The woman who had answered the door brought in a tray with tea and biscuits, set it on the table, and retreated to the door, where she stood like a guard. She didn’t look like a guard though, in her blue cotton dress with small yellow flowers. She looked like a housekeeper, although I was aware that women in such positions were often fiercely protective of their domains.
“I understand that you have some questions concerning Aleksi Nieminen,” Campbell said.
I looked to Isabella. The search was her concern, not mine.
“We are looking for him,” she said.
“That doesn’t provide me with any incentive to give you any information,” Campbell returned.
Isabella looked back to me, so I said, “A man named Vincent Crocker attempted to breach my wards and break into my property. When he was captured, the Pontificium Consilium de Artium Arcanum Mortis stepped in and demanded his release. The Federal Paranormal Crimes Unit decided to deport him and took him to Reagan International.”
I raised an eyebrow to indicate that the story was hers again.
“Crocker gave the feds the slip,” Isabella said, “and a surveillance camera caught him leaving the airport with a man who was identified as Nieminen.”
“Vincent Crocker is an employee of the Council,” Campbell said. “I was the one who interceded with your government to have him released.”
His answer seemed to irritate Isabella and Wilcox. I had to suppress a grin. Campbell would have done well negotiating with Elves.
“Have you seen the crater in Arlington?” I asked.
“I have seen pictures of it. Considering the security issues and my mobility problems, journeying to the site would be problematic.”
Looking Campbell directly in the eyes, I said, “An artifact was at the site. Its imprint was unmistakable. Also unmistakable was the smell of Vincent Crocker’s blood, which fueled the spell. Considering that he was last seen with Aleksi Nieminen, I think it is natural that a number of people wish to speak with him.”
He regarded me for some time, then asked, “What is the nature of this artifact?”
“A golden jaguar,” Isabella said, “that was removed from an ancient temple in Yucatan.”
“And you think this artifact is powerful enough to blow mile-wide holes in a city?”
“Do you know of any mages powerful enough to blow mile-wide holes in a city without some kind of augmentation or help?” I asked.
He shot me a look, then sighed and relaxed back into his chair. “No, I don’t. I take it that you don’t consider such power as being commonplace any more than I do.”
I tried to choke back the laughter that bubbled up but wasn’t successful. “No, my lord, I don’t.” Managing to regain my composure, I said, “Perhaps a full circle of battle mages might contrive such a spell, but when I stood on the edge of the crater, I could think only of a god or an archdemon. The magical residue was far beyond anything I could have imagined, and it stank of evil.”
Campbell nodded. “I don’t suppose you have any insight into the origin of this artifact?”
“Are you familiar with Mesoamerican lore?” Isabella asked.
Campbell shook his head.
“Then I will simply say that it was used in blood sacrifices to call the jaguar goddess and the bat demon in rituals to affirm the ascension of a line of mage kings. It opened portals to the upper realms.”
“And it was used for how long?”
“Several hundred years.”
“A couple of nights ago,” I said, “we interrupted Nieminen while he was cutting the heart out of a woman named Jennifer Watkins. The major demon he called was quite impressive, but fortunately we intervened before he could bind the demon. We were told that you have knowledge of him visiting a healer. We assume that was to heal a knife wound.”
For the first time Campbell showed signs of agitation. He shifted in his chair, his eyes darting from me to Isabella to Wilcox and back to me again.
“I never heard of a demon using a weapon.”
“It didn’t. I stabbed Nieminen, and then killed the demon. It was sort of a natural progression, but Nieminen escaped.”
A crashing sound from the front of the house caused everyone but Campbell to leap to their feet. But it captured even his attention. His housekeeper rushed forward, but I grabbed her arm as she passed me.
“We seem to attract demons,” I said. “If you’re not up for dealing with them by yourself, I would suggest staying here.”
I waved my arm in a wide circle and said the Word, setting a ward on the room, then turned back to Campbell. “Is there a good escape route, my lord?”
“You think you were followed here?” he asked, evidencing little alarm and no urgency.
“I would consider it a good possibility,” Isabella said. “As Kellana said, we do attract demons, which is suspicious since I hadn’t seen a demon in centuries before I started hunting for the jaguar.”
“Well, I am fairly confident they cannot get through my wards,” Campbell said. “I would suspect the noise you’re hearing is due to the demise of your vehicle.”
That wasn’t very reassuring. I couldn’t decide if I was glad we didn’t use Isabella’s rental car, or sorry that we had used mine. Dealing with the insurance company did not promise to be any fun.
A massive wave of magic swept over us, and I saw Campbell flinch. Since we weren’t all immediately incinerated, I assumed his wards were holding. How much longer they would do so was the question.
“Just for the record,” I said, “I would guess that was an enhanced attack. Are you still confident in your wards, my lord?”
Isabella looked out the windows toward the bay. “Do you have a boat?”
“There is a motor launch. Mary used it to fetch groceries just yesterday.”
Without any hesitation, Isabella grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her toward the back door. “I assume you’re Mary,” she said. “Where’s the boat?”
“I’m afraid I’m not as spry as I used to be,” Campbell said, struggling to stand.
