by L. A. Banks
“Of course you couldn’t come to fight me alone,” he shouted while Vampire human helpers quickly ran to take up a new position as the wind shifted.
“I saw no reason to harm this beautiful new body,” Lady Jung Suk cooed as she stepped into a pool of moonlight beside Duval Hempstead. “You have been a very bad dog, and I have some friends who would like to train you.”
A Vampire army exited from behind trees, their sneering laughter creating a Doppler of echoes in the night.
Duval held out his arm with a toothy smile, and Lady Jung Suk did a slow pirouette. “You like? She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes . . . she is,” Shogun said angrily. “And she should be returned to her mother and father.”
“Forgive my nephew. He is so sentimental.” She glared at Shogun with hatred brimming in her cat-green eyes. “Put him out of his misery. Kill him.”
As soon as Duval left her side, Fae archers dropped the silver net on Lady Jung Suk. Hunter came out of a fold of shadow and began dragging it out of the heat of the battle toward where Silver Hawk had appeared. Sasha leaped out of a shadow, covering Shogun with a machine-gun burst of hallowed-earth hollowpoints, exploding Vampires in the air, while Sir Rodney kept the crackling white Fae electrical charge focused on the net.
Shedding their human forms, Shogun, Bear Shadow, and Crow Shadow fought off vicious Vampire attackers. They had to keep them from the screeching, twisting entity in the mesh. Shadow-jumping from tree to tree, Sasha held back her wolf. Now more effective in human form, she exited a shadow, released a short burst of gunfire, and then disappeared before an attacker could lay a hand on her.
Archers kept up the pressure from above, forcing the Vampires to remain earthbound. Each time they went into a funnel-cloud spiral to get above the fight, archers sent silver arrows into the whirling tornado, causing it to sputter to a stop with Vampire ashes and red embers.
But the battle was far from over as the Vampires began to retreat. Amy Chen’s face had distorted into that angry, fanged transition of Lady Jung Suk.
Muscles bulging, Hunter strained to hold the mesh with Silver Hawk while the Were Leopard pulled itself out of the young woman’s face, hissing and roaring.
“Drop the mail!” Sir Rodney shouted. “Let her out!”
Immediately Hunter and Silver Hawk complied, but rather than run for safety, Lady Jung Suk went right for Hunter’s chest.
Hunter fell backward as Silver Hawk hit the ground and then scrambled to gather the ends of the mesh to quickly begin dragging the girl away. Shogun turned just in time to see Duval send a thick branch in his direction, and he ducked, heading toward Hunter, who was locked in a ground roll with a two-hundred-pound Were Leopard on his chest.
Panic stung Sasha’s nervous system. There was no way to get a shot off without killing Hunter. Silver Hawk gathered the girl in his arms and began running, a few Fae archers and Crow Shadow following orders and going with him. But Bear Shadow and Shogun circled the combatants on the ground, Shogun finally able to leap in and rip off Lady Jung Suk’s ear. She let out a roar that cut through the night.
“Fall back!” Sir Rodney shouted.
The moment Shogun released the big cat, she leaped off Hunter, and went airborne to attack Shogun. Bear Shadow hit the ground, covering the fallen pack alpha with his huge wolf body. Sir Rodney caught the Were Leopard in the air in the charge, slamming her against a tree and holding her there with all the might of Garth’s wand.
“Sasha, now!” Sir Rodney yelled, straining against Lady Jung Suk’s strength. “Do whatever you humans do to send the bitch into the Light!”
Torn, Sasha ran headlong toward the struggling beast. She didn’t know what to do, really, and only her dead mother’s face came to mind.
“Please, God,” Sasha said, glancing at Hunter’s lifeless body and the limp girl that Silver Hawk was working on. “She’s killed enough innocent people—don’t allow her to take any more. Get this thing away from that poor young woman who hasn’t even had a chance to start her life. Take this evil thing into the Light and make it no more. Amen!”
A supernova white light with what felt like the impact of a daisy cutter lit the swamp, felled trees, and put everyone on their faces in the dirt. Black Were soot floated to the ground, making everyone cough except Hunter. Sir Rodney had been knocked out of the tree, and he and all his archers were on the swamp floor, dazed. Duval and several henchmen were holding their charred faces, screaming and running blindly into the night.
