by Chloe Neill
The chill seemed to push back the worst of it. After a minute, I opened my eyes again.
“Hi,” Liam said. “Bummer we weren’t dating when I moved into the town house. You could have hauled Eleanor’s couch upstairs.”
“I’m not available for rent,” I said weakly, but appreciated the stab at humor.
“Damn right you aren’t,” he said, then put a hand at the back of my neck, pressed his forehead to mine. “You did good.”
“Joanne?”
“Darby’s checking on her, and Containment’s on the way. You can probably hear the sirens.”
I couldn’t hear much of anything over the roaring in my ears, but didn’t tell him that. It would only have made him worry, and I was pretty sure the effect would fade.
I breathed through pursed lips, and after a few seconds felt better enough to take a drink of water.
“I think she’ll hold,” Darby said, when Gavin had taken over for her. “You saved her,” she said to me. “I’d give you a Good Samaritan badge if I had one.”
“We should get badges or patches or something,” I said. “For honorable civilian work during an asshole of a war.”
“Gavin gets one in flirting,” Darby said, glancing back at him. “Joanne’s at least thirty years older than him.”
Liam snorted. “Gavin’s like the post office. Snow’s not going to keep them from delivering the mail, and a little thing like age isn’t going to keep him from checking out women. He’s an equal-opportunity flirt.”
Darby smiled. I might have still been addled from the whiplash, but I thought I saw something sweet in that smile. And . . . interested.
“You said you were running when you found her?” Liam asked.
She nodded. “It’s the only thing that keeps me sane these days. Or as close as I’m likely to get. Then they came.”
“You saw the Seelies?”
She nodded again. “I was running, and I’ve said that twice now.” She shook her head, as if clearing it. “Sorry. I’m a little off my game. I heard this whirring, turned around, and they were there.” She looked up, pointed at the sky. “In a circle, and the wind picked up. It felt cyclonic, but I couldn’t actually see a tornado. Of course, there was no rain or debris field yet, and that’s generally the visible portion of the—” She cut herself off with a raised hand. “Off my game and rambling. I ducked into an outbuilding,” she said, gesturing to the mostly still-standing remains of a shed across the street. “Figured it would keep me hidden and safe from debris, and if the whole thing fell down, it wouldn’t pin me. Joanne wasn’t so lucky.”
She looked back at the street, the houses mostly leveled, the street mostly impassable. “They’ll destroy us if they can.”
I looked at her, found nothing angry or sad in her expression. Just a kind of dark understanding.
“Yeah,” I said. “They’ll tear the city apart one block at a time.” I looked back at Liam. “Containment has to stop this. They have to.”
“We’ll talk to Gunnar,” Liam said. Because what else could we do?
Wings fluttered above us and Malachi touched down. The look on his face—anger tinged with sadness—said enough.
“How bad?” Liam asked.
“Nearly a square mile,” Malachi said. “So much destruction.”
“Why?” Darby asked. “Why are they doing this? Are they so angry at us? At Containment? At humans?”
“They already told us,” Gavin said, putting a supportive hand at her back. “Judgment.”
I caught a glimpse of something red, and thought at first a Seelie had stayed behind, either to cause more trouble or to watch us take all this in. But it wasn’t a person. It was paint.
I stepped carefully across broken paneling and drywall that crumbled beneath my feet to the only standing wall of a former Creole cottage. It was salmon pink, the color deep and saturated.
A long stripe of deep crimson had been painted down the middle, the same color that stained the Seelies’ faces. And beside the mark was a message: CALLYTH was written in large letters in the same wine-dark stain.
“They left a calling card,” I yelled, and waited while they picked their way over detritus and joined me to stare at the wall. Silence fell as we looked at the mark. At the threat. At, maybe, a reason for the judgment the Seelies wanted to pass.
Anger was a wave that flashed over me, hot as the sun-drenched asphalt. We’d worked for years to keep New Orleans running. To survive the first war, the aftermath, the second. We weren’t the aggressors; they were.
“Who or what is ‘Callyth’?” Gavin asked.
Liam shook his head, glanced at Malachi. “Mean anything to you?”
There was a crease between Malachi’s brows as he stared at the wall, tried to puzzle out its meaning. “No.”
“I guess we’d better find out,” Liam said.
A man came toward us, skin dark, patch across his left eye, dressed in jeans and a Saints T-shirt.
Tony Mercier was a New Orleans legend. He was Big Chief of the Vanguard, his crew of Mardi Gras Indians. He’d lost his eye in the Second Battle of New Orleans.
“Chief,” Liam said. “You all right?”
Tony nodded, ran a hand over his dark, cropped hair, which was flecked with bits of drywall or insulation, as he looked at the wall.
“My house is two blocks upriver,” he said. “Went to school, met my wife, raised four children in this neighborhood.”
Past-tense verbs, because his wife, Clarice, had been killed during the war, along with his oldest son. His other three children had left the Zone.
“Heard the noise, came over.” He scanned the horizon. “Not many left in Tremé. I’d counted that as a loss until today. Today, maybe something to be grateful for. Most of these houses were empty, but I don’t imagine that was the point.” He paused. “They’re trying to erase us.”
