by Amir Lane
“Where else should they hold illegal werewolf fights? A Walmart parking lot?” Rowan said.
I shrugged. That was fair. Still, I wished people would get more creative with these things. I was sick of abandoned warehouses.
There were already two detectives from Organized Crime and a handful of uniformed officers there. I pat the holster at my side, more out of habit than anything. Although I preferred not to use it, I liked knowing my Smith & Wesson was in place. Rowan had his in his hand, though he used it about as much as I did.
The plan was fairly routine. The uniformed officers and Organized Crime detectives would go in and round up as many people as they could while Rowan and I worked on containment. Two of us to keep in about forty people, including a possible dozen werewolves and whatever else was in there. There was absolutely nothing about this I would do differently, but it wasn’t my bust. Rowan went around back with half the officers while I went around front with the rest.
“Don’t you need your gun?” the detective with me asked in a condescending tone that made me almost roll my eyes.
“Not usually,” I said.
I’d been using a Glock until an officer in Calgary accidentally shot himself in the leg with his. After that, I switched to a Smith & Wesson. Rowan was still rubbing it in. The Smith & Wesson had always been his weapon of choice. I was still getting used to it. Not that this officer needed to know that. Besides, I had something better at my disposal. I flexed my fingers. The heat that ran through my hands brought me more comfort than the gun ever would.
The detective counted down on her fingers and kicked the warehouse door in. The stench of sweat and blood hit my nose, a sharp contrast with the air outside.
“Toronto Police! Nobody move!” Her voice boomed through the warehouse with a force that almost made my legs give out and brought several of the men closest to us to their knees.
In a perfect world, everyone would surrender quietly and we could call it a day. But the world was far from perfect. That was why I was here.
Most of the people inside the warehouse didn't go down so easily. I didn’t expect them to. Nothing was ever that easy. Most people bolted for the exits, trying to evade the cops. I threw my hand up. The familiar purple lettering snaked up my arm, warming my skin as I threw up a barrier against the door I had just come through. Hopefully nobody would reach it. I needed all the focus I could get to contain the wolves. Though I hated abandoning the barrier to weave through the crowd toward the informal ring, it would take too much energy to weave a trail through the entire warehouse. It wouldn’t stay up long without me close to hold it up. The occasional bump against me that came from nowhere told me people were, in fact, reaching the door. I would put money on the fact that some idiot officer was throwing people against it, completely unaware that I could feel it.
A fully naked man lunged at me, reminding me once again why I was a lesbian. His body twisted midair, his face elongating and his fingernails turning into claws. I threw up another barrier, this one smaller and more localized than the one by the door, meant only to protect the part of me the werewolf was aiming for. He hit the barrier, and I dug my heels into the floor to keep in place. His claws raked over the barrier. Red lines rose on my arm.
“A little help!” I shouted.
An officer was kind enough to wrench the werewolf’s arms behind his back. The werewolf, who couldn’t have been much older than myself, shifted back to a fully human form and thrashed against the officer.
“This is police brutality!” he shouted. “I’ll sue!”
“Are you kidding me?” I muttered.
I touched at the red lines on my skin. They weren’t nearly as bad as they would have been if he’d actually gotten his claws into me, but it still hurt. If the officer shoved him harder than entirely necessary, I didn’t say anything about it.
By now, most of the action was dying down. These things always went much more quickly than they did in movies. It wasn’t a big, drawn-out thing, and it wasn’t the magical firefight I’d been led to believe I would be seeing in the Police Academy. Maybe it was different for parahumans like Rowan, but it generally took a few seconds to work up a spell, longer if someone wasn’t trained right. That meant magical firefights just didn’t happen all that often.
I hadn’t been trained in magic at all. Not officially, at least. My parents hadn’t wanted me to be. Even though this gift had saved my life, it could have also put me in danger. Whether or not it was safe to do what people here called magic was largely dependent on the militant group that had the most power, which changed from week to week. I’d practiced in secret as much as I could, and then openly when I moved to Toronto from Lebanon for university. By now, I was pretty damn good with the barriers, but the suppression limited my skill. I should have been able to do so much more. This was all I had, and I made the most of it.
By the time I shoved my way to the centre of the warehouse, all but three of the werewolves were contained. It was a good thing, too. I was drenched in sweat from holding up a barrier so far away from me. The werewolf by my feet was wrapped in the long branches I was now quite familiar with. I dropped the barrier at the door, and I used the extra energy to put up another one around the remaining werewolves. Two were in wolf form, both bigger than I expected wolves to be, and covered in black fur. The third was still in a human shape, but brandishing a knife.
This barrier was much thicker than the first one to account for the wolves throwing themselves at it. Each hit bruised my shoulder. I ground my teeth together and held both hands against it. It wasn’t enough to stop my feet from sliding across the concrete floor. The back of my shirt felt damp and my hair was starting to stick to my face. Even though I wasn’t in bad shape, I wasn’t much of a match for two adrenaline-filled werewolves. The one with the knife slashed at the barrier, and tiny papercuts appeared on my arms.
“Ow! Hey, stop that!”
If only I could do that electrified barrier thing I’d been told my grandmother could do. That would be handy right about now.
