitch.
Okay, now this shit was really getting on her nerves. Sasha stood by Doc’s side in the lab as she handed the cooler to him and Clarissa. Waiting for a flight was out of the question; she needed immediate answers.
Her stomach did a weird flip-flop as she glanced at Bradley and Winters, who were on computers and ready for sample analysis to begin. Woods and Fisher hung back, waiting on Sasha to give them the go-ahead that they could join the fight. But first, she wanted to know what they were dealing with.
“I can’t even begin to tell you what the scene looked like back at that kid’s apartment. I’ve gotta know if Vamps did this or if this was from a rampaging Were Leopard.” She set Russell Conway’s digital camera down between Winters and Bradley. “I also need to know what that entity is that he captured on the vid. Shogun made an interesting point: Lady Jung Suk—our suspected predator—is white with black spots when in Were form. But what attacked that Ghost Finders, Inc., crew was transparent and black. Slow the frames down and you’ll see what I mean.”
“You okay, Sasha?” Clarissa asked as Sasha blotted her forehead. “You look flushed.”
“I’ve just seen a lot of really horrific shit in the last twenty-four hours, and didn’t really eat this morning.”
“Get her some orange juice,” Doc said to Fisher. “She looks like her blood sugar’s dropping and she’s about to pass out.”
“I’m cool, I’m cool,” Sasha said, weakly protesting.
Ignoring her, Fisher left the room as Clarissa opened the first cooler and then screamed. Everybody was on their feet, and the adrenaline spike instantly revived Sasha.
“Bradley, get a brick-dust circle going, stat!” Clarissa shouted, backing away from the cooler. “Demon essence in the house!”
Clarissa waited until Bradley was able to dig in the lab drawers and rush back to begin pouring the reddish dust into the floor from the hole he’d made in his fist. Then she put some on her hands and carried the cooler to the center of the circle, cautiously opened the lid, and jumped back.
Angry green slime hissed and popped and slithered over the edge of the cooler like a fast-moving cold fire. As soon as Sasha saw it, she vomited green bile, which Clarissa and Bradley hit with brick dust.
“Get a circle around her, people,” Clarissa said, watching Bradley, Winters, and Doc jump into action. “You hold the line at the door, Woods; don’t let it get out of the lab!”
“What am I supposed to do, ’Rissa?” he shouted, running toward the open drawer and grabbing a handful of dust.
“Make a line in front of the door!” she yelled back as Doc held Sasha up while Bradley began saying the Twenty-third Psalm in a very loud voice.
Just as suddenly as the fracas began, the essence in the middle of the circles quieted, turned from a vibrant green to a gooey black tar, and then torched.
“I don’t think we need any analysis on the stuff in cooler number one. This was definitely a pure demon that took those folks,” Bradley said.
“Bigger question is, how did Sasha get infected?” Doc peered at her with concern and helped her to a chair.
“I probably picked it up while mucking around at the kill sites,” she said, wobbling to sit down.
“I want a full evaluation on her—she’s not going back through shadow lands in this state . . . there could still be some infection in her,” Doc argued, folding his arms in front of her.
“As much as I appreciate the concern, no can do, Doc.” Sasha offered him a wan smile. “There’s a huge problem down in the Delta, obviously . . . whatever was in me for sure came out—my apologies to the team.”
“Clarissa, can you scan her psychically, and at least make me feel better?”
“No!” Bradley shouted. “Just let Sasha step through some Holy Water or something.”
Sasha nodded. “Clarissa’s been through enough. Flash me with brick dust, the Twenty-third Psalm, Holy Water, whatever, but leave Clarissa out of any—”
“I’m okay, guys, no problem . . . but I think Sasha’s all right. I’m not getting bad vibes now.”
Bradley walked away from Clarissa, raking his hair in frustration.
“You’re sure?” Doc said, looking at Clarissa hard. “And how are you feeling? You okay, McGill?”
“Yeah, and never better, sir,” Clarissa replied, going to Bradley. “I’m all right.” She placed a hand on his back.
“Then humor me and let me purge you, just in case,” he muttered, slowly drawing her into a hug.
“Well, now that all the excitement is over, what the hell was that?” Winters looked at the cooler and ran his fingers through his hair just as Fisher came back in the door.
“Yo, what’s wrong everybody?” Fisher said, glancing around. “What’d I miss?”
CHAPTER 18
Sasha sat across from Hunter and Silver Hawk, while Crow Shadow an
d Bear Shadow patrolled the perimeter of the leadership cabin. She felt a hundred times better, even though the information she’d gleaned so far really wouldn’t help the wolf Federations fight the charges lobbed by the Vampires.