He shook his head ruefully at the wall, then moved back to the street, slammed the tip of his cane against the ground.
“We will not walk away!” he yelled, voice echoing through the silence. “We will not cede this ground to you who would take it from us. We will not.”
* * *
• • •
Some didn’t have the choice to walk away. Tony had found one more injured human, and two who hadn’t survived the attack.
Containment arrived with Burke, but without Gunnar, who the agents told us was at the Cabildo, coordinating the citywide search for the Seelies.
“Did you engage them?” Burke asked as other agents worked to treat Joanne and began searching the other houses for survivors. Or those who literally hadn’t made it out alive.
“Unfortunately not,” I said, and was disappointed, because I’d had enough of Seelie arrogance, and was eager for a little violence of my own.
“We hit the edge of it,” Liam said. “Turned the corner and drove right into it. Wind pushed the truck around, and then it was moving downriver. Darby saw them.”
“I’ll talk to her,” he said, and glanced back at me. “Y’all might want to talk to the medics. Looks like you got roughed up a little.”
“We’ll hold,” I said, and looked back at Joanne. “They should focus on her.”
“I’m going to do that, too,” Burke said. “You know anything about Callyth?”
“We don’t,” Liam said. “But that seems to be the key to this. Or at least one of them.”
“In addition to the general sociopathy,” Burke added.
“In addition,” Liam agreed.
“Take care,” Burke said. “I’m going to check on everyone else.”
“My turn to say let’s go,” Liam said, and rubbed the back of my neck. “Some AC and water will do you good. You look disgusting.” His face was marked with dirt and dripping with sweat. I assumed I looked about the same.
�
��I feel disgusting,” I said, and used the underside hem of my T-shirt to wipe the sweat from my face. “I need a weeklong shower.”
“Earmuffs,” Gavin said, turning for his borrowed jeep. “I don’t need to hear about your sex games.”
Liam thumped him on the ear. “Keep your mind out of the gutter, mon frère.”
“We live in the Zone,” Gavin said, looking back at the street. “Life is much more fun with my head in the gutter.”
* * *
• • •
We gave Scarlet a once-over, found no flat tires or leaking fluids. The windshield was cracked mostly on the passenger side, so she was still drivable, and we made it back to the Quarter without incident.
“I’m going to take a look at her,” Liam said, when we reached the store and I climbed out. “Just in case.”
I handed him the keys. “I’m going to take a shower.” I didn’t want to be grimy anymore or wait until we were back at the garage.
“I’m going back to the thing we’re calling a bar,” Gavin said from the jeep. “In case there’s still Wild Turkey. Although I don’t think there’s enough booze in the Zone right now to make me feel better.”
“Be careful,” Liam said.
Gavin grumbled, but didn’t argue. While Liam checked out the truck, I went inside, found a scattering of Containment agents in the store and Tadji at the counter. She walked around it to me.
“Thank God,” she said. “I was worried. We heard the noise, the sirens. Knew they’d taken out part of Tremé, but we didn’t get any details about who was involved.”
Guilt piled onto exhaustion and irritation.
“We’re fine.”
“You’re bleeding.” She frowned at my forehead. “Go sit down in the back, and I’ll get you a towel, a bandage.”
I didn’t want a towel or a bandage. I did want to sit down, to be quiet, so I went into the back of the store, sat down at the table.
Tadji was back in a moment with a damp towel and a first-aid kit. She put the kit on the table, reached out with the damp towel toward my forehead.
“Stop,” I said, and moved back out of reach. “I don’t need to be babied. I just need some time to breathe.”
Slowly, Tadji drew back her hand, but I could feel her eyes boring into me. And she didn’t need to say a thing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so pissed off. So fucking angry, and it’s not at you. I’m just—you’re here.” I put my elbows on the table, my head in my hands, tried to rub the headache out of my skull. And gave myself three breaths before I looked up at her again.
I expected to see the same irritation I’d given her. But she looked worried, not angry.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “It was bad, Tadji. It was . . . so bad.”
She put the cloth on the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down beside me. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. A chunk of Tremé, completely wiped out. We managed to get a woman out who was pinned, but her house is gone. Tony was helping, and he’s wiped out. We’re all just wiped out. And when we have the energy, really, really pissed off.”
“Being here,” she said, lifting her gaze to the agents who talked in small clusters in other parts of the store, “living in war, can make you hard. I figure that’s good and necessary in some ways. You need it to get through the day, to keep moving, to take care of yourself if you end up cornered.” She looked back at me. “But being resilient isn’t far from being callous, from becoming cruel. That’s the part we have to learn to balance. That’s the thing we have to protect against. Because, after all this, if we survive and the Paras are gone, but we’ve destroyed ourselves? Maybe the cost was too high.”
She’d put it into words, this nameless dread I’d been feeling—or at least the part that wasn’t just reflecting the Seelies’ magic. It was the questions we’d asked ourselves a thousand times before, and would probably keep asking: When had we given too much to this city? At what point had we become sacrifices to what we were trying to save?