“Faiz!”
At the sound of Rowan’s in-case-I-don’t-have-time-for-both-syllables nickname for me, I allowed a small hole in the barrier behind the wolves. It was only just large enough for him to push a hand forward through it. More of those malleable branches extended from his fingers like ropes to wrap around the first wolf, then the second. That left the guy with the knife running for Rowan.
In the span of a single breath, I dropped the barrier and ran at the man. I threw all my 160-pounds at him. He let out a startled sound as we fell onto the ground. He writhed beneath me as I held him down, fishing for my cuffs in my back pocket. I yanked him to his feet, cuffs securely in place around his wrists, and threw him at the nearest officer. I officially hated werewolves.
“You all right?” Rowan asked.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak without giving away how out of breath I was. He slipped my arm around his shoulders and helped me outside. It was easy given we were about the same height. Pressed this close against him, I could smell sweat and root beer. It was not a great combination.
The cool air felt good against my skin. I closed my eyes, enjoying the late-winter air. It had been a colder week than any other we’d had this February, and I was glad for it now. We made our way back to our car, and I grabbed my jacket with the intention of calling Sabine to let her know we were done. I had a missed call from Oscar.
While Rowan chatted with one of the detectives, I listened to the message.
“Hey, Arshad, it’s Oscar. You told me to call you if I came across anything weird. Well… I did some poking around for you. There’s a faerie girl at Toronto General who was attacked the other day. Her wings were cut out and so was her gallbladder or pancreas or something. Dunno how she survived but—”
He went on to give me details I could barely hear over the sound of my heart racing. A phoenix, a siren, and now a faerie. Oscar had a saying, the same one he left me with at the end of his message:
<
br /> “Once is an occurrence, twice is a coincidence, three is a pattern.”
I swallowed and looked over at Rowan chatting with the detectives. His eyes met mine and his smiled dropped.
We had a pattern.
Chapter Five
“I still don’t get why eyes,” Rowan said as we walked through the halls of Toronto General.
It had taken a lot of work to convince the nurse to let us see Cerys Rees without flashing our badges. We were both a little paranoid about investigating in another precinct.
I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting Sabine or one of the officers in this precinct to jump out and demand to know what we were doing here. Nobody did, and we made it to the girl’s room without interruption.
To say she didn’t look good would be putting it lightly. Her skin was a sickly grey colour where it wasn’t covered in dark bruises. Even under the sheets, she looked too long and thin with bones protruding against her skin, literally like a twig. Where was her family? The nurse said we were the first ones to visit despite the girl having woken up a few days ago. Though she’d been brought in as a Jane Doe, she was able to identify herself, even if she couldn’t give the police any details as to who had attacked her. I didn’t know why I thought she would talk to us. Optimism, maybe. The police report on the attack was flimsy at best. The idiots in charge hadn’t even talked to the eyewitnesses who’d saved the girl. We didn’t have anything else to go on unless I could get her to remember something.
At first, it looked like she was asleep, probably sedated. We moved closer to her, and when we were within arm’s reach, she lashed out. I moved faster than Rowan, and she caught her nails on his skin, shrieking. With her other hand, she held a pen out like a weapon.
“Woah, relax! We’re cops!” he shouted. He pulled his badge from his belt and showed it to her. There was no point keeping the secret now. “See? We’re not going to hurt you.”
I moved toward the door. It didn’t sound like anyone was coming. Unless she needed medical attention, I didn’t want to risk it. I pressed a hand to the wall, my rings interrupting the contact between my skin and the plaster. Arabic script burned through my skin. It took longer than I would have liked to frame the entire room. The purple shimmer didn’t quite reach the edges, aside from the spot I touched, and it moved with me as I approached again. I would have preferred being able to leave it in place, but it was easier to keep it up if I was in contact with it. I was still tired from the werewolf raid.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed hoarsely, no real volume to it.
“I’m not touching you! Not touching you, see?”
Though Rowan stepped back, holding his hands up, Cerys continued brandishing her pen. He looked at me wide-eyed and unsure of what to do. I felt the same.
“Cerys—” I began.
“Keep him away from me!”
Him? Was she— She wasn’t afraid of us, she was afraid of Rowan.
I nodded for Rowan to step back, and he was more than quick to tuck himself into the far corner of the room to make space for me at Cerys’ side. The barrier rippled as he passed through he part I thinned out for him, making me shudder. Cerys didn’t appear to notice it. She pulled her knees up and tucked herself into a ball. How could she move like that after such an attack? Her gown fell over a shoulder, revealing more bruises. I pulled the chair up to her side. When I spoke, my voice was low and gentle, the way my mom’s was whenever I’d woken up from nightmares growing up.
“Cerys, we’re not here to hurt you. I promise you, nobody is going to hurt you. My name is Fairuz Arshad. My friend there is Rowan Oak. We’re with the police. We just want to know what happened to you, sweetie.”
Her green cat’s eyes regarded me with suspicion, her sharp teeth clenched together. I tried not to worry about her biting me as I offered out my hand.
“I already talked to cops,” she snapped.
“I know. I’m hoping you’ll talk to us, too.”
