Lions' Pride

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  She couldn’t normally sense such things without looking, but her magical senses were so sharp right now it hit her like one of the nuclear missiles that used to be stored here.

  Inspired, she called again on the powers of the land and of green and growing things, this time specifying they would be striking against allies of those who had polluted the land. If the army was involved in the Agency’s project to develop some kind of mutant dual super-killer, the country was in trouble. If it wasn’t, the country was in worse trouble, because what else would a government agency do with a bunch of souped-up magical assassins? Stage a coup? She shuddered at the thought.

  The power of the earth rose and filled her. It was dark and angry power that tasted like oil and revenge. Green mixed with it, but it was thorned green, not the friendly power she knew, but something sharper and fiercer, something that could tear flesh, something that grew as fast as kudzu and would be glad to grow in someone’s path—or around their neck.

  Demons and devas, that felt good.

  The snow fell faster now. Elissa opened to that as well, swelled with its fierce, impersonal violence.

  She heard, or felt, something telling her, “Call upon the white deer and they will help you.”

  Huh? She wasn’t a beast witch, and she didn’t know of anything magical about the deer other than their unusual coloring. Descended from a few white deer—not albinos, just light-colored—that had been fenced in when the army base was built, they’d grown to a large, ghost-pale herd that looked like they should be spirit creatures. As far as she knew, though, they were ordinary white-tailed deer in every way except their coloring.

  Which made them beautiful, but, as far as she was concerned, useless.

  Still, when working magic, it paid to listen to one’s instincts.

  She stretched forth her hands. How the heck did you call upon deer, anyway? “Deer, white deer, I call upon you for aid,” she said, trying to imbue the words with power.

  She burst into nervous giggles instead. Although she throbbed with magic she could barely contain, the words came out as ordinary words, and silly ones at that.

  “Let me try,” Rafe insisted. Rather than say it was impossible—who knew, with that crazy witchlike aura of his?—she nodded and he stepped forward, stretched his hands out as she had done and closed his eyes.

  What he did she had no idea, but she could feel the energy of the land shift. His aura flared gold and copper.

  Everything, including the wind, went silent, or maybe it seemed that way because Elissa was holding her breath, holding precisely still, to see what Rafe might do.

  The moment passed. The wind picked up again, its edge harsher for the brief calm. A crow cawed somewhere. Elissa let out her breath with a rusty sigh.

  Rafe chuckled soundlessly. “Well, that was stupid. Don’t know what I thought I…”

  He pointed, his mouth hanging open and an expression mingling awe and terror on his face.

  Camouflaged by the snow, white deer surrounded the parking lot.

  “You did it!” Elissa clasped his arm, feeling a jolt of power. “How did you do it?”

  “I just…talked to them. Like calling for prey, only I told them I wasn’t hunting them, that we were the good guys and we needed…” His voice trailed off.

  She shrugged. “Hey, it worked.”

  “I have no fucking idea what I did, Elissa. I’m not a witch. I can’t command animals. I don’t even know how to be a dual. I’m making that up as I go along. How did I know how to call prey?”

  His voice was tight, almost angry, and Elissa decided this wasn’t the time to convince him that, for a non-witch, he was showing every sign of being witchlike, or shamanesque, or something else with an affinity for nature magic.

  “What do I do now?” he whispered fiercely.

  Like she knew? “Uh, thank them. Tell them to watch and wait.”

  It was a good idea to thank beings who answered your call for help, even before they helped you, but she had no idea what she meant by watch and wait. It seemed to click with Rafe, though. “Cover,” he said. “Distraction. Harming the white deer will piss off the neighbors—they’re the local good-luck charm. And if the neighbors get up in arms, that’ll get the attention of the crunchy types in Ithaca. The last thing the Agency wants is a bunch of suspicious Cornell professors looking at this place, so they’ll have to be careful with the deer.”

  He closed his eyes again. The copper aura spiked. Elissa smelled pine and heat sharp against the snow.

  It passed and Rafe was normal again. “Well,” he said, “what are we waiting for?”

  Elissa took a moment to cast the simplest of illusion spells on them, one where, at a casual glance, they’d look like someone who belonged there, but whom the onlooker knew only vaguely. It wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny, but the idea was to avoid close scrutiny by being part of the scenery.

  Her hands shaking, Elissa punched in the first door code. The system hesitated and she stopped breathing. Had she remembered it correctly?

  After a seemingly interminable wait that was really no more than a few seconds, it blinked green and emitted a satisfying click.

  As she opened the door, Rafe pushed past her.

  His hand went to his gun, concealed under his jacket.

  Men. Cops. Didn’t he realize they had to be inconspicuous?

  She shook her head and made an averting gesture with her hands. Luckily, he seemed to understand and hid the gun.

  She still let him go first. It would be easy to argue—but stupid. He had a hell of a lot more experience in potentially violent situations than she did. She worked in an agricultural research lab, for gods’ sake! She was not the stuff secret rescue missions were made of.

  The partner more suitable for staging rescue missions was the one who needed rescue.

