“And what’s his next trick?” Evelyn whispered some more.
The Lady nodded. “The question that keeps this old woman up at night . . . that and the old man who keeps getting up to go to the bathroom every hour.”
“I always laugh at the Rejuvenation Society, Maudette, but this . . . I don’t know what to do . . . I’m not even sure what she is.”
The Lady placed a wrinkled hand on Eva Reti’s brow. Short dark hair, gray eyes, strong features. The girl was pretty, if boyish in frame, more than ever boyish in frame now. “She’s still our student,” the Lady said. “The world’s second Were-mancer hybrid . . . hopefully it’s only and last now that King Henry has brought justice to Conan Sapa.”
“Also our student once upon a time,” Evelyn reminded her.
The wrinkled hand softly caressed the girl’s cheek. “Yes, well . . . we do save the ones who need saving and kill the ones who need killing, don’t we?”
Evelyn tried not to sound hopeful, but failed as she asked, “And how do we save her?”
The Lady glanced up at the ceiling, at the lights there. “Human anima has no trouble dominating animal anima, even the thirteen-linked anima that a Totem spits into them during a Matching . . . but this . . . much closer to human, much stronger, more linked, and an Alpha’s anima . . . if she wasn’t an Ultra she would already have been consumed. As it is, she’s struggling to hold on, but still it’s a stalemate. This is good. A stalemate can be maintained, and while it is maintained we help the girl marshal her forces . . . then, we attack.”
*
Two Weeks Earlier
The largest problem with Eva’s plan wasn’t the plan itself, but how easily she pulled it all off. Easy outcomes worried her since very few things were easy in the maelstrom that was the supernatural underworld. She wasn’t thinking ‘trap,’ but she was worried about who would be coming behind her to find Sapa’s hideout soon enough.
Iscariot?
“Like I’m that lucky,” she sighed.
The shadows at the edge of her vision had lessened considerably. “Pooled up or finished with whatever they’re doing?” Eva might not have been Vicky Welf, but on the other side her anima senses weren’t specialized for sight, she just needed to be near the source for her shadows to appear. There’s always a downside, no matter how special the gift.
Eva had her own pool of course. She wasn’t some amateur Asylum graduate who kept to the school maxims about only pooling when you thought you would need anima in the next half hour. She knew all the tricks, all the secrets. It was the first lesson she’d received from Fines Samson, the very moment she agreed to replace him as the Council’s problem solver. It was the first realization that the world wasn’t the world she thought it was and never would be again.
That crashing truth that existence wasn’t turtles all the way down, but one lie stacked on top of another on off into infinity.
Still she kept to a single thirty-minute-pool, not quite at her maximum limit to be on the safe side. She had never been a particularly large pooler, only a fast one, and if you were smart then you should never run into a situation where you needed more. It was easy to be paranoid in her occupation and Samson had also advised her against making paranoia or anxiety a habit. “Be sure of yourself, but aware of your strengths and weakness, never do more or less than you’re capable of, never get yourself into a situation greater than you’re capable of, and you’ll stay out of the type of trouble only anima can solve.”
“Or . . . don’t bumble into everything like Lover Boy manages to,” Eva summarized.
Her plan had worked too easily, which meant that others would be having equal luck at finding Conan Sapa soon enough. Eva was on the clock. Twilight became true night outside of the car and still she sat there waiting for a sign from the dentist office.
“I really don’t want to go into that building.”
Shadeshifters can hide in the shadows or attach shadows to their bodies, but they weren’t invisible. The more enclosed the space, the greater the chance of being discovered grew. The dentist office wasn’t a small building, but it wasn’t nearly as large as the warehouse where Hector Vega had housed the Auction of Illicit Wonders for example. Breakroom, surgery suite, some cleaning rooms, storage room, dentist offices, records room, and a large waiting room. The main avenue through the building was a single hallway . . . which was trouble. A front door she could never use except for making a run for it once she had what she needed and two backdoors that would be locked.