“It’s a possession demon,” she said calmly.
“A what?” Hunter stood. “And it tried to attach itself to you?”
“Yeah, pretty messed up what happened in the lab.” She looked at Silver Hawk. “A piece of this same thing tried to get inside Sir Rodney and Clarissa, but the Fae blasted it before it could go full-blown. We’ve gotta get you cleaned out, just in case, all right?”
Hunter paced away from the table, seeming like he was ready to explode from frustration.
The elderly man nodded and released a long breath. “I do not feel like myself.”
“Your silver aura is so strong that the thing is struggling within it, most likely,” Sasha said in a quiet tone. “Did you touch anyone?”
Silver Hawk looked at Hunter. “Just my grandson.”
“Why would a strong sorceress like Lady Jung Suk join a coven?” Sir Rodney said, staring at Esmeralda’s crystal ball. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you want to amass even greater power,” she said, watching the mist begin to part within the murky globe. “She could feed, like a Vampire, on all the souls in the group, sucking their magic from them, their life force . . . If she was given a body by the Vampires, as you say, beloved, then she would want to have a way to get strong enough to one day break their hold and control over her.”
“That definitely fits the bill for her personality type.” Sir Rodney sat back and rubbed his chin. “But how do we find her?”
“Patience . . .” Esmeralda sighed. “I’m trying to do a little remote viewing, and that requires concentration, all right?”
He held up a hand. “Sorry.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then gave him a sexy sidelong glance. “I want amnesty forever in the sidhe for this.”
“You know that can be arranged,” he said, leaning in close to her. “So, when we find this very bad little witch, how do we make sure her Were Leopard doesn’t escape back out into disembodied form if we simply shoot her with a silver crossbow shot or something equally drastic?”
“Oh, no,” Esmeralda said quickly, now turning to face him straight-on. “You must trap her in silver so her Were Leopard spirit cannot cross that plane. She will separate from the girl’s body, pulling her spirit out of it to run from the silver. So mesh and then some sort of strong bars or energy field are required to actually trap her fleeing spirit. But if you want to save the girl, you’ll have to pull her away quickly and try to resuscitate her terrified spirit. But to kill a disembodied means—”
A horrific scream left Esmeralda’s throat as Sir Rodney grabbed her by the shoulders.
“What’s wrong, love! What’s wrong?”
Blood poured from Esmeralda’s once lovely eyes, leaving dark holes in the sockets as she clawed at her face.
“I cannot see, help me, help me, she’s blinded me!”
Lady Jung Suk slowly walked away from her kitchen sink and dropped the sharp knife into it with a clatter. Blood stained the white porcelain as a satisfied purr rumbled in her throat.
“That will teach you to spy on your elders,” she mewed. She went outside in her garden to enjoy the late-morning sun.
Doc squinted as he peered into the microscope one last time and then sat back. “Lab analysis shows that the bites from victims one and two found on the first night the murders began are different from the others at the Bayou House, and the last victim, Lawrence DeWitt, wasn’t bitten at all. That was more like some sort of protoplasmic depth charge, go figure. But those mauling victims prior to the ones found at the Bayou House didn’t have any trace of that highly volatile demon virus resident in them. Now, why that cooler of tissue samples from there snapped, crackled, and popped like it did doesn’t make sense to me. If it’s the same contaminant in it as was in the bodies we brought back from Colonel Madison’s first mission, then it should have reacted similarly.”
“Unless an infected host, like Sasha, wasn’t nearby,” Bradley said, coming over to the now still samples.
“Bradley, my friend, you just may have a point.”
Sasha put the cell phone down on the table and simply stared at it.
“What’s wrong? What did Sir Rodney say?”
Sasha closed her eyes and ran her palms down her face. “Esmeralda, a friend of his, was attempting to locate Lady Jung Suk through opening up a remote viewing . . . she’d joined their coven so it was even easier than normal . . . and then something went wrong. Esmeralda’s eyes got clawed out.”
“Damn . . .,” Hunter murmured.
Silver Hawk nodded. “This is the powerful sorceress I spoke of. The predator within that is extinguishing the spirit of the girl’s body she stole. In three days and nights, once the moon ceases to be full, the girl will float away and become an earthbound spirit. Lady Jung Suk is a being of darkness; she will never let the innocent girl find the Light . . . and she is so much stronger than that young girl.”
“Rodney’s going off the grid to take Esmeralda back to the sidhe for protection, but he told me what Esmeralda said about how to catch Lady Jung Suk. We owe it to Amy Chen’s family to try to save their daughter, if we can.” Sasha stood and went to the window.
