A voice rang out, even over the blasts of wind. Father Columban, speaking from the church steps, a booming chant cast against the storm, definitely in Latin. He was praying, arms raised before him. His gaze focused on something close to us, though I couldn’t make out any details amid the swarming dust and smoke. There might have been a million insects attacking us and I wouldn’t have been able to tell. Rick, arm bent before his face, watched Columban and inched toward the staircase. He was murmuring—I couldn’t hear very well, but he seemed to be matching Columban’s words, adding to the prayer.
Whatever they were saying didn’t seem to be helping.
Hands closed around my neck.
Again, I could feel the action, make out the pressure of fingers on my throat, note the strength of the arms that hauled me backward. I thrashed, fighting against it, ignoring the fact that it had cut off my air. Didn’t need air, just had to get free. Claws wouldn’t do me any good—I had nothing to slash. When I reached back, my hands passed through nothing.
But I heard a voice near my ear, soft, a murmur under the wind. “My bounty is for the priest, but you’ll do.” Indistinct, impossible, like the whisper of a tornado.
I struggled harder, but how did you escape a storm when you couldn’t run? Especially one that seemed to be speaking to you?
Rick flew. Or seemed to. His leap had sent him into the wind, and he sailed above the space between me and the steps.
He couldn’t see our opponent any more than I could, so he grabbed onto me, wrenching me down as he dropped back to the ground. My captor kept its grip and would rip my head off, I thought. I wouldn’t survive that, and I twisted to try to keep whole. My muscle and bone seemed to crack. Suddenly, it let go, and I fell along with Rick.
Visible above me, I finally saw something clearly: a weapon—a long staff with a sharpened point reaching out of the black wind. A wooden staff, expressly designed for killing vampires. My bounty is for the priest …
The spear aimed at Rick.
I lunged at it, hoping to shove it away, maybe even take the strike meant for him. I’d survive it, even if it struck my heart. It was only wood. But the spear withdrew, looped around me, and thrust again. Rick dodged, of course he did. Impossibly, though, the staff anticipated his movement. As fast as the vampire was, the spear tracked him, moving just as fast. He couldn’t escape.
Columban shouted. “No!” He leapt from the stairs, toward the battle.
Rick fell away from the spear; Columban pushed him. And the spear went into Columban.
The priest fell, gripping the wooden shaft that protruded from his chest.
Columban was old, and in seconds his body returned to the state it would have been, buried in the ground all this time: rotting, blackened skin crumbling to ash, revealing muscle and bone that also crumbled to ash, his cassock decaying along with the flesh. Rick stumbled, staring at the disintegrating body with shock-widened eyes. The dust scattered, dispersing into the wind, leaving nothing behind. Columban might never have existed.
Rick stayed frozen at the spot where the vampire priest had been. I could have knocked him over myself. I paced around him, back and forth, manically trying to keep myself between him and the spear, which had pulled back into the whirling smoke. The point of it still tracked us. Since Rick wasn’t paying attention, I had to defend him. It might strike at any moment.
Now Cormac was chanting, and it wasn’t Latin.
He might have been at it for a while, and I hadn’t noticed. Hardin was beside him, holding something—an extra hand to make up for Cormac’s broken one. In his good hand, Cormac held a lighter, though getting it to work in the tempest would be a trick. They pressed toward us, opposing the gusts of wind. Hardin cupped both hands together, protecting whatever she held.
Rick looked up at Cormac, and his expression darkened into rage.
“Rick,” I muttered, my voice rasping, dried out from the wind and full of repressed growling. That spear still lurked, and I prepared to leap at it, an attack of desperation.
Cormac’s chanting increased in speed and volume, doing battle with the blasting of the wind until it reached a climax, a series of shouted, individual words. Then he flicked the lighter, using his body as a windbreak. Amazingly—magically, even—the flame came to life, flaring yellow. At the same moment, Hardin threw her handful into the air. Bits of dried herbs, shredded paper, who knew what else. The potpourri passed over the lighter flame and caught fire.