“Not a problem,” she whispered. Stealing cars wasn’t the only skill Samson had forced her to learn, she could pick a door easily enough. “Easy, easy, easy . . . just so easy, Eva, why you worried? Can’t be the Curator in there, can it? Wouldn’t risk it. Just Isabel and Sapa, maybe a few other goons, but you don’t need to fight them if they find you out, just run from them.”
She was nervous. Or excited. It was often hard to tell the difference. Of course I’m nervous about diving off that cliff into the pool of water a hundred feet beneath, any sane person would be! Only . . . maybe she wasn’t. Maybe the thrill of it all was what made her jumpy. Jump herself right off the cliff, just to see what it felt like.
She picked up her phone, checking for messages. Nothing since the last round from Samson and the Lady informing her of the Jason Jackson situation, with a few hints that she should make contact with King Henry and apprise them if it looked like he would do something stupid in retribution.
Eva felt a smile on her face for the first time that night. “Yes, of course he did, and I’m doing everything I can to save the moron again.” But was she really? Entering that building would help him a whole lot more. Help King Henry, help Eva, help the Learning Council. Really . . . she should really go into that building.
Really, really.
See who was inside of it.
Yes, she should.
She shut her phone off and stuffed it in a pocket. She was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a black hoodie—had been wearing sneakers, jeans, and a black hoodie for more days than she wanted to think about. At least she’d found time for a shower and a quick nap that morning while she was waiting on the ESLED computer boys. Never being a girl’s girl, giving her excuses to ignore fashion just made her worse.
Reaching into the backseat, she popped open her tool suitcase, pulling out a switchblade knife and stuffing it in the side of her shoe. Samson worked with a combat knife carried over from his Army days, but Eva had decided way back in Survival and Defense as a Single that something so large just looked ridiculous in her tiny hands. “I might be strong for my size, but my size is still of the pipsqueak variety.”
Next was a small pistol that she slipped into her hoodie pocket, which Samson forced her to carry. She was proficient with firearms, her father was her first teacher in self defense long before Fines Samson came along, so she could shoot a .22 and was practicing martial arts by the time she was eight. “And even then, Abba was grumpy that Ima didn’t let me learn sooner.” Still, she didn’t like guns in a supernatural setting. Even using every .45 round in her concealed pistol, all she was likely to do was really piss off a vampire with it. “To say nothing of Isabel if King Henry’s descriptions are accurate and not blown out of proportion like usual.”
Third was a set of lock picking gear.
“Just everyday accessories for a modern woman looking for a good time,” she teased herself as she shut the case.
Ready.
She could do this.
Until she noticed that there was a wolf standing in front of the dentist office door.
“Why are you shocked, Eva?” she asked herself. “This is your life, isn’t it? Just a normal Friday night.”
Except calling the animal a wolf was like calling the Burj Khalifa a building. Sure, it was a wolf in that it had fangs and fur and four legs, but the size and downright ferocity of the creature wasn’t so much beastly as it was mythological. A normal gray wolf stands two and a half feet tall and wei
ghs about one-hundred pounds; even the famed now-extinct dire wolf wasn’t much larger. This wolf was almost five feet tall and had to weigh almost three-hundred pounds.
Werewolf.
An actual werewolf . . . in the middle of Las Vegas.
Why not? she thought, keeping her mouth firmly shut.
Some instinctual part of Eva screamed out to release a small chunk of her anima pool and wrap herself in shadows. Be safe in the darkness, the darkness is your only friend. But . . . that would have been wasteful. The car windows were tinted, she was down and across the street from the dentist office, bracketed by two other abandoned cars. The odds of the werewolf seeing her were small, not worth using anima over, especially not worth breaking open a pool and having to deal with the buzzing pain of holding the rest back. Samson keeps telling me it will go away eventually . . . but I’m not sure I believe him.
Still, she slouched down in the front seat, her hand abandoning the handle that opened the door.
Yes indeed, my gun would do nothing but make that monster gnash its teeth and rip my throat out.
