by Mark Henwick
I spoke the words, and yet I still couldn’t believe it.
I’d trusted her.
“And now we have not just Weaver to worry about, but the Empire and Matlal,” Alice said.
“We had them to worry about without this,” Diana responded. “They don’t know what we were doing, but Weaver has Tullah. That’s what we have to focus on first.”
“I don’t understand how you attacked the substantiations,” Bian said.
“This power, or curse, or whatever it is.” I frowned and tried to remember exactly what I’d done. “In the spirit world, you’re connected. Not quite like I was connected to Matlal when he attacked me in the Assembly, but something like that. I just channeled it through the connection.”
If I were doing it again, I’d do it differently. I’d focus on one at a time. I’d weakened the effect by trying too much. I should have killed Weaver.
But I hadn’t. Now he had Tullah.
He’d been trying to find her because he thought she still hosted Kaothos, but he’d have realized that mistake as soon as she broke cover.
Maybe he thought he could use threats against Tullah to force us to hand Kaothos over.
I felt sick to my stomach. We couldn’t do that. Not even for Tullah.
Surely, he realized that. Yet he’d gone ahead, at some risk, and taken her.
So he must know she was a way of getting Kaothos, that there was a way of using the link between Tullah and her dragon.
“Now Weaver has them all,” I said. “Tullah, Hana and Tara.”
“You need Hana and Tara back,” Kaothos said. “In the same way I need to return to Tullah.”
“We find where he’s got Tullah, and we go there and get her back,” I said. “I don’t know how yet, but it’s all we can do. I found her once using Flint and Kane. I can find her again.”
“Except now, Weaver’s got her and he’ll know exactly what he’s got,” Bian said. “He’ll be expecting an attack.”
Kaothos hissed unhappily. “Finding her in the way you did would open a connection again. He would be waiting. He would use that connection to trace back to here.”
“Are we running scared?”
It was Alice who responded. “However it’s happened, Weaver’s much stronger than we thought originally. And...”
“And now, he’s got the Hecate on his side.”
I said the words and felt the turmoil inside me.
Bian stood away from the table, putting her hand to the ear where her tiny comm system sat.
“Are you sure?” she said, and then a moment later: “Alone?”
“Amber.” She turned back. “There’s someone to see you at the gate.”
I frowned. “Who?”
“The Hecate’s little friend, Gabrielle.”
Chapter 58
Bian wasn’t about to let her into the building, and I needed to get out of the dungeon for a while.
Still, I took my time walking to the gate. Let her sweat.
I’d grabbed Alex’s borrowed ski jacket on the way out and wrapped myself into it. Too long, too wide, but it smelled like him. I’d take that small comfort, today. I didn’t know what I was feeling: anger, pain, guilt. Confusion. All mixed up. All looking for some outlet. All urging me to do something. And the sick feeling that I knew the wrong response would make things worse.
Learn more first, I told myself.
In the late afternoon gloom, Gabrielle was standing next to a cheap rental car, dressed in her snowboarder grunge, red hair hidden under a ski cap. A couple of the guards were watching her. There were no guns aimed at her, yet, but she was sensibly keeping her hands in sight and her mouth shut.
She looked pale, and there was a determined frown creasing her forehead.
I slipped through the gate and stood in front of her, waiting.
“The others have left Denver,” she blurted out. “They wanted to go home to wait for instructions. They don’t know what’s happening.”
They don’t know. Interesting way of putting it.
“What do you think’s happening, Gabrielle?”
“I don’t know exactly.” She blinked. Her lips pressed together briefly, as if the words had to be forced out. “But I know she wouldn’t betray you.”
I looked at her. She looked right back, so I let the anger surface and the Athanate dominance come through. I got that narrow, sharp sight which told me my eyes had vamped out.
Gabrielle wasn’t Athanate, but her aura was sensitive enough to pick up Athanate signals, and she knew enough about Athanate to understand she was in danger.