“We’re doing the right thing,” she said, lifting the cloth again. “So buck up, put on your big-girl panties, and let me clean that wound.”
I could hardly argue with that.
* * *
• • •
I took a shower and balanced my magic, then came down again for water and a protein bar—and to let Tadji bandage my head.
As the day progressed, we waited for news from Containment about the Seelies, additional attacks, additional wounded.
And we weren’t the only ones on edge. Rain fell, hours passed, and the conversations in the store grew louder—fueled by fear, loathing, and caffeine. And it didn’t take long for the already-short fuse to reach the point of detonation.
A wooden chair hit the floor, and all eyes turned to two soldiers who stood at opposite sides of the table.
“The fuck do you know, Claude?” A soldier threw a hand of cards on the table. “You sit in an office all goddamn day.”
The soldier across from him, who I assumed was Claude, pointed a finger, his body nearly vibrating with anger. “You think that makes me less than you? That I contribute less? You wouldn’t have ammunition if it wasn’t for me. You wouldn’t have gas in that jeep you drive around town, and let’s not pretend you’ve ever even fired on a Para, you asshole.”
“Fuck you,” the other one said. “This is all Containment’s fault. All of it. Because paper pushers need a war to justify their existence.”
They began inching around the table toward each other.
“Hey,” Liam said, striding toward them. “Take a breath and calm down, or take this shit outside. No fighting in here.”
“Come at me, asshole,” Claude said, ignoring him.
“You think you could take me? You think sitting at a desk all day makes you strong?”
They were nearly in chest-bumping range when Liam reached them, put hands on their chests, and pushed them back. “You think this shit helps? You think infighting is going to serve us during war?”
The first guy turned his furious gaze on Liam. “You think we’re going to win this fucking war? That there’s a chance we save this city? There’s no chance. There’s no fucking point.”
“So you want to just turn over your city to them?” Liam looked at each of them. “You’re going to just give up? Is that what Containment taught you? Is that what war taught you? That humans should just be cowards and let Seelies roll over us?”
The first guy muttered something under his breath and looked away.
“Yeah, look away,” Liam said. “Look away and pretend you don’t know what they did, or what they’re doing.” He looked over the crowd in the store.
“Never forget,” he said. “War is a bitch. But we aren’t fighting because it’s fun. If you wanted peace, you shouldn’t have joined Containment.” He took a step closer. “Now, either soldier up, sit down, and drink your goddamned coffee, or get the hell out of this store. Claire and Tadji don’t have time for the bullshit.”
The soldier’s mouth worked angrily, but he didn’t speak. He sat down, put his hands around his coffee mug, and brooded into it.
“That guy is so hot,” came the whisper from somewhere behind me.
I didn’t correct her, since I didn’t disagree. “That was a powerful speech,” I said, when I’d followed Liam into the kitchen.
“They come into the Zone thinking they’re going to have an adventure.” He lifted his water glass. “Welcome to adventure. Everything’s hot but the coffee, and Paras constantly want to kill you.”
“Hey, I made that coffee, and it was plenty warm. Until the power went off.”
“Until the power went off,” he said with a smile.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Tadji said, stepping into the doorway, “but this just arrived.” She handed over a white card.
“We
are getting a lot of correspondence lately,” I said, and opened it, scanned it. “Darby wants us to meet her at eight tomorrow at the museum. She said she may have found something. Something that could help bring down the Seelies.”
“Then I know where we’ll be at eight a.m.,” Liam said.
Another thing I didn’t disagree with.
* * *
• • •
Liam and I let Tadji and Burke close up the store and headed back to the gas station, raided the cache of chocolate Eleanor had sent, and climbed onto the building’s roof with a half bottle of wine and a military-surplus sleeping bag.
Steam rose from the roof as we flipped rainwater off the tarp, spread out the sleeping bag, and sat down.
While Liam pulled the cork on the wine, I slid a finger beneath the chocolate’s foil wrapper and was transported to my childhood, when the act of slipping chocolate from its prison was a reverent act of anticipation. Of the nearly-there. And then the bar, with its perfect squares and imprinted letters, was ready for devouring.
Liam hadn’t bothered with glasses; that was just more to carry. I broke off a piece of chocolate, offered it to him. He took a drink of wine from the bottle, and then looked at me.
“You probably shouldn’t drink if you have a concussion.”
“Not a concussion,” I said, and pointed to the bandage on my forehead, then rubbed the back of my neck. “Just a cut and some whiplash. Give me the wine or I will take it from you.”
His eyes widened with interest. “Will you?”
“With magic,” I said dryly. “No touching required.”
“Disappointing,” he said, and passed over the bottle. “The wine tastes like . . .” He smacked his lips, trying to decide. “What does it taste like?”
I took a sip, grimaced. “Like someone who’d never tasted a strawberry tried to imagine the flavor.”
“And added eau de red plastic.”
“With hints of gasoline,” I said, and took a bite of the chocolate to get rid of the aftertaste.
The chocolate was a little waxy, and marked with white crystals that meant it had gotten too warm or cold during its journey to New Orleans. But it was delicious, and the simple reminder of life before the war nearly brought tears to my eyes.