Shogun ran to his brother as Bear Shadow slowly peeled himself off the clan leader’s body. Sasha skidded to a halt, went down on her knees, and rolled Hunter over. His Adam’s apple didn’t move and in panic she put her ear to his shredded chest and then made a fist and pounded on it.
“No! You come back here, Max Hunter!” she shouted, between heavy thuds.
“I am not getting the girl—I’m losing her,” Silver Hawk called out. “She is too afraid. She doesn’t trust me!”
Tears brimming, Sasha looked from Hunter to Silver Hawk. “Come save him!” She got up and ran toward the girl, sliding down into the dirt beside her. Hugging the girl in her arms, Sasha began to rock her. “Amy, please, Amy, come back,” she said quietly, panic and strain making her voice hitch. “A good man may have died for you . . . your parents need you, your mother is so upset, she is crying . . . she lit candles for you—the wolves are good. They chased away the leopard. You can come back. It’s safe.”
Rocking harder, Sasha kept her gaze on Silver Hawk’s ministrations. Hunter hadn’t let the Were go . . . he’d held its vicious jaws away from his face and had wrapped his legs around its waist tightly to keep its powerful hind legs from doing damage, but its front paws had torn at his arms, back, and chest. He’d lost so much blood . . .
Sasha nuzzled the girl’s hair and wept for all the losses and all the pain that now flooded her heart. “Shogun!” she cried. “Tell her in her language. She doesn’t understand me!”
She watched Shogun struggle between standing at Hunter’s side while his elderly grandfather worked on him and coming to the aid of the young girl he didn’t even know. Shogun dropped to his knees beside Sasha, careful not to touch the silver mail.
“I will try in Mandarin . . .,” he said, looking at Sasha. Then he spoke softly to Amy Chen. “Do you speak English—ni hui shou ying wen ma? I am sorry, dui bu qi, for what happened to you. Qing gei wo . . . please give me . . . a chance to take you home. Wo mi lu le . . . wo bu zhi dao—I am lost, I don’t know what to do.” Shogun hung his head. “I don’t know if she can hear me and my brother is dead because of me again.”
A short gasp and a muffled cry made Sasha quickly lower the girl from her embrace. Her large, startled eyes immediately filled with tears as Sasha took the mail off her face. Amy’s delicate features crumbled into weeping and Sasha quickly uncovered her body, gaining help from the Fae archers who’d gathered around. But she handed her off to Shogun, then got up without a word and jogged to Silver Hawk’s side.
Her hands worked with the elderly shaman’s covering gashes that went down to the bone. Sir Rodney knelt beside Hunter and looked at both Sasha and Silver Hawk.
“We have to get this man to the sidhe, where our healers can assist your efforts. He’s lost so much blood—”
“And has saved us the trouble,” Elder Vlad said, coming out of a dark fold of night.
Canines ripped everyone’s gums as the old Vampire laughed. Sasha looked along the ground for her weapon, only to see Elder Vlad standing on it.
“I call the UCE!” Sir Rodney said, glancing around at his diminished forces.
Elder Vlad shook his head as the court building began to rise in the distance. “You’re early and don’t have evidence gathered . . . but I guess it is wise to go for a civil alternative where the executions can be limited to the wolves, thus saving your cowardly Fae hides.”
“The book must register our findings as interim . . . we still have almost ten day
s, maybe eleven,” Sir Rodney said quickly as the wolves in his party gave him skeptical glances.
“No . . .,” Elder Vlad said with an evil grin. “You cannot ask for a continuance on a matter such as this—you present now, or you present later. If you decide that it is later, I’m sure you know that we will exercise our right to retaliate on the spot for your offenses in the glen tonight. I suggest that you, as they say, man up, and swallow your medicine.”
“I call the book. This man cannot be moved,” Sir Rodney said. “He’s lost blood at the hands of Lady Jung Suk, who—”
“Who obviously was defending herself,” Elder Vlad said coolly, “but so be it. Bring the book to record.”
They waited until the huge black tome exited the front doors of the rising structure and hovered between the combatants with a black quill pen waiting in the air.
“And I want the crone as a witness—there must be someone to keep the balance, after the verdict.”