The burning debris rocketed toward us, propelled by the wind, by the spell, by Cormac’s chanting. I ducked, pulling a still-stunned Rick down with me.
The spear had been moving toward Rick, ready to strike—but the cloud of fiery debris hit it. And vanished.
So did the smoke, wind, swirling dust, and oily vortex that had engulfed the church for what seemed like hours, but had probably only been a minute or two. The world fell still, and I could see the sky again, its dark arc and haze of reflected city lights. I gave a deep sigh—I’d been holding my breath. The air smelled burned.
A figure stood nearby, holding the spear. A woman. And she was bound. Flickering yellow ribbons, like fire given solid form, wrapped around the wooden shaft of her spear; around her arms, pulling them from her body so that she couldn’t move; and around her legs and torso, anchoring her in place. Color and light slid along the bindings, giving the illusion of movement. But the figure remained immobilized.
She seemed tall—hard to tell how tall, because I was on the ground at her feet, looking up. From my vantage, she seemed to fill the sky. Muscular, she wore a close-fitting jacket, thick leather pants, tall boots. A biker’s armor. Her dark hair was short, spiky. Straps fitting across her chest and around her waist held weapons. More wooden spears, along with blades, whips, a sword across her back, a nightstick at her hip. Nothing with moving parts, no guns, nothing apparently explosive, but lethal in so many ways all the same. She also wore tinted goggles strapped to her head, sealed tightly to her face, making her eyes seem huge, stark, against her pale skin. I couldn’t tell if she was looking back at us. Her chest worked, taking in deep breaths, as if she were exhausted. A lingering cloud of black fog roiled in a layer at her feet.
Her mouth twisting, she lunged against ribbons that bound her. They didn’t budge, and she threw herself forward again. The bindings only tightened. She didn’t waste her energy struggling for long, and after the second attempt, she simply stared. At least, she seemed to. Who could tell with those goggles? Her lips pressed into a thin line. She might have been admitting defeat.
“Cormac…” I murmured.
“Huh,” he said, as if surprised how this had turned out. “Hoped we’d catch something.”
He hoped?
“Who the fuck are you?” Hardin said, gasping to recover her breath as much as the rest of us. All of us except Rick, at least.
The woman tipped up her chin in stoic refusal, like a prisoner of war.
“Do you have any idea who she is? Do you?” Hardin demanded of Cormac and Rick in turn.
Rick murmured, “I might have some ideas.”
At the same time Cormac nodded, “Yeah, I think I do.”
“I want to see her eyes,” I said vaguely, frustrated at the dark lenses that made her expression blank. The face turned to me, and I flinched. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could feel her attention.
“The light hurts her eyes,” Rick said. “It’s dark where she comes from.”
“But it’s night,” I said. “There isn’t any light.”
“It’s very dark, where she comes from.”
She let a smile flash. Just a tilting of her lips. One gloved hand flexed on the spear; the other closed into a fist. I hoped Cormac’s spell held.
Moments passed. The scene froze, the area around the church remaining incongruously quiet. Hardin’s backup officers stood a ways off, guns at their sides, but they didn’t know what to do next any more than the rest of us.
“Now that we’ve got her, what do
we do with her?” I asked. What was she? Demon, I was guessing. But that covered so much ground and didn’t tell me anything.
“Can I arrest her?” Hardin said. She was probably put out that she didn’t get Columban after all.
Father Columban, who’d known what was coming all along. This demon had been hunting him, maybe for centuries. And now he was gone.
The first thing to do when you wanted information was to ask. Nicely, if possible. I stood and faced her. “You said you had a bounty on the priest, but that ‘I’d do.’ Father Columban said that all three of us were in danger.” I gestured to include Rick, and asked, “Why?”
She actually answered, in clipped words. I couldn’t place her accent. “He was a traitor. Like him. Like you.”
“A traitor?” I said, indignant. “I’m not a traitor, I haven’t betrayed anyone—”
“A bounty,” Rick said, interrupting. “Placed by whom? Whom do you serve?”
