“I don’t know, being a hunter sounds pretty cool…”
Draven scowled.
“Relax!” I said, putting my hands up, “I get it, you’re the nice ones. You’re still assholes, though. You kidnapped me and threatened me with death, I’m not going to forget that.”
“I don’t expect you to. But for now, I need you to tell me more about the stone.”
We continued walking down the hall. “Abvat and I have a history…” I said, “I was the one who found him when he fell through the rifts. I took care of him, but he screwed me over, and then I didn’t see him again for years. Until recently. He told me he had a job for me, told me he could pay, so I took it. All I had to do was break into an antique’s store and steal that stone from one of the display cabinets and he’d pay me ten thousand dollars. I know, I’m an asshole for stealing, but Fate and I really needed the money. We were used to always being tired, and broke, and she was sick all the time… I wanted comfort for us.”
“Why did he ask you to do it?”
“I’m having a hard time figuring that out myself. Taking it was so easy, I thought there had to be a catch, but I didn’t know what it was. That made me nervous, so I didn’t give it to him straight away. That night I didn’t sleep well. I know I dreamt of something that really terrified me. I woke up sweating, shaking, but I couldn’t remember the dream. I just had a gut feeling I shouldn’t give it to him. That’s when I decided to find a way to hide it. The rest, I’ve told you.”
“Perhaps he couldn’t handle the stone, maybe he worried touching it could kill him.”
“Kill him? How?”
“Naga magic is dark, and much of the power their species has they stole from other species long ago. An Aevian is pure, our kind has made bountiful pacts with the Gods. I have heard rumors that only a pure spirit can handle a singing stone.”
“Okay, that may be the case, but he was able to handle it tonight… although—”
“Although?”
“His hand was… fiery… when he asked me to give it to him, like he’d used some kind of magic before I handed it to him.”
“Defensive magic... that means he may know how to use it. Quickly, what do you know of him? Where might he go?”
“Where? To the city. Why?”
Draven stopped and took my shoulders in his hands. “Where in the city?” he asked, more forcefully.
“Brooklyn. There’s a place where he likes to hang out, one I know to avoid.”
“Tell me where this place is. I have to retrieve the stone.”
“Look, no offence to you—I mean, you’re scary and everything—, but you’re going to get yourself totally murdered if you go near Abvat. He hangs out with some of the shiftiest people I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.”
“That doesn’t scare me, but we’re running out of time. I need to know where he is.”
“You aren’t listening…” a thought struck me, then, and I cut myself off. “Wait… I’ll do you one better, I’ll take you to him.”
“Under no circumstances will I allow a prospect to accompany me on this mission. I cannot.”
“Well, then I hate to break it to you, but the stone’s as good as his.”
He moved in further, his face so close to mine I could feel his warm breath on the tip of my nose. “Tell me where he is!”
“Let me go with you. If you go on your own, or you take one of your Order buddies, you’re going to get killed—and even if you don’t, Abvat will scatter the moment he sees you and you’ll lose the stone.”
“Do you mean to tell me he won’t recognize you? You aren’t exactly forgetful.”
Was that a compliment? “I know someone who can make me look a little different. More importantly, I know how to talk to the people he surrounds himself with. You… don’t. Let me go with you, I’ll find Abvat, get him talking, and then you can come in when I give you the signal.”
Draven stared at me, his black eyes glinting against the slight glow from my hair and the candles around us. Now that there was a pause in our conversation, I could hear my own heart beating rapidly inside of my chest. I hadn’t been aware of it until now, the fluttering, the light headedness. I licked my lips, an unconscious reaction to my proximity to him.
“Fine,” he grunted, “But only if you can make yourself look different.”
A pause. “I have a condition.”
“Condition?”
“After this is done, you let Fate and I go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“I don’t know. Away. Home. We had a life in New York before you showed up, one we were happy with. Your team of medics clearly aren’t equipped to deal with whatever illness she has. If you and your Order won’t let me look after her, if you insist on separating us and threatening to kill us… I can’t live like that, and neither can she. If I help you find Abvat and the stone, you will let us go back to our lives, and you won’t ever kidnap us again.”
Draven shook his head slowly. “What you’re asking for breaks many of our rules.”
“I’ve already told you, your rules are stupid. So, what’s it gonna be?”
His eyebrows met in the middle, and his jaw clenched. “I could kill you if you refuse to tell me what I need to know.”
“But you won’t, because then you’ll never find Abvat before he does whatever he wants to do with that stone.”
“Do you know what your problem is? You fail to see the bigger picture. If you go back out there, you will be on your own when the others come to find you.”
“And your problem is you think everyone’s going to do what you want them to do because you’re big and scary and you think you know what’s best.”
“I do know what’s best. If I didn’t, this Order wouldn’t exist—none of us would be alive right now. What you’re suggesting is insane.”
“I think it’s pretty sane, actually. Right now, it’s between staying here and Fate definitely dies if I don’t make it through your trials alive, or go back out there and maybe we’ll both die if we run into some asshole with an agenda. I’ll take the second option, and I know Fate would, too.”