  Once inside, they came to a small bank of three elevators. A security camera pointed down into the little lobby, but all its up-and-running lights were off. “Looks like Maggie did her job,” Elissa whispered, pointing to the dead camera. She felt better immediately.

  But Rafe took one look at the elevators and his confident posture sagged.

  Elissa almost asked him what was wrong then realized she already knew because Jude had the same problem. Like most duals, Rafe suffered from claustrophobia.

  Elissa took his hand in what she hoped was a comforting gesture.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Elevator. Hell, of course there was an elevator.

  Drozz had been good for a few things. Everyone knew duals hated small, confined spaces, but he’d never realized how much he did until he faced an elevator without the drug to humanize his reactions. He’d spent a lifetime taking the stairs when he could, but he’d been able to use elevators when he had to. Right now, though, the damn things looked as scary as whatever they’d be facing once they actually got inside the compound.

  “Must be stairs somewhere… What if there’s a fire or something?” He wheeled around, hoping he didn’t look as stupidly frantic as he felt.

  If there was a staircase, it was well hidden, and they didn’t have time to search for it.

  His shoulders sagged. No way out of it that he could see. He had to get into an elevator and go God only knew how many stories down below the surface of the earth, where he’d probably have to deal with ghosts and assorted other weird and dangerous shit bullets probably wouldn’t affect.

  What was he doing, anyway, letting himself be dragged into someone else’s war? Letting himself be used like some cross between a weapon and a sex toy?

  Elissa squeezed his hand. “You can do this. You’re a good cop, and good cops do what they need to do. Thank you for being brave for me.”

  What was a little phobia, compared to what she’d already risked to save Jude?

  Nothing.

  And if she’d used him, she’d been clear and honest about it and he’d gone into it with eyes wide open.

  Hell, he’d volunteered to b
e used.

  The elevator door pinged open.

  Reverie cut, he braced for action—but the damn little box was empty.

  He forced himself to get in the elevator briskly, before his unease turned into a fucking full-fledged panic attack. “What floor?” he asked, inordinately proud it came out calm instead of shaky.

  The descent to level nine took longer than Rafe would have thought possible—nerve-wrackingly long, a length that made him all too aware of the weight of earth over them. He noted that Elissa dropped his hand and moved to the far side of the elevator so she didn’t crowd him.

  “Thank you,” he mouthed. The human part of him wanted to cuddle close to her for comfort, but he was afraid the nervous cougar might do something stupid if he tried.

  They descended in silence. Rafe didn’t know about Elissa, but he couldn’t think of anything worth saying. Everything that popped into his mind seemed too trivial, too foolish, too mundane.

  Or too fucking major.

  This was so not the time to say, “I love you.” Especially if you were sure the woman in question didn’t want to hear it and you weren’t sure what you meant by it, although you knew you meant something huge, and working through that could take hours, or possibly years, that you didn’t have.

  “You have a gorgeous ass” wouldn’t go over well either—although Elissa kicking him in the nads might relieve some tension.

  “Do you still call it the ninth floor when it’s nine levels down?” he finally asked, unable to stand the silence. How could the elevator take so damn long? “Shouldn’t it be negative ninth or something?”

  Elissa’s smile was weak as late-winter sun. “Or the ninth circle, like of hell. Dante’s Inferno,” she added—he must have been staring blankly. “Don’t they teach you anything in cop school?”

  “Plenty. Not a lot of literature, though. Surprised you get it in witch school.”

  “We’re expected to get a thorough classical education as well as the magical one. Donovan kids don’t play much.” She might have sighed, but her expression was so grim it was hard to tell. “Besides, it’s required at Cornell.”

  Rafe raised one eyebrow. “I thought…”

  He was about to say something to the effect of, “I thought witch kids didn’t go that far from home,” but the elevator doors opened at last, and he realized the ninth circle of hell analogy was accurate.

  Oh, it wasn’t the humans, although the people bustling in the corridor were kind of spooky even if you didn’t know what was going on here below the ground. No one made eye contact with them, but Elissa had told him to expect that. As long as they did nothing remarkable, the illusion spell made eyes slide right over them. No one made eye contact with each other, though. No small talk. Certainly no smiles.

  But that wasn’t the creepy part.

  It was the smell. The noises that weren’t quite noises. The…well, he couldn’t describe it precisely in human words.

  It tasted the way it would when you put the pistol into your mouth: cold metal and gun oil and fear and impending death and a despair so deep you were ready to splat your brain to make it stop.

  Then there were the whispers just out of range, a constant, annoying—no, make that alarming—buzz he knew contained words even his keen hearing couldn’t make out.

  One glance at Elissa’s pale, tight face told him she could hear them, too, probably better than he could.

  Which meant the voices were ghosts or some weird-ass magical defense.

  Fucking wonderful.

  Evil surrounded them. It prickled on his skin, made the cougar’s fur stand on end inside him and confirmed what the cop already knew: things were going to get very ugly very soon.

  Without thought, he reached for Elissa, not sure whether it was to comfort her or seek comfort himself.

  His hand closed around her fingers and, for less than a second, things seemed better in Rafe’s world.

  She jerked away and said too loudly, “Excuse me!” as if they’d bumped into each other. Her eyes went wide, stricken. Something barely visible wavered and shimmered in the air around them.