She bared her teeth—straight, white, normal. I expected them to be sharpened, vicious. She gave the impression of laughing at us and said nothing.
“Did Roman send you?” I asked. “Dux Bellorum, Gaius Albinus?” He probably had a dozen other names I didn’t know.
Now she did laugh, a short and mirthless sound. “Idiots.”
“If not him, then who?” I said. Pleading.
“You know so little,” she said, showing her teeth again.
“Then tell me. Educate me. What are we up against here?”
She said, “I was sent by the one who commands Dux Bellorum.”
I tilted my head, as if that would help me hear better, though I’d heard her perfectly well. “And who is that?” I said.
Rick answered me: “Dux Bellorum is the general. The one who leads the army. Not the one who rules the nation. That would be Caesar.”
I stared at Rick. I had never considered such a proposition, and now it rattled in my brain like bells. Church bells, sonorous, tolling doom.
Hardin was getting frustrated. “You still haven’t said if I can arrest her or not.”
“No,” Cormac said. “I don’t think you can.”
“Well, I can’t condone killing her if that’s your other option.”
“You don’t kill something like this,” Cormac said. “You banish it.”
“Then you know what she is?” I said, my ears still ringing. Who was Caesar?
“Demon,” Cormac said, which I’d already known—
I heard the wind before I felt it, a sucking noise, a single, powerful blast of air. The oily vortex reappeared. Narrow this time, it focused on a point—on the woman in leather. She braced against her bindings and tilted her head back.
Dust and debris smacked my face, but I didn’t want to turn away. The tornado shrank, closing the demon in its circle, sucking black smoke into the ground. She opened her mouth, and I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or screaming. The vortex collapsed, taking her with it, wind, dust, smoke, and demon, all of it falling into the ground, to nothing. The firelit ribbons that had bound her fell to the sidewalk, then turned to ash and scattered.
The air fell still, dust and smoke vanished. She was gone. My nose itched with the smell of soot.
Hardin spoke first. “What happened?” She looked around, not questioning anyone in particular.
I looked at Cormac. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Cormac said.
“Yes you did, something happened—”
“That wasn’t me. Something yanked her back before I could do anything.”
“Yanked her back? What? To where?” I asked.
“To wherever she came from. I don’t know.” Turning away, he rubbed his forehead, like he had a headache. I know I did.
Beside me, Rick looked lost for a moment, glancing around him, returning again and again to the spot where Columban had been. His expression was stark, eyes unblinking. I wanted to reach out to him—anyone else I would have hugged, tried to comfort. Tried to share the grief. But I couldn’t touch him. I reached out my hand, then drew it back.
“Rick,” I said softly.
Rick’s gaze came to rest on Cormac. “You might as well have killed him yourself.”
The vampire closed on him in a second, almost invisible with speed. Cormac had a stake in hand just as the vampire reached him. The tip of the stake rested on Rick’s chest, but Rick’s hands gripped Cormac’s neck and squeezed. Cormac choked, but his hold on the stake didn’t waver. Both were ready to deliver killing blows. Rick bared his teeth, showing prominent fangs. He was usually so good at keeping them hidden.
Shouting, I ran, the strength of my Wolf carrying me in a couple of long strides, and crashed between them. “Stop it!”
They fell back. Cormac held the stake at the ready; Rick was braced to fight. But they waited. Really, they didn’t have to listen to me. But they did. I held out my arms, keeping a space between them.
Rick spat his words past me. “You knew what would happen when you broke his protections. You knew something would attack.”
“Question is, did you?” Cormac appeared calm, but he was sweating with nerves. “Did he tell you what was after you both?”
“Both of you shut up,” I said, the words growling, my teeth bared.
They looked at me, and might have shown some concern for my state of mind. I felt fur prickling just under the skin, and wished Ben were here, because all he’d have to do was touch my arm and I’d calm down. But hell, if me threatening to shift uncontrollably got them to stand down, so be it.
