Inside Straight

by Mark Henwick

  Scott’s lips pulled back. Not quite a snarl, but close.

  However, Weaver’s comments—like the Hecate’s—appeared so sensible and logical, I felt I couldn’t argue. But they still tasted wrong. I couldn’t tell if he was lying, but I thought, like me, he was half-saying things so he wouldn’t seem to be lying.

  I changed tack.

  “Let’s talk about mutual enemies then. What’s preventing Tullah from coming back to Denver? Or more importantly, who?”

  He spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Possibly the Empire? They’ve had Adepts in the country, as you know. And however Altau managed to persuade them to leave, that’s not to say some haven’t come sneaking back. Or it could be the Hecate’s doing, distracting us here while her Adepts are hunting.”

  “Okay.” I heard what he said, but I didn’t agree; I still didn’t trust him any more than I had when I came in. “What about how we get her back? Why come to me? What do you think I can do that you can’t?”

  “Ah. Well, you see, you’re the key to it, for four reasons.” He ticked things off on his fingers. “You’re from the paranormal community, so there are no security issues involved in working with you. You have some ability with the energy yourself, which will help. Tullah’s a close friend and you’re motivated to find her. And you’re close friends with her parents as well.”

  “From what you’re hinting, there’s some kind of location magic that involves me and my friendship with Tullah?” I raised an eyebrow at Kane, but he remained expressionless. “A stronger version of things like eukori and the werewolves’ Call?”

  “Yes,” Weaver said, leaning forward. “It’s a structured working that is too complex and dangerous for shamanic magic. Using you as a focus, the community working together will enable us to project your awareness, a sense of you, like a beam of light in the darkness and tune it to Tullah, so others can’t listen in. She’ll recognize your aura and respond, although it may take a few attempts.”

  Flint and Kane had managed to find where the Northern Adept League were in RiNo, so I didn’t entirely buy this was too complex for shamanic magic. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. It did sound like it was the next level of complexity.

  “Can Tullah and I talk while using this? Or is it just a sense of my aura that she receives?”

  He shook his head. “No talking. When she responds, you’ll be able to sense a direction.” His hands swept across the desk to illustrate his words. “Then we move to one side and try again. Another reading...” He drew lines with his fingers. “And where the readings meet, there’s where she must be, trapped somehow.”

  “I understand. But you’re claiming I’m the key. There are people in the Denver Adept community that have known Tullah their whole lives, who she must know as well as she knows me, if not better.”

  He looked embarrassed. “She no longer trusts the community.” He rocked back in his chair and sighed. “This is all due to the lock and that was entirely my doing, but as I explained, I was only trying to do the responsible thing.”

  “I don’t think it’s just about the lock, Weaver. You led a revolt against her mother to take over the Denver community.”

  “No. I acted absolutely within the rules laid down by the community,” he said. “In the event of the use of lethal force by magic without prior license, any community member has all offices suspended for an enquiry. We’re all signed up for that. I just happened to be next most senior.”

  I huffed. He had an answer to everything.

  “Okay. So, your community working with me sends out a signal,” I said. “But we don’t get one back unless Tullah wants it. Have I got that part right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Tullah can tell it’s not just me, but it’s me working with you?”

  “Yeah. She’ll know it’s us.”

  Both Kane and Rita stirred for the first time since Weaver had started talking.

  When Rita stopped moving, she had such an uncanny stillness, you almost forgot she was there. Kane hadn’t so much as blinked even when Weaver made his comments about being outside of the Adept law. If they both moved like that, it was telling me Weaver’s last statement wasn’t the same level of truth or ambiguity as the other things he’d been saying.

  Interesting.

  I would have to come back to that, but while he was talking freely, I wanted more from his perspective without him understanding why I wanted it.

  If I was going to be a cog in the Denver community’s working, I’d have to lower my barriers, and as soon as I did, they’d know what kind of magic I used. They’d know the halfy ritual was based on Blood magic. I was scared they’d sense that I’d used Blood magic to win the El Paso challenge if I let them in my head.

  I was surprised Weaver hadn’t sensed it in my aura already. Or maybe he thought it was all because I’d come straight from killing my challenger, and nothing to do with the way I’d killed her.

  Would they still work with me when they knew about the Blood magic? Or would they be horrified like Flint and Kane?

  The silence had stretched on too long. Weaver was holding out for a yes.

  “So, your community is okay working with an Athanate like me?” I said instead. “You know, the same evil Athanate you say steal souls?”

  Weaver grimaced.

  “That’s old shamanic superstitious language coming through, from Adepts who’ve adopted the new methods after starting from shamanic.”

  It had been. Tullah’s mother, Mary, had used those words: that the price of Athanate long life was the souls of the people who gave their Blood.

  “Suppose you put it in your modern words then,” I said.

  Weaver leaned back and reached for the bookshelf behind him for a slim, old volume.

  Discourse on Free Will and Determinism, the title said.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Modern words,” Weaver said with a small smile, “for a discussion that’s been engaging some of the finest minds for hundreds or even thousands of years. This is Erasmus and Luther exchanging letters in the 16th century.”