She’d seen other Weres shapeshifted into animals before. Usually they were nothing but slightly overlarge animals of their Totem type. Not that an extra big tiger can’t be impressive . . . but it’s nothing like this. It had to be the Wolf Nation Alpha. The Wolf Nation was old, had survived the original destruction of Totems that Vampires arriving in the New World had wrought. It had the anima of generation after generation, ancient peoples all the way to Native-Americans and now the hard-bit sons of ranchers and cattle drivers. Even the massive boom that Horatio Vega’s Coyotes were going through couldn’t match it. As the Lady was fond of joking, anima got better with age. Saturation mattered just as much as the total amount. Density, not volume.
Some Nations didn’t bother with ceremonies for changing leaders. It was a political post. The Totem was an object to them, to be protected surely, but not a focus of religious ceremony. Not so with the Wolf Nation. The list of recorded Alphas might not stretch back to as long as the Totem had stood, but it went back so far its beginnings were only marked by oral tradition. The Alpha of the Wolf Nation had an unfairly large chunk of the Totem’s anima pool.
It showed.
The size, the strength, even in the dark gray coat of the man turned animal. Grant Little, Eva remembered from her briefings, rancher and hunter, hates mancers because his daughter was one and left for the Asylum over staying true to the Nation. Miss Dale fought him off while other Recruiters escaped with the girl.
Eva had no interest in fighting Grant Little herself, but the way he sniffed at the dentist office made it clear that her first competitor for the prize inside had already arrived.
And what are you going to do about it?
The werewolf snarled at the glass door in front of him, blocking his way. Samson would’ve given a chuckle if he’d been in the car with Eva. She could still hear his voice, all that power and strength and not one thumb to get the job done.
After pacing back and forth, the werewolf disappeared around the corner in a trot. It returned a moment later, still frustrated. The way it ignored the cars made Eva realize that the werewolf had actually managed to track Conan Sapa by smell through the entirety of Las Vegas. I think I’m impressed . . . just not impressed enough to get out of the car and open the door for him.
For one . . . going through a front door was stupid, even with a Wolf as company. For two . . . the Asylum wasn’t allied with any Were Nation with good reason, and even if they were it would never be the Wolf Nation. He’ll try to kill me just because I’m a mancer, that’s enough of an excuse for Grant Little.
Why couldn’t it be Iscariot? I’d have delivered the message and we could have split the threat of whatever’s inside that building between us.
No . . . it was a Were causing trouble, just like with the whole Ouroboros and everywhere else they stuck their thieving paws.
She couldn’t side with him, that was impossible, but it didn’t mean that she couldn’t use him. Sorry, Grant, but I am a spy after all and your impressive furry butt is a fantastic distraction while I sneak into one of the backdoors.
Eva stepped out of her car just as the werewolf Shifted back into a human to regain the use of his thumbs.
Wow, is he way less impressive looking like that or what? Not that older, naked men have ever been my particular kink of course.
.
.
.
He still has a furry butt though!
*
Since the Lady had set their plan of action, Eva Reti’s coma had been medically induced to insure her physical body wouldn’t try to wake itself before her aura was elementally ready for what was to come. She had also been kept in almost complete darkness. The room came with an airlock to fight infectious diseases, which had instead been repurposed as a lightlock, the observation windows had been covered with blackout curtains, and even the machines keeping track of her vitals had their displays removed, data pumped digitally into another room with a bit of conjuration from one of the electromancers who ran IT for the entire Administration.
The only light inside that hospital room was a single candle, replaced like clockwork every four hours by Fines Samson, who was taking this attack on his pupil stoically, but with great personal anguish apparent in his soft face. He would have stayed in the dark room with Eva if Evelyn had allowed it, had even argued with her about it until the Lady came all the way down to shoo him out.
Shadeshifters are almost as bad as Artificers when it comes to grief. So mysterious and hidden until they’re hit so hard by emotions they can’t hide any longer, Evelyn thought as she entered the dark room for what she hoped was the last time.
