by Mark Henwick
Well, it seemed Christmas had brought me a couple of unexpected presents.
Savannah finished showing Flint and Kane as much as she was willing to show them of her ink, and returned to snuggle beside David in a way that reassured me that problem was solved. I should have seen they were made for each other.
And Claude was chatting animatedly to Amanda, one leg tucked under him and body turned toward her. Body language that I could read across the room. No one, not even Pia, had managed to get him to relax like that.
I caught a little raised eyebrow from Amanda to me. I guessed it was a polite query to ask if there was any reason she shouldn’t be interested in him as kin or katikia, but I wasn’t complaining—one less to worry about.
Having unbound humans in my House was a worry. Bian had made it very clear that House Farrell needed to look secure to her paranoid Athanate mind. She meant with all the members bound closely to the House. If Savannah was David’s kin and Amanda took Claude, that left me with only two remaining concerns, the girls that I’d rescued from LA: Tove and Tamanny.
And if I got them sorted out, there was Kath, who I thought would need Athanate healing.
I need time and peace and quiet.
Tove was, as Yelena had said, a mess. She had to get her head straight and her addiction controlled before I faced her with any kind of a choice about becoming part of my House.
Tamanny was just too young, not to mention vulnerable after her experiences at the hands of Forsythe. Part of rescuing her in LA meant she’d become aware of the paranormal. She certainly would notice what went on here in Manassah if she stayed.
Not secure, Bian would say.
How much time would she give me to fix that?
Tove was sitting to one side, against the wall. Nick Grey, the skinwalker, was talking to her, radiating calmness in the way he did. It seemed to be helping, but her eyes were watchful and she had to be wondering what kind of place she’d landed in.
I wondered how long it would take for the magic of my Athanate House to work its way into her, giving her the same feeling of security and comfort that everyone else was getting.
Problems everywhere, inside and outside of my House. Big, difficult, frustrating problems. Small, complex, irritating problems.
What wouldn’t I give for a magic wand to wave which would make everything better?
“Your hair!” Pia interrupted my fantasy, moving behind me with a brush. “Honestly, Amber, it’s as if you don’t look in the mirror.”
She was right: I didn’t like mirrors anymore, but I didn’t reply to her. It was easier to sit back and let her rhythmic brushing and the positive vibes from my House seep into my subconscious.
Like Yelena, I was Carpathian Athanate—uncommon outside of the domain of Carpathia. One of the benefits it gave me was a longer reach for my eukori and so, as I relaxed, my eukori unwound and touched on everyone in Manassah.
Which was when I found that linking eukori with Flint and Kane allowed me to use their Adept senses and auras.
And how weird was that...
Chapter 12
I rush upwards. It’s like an express version of one those glass-walled elevators, without the glass. I can see the Rockies, the high plains. Further. There’s a storm brewing to the west. It’s feeling its way through the mountains like a blind man. Clouds begin to slither through the high passes like spirit serpents. Lightning lashes the valleys. It stings like a whip. Winds batter at me. The scent of snow assaults my nose.
And beneath me, in Denver, clustered around Manassah: eyes. Dozens of eyes. Hundreds. Watching...
I snapped back so quickly, my heart stuttered.
“Sorry, Pia.”
I jumped up and in three steps I was beside Flint and Kane, down on the floor with them, taking their hands to strengthen the eukori connection.
“Tell me you know what that is out there,” I hissed.
My voice was wrong; it came out as slow as cold molasses.
Kane shook his head. His hair was still tangled in Dante’s hands and the movement pulled it through like silk running through her fingers.
All so slowly.
Around us, my House stirred, aware that something was happening.
Vera came across and took Tamanny to help in the kitchen, before she noticed.
Dominé went and spoke to Tove, casually positioning herself to block Tove’s view of us.
My House, operating smoothly, supporting me. I felt a surge of pride.
As Flint, Kane and I reconnected our auras, I wanted to rise again, to look outside, look harder, to see what was threatening us, but Flint spoke with a voice that pulsed with power: “Not that way,” he said. “This way.”
And he pulled us down. Down, down, down.
Our mixture of eukori and auras darkened to the gray of slate, of graphite, and still darker, until the only thing that separated the color from the blackness of space was a hint of movement like a river at midnight.
We sank into the earth beneath Manassah, into the welcoming arms of great sacred shapes, too big to comprehend. Shapes that waited silently in the cold and dark.
Our hearts do not beat, our lungs do not breathe, our limbs do not move. We become as slow as the passing of years, almost crushed by the weight of the land upon us, seeping up through the layers of time, and a century passes before we can reach up with jagged, broken arms into the sky. Now our breath becomes the rush of wind. Now our hearts beat to the pull of seasons.
In our reaching arms there are sparks and sharp sounds. Quick movement.
“Crows,” says Flint, his voice become the creak of branches stirring.
He has named them, and now I see them as he does. All that flickering motion; each flash a single bird, a single heartbeat in a feathered chest, shivering warmth in the cold air.