  He pushed it to one side.

  “They put it all into Christian religious terms. Erasmus said humanity had the choice of good or evil, and therefore must have free will. Luther said we are either bound to the will of God, or Satan. And although neither of those two came down and said it in so many words, others have equated the free will they talked about with the soul.”

  “Athanate feed on the Blood of their kin, not their souls,” I said.

  “Indeed, that’s the accurate, observable reality, and I’m not trying to forge a metaphysical connection between Blood and soul. But tell me, what free will do kin have? Not individuals, you understand, but as a whole. How many decide they no longer want to be kin? How many would fight against what their Athanate masters wish? Over time, how many simply accept it?”

  “And that’s soul?”

  “I’m trying not to use concepts that can only lead to discussing subjective definitions of intangibles. The core problem is that the Adept community believe the Athanate, intentionally or otherwise, take the free will of their Blood donors from them.” He held up his hands. “It’s an item for much later discussion. To answer your original question, yes, we will work with you on this overwhelmingly important issue, and then, at our leisure, we can debate together how Athanate might progress without infringing the free will of their donors.”

  I took a deep breath. Damn, but he and the Hecate had awkward arguments that were difficult to counter. Still, Jen and I had talked about this, and I wasn’t buying his kin-as-slaves view. But at least I’d opened the talk up enough for my next question.

  “This beam of awareness working you say you’ll do, it’s got to be powerful. Does that mean it’s dark magic?”

  Weaver blinked and his mouth turned down. “We dislike all the old descriptions like soul and dark magic. There is the energy and it’s used in workings. It’s harder or easier. Ever
ything else is a human construction of perceptions overlaid on it.”

  My turn to blink, and I noticed Kane stirred again. My little Adept didn’t like that summary from Weaver.

  But I liked the sound of it. Magic is neutral. Everything else is up to the person or people using it. Including addictiveness, evil, soul stealing and the rest. Just human perceptions trying to make sense of what was happening, using real, tangible terms that we could understand and communicate.

  Except it didn’t feel like that. The power I’d felt and pulled through Kane, that didn’t feel like some objective, neutral power; it felt like something that wanted to be used, something with intent. Something that would whisper to me in the quiet, and if I gave it any leeway, would never release an inch of it.

  “That’s been interesting, thanks,” I said. “I did promise I would talk to the Hecate tomorrow... well, later today now. But I think we can say we’re reaching an understanding about getting Tullah back.”

  Weaver was about to object, probably about the idea of my talking to the Hecate, so I finished my drink and stood.

  To give him his due, he saw us politely to the door and offered a hand to shake. It would have been rude to refuse, but I regretted it immediately, getting another static shock like I had in the club when he’d touched my hand.

  What was it with this guy? Did he have polyester underpants or something?

  He hadn’t really given me enough reason to dislike him, but I couldn’t wait to get out.

  Chapter 29

  We left, and Kane was barely outside the house before he was complaining that Weaver had deliberately dodged the question about blood magic.

  “He’s probably going to sacrifice a goat, or something gross,” he muttered. “That man is dark as shit.”

  “You didn’t believe what he said about Tullah being able to know who’s calling?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “What about the rest of what he said?”

  Kane shrugged. “I’m not a Truth Sensor. He didn’t seem to be lying, but I don’t think he told the truth either. I think he’s a frigging genius at saying things he could halfway justify, and hiding what he doesn’t want to talk about.”

  He might not like how I’d used him, but outside of magic definitions, Kane and I agreed on things. And yet there was the nagging feeling I was slipping toward making the wrong decision about Weaver—working on my gut, when I should be thinking it through.

  Kane wasn’t quite finished. “I don’t trust him and I don’t think we should do anything that involves him. If he and his community can do this working, then so can Flint and I.”

  “Except they know what they’re doing,” I pointed out. Weaver was the head of an Adept community. They had to know more about these things than a pair of renegades.

  “So they say,” Kane retorted. “Even if they do, how do you know what they’re doing?”

  Both Rita and Scott picked up on the tension again.

  Rita gave Kane a long, cool look that should have made him more afraid than it did.

  I could shut him down. Whatever he and Amanda finally decided, at the moment, I was Mistress of his House and he was out of line.

  Scott didn’t know what to do. The conflict upset him at a level he hadn’t experienced before. I was his alpha, but both he and Kane were also Amanda’s kin, so part of Scott’s instinct was to defend him, just as another part was to defend me.

  He didn’t know how to handle it and that was making him angry.

  His heartrate surged. I took his hand again, willed him to stay calm.

  Then all of us were distracted by Keith waving urgently at us, listening to something on the comms device in his ear.

  “Trouble,” he said. “Some of the El Paso pack aren’t happy with you, and it seems they have friends in the Confederation. There are a couple of trucks heading this way.”

  “Who’s telling us?”

  “Bian.”

  What’s she doing monitoring werewolves? And how?

  Not important at the moment.

  Keith offered me his comms.

  Eww. That earbud had been in his ear.

  I put it in anyway.

  “Bian? A couple of trucks?”