I scooped him into my arms even as another magical blow landed, stronger than the first. Campbell’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he lost consciousness.
“I think his wards are down," I said as I followed Isabella. I hoped that Dr. Wilcox would help me cover our retreat, but he almost beat me to the door. Chivalry truly was dead among Humans.
Isabella trotted toward the boathouse, one hand wrapped around Mary’s arm, the other holding her paintball gun. I heard crashing and banging from the house behind us and increased my pace.
A demon came around the corner of the house. Both Isabella and I shot it, and it veered off howling in another direction. I saw Wilcox throw a glowing ball of energy or something at a demon coming around the house from the other direction.
We fought off three more demons while getting everyone in the boat. Mary started the engine, and we pulled away from the shore. I lay Campbell on a bunk in one of the two cabins and checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was.
Looking back toward shore, I saw Campbell’s home erupt in flames.
Chapter 17
“Where do you want me to go?” Mary asked as she steered the boat away from shore and pushed the throttle full open.
“Do you know who the healer is who treated Nieminen?” Isabella asked in answer.
The woman shrugged. “Of course. I’m the one who treated him.”
I stared at her for a minute, completely caught off guard. “Why didn’t you or Lord Campbell simply tell us that at the beginning?” I blurted out.
“We didn’t know who was hunting him or why. He told us he was trying to protect the artifact from a cabal of blood mages.”
“That seems to be the standard story,” I said with a chuckle. “I’ve used it myself, although I’m the only one I believe.”
She shot me a glance, one corner of her mouth crooked up, and I caught a twinkle in her eye.
“Is he okay?” s
he asked, looking toward the stairs down to the cabins.
“I think so. If you want to check on him, I can steer straight out into open water until you get back.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, she stood from her seat and rushed toward the stairs. I sat down and grabbed the wheel. I knew the bay was several miles wide at that point, and as long as we were headed away from the demons, I was happy.
Isabella came and sat down beside me. “Where to now?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” I said. “We were looking for Nieminen and the statue, and I think we found them.”
“Yeah. Be careful what you wish for,” she said. “Hell, Kellana, I don’t have any idea how we’re going to take the statue away from him.”
“You distract him, and while he’s killing you, I’ll sneak in and steal it.”
She grimaced, then said, “I guess I deserve that.”
Mary came back a few minutes later. “He’s sleeping normally. I don’t think the shock hurt him any, but he’s not as strong as he used to be.”
“Have you been with him a long time?” I asked.
“All my life.” She gave me a half-smile. “I’m Mary Campbell. He’s my grandfather. North or south?”
It turned out that Campbell had a slip at the Annapolis Yacht Club, so we decided to go north, figuring we would stand out less in Annapolis. I called Wen-li and asked her to meet us there. The small, picturesque city was basically split by an inlet of the bay, with a bridge connecting the two sides. I had often driven over there for a peaceful afternoon followed by a sumptuous seafood dinner.
Mary steered the boat into the harbor at Annapolis, pulled into the slip, and shut down the engine. She climbed down to the cabin to check on her grandfather while I tied the boat to the dock. I didn’t feel any magic users close, but we had been attacked so many times that I was wary.
The sound of a bullet ricocheting off the side of the boat was followed by the sound of the rifle shot. Before I met Isabella, it had been decades since anyone had shot at me, but I didn’t need any reminding to recognize the sound. There wasn’t any kind of cover on the dock, so I dove in the water. Swimming under the boat, I came up on the other side.
The first sounds I heard when my head broke the water were more gunshots coming from multiple places. Not only single shots, but the chatter of a machinegun. Something large passed over me and splashed into the water. Treading water, I pulled out my athame and waited. I was so relieved when a jaguar poked her head above the surface a few feet away from me that I wanted to cheer.
“I think we’ve been betrayed,” I said. Isabella swam over to me and licked my cheek with a very large tongue. That people with guns were firing at a boat in the middle of the city was pretty shocking.
In the previous two weeks, I’d done a lot of research on jaguars. Contrary to most cats, jaguars liked the water and were good swimmers, often taking alligators and caimans as prey.
“Can you float down under the bridge and come out on the other side?” I asked her.
She yawned and rubbed the top of her head against my arm. I took that as a yes.
“I’m going to swim under the boat and the docks,” I said. “Work my way around the far side and come out on the other side of the yacht club. We can flank them from behind.”
Another yawn, and she launched herself in the direction of the bridge. I took a deep breath and dove.
I had to come up for air three times, making sure each time that I came out under one of the docks. The first two times I surfaced, I heard gunshots, but silence greeted me the third time. By swimming under boats and docks, I was able to get around the place where I thought the shooters were stationed.
I slid out of the water and drew my sword. While I was sure the demonbane would be fatally toxic to a Human, I wasn’t sure how fast it would act. Like a fool, I had left my sleepy-gas balls at home.
A man with an automatic rifle crouched behind a piling rising above one of the side docks. I crept up behind him and lay the blade of my sword on his shoulder, the length of the blade extending in front of him where he could clearly see it. He froze in place.