I hadn’t noticed until I caught the slow flicker of blue light in his eyes, but my pendant was glowing again. My hand went up to my chest to hide the glow. Draven shut his eyes. “Deal,” he said, defeated.
I shrugged out of his hold and extended my hand. Draven took it and shook, he then turned around and started walking. “Where are you going?” I called out.
“To assemble my team. Come with me if you want to be on it.”
I followed him like a shadow, sticking closely to him and remaining quiet while he summoned Aaryn, Aisling, and Crag and explained what was going to happen. They then asked me where they’d find Abvat, and knowing Draven was a man of his word and wouldn’t suddenly hang me out to dry after I told him where Abvat would be, I decided to come clean.
“There’s a neighborhood in Brooklyn where a lot of the local strange goes,” I said.
“Strange?” Aisling asked.
“It’s slang on the streets. It means anyone who isn’t human. All kinds of stuff goes down there; fights, gambling, hooking, partying, but mostly it’s a place for business. It’s where money changes hands. Abvat has a hidey hole there somewhere, though I don’t exactly know where it is.”
“I thought you knew where he was,” Draven said.
“I’m getting to that. Abvat is a gambler, so the best place to start is gonna be at Niko’s—it’s an underground casino where strange from both sides of the rift hang out.”
“How do you know so much of this place?” Aaryn asked.
I shrugged. “I’ve lived rough for ten years. You get to know the neighborhoods you live near like the back of your hand, especially if there’s a place in your backyard where the shiftiest people around come to move money and make deals.”
“Very well,” Draven said, “You will go in and look for Abvat. When you find him, you will give us the signal and Aary
n and I will go in and get him. If there is a side street, or a backdoor, Crag will cover it. Aisling will stay in the skies, watching from above for signs of trouble or to keep track of him if he flees.”
“How am I supposed to give you a signal?” I asked, “You took my phone.”
“Allow me,” he said, approaching.
Aaryn put something in his hand as he walked up to me, then slowly, carefully, he fixed what looked like a small pin the shape of a single wing to the collar of my jumpsuit. His hand lingered against my collarbone as he smoothed the pin with his thumb until my ears popped and started ringing. The sound remained for a couple of seconds, then it faded away to nothing. Draven, staring at me, drew his hand away from my collar and stepped back.
“Can you hear me?” Aaryn asked. I turned my attention to her, but she wasn’t there anymore; she was at the other end of the hallway. She waved.
“I can,” I said.
“Good. Then it’s working.”
“What’s working?”
“A way for all of us to communicate.”
“We all have one,” Aisling said, pointing at the collar of her shirt. “Now we can keep in touch while we’re outside.”
“We should get moving as quickly as possible,” Draven said, “Aaryn, do you have the orb?”
As she returned to where we were all gathered, Aaryn flicked her wrist and produced a blue portal orb that shone and crackled with magic. “Where are we going?” she asked, directing the question at me.
“Well,” I said, “Before I can get into Niko’s, I need to make a pit stop.”
“Pit stop?” Aaryn asked.
“Relax. We’ll be in the neighborhood. Just… don’t freak out about her, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s a native…”
“I can’t make any promises,” Draven said. “Give her the address.”
I did as Draven asked, giving Aaryn the directions to a street-corner close enough to where we would find the person whose help I needed. Aaryn shut her eyes, turned her chin up, and then let the orb float into the space between us. A moment later, the orb expanded to engulf us all, and then we were through it, on our way to find Bastet.
Travel through Aaryn’s portal was a lot more comfortable this time than it had been the first two times. My stomach lurched again as the magic sucked me through, but I only had to blink and then I was in the city, breathing that rough city air and listening to the sounds of cars honking, tires hissing along the street. A thick mantle of clouds hung in the air and the floor I was standing on was wet, which told me it had rained not long ago and probably would again.
Aaryn had deposited us on the rooftop of an apartment building overlooking the exact street corner I’d asked her to bring us to. I walked over to the edge and looked down on the blinking traffic lights, umbrellas, the display window lights. It was strange how being here, in this environment, felt more like home than the Black Fortress did, even if there was a much stronger connection to my world there than there was here.
“Are we at the right place?” Aaryn asked, joining me on the building’s edge.
“Yes,” I said, “But I’m going to need all of you guys to wait up here.”
“Up here? Why?”
“The person I’m going to talk to is probably gonna get a little skittish if she sees me roll up with an entourage.”
“Where is she?” Draven asked. Even though the sky was cloudy, the sun’s brilliance had been reduced to little more than a suggestion of light on the other side of that grey mantle, I could tell both he and Aisling were uncomfortable out here. Aisling had opened the door into the building and was waiting just inside, watching us. Draven, meanwhile, had his hand held parallel to his eyebrows to keep the sun away from his eyes.
“She’s usually down there,” I said, pointing at a tight alley between the two buildings across the street. “See that cat? It’s a sentry.”