“I know my brother is distraught about what he witnessed when he went to visit her parents while investigating,” Hunter said quietly. “Shogun has not been himself since that time. His smile is slow, and it does not reach his eyes.”
Sasha nodded and lifted the hair off the nape of her neck in frustration. “I almost don’t care anymore that we only have shaky evidence to link the Vamps to unleashing an entity that killed two humans.”
“I know how you feel, Sasha,” Hunter said in a gentle tone. “According to UCE rules, they only care that the Vampires may have facilitated the embodiment of Lady Jung Suk—a treasonable offense, due to the fact that she was a criminal found guilty of crimes against the Seelie and was on the run. That would be enough to mitigate any claims they have against us, because under UCE law, thankfully, you cannot have blood on your hands and seek justice. You have to be clean. The Vampires are not.”
“But they don’t care about that poor girl, or even those stupid kids who thought they could bargain for immortality with the Vampires,” Sasha said, waving her arms about. “Something’s wrong with a system where any life or anyone is considered a second-class citizen.”
“And as such,” Hunter said slowly, “the UCE will not care about a possession demon on the loose. They only care to know that it is not wolves who have been doing the killings and thus giving the supernatural community undue exposure. They will call for a demon hunt, exterminate it, and then try to do damage control.”
“Those are the twin evils that I spoke of,” Silver Hawk said in a faraway tone. His gaze went beyond the window to a place they couldn’t reach. “One strikes at the life force of an innocent, the other strikes at the life force of a community—and in order to bring balance back and clear the wolf Federations, you will have to solve a dilemma that will help others more than it may help yourselves.”
“Before we do anything,” Sasha said, going to Silver Hawk but not touching him, “we’ve got to get your aura cleaned.”
After days of craziness, they had at least solved the first part of the jigsaw puzzle. They now knew what it was, but had run into the brick wall of trying to figure out where it was. Making things more complicated was the fact that they had to locate the predators but couldn’t immediately engage them until they figured out how to stop them.
“That’s right,” Hunter said, speaking to Shogun in short bursts of information. “We’ve got like twenty-four more hours to find Lady Jung Suk before she completely patterns over that girl’s soul, but if you do locate her, you can’t kill her in the conventional manner or you’ll hurt the victim.”
/> Sasha watched Hunter as he paused. Both her eyes and Silver Hawk’s were on him.
“Yes,” Hunter finally replied. “Just scout her location and get back to the sidhe. Sir Rodney is conferring with his top magic advisors there about how to contain and destroy both types of entities. Esmeralda was severely injured because she wasn’t clear about just how strong a force Lady Jung Suk is. So, brother, I repeat, do not engage the target. Wait for us at the sidhe.”
They looked at Hunter as he disconnected the call. Crow Shadow and Bear Shadow had come into the cabin to stand at the ready for the cleansing of Silver Hawk. The elderly man stood slowly and nodded toward Hunter.
“Let us begin,” he said quietly.
“They used brick dust in the lab,” Sasha said, nervously glancing around.
“That will do in a pinch,” Silver Hawk said. “But go to my desk, daughter, and extract the medicine box.”
Sasha quickly moved to the handmade, antique roll-top desk and extracted an old silver tin.
“Bring this outside,” Silver Hawk said calmly. He then walked past everyone onto the porch and down to the small clearing in front of the steps. “There is a pouch filled with silver shavings and herbs. Make a circle with this around Hunter and me, and then use the eagle feathers to draw another circle around that.”
Working with unsteady hands, Sasha began to walk around the two men standing side by side in the front yard. Bear Shadow held the box; Crow Shadow held the eagle feathers. But as she neared the far side of the circle where she’d begun, nasty green ooze rose from Silver Hawk’s back, flowed over his head, and tried to smother him.
Hunter grabbed his grandfather to keep him from falling to the ground while trying to yank away the gooey toxin from his nose and mouth. “Close the circle!” he shouted to Sasha. “Quickly!”
Running backward, Sasha closed the circle, trying not to focus on the men who were gagging. Crow Shadow hurriedly brought her the eagle feathers and she raced around the circle, drawing a second perimeter in the dirt. The moment the second circle was drawn, the slime rose up like a giant serpent and began to slither around their bodies. In seconds Silver Hawk had become Silver Shadow, shedding his human form to become his wolf-self. The magnificent ancient being made a stunning vertical leap to go after the slimy head of the attacking entity before it could angrily whip around and go after his grandson.