  I listened to her brief rundown.

  “That doesn’t sound like the Confederation,” I said. “They go for overwhelming superiority. And as for El Paso, no way it’s the pack members who were at the factory; Alex and I would have known.”

  “Of course you would have known if they weren’t sincere, Round-eye. Alex is here at Haven with your new pack. They’ve told him Caleb and Victoria weren’t sure Felix would play straight on getting you to the factory, or honoring the challenge, so they had a team in Denver ready to track you down and pick you up. That’s the team after you.”

  Huh? Two things: Alex at Haven? And El Paso’s challenge was about me as well as position in the new super-pack?

  No time to question those as Bian went on. “Seems like El Paso were also hedging their bets by talking to some of the Wyoming werewolves. Might not be Confederation. Long story short, you have two trucks with eight or nine werewolves converging on your spot, and they aren’t going to invite you to a dance.”

  “How the hell do they know where I am?”

  “They had a drone on you. Lost you on the interstate, then picked up your parked truck from the infrared signature.”

  “Okay.” Bian was obviously hacking their cell phones. That was more indication this wasn’t a well-planned attack.

  Planned or not, it wouldn’t make any difference if we died because of it.

  I looked at Julie and Keith and the canvas bags in the back of the Hill Bitch. “We got enough to handle this?”

  They nodded.

  It worried me to have to ask Keith. He wasn’t fully fit: he still had a slight limp from being shot in LA, despite the very best of Athanate care from Yelena. But even so, three people trained by Ops 4-10, with backup, against a team of werewolves who had probably never worked or trained together?

  Unless they had something extraordinary I didn’t know about, it was no match.

  “Hold on, Round-eye, you don’t need to do this,” Bian was protesting.

  “Can’t take this back into town,” I said.

  “You could go back into Weaver’s house and wait. I’ve sent an Ops 4-10 team and a cleanup crew. They’ll be with you in about twenty minutes.”

  I laughed. “No way. Firstly, I’m not going to be obligated to Weaver and secondly, that sort of backing down would be a very bad move in front of my new pack.”

  She knew me well enough to accept that.

  And my thinking was good. Especially about the pack. Why had it seemed, just for a moment, such a sensible idea to go back and get Weaver’s help?

  Put that shit aside and concentrate.

  Old Ops 4-10 training took over.

  Five minutes later we’d split our resources between the Hill Bitch and Rita’s Dodge. We were heading back out of Erie as if we suspected nothing.

  There were headlights in the night behind us.

  “Take a right here,” I said. I was using Julie’s comms unit now and speaking to Keith, who was driving the Hill Bitch.

  We turned south, avoiding the Erie Parkway’s wide open road that would have taken us straight back to I25.

  I looked up at the sky, but I couldn’t see anything of course.

  “A strong Adept could pull that drone down,” I said to Kane.

  Could I? Could I reach up with the dark power and haul it right out of the sky?

  Would I even need to go through Kane?

  I was starting to think I wouldn’t. Something had happened to me earlier. Something had changed. The safety had come off.

  “I could,” Kane said. “But it’s easier to jam it.”

  He closed his eyes and my skin prickled as he did a casting.

  I left him to it, ignoring the tingling in my hands that wanted to show I could do it quicker, better.
/>   “Keith, we’re going to take the left turn coming up now, the dirt road, and accelerate hard. I want a lot of dust.”

  “Affirm,” Keith said.

  Seconds later, the Hill Bitch suddenly swerved and shot off down the county road, dust billowing in our headlights.

  “Go,” I said to Rita, and she took off in pursuit, her smile thin and her eyes bright. My were-cougar was enjoying this far too much.

  “Lights off,” I said.

  Bian swore quietly in my ear. “They’re about three seconds behind you, Round-eye.”

  “You can do a handbrake turn in the middle of the road, Rita?”

  She laughed.

  “One second. On my command. Keith, lights off and get back here.”

  Tricky, as I couldn’t see the Hill Bitch and I didn’t know how close we were. “Rita... now.”

  The Dodge slewed and spun around to point back the way we’d come.

  “Out,” I said to David and Kane.

  Three little seconds. Nothing but the dust we’d kicked up, already thinning.

  Two. The lights of the trucks chasing. The Hill Bitch came alongside us.

  “Full beam, and get out,” I yelled, jumping clear.

  I was relying on self-preservation and werewolf-sharp reaction times, and I wasn’t disappointed.

  The lights dipped as the front truck slammed on his brakes. Then they swerved. And the following truck hit the leading one as it also slammed on brakes that didn’t work so well on dirt. Didn’t hit hard, but enough to shove them both into the side.

  Nice of them not to hit my trucks.

  Julie fired her MP5 and the front truck’s screen shattered and fell inwards.

  I put eight quick rounds through the side windows and doors of the second truck.

  Keith hurled a flashbomb into the lead truck. Rita threw hers through the windows I’d just broken. Not lethal, but anyone alive in those trucks was going to be deaf and blind.

  A guy jumped out of the back. Shotgun lifting. Looking wildly around. I fired again. Tap, tap. Tap. He fell backwards.