“Oh, I agree, Sir Rodney. Our community has already sustained enough of a loss,” Elder Vlad cooed. “We wouldn’t want another violent outburst from the wolves.”
They waited in silence until the massive building stopped rising out of the swamp and the old crone made her painfully slow way down the steps and to the clearing using her gnarled cane.
Sasha leaned her cheek close to Hunter’s face. “He’s barely breathing,” she murmured, her gaze searching Silver Hawk’s eyes.
The elderly shaman just nodded, placed Hunter’s amulet over his heart, and covered it with a weathered palm before closing his eyes.
“The emergency session of the United Council of Entities will come to order to hear the matter at hand—the disputed rule among the Vampire Cartel, the allied wolf Federations, and the Unseelie Fae,” the crone screeched. “We have your complaint on record, Elder Vlad,” she said, opening the hovering tome with a wave of her walking stick. “Therefore, the burden of proof that his claims are false rest on you, the wolf Federations.”
“Fine!” Sasha shouted. “We know that Elder Vlad aided and abetted a fugitive from justice—Lady Jung Suk! She then killed two people, two humans, Tanya Mays and Jim Baton, and made it look like it was a wolf savaging. He can’t come to court to ask for our removal or call for sanctions against us because his hands aren’t clean.”
“There are two problems with this assertion,” Elder Vlad said with a smile as he held up his hand. “First, the accused is no longer able to testify on her own behalf, because once again the wolves acted prematurely, primitive creatures, and just killed her. Second, human deaths have no place in this courtroom . . . Who cares?”
The Vampires who stood behind Elder Vlad laughed as the book waited with the pen hovering over it.
“How do you plead?” the crone screeched.
“Not guilty,” Shogun said, coming forward with Amy Chen. “I have a witness—the human girl my aunt tried to soul-pattern over.”
Vampires erupted in angry hisses as Fae archers immediately ran forward and put the mail sheet between the girl and Elder Vlad to prevent a sudden Vampire black bolt.
“It’s all right,” Shogun said, holding her close to him. “You must right these wrongs by telling the truth, Amy . . . so that no one else will suffer your fate.”
She looked up at Shogun with trusting eyes and held on to him tightly, and then looked at the angry monsters through the thin silver shield.
“I could see everything she was making my body do,” Amy said in a small, frightened voice. She squeezed her eyes shut and retched. “She killed people . . . she . . . she ate them. She did horrible, horrible things, and she taunted me, saying that she was going to go to a brothel and give my body to men . . . but she didn’t live long enough. I wanted to die—I tried to die to escape seeing any more of it,” Amy said, breaking down into sobs. “I just want to go home! I didn’t do anything wrong! I never hurt people—I thought Tanya was my friend!”
Shogun wrapped his arms around the distraught young woman. “Have you heard enough? Do you need her blood for the book? She’s an innocent—it will never burn!”
Elder Vlad’s smile faded as his eyes burned back. “Your aunt may have snatched a body and been a horror, but what has that to do with us?”
“Don’t look at him,” Sasha yelled. She got up, stood before Amy, and held out her amulet. “I block you from her mind. Amy, tell the court how you were abducted.”
“He was there,” she said with her eyes squeezed shut, pointing at Elder Vlad. “They all were . . . the monsters with the teeth. Vampires! My friends put me in a car and took me to a club, and they gave me to one of the monsters—they called him Ariel, and he brought me out in the bayou and gave me to that woman.” Amy covered her face. “Please let me go. I swear I won’t tell a soul. I have done things that I shouldn’t live—I ate human flesh, please help me . . .”
“You didn’t eat human flesh, that thing inside you did,” Shogun said, “and on my life I will get you back to your parents.”
“Do not make promises to the girl you cannot keep,” Elder Vlad said with a sneer.
“This girl is a virgin. If I strike her blood, Vlad, and she’s telling the truth, you know what will happen to your testimony, right?” the crone said with a shrug.
“There must be corroboration, because human testimony does not count . . . they are easily manipulated, paid off, tempted, and glamoured,” Elder Vlad said, sweeping around the group, his black robes billowing thick, angry plumes of sulfur. “This is why they’ve been barred from our courts.” He spun on the crone. “It was always thought that we, Vampires, would be the ones to manipulate humans to our advantage . . . but the Fae have glamour skills that match our mind-bends!”