It seems a lifetime ago, but I remember Felix Larimer, the Denver alpha, talking to me in the woods above his ranch, about spies and the abilities of some Adepts: “They can see through animals’ eyes,” he’d said, “listen with their ears. They like crows for it.”
Adepts are watching Manassah, watching us, using a flock of damned crows. And we are watching them back, somehow, through the spirits of trees.
Kane laughs his Coyote-crazy laughter, echoing in the earthy darkness, and Flint the Raven reaches up to gentle the alarm of his little feathered cousins.
“If you can, don’t scare them off,” I say. “Just make them look the other way. I’d prefer whoever’s watching us doesn’t know we know.”
Kane laughs all the more. “Done,” he says.
And then we were rising again, like ghosts seeping back into our bodies, sitting on the floor in the living room.
A strange mixture of reactions were passing over the faces of Flint and Kane. They enjoyed this sort of thing, it pumped them up, but the first signs of unease showed.
Amanda was kneeling beside us, looked concerned.
“Nothing to worry about,” I said. I think. “But your kin and I need to talk privately.”
I didn’t want to ruin the mood of the day for the rest of my House.
Flint and Kane seemed to understand and they got up quickly, disappointing Jofranka and Dante.
“I promise I’ll let them come back,” I said to the girls as the boys put their shirts back on. “I just need them for a short while.”
I let Amanda come as well. Nick looked across at me from the corner where he sat with Tove. I nodded my head to call him, too. Pia, Yelena and the others I signaled to stay.
We went into the sunroom and I closed the doors behind us.
The contrast between Nick and the youngsters couldn’t have been more dramatic. They all shared bronze hints to their skin, chiseled cheeks and the sleek hair of their Native American heritage, but Nick carried an aura of calmness and dignity about him, from his unhurried movements to the weight of his stare. He was centered.
Flint and Kane were manic fireworks in comparison.
I was glad N
ick was here, and waited until he sat before I spoke to the two young Adepts. “What did we just do?”
Flint couldn’t keep the laughter from bubbling up. “We just kicked some Denver Adept ass,” he said.
“Without them even knowing we did it,” Kane clarified.
I’d been synced with them; I’d tasted how much they enjoyed getting one over on Adepts. I began to suspect it wasn’t any wonder they’d been chased out of the north. The mystery was probably why it hadn’t happened earlier.
“What did you do?” I said.
Flint kept laughing. “Just made their connection to the crows more efficient, so they’ll be maxed out with irrelevant stuff.”
“I predict migraines,” Kane said, and the pair of them high-fived.
The touch of steel in Amanda’s voice brought them back down to earth. “Could you start at the beginning, please,” she said.
They sobered. A touch.
“The Denver coven are watching us,” Kane began. “They can spirit link into animals like crows and pick up impressions of what the crows see and hear. We’d never have noticed, but Amber’s eukori...”
“Just gave us a boost,” Flint said. “It was awesome! Flew us right out of the house and up into the sky.”
“They’re talking about aural projection,” Nick clarified for Amanda. “Spirit walking.”
“That was the first attempt,” I said. “Am I right, after that, we did some kind of a spirit link into trees?”
“Yeah,” Kane said.
“It’s not the type of magic the modern covens understand,” Flint added and stopped thoughtfully. “Well, at least not the Northern Adept League.”
“You don’t sound so sure it was the Denver Adepts linking into the crows,” I said.
Flint shrugged. “Communities have styles. You get a feeling from the way they weave their magic, the traces they leave. This wasn’t Wendy Witch, or any of her Northern Adept League group.”
“So, possibly the Denver community. Possibly someone else entirely.”
They sobered a bit more. They got points for realizing they’d made a huge assumption.
“Can you find out?” I asked.
I needed to know who was spying on me, especially if it wasn’t the Denver community. Adept communities aren’t really territorial. It could be anyone spying on me for all sorts of reasons. The Empire of Heaven, for instance. I shivered.
We can’t let them find out about Kaothos.
“Amber.” Nick raised a hand in warning and both the Adepts kept silent. There was a way he had, just speaking my name, that gathered attention and held it.
“Yes,” he went on. “You could find out, but you really don’t want to open a channel and look. Something like that can be used in both directions.”
Flint and Kane looked at Nick with renewed interest. Other than a brief introduction, they really didn’t know much about Nick, and I was betting they’d pigeonholed him as just another shifter. In fact the skinwalker was as much an Adept as he was a shifter.
Still, they were nothing if not confident in their abilities and they seemed inclined to argue the point.
“But the power boost we got from Amber—” Kane began.
“Is dangerous in itself,” Nick interrupted.
I stopped them. This was something I wanted to talk about, just not today.
“If we do nothing more now, is there an obvious and immediate danger?” I asked.
Eyes met. Small shrugs, shaking of heads.
“No, not immediate,” Nick spoke for all of them. “I can set up a working that will sense any change outside.”