“If you value your head, gently set the gun down,” I said. He complied. “Now, put your hands straight out to the side, as far from your body as you can.” Again, he complied.
“Now, listen to me very, very carefully. I am going to ask you a few questions. The first lie or refusal to answer, and I will cut off your head. Nod if you understand.” I pushed the blade into his skin enough that he started to bleed. He nodded.
“Who told you to shoot at that boat?” I asked, pushing the sword a bit deeper.
“Agent Bronski.”
“And what reason did he give you? Or are you just a mercenary?”
A slight hesitation, and I pushed a little more on the blade. I hadn’t cut anything vital, but blood poured out onto his white shirt.
“The mages responsible for Arlington are on board.”
“I see.” I drew the blade away and slammed the flat of it across the side of his head. He dropped to the ground, unconscious. Raising the sword again, I brought it down and cut the rifle in half.
I checked the man’s pockets and found credentials identifying him as an FBI agent. It was too late to call off Isabella, but on the other hand I wasn’t sure I wanted to. For all I knew, three of the people I had been on the boat with were dead. Of course, all three were mages. Even if Campbell was unable to respond, hopefully Wilcox or Mary could cast a defensive spell.
The next shooter I encountered went down without a whimper when the flat of my blade took him in the side of the head. I didn’t have much sympathy for men who would shoot without knowing who they were shooting at.
Working my way up from the dock level to the deck where the Yacht Club members had drinks on pleasant afternoons, I peeked around the corner of the building and saw Bronski standing by the railing with his back to me.
Taking out my athame, I threw it. It stuck in Bronski’s back with a solid sound, a bit softer than when I threw it at a tree. He didn’t move at first. Then he slowly turned and faced me.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rogirsdottir,” he said, raising a pistol toward me. His face betrayed no pain or any evidence that a knife was buried in his back.
The gun went off, and the bullet passed over me as I dove forward and to the side. Rolling and coming to my feet, I leapt high in the air toward him, and the next bullet passed under me. My feet landed on Bronski’s chest, and his pistol flew through the air. He landed on his back, right on the knife, cried out, and arched in pain. But when he rolled to the side, I saw that the knife had not completely penetrated.
A bullet popped, splitting the air near my head. I looked up and saw a man with a rifle aiming at me. His gun fired again, and the bullet went wide as he pitched forward with a jaguar clinging to his back.
I was very aware that Bronski was a mage, so I treated him to the flat of my blade. Bending over his unconscious body, I ripped his jacket apart to discover my athame stuck in some kind of stiff vest he was wearing.
“Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” a voice over a loudspeaker boomed out.
It had taken them long enough to get there, but police cars with flashing lights sat on the bridge. Policemen with guns and vests swarmed the area. A large spotted cat bounded past me and leaped over the railing. Without a thought, I dove after her. We hit the water, and I pulled hard to get some depth.
In the shelter of one of the docks, I rose with my face barely breaking the surface and took a deep breath, then sank and swam on. I managed to avoid detection and swam underwater past the bridge and beyond until I crawled out of the water over a hundred yards upstream. The sun was sinking low in the sky. Keeping to the shadows, I crept between two houses and out to the street.
“I hate you a lot,” I told Isabella when I found her sitting on the curb waiting for me. She and her clothes were dry.
Isabella looked me up and down. I felt like a used
dishrag, so I could imagine what I looked like, dripping water and completely bedraggled.
“It’s not something I control,” she said. “I don’t even know how it works. Hell, when I was young, I barely wore clothes at all. Who needs clothes in Yucatan? Besides, can’t you wiggle your nose or something to take care of that?”
I cast a spell that dried me for the most part and sat down beside her. I still needed to brush my hair.
“It was Bronski,” I said.
“Yeah, I saw. Why didn’t you kill him?”
“I tried, but then I decided it would be better to keep him alive and try to find out why he did it.”
“Should have killed him.”
I sighed. “You’re probably right. What do you think we should do now? Do you suppose the Campbells and Wilcox are okay?”
“They’re mages. Maybe. Those guys shot up the boat pretty good.”
“Why did we run?” I asked.
“Do you want to try and explain that we’re the good guys and the FBI are the bad guys? The cops will turn us over to Bronski in a heartbeat.”
Chapter 18
I donned a glamour so I would look like Isabella’s sister, and we hiked over to the bus station. Soon we were on our way back to DC. We spent the time on the bus with Isabella trying to teach me Spanish.
Once back in DC, we learned the metro line between Union Station and Bethesda was closed due to demons. We took the local bus to Georgetown and then walked to my house. We discovered the house was being watched when Wen-li showed up at my door less than five minutes after we arrived.
“Should I open the door?” I asked Isabella as I peered out through a gap in the curtains. “Last time didn’t work out very well.”
Looking closer, I realized that it wasn’t the creased-pantsuit, hair-and-makeup-perfect Wen-li that I had always seen. It wasn’t even the fashion-perfect tactical warrior Wen-li that had trekked to the crater with us that night. The woman I was looking at wore jeans, a t-shirt and a clip that held her hair in a messy bun. One could even say she looked furtive, hugging what little shadow fell across my front stoop.
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