Bring It On

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Reaching backward with the flow of the attack, Sergei grabbed his assailant’s elbows and pulled forward even as he dropped down, sensing the pressure on his throat dropping. Swinging in place even as the chokehold eased, Sergei ended up facing a very surprised goon who became even more surprised when Sergei head butted him in the face, hard.

  Freed, Sergei got to his feet and raced for the stairs again, grabbing at elbows that got too close, twisting and shoving without any consideration of friend or foe. If they were between him and Wren, they were to be moved.

  Get to Wren. Get to Wren. The voice in his head chanted the mantra until voice and action melded into a sick symphony, drowning out the yells, crashes and swearing around him. But one fact was clear: the vigilantes were trained, armed, and winning.

  Useless. All these Talent, totally useless in a fight.

  The memory of Lee came to him—a tall, too slender man, an artist, a maker of beauty, heart and soul. A man who used his Talent only to create—spending his last moments turning those skills to hold off a fatae set on killing Wren.

  Not all useless. Just undirected.

  “Forearms!” he yelled, hoping that someone would hear and understand. “Hit ’em hard on the forearms!” He held up his arms in example. A hard enough blow, even untrained, and odds were good that the victim would drop whatever he was holding. Like, say, a baseball bat.

  That hope thrown out into the sea of battle, Sergei took the stairs two at a time, reaching the balcony in time to see Wren turning, a look of dismay and anger on her face, to deal with two humans who were clearly not there to ask her for her autograph.

  “Valere!”

  She heard him, thank God, and then…

  Disappeared.

  He knew she could do it. Her entire career, in many ways, was based on her ability to slide under the mental radar, to become so obvious, so overlooked, that your mind literally didn’t see her standing right in front of you, taking your valuables.

  He had heard her talk about how she did it, the technical details, the preparations, the effect…but he’d never actually seen her do it. Or not seen her, as the case might be. For some reason, even when she put the mojo on, he had always been able to see her.

  Not this time.

  Someone came up the stairs behind him, and Sergei turned, determined to throw the son of a bitch over the railing.

  “Come! Come!” The Leshi had lost one of his prongs, and his patrician nose was bleeding, probably broken, but his flat, even teeth were bared in a fierce grin, and not all the blood on his face was his. “More come. We go.”

  “Finally,” Sergei muttered. “A fatae with a lick of common sense. Wren?”

  “Here,” a voice murmured, and a cool hand touched his, and then was gone.

  Bart gave up even pretending to eat his scrambled eggs, and looked around the table. “All right. I hereby call this meeting to order, yada yada yada. What was the final roll call?”

  “Full house—almost thirty fatae of various clans, probably a hundred lonejacks, maybe more. Tough to tell—not everyone had checked in, and more were still arriving when all hell broke loose.” Stephanie tallied it up, her Connecticut Suburban Matron Cool still holding, but only barely.

  “Losses?” Wren didn’t want to think about it, but they had to.

  The dark red flaking off P.B.’s matte-black claws was noticeable only when he flicked some of it off, a nervous twitch Wren would prefer never to see again. The last time she had seen blood on his claws, it had been her own, after he dug a bullet out of her shoulder.

  They were sitting in an all-night diner just outside the Lincoln Tunnel, surrounded by off-duty staff from the local hospital, a guy who was probably an undercover cop, from the way he was sitting, and a scattering of workers wearing the uniforms of a major office cleaning company. The paramedics gave them an occasional professional once-over because of the number of bandages and bruises they were sporting, but otherwise the only person paying any attention to their table was their waitress, and even she was doing a half-assed job of it. P.B. finally had to get up and grab the coffeepot off the warmer himself, to give everyone a refill.

  “Too many. At least half the fatae are down, maybe out.” The Leshi had borrowed a file from Bart’s truck and evened out the ragged edge of his antler as they fled the city, giving him a disarmingly rakish look. He picked at the edge of his salad, shoving the hard-boiled egg to the side of the bowl with a grimace of distaste.

  Wren had only ever met one Leshi before, back when the vigilantes were becoming a real problem, and he’d been a hell of a fighter, too. She wondered if it was the antlers that did it, or if they had developed the antlers because they liked to fight…

  Michaela got a vague look in her eye for a moment, listening to a report from someone still on the site, doing cleanup work. “Seven lonejack dead. Another dozen in various stages of walking wounded. Two more had to be sent to the hospital with head injuries, no word on their condition.”

  Current could seal up minor skin damage and do wonders for bone fractures, but anything more delicate than that and it got tricky. Healing yourself was generally considered a major no-no—you couldn’t separate out your internal organs from the current, and sometimes really bad things happened.

  There were seven of them at the table. Michaela, Stephanie, and Bart, Wren, P.B., the Leshi whose name, amusingly enough, was Clyde, and another lonejack Wren had never met. Nobody had seen Rick since the attacks began. You didn’t want to count Rick out, but…

  Sergei had dropped them off at the front door, then commandeered Bart’s truck, saying something about the Null going to get gas while they compared notes. That had been an hour ago. She figured he was either lost in the swamplands of Jersey, or checking in again with Andre. Either way, he was on his own. She had to deal with the crisis of the moment.