  He figured it out too late. Even in normal corporate America, employees holding hands would draw attention. Here, where co-workers barely met each other’s eyes, it was downright freakish.

  With one innocent touch, he’d managed to crack the illusion.

  A big, uniformed man wheeled around, pointed at them and shouted, “You! Where are your ID badges?”

  The few other people in the hall turned and stared. No, glared. If it had been a movie, they’d be brandishing pitchforks.

  Elissa opened her mouth, apparently with a plausible lame excuse. Rafe smiled, said, “Oops!” and raised his hands appeasingly. “It’s right in here,” he said, hoping he sounded convincing because if he didn’t they were in big, big trouble, and reached for his coat pocket as if to find the errant badge.

  His gun. Had to get to…

  The security guy did exactly what Rafe would do if a suspicious character reached into his pocket. He yelled, “Freeze,” and tried to draw.

  The man’s hand never made it to the gun. Out of the corner of his eye, Rafe saw Elissa do…something.

  The corridor turned into one of those dreams where you’re frozen while something horrible is about to happen. In this case, though, the bad guy was frozen.

  Elissa grabbed his hand. “Hurry, this won’t hold ’em long!”

  Tugging at his hand, she ran.

  But not, as all common sense suggested, back toward the elevator and out to safety.

  Down the corridor, past the frozen bad guys, deeper into the compound.

  “Shouldn’t we…”

  “No way.”

  “But…”

  “No fucking way.”

  He read their doom in those three simple words.

  His parents would never know how he died. Maybe just as well. They’d never understand.

  He wasn’t sure he did either, how Elissa and Jude had gotten such a hold on him in such a short time. The sex magic he’d stumbled into that first night, maybe?

  All he understood was that he couldn’t abandon her now. So he followed blindly, running like the devil was after them—which was way too close to the truth—and hoped she had a workable Plan B. His Plan B—his Plan A, for that matter—involved a lot of shooting, but he had a bad feeling they’d be outgunned, and a worse feeling guns might not affect everything in this special little outpost of hell.

  They pelted around a corner and almost crashed into a heavy steel door. Elissa looked around frantically then punched in another security code.

  Something beeped. Lights flashed red on the panel.

  Elissa cursed and tried again.

  The sound of heavy boots running echoed down the corridor behind them.

  This time, the door clanged open. They ran through.

  “They’re coming.” Rafe stated the obvious. “What now?”

  Elissa touched the door. A look of intense concentration darkened her face. Her eyes glazed over. Something popped and sparked, and Rafe smelled ozone.

  She smiled distantly. “That ought to hold them for a while. Let’s go.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Storm energy, I think. It’s not an electrical storm, but I managed to tweak it.” Elissa blinked. “I’m not sure how. Sometimes you work the magic. Sometimes the magic works you. And sometimes stuff happens that you can’t possibly anticipate. Step away from me, Rafe.”

  Something in her voice demanded his obedience, and he gave it.

  Seconds later, it was all he could do to not run down the hall without her, into the unknown, as the area by the door filled with misty spirits and a damp, nasty smell like the rot at the bottom of the lake.

  It wasn’t enough that this place had its own ghosts. She’d brought her own.

  Chapter Thirty

  Elissa, shaking, released the first batch of lake-drowned spirits that clung to her. “Make yourselves visible,
” she urged. “And terrifying.”

  Hollow eyes, water-logged faces. Water dripping onto the tile floor from no apparent source. And screaming, panicked cries for help, splashing, the helpless flailing of someone going down for the last time.

  She wasn’t sure if an ordinary person could hear them in the same way she could, but they’d register on the subconscious, make people want to be anywhere but there.

  It was already working on Rafe, who demanded, “Let’s find Jude. Now.”

  She nodded tightly. The ghosts were harmless, but the screaming was pitched in the key of get-the-hell-out-of-here and freaked her as much as it would anyone else.

  “This way.”

  Now she had to lead based on what she’d seen out of body and in visions, lead someone much better suited to being in the lead now, to rescue the one she’d secretly figured would be her furry knight in shining armor in case she ever needed rescuing.

  But she wasn’t going to let any of that, or even simple fear, stop her. She led, and did what she had to do.

  She froze an alarmed lab tech and an oblivious janitor. Listened to the screams of humans mingling with the screams of the ghosts and sent a silent command to the ghosts to ramp up their efforts. Realized not all the humans were put off by the ghosts. Some still followed.

  She prepared the freezing spell again, trying as she did to think of alternatives that might hold their enemies off longer. She had plenty of power—but what was the best way to use it?

  Rafe jerked his head down the corridor. “Someone’s coming from that way.”

  Great. Now they were boxed in.

  Worse, the new enemies were between her and Jude.

  Some primitive part of her dating back to ancient Ireland, before magic had been codified and Donovan ancestors no doubt did whatever they needed to do in times of war, howled with glee at the prospect of battle.

  “Now that’s just unacceptable,” she said and drew up. “You’re not stopping us now.”

  “What are you…” Rafe started to ask. Then he changed whatever dumb question he was about to ask to, “How can I help?”