Even with a candle by the bedside it was pitch dark in the majority of the room. Nothing but a tiny nimbus around the patient, the rest shadows and proper darkness, almost deep enough to imagine an anima concentration forming in one of the corners. A man-made cave, perhaps not as pure as they like it, but very close.
Evelyn brought with her supplies for the coming conjuration the Lady had designed. Eva wasn’t the only one who had spent the last two weeks preparing for the day. The Lady had sworn off any conjurations, conserving her own strength and awaiting the massive amount of anima pooling she would have to do today. Most likely already started, enough anima in her pores to make any Intra’s eyes pop out of their heads.
Evelyn on the other hand had practiced recreating the ceremony the Curator had used on Eva. Evelyn wasn’t sure who the Lady received the photographs of the circles and artifacts from, but she knew better than to ask. She studied them and had practiced making the circles with watercolor paint in her own living room nightly. A few nights ago she had upped the difficulty level by attempting the task in near darkness.
Samson had again wanted to be the one to recreate it all, putting forth decent points about being able to see in the dark, but the Lady had been firm that no other Shadeshifter should be in the room with them, that it could be dangerous.
You would think she was calling a violent ghost to life in some necromancer séance, not forcing a girl’s body to fight off a foreign anima invasion.
Evelyn put down her container of Slush on the bedside table next to the candle. The thick, pungent slop glowed blue in the light, the same color as moonlight reflected off a pond. I’m feeling romantic . . . I’m officially disgusted with myself. Ninety percent anima H.A.I.M.S . . . the Lady’s own cocktail, since she was the only person on the planet who could distill so steeply.
Evelyn could barely reach sixty percent. Even Society Grand Matrons could barely top seventy.
What would we do without the Lady?
What would they do without all of them . . . the Lady, Plutarch, Samson, Ceinwyn Dale, Keith Gullick . . . I’d even worry if that severe bastard Root wasn’t around. Evelyn knew the Lady had plans for after her death, replacements and the like . . . but still she worried. Worry most of all that I’ll end up on that replacement
list somehow.
Evelyn Strange, Learning Council, Voting Member.
I’ll run away, yes I will. Find a nice quiet town with an understaffed clinic.
No anima. No darkrooms. No Curator. No Were-mancer hybrids.
No students to keep hearty and hale . . .
After checking Eva’s vitals to make sure the girl was still stable and unchanged, if not well—there had been some worry that she might continue to put on muscle mass and gain height, but outside of the first occurrence, no more growth had materialized—Evelyn exited the darkroom twice to bring in the pair of wheelchairs the Lady wanted to use in place of the dentist setup in Las Vegas.
This whole ceremony is insane, even for a mancer.
She went about locking the wheelchairs down, including their brakes so they didn’t move from where she placed them across from each other. Next, the Slush canister was opened, Evelyn pulling out a brush and dropping down to her knees. Carefully she marked the floor with a line of hydro-anima infused muck. Between the wheelchairs it went, then a semi-circle behind them to round off the main design.
Thirteen smaller circles followed, but with none of the Curator’s devices to put in them Evelyn settled for a cross of Slush as the Lady had ordered. I feel like I’m a witch, not a mancer, some hedge witch trying to impress the locals. Still . . . the theory of it all made sense. And no one can tell the Lady ‘no’ when she puts her mind to something . . . not even Samson.
Evelyn returned the canister to the table, trading it for the candle so she could closer inspect the lines on the flooring. Good enough won’t do, she thought as she marked a few dips and dashes in the lines with what Slush was left on the brush.
A sigh escaped her as she put down the candle.
“Are you ready, Reti?” Evelyn asked in the darkness. “Are you strong enough? Of course you are. You’re one of my kids, my kids are strong . . . especially your class. You were all troublemakers, weren’t you? I remember the time Hope bet you that you couldn’t climb the Gym wall . . . you got halfway before falling and broke your ankle. I had you in the Infirmary for three days, almost had to strap you down then too . . .”
King Henry and the Three Little Trips (The King Henry Tapes) Page 10