  Although his calm mind would have been useful, right about now.

  “How many Nulls?”

  Wren shrugged, wincing as she felt a muscle twinge. She’d managed to avoid getting hit, being out of the main fighting, but being no-see’um had its own disadvantages—someone had slammed her with a chair, aiming for someone else when she was in the way. “Didn’t stop to count bodies. Anyone else?”

  A round of heads being shaken, all around the table.

  Wren ate the last strip of bacon on her plate, then wiped her fingers on a napkin. “There looked to be at least two dozen of them. Maybe more. I doubt we did much damage. Even if we all knew how to land a punch, we were taken by surprise.”

  “How?” That was Michaela, finally asking what everyone had been avoiding for the past several hours. “How the hell did they know where we were? Who told them?”

  “Someone told them. Someone who knew. Not that this was exactly a secret, considering how far the word went out—”

  “You think it was Council?”

  The question fell on the table with an almost literal thud.

  “It had to be someone who knew ahead of time,” Wren said, not answering the question directly. “You don’t get that many people together in half an hour, not unless you have an entire army sitting around waiting.”

  “How do we know they don’t, the Council? Ready and waiting to make their final move against us?”

  The tension level, already high, ratcheted up at Bart’s question. Wren could feel it, all the current coiling tight in her own gut, echoing the actions of her fellow Talents. Even the fatae at the table got tense.

  “All right. Enough.” Stephanie, taking control of the conversation before anyone let exhaustion and fear mix badly. “We got hit, and we got hit bad. Proof, if anyone doubted it, that an alliance is not only a good idea, but a necessary thing. The first prong of the attack was not aimed at lonejacks, but fatae. Alone, our cousins would have been slaughtered.”

  “Then if the freaks hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have been attacked in the first place.” The unknown lonejack, Shawn-something, his name was.

&nbs
p; Bart slammed his meaty fist down on the table, making his unused silverware jump, and the coffee, left cold in his cup, shimmy unpleasantly.

  “How did you get out of there?”

  There was silence.

  “I’m talkin’ to you, Shawn. How did you get out of there?”

  “I followed you,” he said sullenly.

  “And how did I get out?”

  The lonejack glared at Bart, then looked down at his plate. “You followed the fatae.”

  “The fatae has a name,” P.B. muttered, then subsided when Wren kicked him under the table.

  “And why was I following the fatae?” Bart pushed.

  “Because…” Shawn gave a long-suffering, put-upon sigh, then said, “Because he was clearing a path.”

  “With claws and muscles that only a fatae would have. With claws and muscle he knew how to use—and was willing to use, to get us out.”

  Point made, Bart leaned back in his chair, still pinning Shawn with a glare.

  “It didn’t matter who they were there to attack. The point is, we made it out as a team, where alone we would have died. The vote was taken in blood, our blood. We’re Cosa. We stand together. Got me?”

  “Yeah. I got you.”

  Wren wasn’t so sure the message had actually gotten through, but she had never given a damn about winning hearts or changing ideals—she just wanted people to stop screwing with each other so she could get back to work.

  She was a simple girl, really, with simple desires.

  “Wren.”

  Okay, and she was a simple girl who was slipping, if her partner could sneak up on her like that. A simple, very tired girl, who had at this point been awake for almost—God, almost forty-eight hours. No wonder she was starting to get groggy; there was only so much adrenaline and caffeine could do.

  “We need to talk.” Sergei’s face was even more poker-still than usual, and there was no sparkle in his eyes, at all. Wren was on her feet before her body thought about moving.

  “Wait.” Stephanie, frowning. “What can’t be said here, in front of everyone?”

  “Retriever business,” Sergei said, not even bothering to look away from Wren’s face.

  “Bullshit,” Bart said. “You’ve discovered something, and don’t want to tell us. What is it?”

  Something flickered then, deep in Sergei’s expression. Wren felt her breath catch.

  “You were sold out.”

  “We figured that already,” Shawn said in disgust. His body language shouted that he didn’t see what this Null could do for them, or why he was even being allowed at the table.

  “You know who,” Michaela said.

  Sergei gave a tight nod, his eyes still holding Wren’s. Her insides twisted in a way that had nothing to do with current.

  Someone at this table. Someone we trusted.

  She wasn’t sure what happened next; he might have let something slip, some body language or change of expression. Or maybe the traitor just panicked. But the table went flying onto its side, pushed with a blast of current that knocked them all off their chairs and onto the linoleum floor. Diners around them scattered, clearly expecting some sort of brawl to break out, and in the corner of her eye Wren saw the cop start to reach for a holster.

  “No guns!” she shouted, a dual message: for Sergei not to pull his own weapon, and for the cop to understand that this was going to be settled without bullets.

  Talents had different ways of doing things.

  Bart grabbed for Wren’s hand, and after a moment of panic, she grabbed it back, her much smaller fingers engulfed in his meaty and callused paw.

  Paw. A memory rose, something she’d never had time or energy to follow up on: P.B. offering himself as a source during the battle with the energy-creature, back in the Library over the summer. “It’s what I was created for,” he had said. She hadn’t understood it then. She didn’t understand it now. But she didn’t understand half of what she did; she just did it, and it worked, and that was all the moment needed.