“Good. Then we won’t do anything else yet. We’ll go back and enjoy relaxing with the rest of the House. You three,” I nodded at the Adepts and Nick, “will compare notes about what you know and what we might be able to do about the danger from Adept communities. Keep in mind, neither Tove nor Tamanny are part of the House yet. Then tomorrow, you come speak to me, and I have a lot of questions.”
I was buzzing with a thirst to know about magic—though some questions they probably couldn’t answer—but I wanted Christmas Day to feel as normal as possible for the House, under the circumstances.
They filed out, leaving me with Amanda.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “They’re impulsive. All too eager to make fools of stuffy Adept communities, without any regard for the situation. You really don’t need that added to the mix of what’s going on.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. I took the opportunity of inhaling a lungful of her marque and savoring the anticipation of biting. “But if you think I regret bringing you into my House, you’re completely wrong.”
I was being truthful, and not just because I found her marque attractive. My gut instinct was insistent that I needed Adepts as well as shifters and Athanate and humans: I wanted a coven as well as a pack, all neatly inside my Athanate House.
Was this remotely normal for Athanate? No, I guessed not, but then I wasn’t normal either: a three-way hybrid: an Athanate, a Were and an Adept.
I seemed to have little natural magical ability other than helping Were cubs through their first shift. And today’s surprise: that I could hitch onto Flint and Kane’s auras and spirit walk. But with Kaothos back with Tullah, and Nick, Flint and Kane in my House, surely I would be able to find my lost spirit guide and Tara.
Then maybe that idle fantasy of fixing things magically wouldn’t be so idle.
I growled, just thinking about it.
Amanda looked away and flushed.
My newest Athanate was still not quite sure of how my House ran. I thought she might be worried I was growling at her. I touched her to reassure; my hand on her arm, my eukori brushing hers.
“So, it looks as if Claude might end up as your kin,” I said, changing the subject. “From what I could see earlier. He seems fascinated by you.”
“I wanted to ask you about that...”
“I’m delighted,” I said. “What about the other side of the coin? Are you all right with the attention your kin are getting?”
“Yes,” she said. But up close, the image of cast-iron confidence was less convincing, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to tease her.
“And you personally? You’re going to be popular, you know. You’re working a lot with Pia, are you sharing her bed?”
“No, I’m not.” She was still avoiding eye contact. “I... prefer my own bed.”
I let a hint of chill come into my voice. “Is that going to be a problem, then?”
“No, Mistress.”
But now she looked back at me and saw I was barely able to keep a straight face.
“Ohhh! You got me. You...”
“Bitch,” I supplied. “Yeah, got you good.” I mimed marking up a score. “Listen, Amanda, House rules. No one gets to order you into bed, not even me. Blood, on the other hand...”
“I’m happy with that,” she said. “The sooner the better.”
“No argument from me. As soon as it’s quieter.”
She paused, considering what she was about to say.
“You know, I’m happier than I ever imagined I could be in this situation,” she said. “I understand that it’s dangerous in Denver and I’ve no fighting experience, so I’m not much use to you in that way. I do have other skills you need.”
“Like?”
She cleared her throat, seeming unsure how I would take what she had to say. “My job back in Detroit... well, I was... I am a psychoanalyst. I can be useful. I can probably help you with that warped sense of humor you’re struggling with, for instance.”
“Bitch!”
We laughed and she marked her score on our imaginary board.
“But seriously,” she said. “I think Tove and Tamanny could use someone to talk to who isn’t quite so scary.”
She smiled to soften it, but she was right. Whether I was scary or not, I sensed both the girls would find her much easier to talk to than me.
And Kath, I thought.
But one little step at a time.
“You’re on.”
We linked arms and returned to the party in the main living room.
But despite the face I put on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that events had started to slide out of control. Those crows hadn’t been there yesterday.
What had changed?
Tullah had stopped hiding and started to make a run for home.
Wherever it was she’d been hiding, it had been good enough to defeat the searches of even the Empire of Heaven’s elite Adepts. But now she was moving and it would be harder to hide.
So, they knew she was moving. They hadn’t found her, but they had the next best thing; they knew where she was heading for and that was almost as good.
And ‘they’ included the Hecate and her Northern Adept League coven.
Sneaking Tullah past them and back to Kaothos had to be our top priority.
The only good thing about it all was that I wasn’t going to get conflicting demands on my time from Athanate and werewolf hierarchies.
On the Athanate side, Skylur was all caught up in whatever urgent situations had taken him so abruptly to New York. Probably high level Emergence issues. Nothing to do with me in the immediate sense.
On the werewolf side, Felix and Cameron were caught up in becoming mated, consolidating their packs into a single entity under their joint leadership and then extending the association of the League of Southern Packs. They’d be far too busy to rattle my cage, and there was no other halfy ritual scheduled.
Which left me, Bian, Diana, our Houses and Haven’s ex-Ops 4-10 troops to concentrate on the Adept issues and getting Tullah home.
No need to panic. It’s manageable.
Climb a big mountain one step at a time.
Ha!
Chapter 13
The next day, there was still no call from Tullah, and no response from Matt when David messaged him repeatedly.