But she didn’t take a backwards step.
“You mean you don’t believe she would betray me,” I said.
She swallowed to ease a dry throat and her voice came out hoarse but steady.
“You don’t believe she would either.”
I let the words fall. Didn’t show I’d even heard them.
She still didn’t back down; neither did she weaken the effect of her words by saying anything else.
Impressive.
I’d already respected her on the basis that she’d obviously taken a senior position in a powerful community of Adepts while still very young.
But is that all there is to it?
I let a whole minute pass in our staring match before I spoke.
“I think we should take a stroll.” I reached back and pulled my hoodie out to keep the wind off my neck, zipped up the jacket, put my hands in the pockets.
One of the guards moved forward as if to accompany us.
“Alone.”
“Ma’am.” He stepped back. One of Bian’s kin. He’d call her as soon as my back was turned. Bian hadn’t been happy for me to come out and talk to Gabrielle alone. I wasn’t sure why I insisted in the first place. It felt right.
Learn more. With Bian out here, Gabrielle might stop talking.
We had five minutes before Bian came out, I guessed.
I took Gabrielle’s elbow to guide her down the road, and we’d walked fifty yards before I spoke again.
“That’s quite a statement—that I don’t believe she betrayed me.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I? You don’t believe she’s betrayed you.”
“You’re not right. You’re not wrong. I’m at the point where I can’t decide. The thing is, I know what I saw. I’m wondering what you think you know happened.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, but you’re still convinced she didn’t betray us?”
“I said ‘you’. I meant you alone. Yes. I’m convinced.”
Absolute, utter belief in her voice.
I changed tack slightly. “There’s a difference between betraying me and betraying everyone else?” I waved at Haven.
She stared off across snowbound gardens, not meeting my eye.
“Maybe.”
I said nothing, and let the silence pressure her into justifying herself.
“I mean, what if Diana doesn’t want Kaothos to go back to Tullah?”
I snorted, even while I was thinking yeah, but really, what if? Who wouldn’t want that power?
“What if Flint and Kane aren’t what they seem?” she went on. “They turn up here and you know practically nothing about them—”
“I know more about them than I know about you.” I stopped her. “So spare me the paranoia and tell me why you think I’m on the side of the angels.”
“Gwen said to trust you,” she said. “I trust her.”
Again, that absolute confidence.
“Okay. So what else did... Gwen say?”
If I couldn’t even decide what to call her, I was really mixed up.
“That you’d messed up with your search,” Gabrielle said, “and everyone knew where Tullah was now. So she had—”
“That’s odd, ’cause y’know, Yelena told me, when she called the apartment in RiNo, they said the Hecate had walked out without talking to anyone. And that was just after we finished our search.
”
Gabrielle twitched. Unlike the leader of her community, she had twitches and tells that I could read. I’d just caught a lie. By omission maybe, but still...
She squared her shoulders. “Gwen spoke to me before she left. She said not to tell the others.”
“She doesn’t trust them?”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t time to ask.”
I could see the frustration in the way her jaw clenched. She had to know that her story was sounding paper-thin and yet she was determined to deliver it.
I could hear the crunch of Bian’s footsteps in the snow, coming out of the gate behind us.
“So I’m to be trusted,” I said. “Even though I messed up and let other people find where Tullah was. And Gwen has had to go out and fix things? Is that what she told you?”
“Kind of.”
“So if she’s got it all in hand, why do you need to come here and talk to me?”
“Because she said she couldn’t do it all on her own. She needs you.”
More twitches, more tells. A little doubt for a change.
“To do what?” I asked.
Gabrielle swallowed, took a deep breath. “To get Diana close enough to Tullah so that Kaothos can make the jump.”
“Well, that answers the question we were just discussing down in the dungeon.” Bian spoke from behind us.
“What?” Gabrielle looked confused.