Rick lowered his arms, but Cormac wasn’t moving that stake an inch. If I had to stay here all night, I would. I wasn’t going to let them near each other.
Hardin had been at the curb along the street, talking to the uniformed officers she’d brought. They’d walked off, probably searching the area for any evidence, or random destruction, or whatever. I doubted they’d find anything. Seeing the three of us in a standoff, she put her hand on her holster and walked over.
“There a problem?”
I wasn’t going to say anything—let one of them back down. When none of us answered, she continued. “Right, then who’s going to explain to me what the hell just happened?”
Good question. I wanted someone to do the same for me. But Cormac and Rick kept glaring daggers at each other.
Maybe if I started thinking out loud. “Columban knew he was being hunted. I’m betting that fire in Hungary was part of it. He knew how to protect himself, but when the shield was destroyed—”
“I got all that,” she said. “What about you and him? All that stuff she said at the end about being traitors? And Dux Bellorum? That’s Roman, right? That megalomaniac vampire freak who came through a couple years ago? And where did she go?”
Right to the heart of it. How big was this really? Was this a backstreet scuffle, or a battle in an ongoing war? I knew where I was putting my money.
“You don’t really want to know,” I said weakly.
“Oh, yes I do.” Her expression blazed.
“The Long Game,” I said, swallowing to get control of my voice, to pull Wolf back to her cage.
“I’ve heard you both talk about that before. It’s got something to do with Roman?”
“He’s worse than you think, detective,” I said.
“Kitty,” Rick said. “You don’t have to explain to her. You don’t have to bring her into this.”
On the contrary, I thought it was long past time we explained everything to her. I said to him, “We’re looking for allies. I consider her an ally.”
He nodded at Cormac. “You consider him an ally, too, and look what happened.”
“Rick—” I begged.
The vampire glared at Cormac, who might very well have turned to a flaming crisp if he hadn’t been wearing sunglasses to protect him from meeting Rick’s gaze.
“I do not ever want to see you again,” Rick said. “Be grateful I’m not forcing you to leave my city.”
�
��What makes you think you could?”
“Don’t push me.”
For a moment, I thought Rick was going to try, right then and there. A demonstration, because however brash Cormac acted, Rick could get around that stake and overcome him. But I kept myself between them. I even caught Rick’s gaze. Looked him in his blue eyes. He could have used his hypnotic power, commanded me to step aside, brought me under his control. But he didn’t. Please, I tried to tell him, even though he wasn’t telepathic. I was pretty sure he wasn’t telepathic.
Rick turned and stalked off. In three strides, he’d vanished into the church’s shadow. If I ran after him, he’d be gone. Again, he was gone.
“A little uptight, isn’t he?” Cormac said. Humor covering nerves. He was still holding the stake in a white-knuckled grip.
“Lay off him.” My lip curled in a snarl.
He glanced at Hardin, back at me. Frowned. “You want to know where that demon came from, I’ve got some research to do.” He stalked away, to the street and his Jeep.
“Cormac—”
He ignored me, just like I expected him to.
Where did that leave me? I looked around. The place didn’t look any different than it had a week ago. The confrontation hadn’t left any evidence behind. Not so much as a streak of soot on the concrete. Even the air smelled normal, full of people and cars, brick and asphalt, with a hint of distant mountains. A fire engine siren echoed somewhere.
Columban’s markings, the ones that drew out the boundary of his protective circle, were gone.
“Are you okay?” Hardin asked. She’d put her gun away and stood, arms crossed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I will be.”
“Can I take you out for a cup of coffee?”
That sounded like a marvelous idea to me.
We ended up at a twenty-four-hour diner a few blocks away, on Colfax. The waitstaff recognized Hardin and sat us in a booth in back, in relative quiet and privacy.
I called Ben.
“Hey,” he said. “I was just going to call you. Shaun and I tracked Darren. He’s out of here. Loaded up his car and drove. I don’t think we have to worry.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice flat. “Good.”
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