She looked at Rowan without turning her head. I could practically feel him stiffening behind me.
“You're one of those protection witches, right? I’ll talk to you,” she said. “Make him leave.”
I turned to Rowan with an apologetic smile. He shrugged and stepped out of the room.
“Why don't you tell me what happened?”
The lack of effort in investigating this attack worried me. While I liked to give the benefit of the doubt as much as the next person, I didn’t quite buy Rowan’s explanation that the officers might have just been lazy.
Cerys regarded me suspiciously for a moment. Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused, maybe unfocused enough that she couldn’t actually see the soundproofing around us. What were they giving her for the pain?
“I don't really know,” she admitted after a long moment. “I was walking home. Someone tied all these ropes around me and pulled me back. I remember it hurting like I was being stabbed.”
She held an arm out to me. The lines around her bicep looked like rope burn with sharp punctures every inch or so. The punctures were inflamed, the edges circled with black rings. My stomach sank. I'd seen this once before, in the picture of the siren kid Oscar had sent me.
“I was cutting through the Arena Gardens. I remember because I kept thinking that walking through the park was stupid, but I didn’t want to go all the way around to Shuter Street. I don't know what happened after that. I think I blacked out.”
I was pretty sure she blacked out, too, and I was pretty sure I knew why. There had been no drugs found in her system, though that wasn’t to say none had been used. Even if, God forbid, she had been awake, pain like that couldn’t be handled by the conscious mind. As for what happened next, that went without saying.
“Can you tell me how many people attacked you?” I asked.
Her face screwed up in thought. How did she go without cutting herself with those teeth?
“Two, I think. Maybe three. Definitely at least two.” She nodded. “The one who grabbed me and the other guy.”
“Are you sure they were men? What else can you tell me about them? Anything will help.”
“The one who grabbed me smelled like your friend. The other one was like a shadow.”
That settled it. One of her attackers was definitely a dryad. It was the shadow thing that threw me. What was like a shadow?
Oh…
A shadow had been crouching over the phoenix when Hanna Kasim, the witness, had found him. Maybe she hadn’t been imagining things after all.
I prodded as gently as I could for more information, but she insisted she didn't remember anything else. Maybe Indira could have helped. Alkonosts worked with memories, but we would have to get a warrant and, while I was sure I could get one signed, I didn't want anyone involved if it wasn't completely necessary. Besides, the poor girl had been through more than enough. She didn't need to remember more. I let her use my phone to call her roommate, and I waited with her until the girl arrived.
Rowan was waiting for me when I stepped out of the room. I didn't know if ‘still as a tree’ was an expression people used, but if it was, it would have applied to him perfectly. I pulled down the barrier around myself. Exhaustion washed over me. I could have gone for another coffee. Perhaps sensing the shift in magic, he opened his eyes and raised an eyebrow.
“Get anything?” he asked.
“She was attacked by a dryad. One with thorns.”
When Rowan frowned, one of his brows creased more than the other. If he'd had plastic surgery, wouldn't it be symmetrical? I described the marks on Cerys’ body and the crease deepened.
“Could be a nightshade. Maybe a crown of thorns, but they don’t do so good up here with all the cold. I’ll ask around, see who knows what.”
Dryads didn’t come in one kind. There were more sub-species than I could wrap my head around.
“She said the other man was… like a shadow.”
“Shadow?” he repeated.
“A shadow was over the pho
enix, too. I didn’t think it meant anything at the time, but now…”
Rowan nodded. “I’ll see what I can find out about the dryad, you take the shadow and the witnesses. You’re better with witnesses.”
Though I knew it made the most sense, it felt like he had the easier job. That wasn’t fair of me. Rowan knew more about dryads than I ever would, and he also knew more dryads than I did. Those connections could come in handy, and I might be able to get a description of the attackers from the witnesses. All I had to do was keep anyone from finding out.
Mama always said the worst thing a person could do was lie. I thought stabbing someone with thorns and taking their organs placed a little higher on the list.
Brett Lindon Al-Amin and Smith Summers, the witnesses, lived in a house near Ryerson University. I had a missed message from my mom that I listened to as I got off the bus and walked down the street to the address written on my palm. As much as I hated it, it was sometimes easier to take public transportation than to drive.
“Hi, habibi, it's Mama,” her voice said through the speaker. “How come you’re not answering when I call? Do you have a day for the wedding yet? Gramma and the cousins will need to know so they can buy plane tickets. It'll be more expensive if they have to buy last minute. Okay, baba says hello. Call please. Bye-bye.”
I felt bad, but not bad enough to call her back right away. Mostly because Ariadne and I weren't actually engaged yet. Neither of us saw the point of rushing. We weren’t even living together yet. One of us would propose when the time was right. Until then, we would have to live with people always assuming we were just those girls who called their female friends ‘girlfriend.’ I never understood that. People never called their male friends ‘boyfriend.’
It wasn't even that I didn’t want to marry her. God knew I did. There were just way too many factors to consider and, though she wouldn't admit it, Ariadne was still hoping her family would get over their problems with her dating girls. My parents did their best to make up for it, but I knew it wasn't the same.