“We were wondering how kidnapping Tullah could get Weaver access to Kaothos. What plan he’d come up with for getting the dragon. Now we have our answer. You come here and tell Amber to take Diana to Weaver.”
“No, it’s not like that!” Gabrielle said. “I’m not on his side. Neither is Gwen.”
“Really? Let’s see,” Bian said. “The Hecate gets our attention by kidnapping Amber and letting her go, then gets an invitation to visit Manassah, because all she wants is to talk, apparently. So reasonable. But at that point Amber has some crisis with a working the Hecate claims comes from Weaver and that only she can help with, so we all feel indebted to her. Indebted so much that Diana invites her out to Haven. But once she’s seen the setup here, the Hecate knows she can’t persuade Diana and Kaothos to leave the dungeon, can’t kidnap her, so she comes up with another way—use Amber to take Kaothos directly to Weaver.”
Gabrielle’s mouth opened and closed. Equal parts shock and outrage.
“But how to persuade Amber to do that?” Bian went on. “The Hecate can’t, not once she’s had to go and rescue Weaver while helping him to kidnap Tullah. But luckily for her she has someone who might be able to convince us. Someone young, bright and unconventional and loyal to the Hecate. Exactly the sort of person who would appeal to us, and who just happens to have been introduced to us.”
“I’m not lying to you!” Gabrielle shouted.
“Of course not. It would be dangerous to lie to a roomful of Athanate and Adepts. Anyway, the Hecate would never let the rest of her coven in on her secret. In fact, she’d leave them with the absolute conviction that we’re on the same side. Especially the person she’d selected to appeal to us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Gabrielle said, but for the first time a real hint of doubt had crept into her voice.
“Is it?” Bian raised her eyebrows. “What was the decision process the Hecate went through before she brought you along to Manassah that first visit? Seniority? Capability?”
Bian began crowding Gabrielle, making her step back.
“I specialize in substantiations,” Gabrielle said.
“You’re the best she has for that?”
Gabrielle’s mouth snapped shut. Clearly she wasn’t.
And Bian was right about another thing. We’d all taken a liking to Gabrielle. Even Bian. I didn’t want the young woman to be part of any betrayal. I wanted to believe her.
“Hold it,” I said, pushing Bian back. “This is all too complex. No one plans like that. Too many unknowns. Too many variables.”
“You’re not going to take Diana out of that dungeon,” Bian said, her tone flat and final.
“I’m not suggesting I would.”
Of course, Kaothos could reach out of the dungeon, whatever the rest of them thought. She’d spoken to me just before our peyote-fueled spirit walk.
I’d keep that quiet for the moment. If Kaothos wasn’t talking about it, neither was I.
“I’m not lying to you,” Gabrielle said. She was almost in tears. There was little of the brash and confident young Adept now. “You can check. Like you do with kin.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Gabrielle.” I let my fangs show briefly and saw the flicker of shock in her eyes. “I don’t think you’re lying to us, but Bian has a point. If the Hecate wanted to trick us, she wouldn’t send anyone who actually knew her real plans. She’d send you in blind.”
Gabrielle just shook her head and looked down.
Bian put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle. Amber’s right. All this magic stuff has made me paranoid. Maybe there’s another explanation. Let’s walk back, and you tell me exactly what the Hecate said to you.”
I glared at Bian. Now she wanted me to be the bad cop.
We turned and began the walk while Gabrielle talked hesitantly.
“It was early morning and I was asleep. She woke me. She said you’d tried spirit walking to find Tullah. You’d used some kind of hallucinogenic inhibition suppressant. I mean, we know that kind of thing works, but it’s not controllable. It’s like you’re lighting bonfires in the spirit world.” She sneaked a glance at me, genuine worry on her face. “Not what you personally should have been playing with, Amber. Not while you were recovering from Weaver’s working.”
I shrugged as if I didn’t care. Hard choices.
And yet, we’d screwed up because of what I’d agreed to do.