  The thought had no sooner come to her than she felt claws scratch her shoulders, felt the warm, musk-scented fur of her friend at her back, and once again sensed that deep, heavy strength coming up under her own core, supporting and feeding the current without actually having any of its own to compete or interfere. Total surrender, total trust.

  Some day we’re going to talk about this, she told him before falling down onto the offered strength, reaching out with tendrils to coil around Bart’s offered current, feeling Michaela taking her other hand, sending Shawn’s weaker offering coming through Michaela.

  Any of them could have been point. But only she had P.B. at her back, and Sergei’s influence guiding her mind, coolly, calmly, dispassionately. Doing what needed to be done.

  And current lashed out, cracking in the air, destroying cell phones and PDAs and laptops throughout the entire diner, shorting lights and bringing the entire kitchen to a standstill.

  Wren fell out of the gestalt, and looked across at the shattered, bloody remains of what used to be the Connecticut representative, then over at the cop, who was blinking in shock, sitting back down slowly as though aware that there was nothing at all he could do.

  I hope we didn’t short out the entire town, she thought, then leaned forward and threw up.

  19

  The sound of polished stones being placed on the table sounded muffled, despite the excellent acoustics of the room. They appeared into the air above the table, untouched by obvious hands, and dropped slowly onto the cherrywood, not even smudging the surface. Seven, eight…nine stones, each the size of a well-groomed thumbnail, all glossy quartz. Six were milky-white, two a dark glossy green so dark they looked black, and one was clear, shot with webs of smoky-gray.

  A sigh seemed to rise into the air, breathed collectively by the eleven bodies in the room.

  The Arbiter, the somber tones of his dark gray suit offset by a pale pink bow tie, gave the stones a careful once-over, then nodded. “It is done. It is witnessed. The Mage Council has voted.”

  The words were ritual. The satisfaction in his voice was not. Clearly, he—like everyone else in the room—had an opinion about the vote.

  KimAnn Howe, the architect of the vote, smiled pleasantly at nothing specific and everything in general, every inch the genteel little old lady in a slim-styled business suit and demure heels. Only one Mage Council representative had abstained; old Washington, and KimAnn was not about to waste energy resenting someone who had cost her nothing; everyone knew that Washington would not take sides. The two who had voted against her; well, that was a different story. But for now, in her victory, it made no sense to be vindictive. A split decision was often more useful than a unified front. The Council needed a loyal opposition. Just so long as they stayed loyal. And the de facto, acknowledged leader of this Council was pretty sure that she had ensured that.

  The individuals seated around the table raised their hands, palm upward, to show that they held no more stones. “As the will of the Mage Council moves it, so shall the Council be moved.”

  Those words, too, were ritual, binding the vote into inevitable, unstoppable action. With the soft clunk of the voting stones, and the binding words over them, the greater New York Area Mage Council voted to become a larger entity, merging Sebastian Bailey’s San Jose Mage Council into their own, creating a larger, more powerful entity. Against all tradition, defiant in the face of the original charters, and with the full awareness that the five other Mage Councils of North America might take it amiss, they had done this thing.

  KimAnn met the glance of Jacob, sitting in the offcorner quietly making notes, and exchanged satisfied nods. A merger of equals, yes, but one with clear leadership—her own. It would take a while for the kinks to be worked out, and everyone to find their comfortable placement, but in the end, the Council would be strong, healthy, able to face the decades to come and not falter.

  A fitting legacy to her name, to pass down to the generations. Eve
n the lonejacks would see that, soon enough.

  “Michael, if you would ring for service, please?” They had come directly to the Council Room that morning to vote; although she had enjoyed a leisurely breakfast upon waking, it was unlikely that the others had been able to down more than coffee before—

  “Madame Howe.”

  The voting over, the stones recalled, the barriers on the Council Room doors had been released, and Colleen stood in the doorway, carefully looking directly at KimAnn, avoiding the table and those still seated around it.

  “Yes?”

  “Madame, there is news.” At KimAnn’s raised eyebrow, the girl continued. “The lonejack Moot. It was…attacked.”

  That got the attention of everyone in the room, Council members looking at each other with concern and not a little suspicion—they had all heard of the disappearances, of course. Those messages had been as much to keep her own people in line as to encourage the lonejacks to come to their senses. Angela looked a little pale—KimAnn remembered that she had a relative who had gone lonejack, almost a decade ago. It happened, now and again. No fault was attached to the family.

  “Attacked by whom?” She had not ordered any discipline—would not have done so on such a wide scale, regardless.

  “Madame. We—we don’t know.”

  KimAnn sat back slowly in her chair, the only sign that she was disturbed by this intelligence. Not that she cared if a few lonejack were brutalized—if it made them feel insecure, or threatened, then so much the better. Her own plans had been predicated on the fact that it was far easier to bring home frightened children than defiant ones, after all.

  But an organized attack on an entire Moot of Talent indicated someone who was not afraid of current. And that—that bothered her a great deal, indeed.