“Then how about testimony taken by cell phone?” Sasha said, coming on the other side of the silver mail divider. She held it out to the crone. “I’m a Shadow Wolf and I can testify that there were no Fae present when I went after this kid—and if for some strange reason this doesn’t play, I’ve got a copy back at NORAD, all right?”
The crone held up her stick before Elder Vlad could speak. “Enter this into the record. Play the human contraption.”
Sasha found the video and complied, allowing everyone to see and hear Lawrence DeWitt’s confession. “They snatched the girl,” she said, pointing back toward Amy Chen, “for the sole purpose of giving her Lady Jung Suk’s body—which is a felonious offense. It’s treason, because Lady Jung Suk was wanted for other high crimes against the Fae, therefore the Vampires have mitigated any claim to justice. Plus, they killed the witness, Lawrence DeWitt. It is not a crime, per se, to kill a human in this court—but it is a crime to snuff a witness to keep him from testifying, even if he is human.”
“Prove it!” Elder Vlad said through his teeth amid hisses.
Sir Rodney tossed a small glass vial to the crone, who caught it without effort. “Sniff it. That is Vampire messenger demon, something we cannot get unless they left it behind somewhere. They left it all over the human’s apartment, Lawrence DeWitt’s—and left him all over it as well. That young man was killed by Vampires, which is proof positive.”
“Let it so be entered into the record,” the crone called out as Sasha turned her wrist over to allow the pen to slash it, then write the entry in blood.
“DeWitt was killed because he opened Ariel Beau-champ’s tomb to daylight!” Elder Vlad shouted, spittle flying past his fangs. “It had nothing to do with the obstruction of UCE justice!”
Any Chen shook her head as she kept her face buried against Shogun’s chest. “Not true, not true, the evil one said the cold lady did it . . . that is why the one who inhabited me, Lady Jung Suk, joined a coven.”
The entire bayou became silent.
“What did Lady Jung Suk say?” Elder Vlad hissed as he walked dangerously near the silver divider.
Wolves and archers put their bodies between Vlad and the young woman, and Shogun shoved her behind him.
“Tell him, Amy,” Shogun said, glar
ing at the ancient Vampire. “Make us all know what happened.”
“Lady Jung Suk, while inside my body, made me join a coven and participate in the rituals . . . she was angry . . . jealous that a cold lady—that’s what she called her, it was not a nice name . . . she said the cold blue bitch wasn’t loyal and yet she was given more respect by the Vampires than she. The queen of the Unseelie, she also called her. The evil one who took my body said the covens were beneath her when she talked to the demons in her magic room, but she needed the witches to begin to get enough power to go against the blue Faery. I don’t understand—there are so many things I don’t understand. She said the blue one didn’t even trust the Vampires because she killed some of them—the one who brought me out to the bayou, Ariel and his mates . . . she said the cold one did that to be sure the lower Vampire wouldn’t one day try to blackmail her. Lady Jung Suk said the queen did not trust the old Vampire and would never fully share power with him, because she knew he’d already betrayed her. The queen didn’t make people sick, the old Vampire did in her name, but he’d blamed the queen and she hates him for that.”
Amy wrapped her arms around her waist. “I pray that one day this all goes away from my mind.”
Sasha shook her head and chuckled. “Now we have conspiracy, Vlad . . . you stupid, old bastard . . .”
“I could’ve told you that Cerridwen has trust issues and doesn’t like loose ends,” Sir Rodney said with a cold smile. “Beautiful though she is.”
“Case dismissed,” the crone said with a grunt, slamming the book shut and crooking her finger for it and the pen to follow her. “Next time you bring a charge, Vlad, come with clean hands or do not wake me up in the middle of the night!”
“Wrap him in the mail,” Sasha said, glancing at Hunter as the angry Vampire contingent disappeared into a swirling black mist.
“This isn’t over and the night is still young,” Sir Rodney said to his men. “Bring everybody back to the sidhe, especially the girl. Put guards around her parents, and get them to go to hallowed ground until daybreak. It would be just like Vamps to seek revenge against her family for her testimony. Send advance warning to Garth—right now, we’ve got a badly injured man to heal.”