Maybe Tullah would have been safe for a while longer, high in the San Juan, hidden in the mill by her spells.
Gabrielle went on. “Gwen said Weaver was alert. Expecting us to do something. But it was worse than that; both Matlal and the Empire were watching as well. It was just because of that kind of thing that we said yesterday that we had to do a substantiation. You can keep that quieter, if you cut it right down to essentials.”
“Nice of you to tell us all that,” I said, but didn’t press it.
“We didn’t believe Flint and Kane would try a crazy thing like a spirit walk with drugs.” She huffed. “We’ve been tracking them for ages and they’d never done anything like that before. Well, anyway, you did. They heard. Weaver, Matlal, the Empire. They were all watching, waiting for you to find something. In fact, I think they were holding back because they all thought this had to be a distraction.”
Note to self: now that you know how, set up a distraction next time.
Aloud I said: “But Matlal and the Empire of Heaven didn’t know what—”
“They know there’s a dragon spirit,” Gabrielle said. “They know where you are. They’d know we were here as well. They’d know about Weaver. They’d put it all together.”
“I thought you had gone back to plan and rest,” Bian said. “How was it that Gwen knew what was going on in the spirit world?”
“We’d done the planning. We were resting. Gwen is...” Gabrielle stumbled before going on. “She’s different. Stronger. Her spirit guide is stronger, more independent.”
“A bit like a dragon,” I said.
“What is her spirit guide?” Bian said. “Why can’t anyone else see it?”
“I don’t know,” Gabrielle replied.
Truth again, as far as I could tell.
“Okay, so somehow her spirit guide was alerted to what was going on, heard the noise of our spirit walk, saw that others were waiting in ambush, and woke the Hecate,” Bian said. “And then what?”
“Gwen said she had to do something quickly. That Weaver was the least worst option. It was very dangerous. She made her own substantiation. She used it to go to him.”
“What about helping us?”
Gabrielle was hesitant.
“I think she thought she couldn’t,” she said slowly. “I mean, it would have taken too long to get the rest of our coven to create a robust substantiation. She would be alone, at the limit of her reach, and she’d had almost no time to prepare. She’s strong, but if she’d attacked all three of them alone, to defend you, she’d have failed.”
Fair point.
“So you’re saying the reason she made a deal with Weaver and helped him against Matlal and the Empire was that we’d have a better chance to rescue Tullah?”
“Yes. If either of those other two got her, you’d never get her back. We think Weaver’s not so far away and he’s not as strong as them.”
“But he beat their attack.”
With my help.
I’d keep that quiet.
“Two of them. At the limit of their range, and with help from Gwen.”
It was consistent at least, even if neither Bian nor I could really judge the truth of her claims about the balance of strengths for substantiations in the spirit world.
I believed Gabrielle. But then I’d believed Gwen. Now, I wasn’t quite ready to finally decide on the Hecate. She didn’t make it easy, with the shapeshifting face and mixed mannerisms. One minute, a sweet face but disturbingly, no tells, then the next minute, that ice-bitch look and all predator body language. And keeping her spirit guide hidden, even from her own coven.
“Lay it out. How is she suggesting we get Tullah back?” I said as we got back to the gate.
Gabrielle licked her lips nervously.
“Weaver can’t build a shield around Tullah strong enough to stop Kaothos under every circumstance. But Kaothos is still growing. She can’t reach all the way through the spirit world or across the physical world to Tullah. You need to get her up close in this world.”
“Where Weaver might have all sorts of traps set up that we don’t understand and can’t even sense.” Bian wasn’t buying.
“Of course he’ll be setting up traps, but you have to trust me,” Gabrielle said. “Get her close enough, and Kaothos can make Weaver’s own traps eat him. Literally.”
“How close?”
“I don’t really know.” She looked down miserably. “I don’t think anyone does. Kaothos herself will only know when she’s there.”