“Sentry… like a lookout?” Crag asked.
“Those cats look after her as much as she looks after the cats. I have to go in alone.”
“Very well,” Draven said, “But do it quickly. We’ll be watching from up here.”
I nodded and hurried to the gantry on the side of the building which I rushed down as fast as I could, taking the stairs two at a time until I reached the bottom. Already one of Bastet’s cats had spotted me, I could see it watching me from a dumpster a few feet away from where I’d landed. That meant she knew I was here.
Ignoring the cat, I stepped out of the alley and into the street. Nobody looked at me, nobody even noticed me as I hurried past cars and weaved around people. I was invisible to them as long as I didn’t draw attention to myself, and that was something which would come in handy in the future, I could tell.
I reached the edge of the alley where I’d find Bastet, and now there wasn’t only one cat sitting just inside, but eight. They all looked up at me, not moving, not even blinking, their tails gently swishing. Something was wrong. They were stopping me from going through. This hadn’t happened the last time I was here. I took a step toward the alley, but one of the cats—a black one sitting on a trash can—hissed and swiped at me.
I took that as firm confirmation of my suspicions.
“I need to see her,” I said, “I’m not here to cause any trouble.”
The cats didn’t respond. Did they know I’d brought the Order with me? Of course they did. The cats knew everything that happened in this neighborhood. They were everywhere, they lived everywhere, and they saw everything, which meant they’d seen us arrive through the portal even if the humans on the street hadn’t. Crap.
“Please,” I said, “It’s urgent, and it’s just me right now.”
Still nothing from the cats.
“I’ll handle this,” came a confident, if little full of itself, voice, one I’d come to recognize intimately.
There he was, Rey, sauntering with his tail up toward the cats guarding the mouth of the alley. “How the hell did you get here?” I asked.
“Same way you did. I snuck into your portal.”
“You what?”
“Quiet, the master is at work.”
I watched Rey move closer to the cats, then sit down in front of them. No words were exchanged—duh, cats couldn’t talk—but Rey started grooming one of his back legs, and then one of the other cats joined him, followed by another, and another. Soon, all the cats were grooming themselves in some way; one licked its own chest, while another nibbled at its front nails. One of them, though, the black one that had hissed and taken a swipe at me, had its ears pulled back and was growling at Rey from atop the trash can.
I had no idea what was going on or how valuable my input was. Knowing I was being watched, I turned my head over my shoulder and scanned the rooftops for Aaryn, who was staring at me. “What’s happening?” she asked, her voice also broadcasting directly into my brain.
I shrugged at her. “I don’t know,” I said, but when I looked back at the cats, they were all scattering, slowly slinking back into dark corners under dumpsters, behind trash cans, and up the sides of gantries.
“All done,” Rey said.
“What did you do?”
Rey waltzed into the alley, flashing his butthole at me. “I just reiterated your intent. You don’t want to hurt her, you only want to talk. She’s agreed to it.”
“Why would Bastet trust your word over mine?” I asked, following him into the alley.
“Simple. I’m a cat.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m more of a cat than you are.”
The cat had a point, so I decided to shut up. There were easily a hundred more of them assembled around Bastet’s apartment. They were sitting on walls, perched on ledges, on the gantry, staring at me from the edge of the roof high above. I couldn’t help but feel a little unnerved as I climbed the ladder, and then the stairs, to the first-floor window which led to Bastet’s front room. I mean, cats had sharp claws and they cou
ld do serious work on a person if they got close enough—and that was just one cat. This was an army.
“Hello?” I called out as I reached the window.
“Seline!” came Bastet’s voice shooting out from inside, a high-pitched squeal like I was someone she hadn’t heard from in years. “Come in, silly goose, you’ll catch your death out there.”
I clambered through the front room window, avoiding the cats that didn’t move out of the way for me, and then righted myself once I’d gotten inside. Bastet was in the kitchen, dutifully opening several cans of tuna all lined up along the counter. When she’d opened the last one, she dropped the can opener in the sink and turned to look at me, but she wasn’t smiling, she was pouting.
“I’m so sorry about what happened just now,” she said, “But my babies tell me you brought the fuzz with you, and naturally I thought you were here to try and ruffle my fur. It’s not true, is it?”
Bastet was a stunning woman with delicate, yet razor-sharp facial features, a skin-tone that put her birthplace somewhere in the middle-east, and a wardrobe selection that’d make her fit in perfectly with the Nirvana groupies of the nineties. Her hair was a wavy black mess, her eyes were smoky and dark, and she was wearing a black fishnet top over a red bra and the tiniest jean shorts you could find.
“That’s not the reason I’m here,” I said, “I promise.”
“Really? Well that’s delicious news, kitty-cat.” She hopped over to me and gave me a big hug. “Because you know what I’d do to you if you messed with my zen, right?” she whispered into my ear.
“You can trust me.”
She pulled away, smiling at me, then her eyes turned to my outfit. “That… is a seriously sexy get-up, but it needs a few tears, a little character. Don’t you think?”
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