“How much of a plan?” Jesse asked beside me.
I flashed him a grin and said under my breath, “Twelve percent.” To the others, I said, “But we need to know where they’re going to be. I need help with that.”
“Do you have a map of the city?” Will asked Dashiell.
Beatrice got up and retrieved a map of the greater-LA area. Trust vampires to still have paper maps. Will took it and handed it to Kirsten. “Where is this ley line?”
She shot him an appreciative look and pulled a pen out of her purse. She drew a curving line from the Simi Valley southeast through Canoga Park and Burbank, curving around and south all the way to Long Beach, not too far from Sunken City. Even from the other side of the table, the line looked familiar, and I got up and went over for a closer look. “It follows the river,” I declared, pointing at the blue line whose course was almost identical to the pen line. “I saw it on a map this afternoon at the River Center.”
“I’d never paid much attention, but I suppose that makes sense,” Kirsten said thoughtfully. “Ley lines often follow natural landmarks, and that river’s been there in some form or another since the Tongva.” The Tongva were the Native American people who had occupied the LA Basin before the first Spanish settlers. “Staying near the ley line would likely boost the Hunt’s strength.”
“It’s not just that.” Jesse leaned forward to trace his finger along the line. “They can use the riverbed itself to get around the city.”
He was right.
“That’s good to know and all, but ‘they’ll be somewhere along the river’ isn’t enough for us to go on,” Will pointed out.
“No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “Unless we could predict exactly where they’re going to turn up and be waiting for them.”
Every head in the room turned to look at me. “How fast can you guys assemble your people?” I asked.
Chapter 42
I started laying out my plan—or my 12 percent of a plan—and the others spent another fifteen minutes poking holes in it. The biggest question was whether or not I would be able to stop the Wild Hunt magic. We would have to bet everything—everyone—on the theory that I could.
“How sure are you?” Kirsten asked, looking worried.
I chewed on my lip for a moment. “Mostly sure?”
The other three Old World leaders exchanged looks. “That’s not overwhelming me with confidence,” Dashiell said.
“Okay, let me show you something. Please just humor me for a second. Bea and Dashiell, can you come stand by me?” They raised their eyebrows, but pushed their chairs back and came toward me. I looked at the wall, where Shadow was curled up next to the door so she could ambush intruders. “Shadow, can you come here?”
The bargest stood and trotted over to me. I asked her to sit next to my chair, and then I stood up and went to the other side of the room, positioning her between myself and the others. I brought Beatrice and Dashiell with me so they wouldn’t turn into dead vampires again. “Be very still,” I advised Will and Kirsten. “Will, fight your instincts.”
Before anyone could react, I pulled in my radius. Almost immediately, Shadow stood up and ran straight for Will, her teeth bared. He followed my advice and held still, while she stood three feet away from him, the hair on the back of her neck bristling straight up. Her whole body was tensed, waiting for the command to rip out his throat.
Carefully, I extended my radius until it encompassed Shadow—but not Will.
The bargest calmed down. She did a little dance in place, whined, and then retreated to stand next to me. “But I’m still a werewolf,” Will said, confused.
I released my radius back to its usual area, and we all went back to our seats. Jesse, who had watched the whole demonstration with disinterested calm, grinned at me. “The bargest magic is Wild Hunt magic, and it works on two levels,” I explained. “There are the permanent physical effects, which give her strength and speed and the impenetrable skin, but there’s also the . . . mmm . . . nonphysical component of the magic that lets her heal quickly and forces her to want to hunt and kill werewolves.” I gestured to Will. “The physical stuff is permanent; I can’t undo it. But the nonphysical stuff is affected by me.” I shrugged. “‘Spectral warriors,’ to me, implies nonphysical. Definitely not permanent. So . . . I’m mostly sure I can stop the Wild Hunt.”
They all looked at me thoughtfully. “What about the animals?” Kirsten asked. “In all the lore, there are horses and dogs, at the very least.”
“That’s what I’m not sure about.” I checked my watch. We had twenty minutes until sunset—though I doubted that the Wild Hunt would begin the moment the sun went down. That kind of complex magic would require a whole ritual to begin. “That’s why we need fighters.”
“And another thing,” Jesse added, looking inspired, “I don’t suppose any of you have access to animal tranquilizers?”
A couple of minutes later, the conference room sort of became the situation room, as everyone began talking or texting, trying to assemble their people.
I expanded my radius so Beatrice and Dashiell could move around the mansion, and kept an eye on Will as he made his calls. Many of his weaker werewolves had already left town, so he didn’t have as many calls to make as the others. When he finished, I asked him if we could talk in the hall for a minute. He looked surprised—the two of us didn’t really do much one-on-one time, especially since I had broken up with his second-in-command—but he complied.
“What’s up?” he asked after I closed the door behind us.
“Listen . . .” I began, not really sure how to begin this conversation. “Uh, you know we’re probably all gonna die tonight, right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. But we’ve been probably going to die before.”
“That’s not . . . grammatically sound, but yeah. Anyway.” I took a deep breath.
It was stupid of me to interfere, of course, but hey. Sometimes I do stupid things. Will had a daughter he didn’t know about. Sashi had never told him about Grace, and now it might be too late.
When I’d called her on the way to Dashiell’s place to thank her for saving Noah, I’d asked if I could tell Will she was in town.
“Do you think that’s really necessary?” she’d said in a panicky voice. “I’m going back tonight. He doesn’t need to know I was ever here.”
“Sashi.” I’d tried to think of the right words, and finally just said, “I’m pregnant.”
She’d gasped. “That’s not possible.”
“Apparently it is. Do you remember the guy I lost in Vegas? The other null?” Despite what was happening with Jesse, it still hurt to think of Jameson. It probably always would.
“Yeah,” Sashi had said, and then, “Oh.”
“Yeah. He died not knowing he was going to have a kid. And Will . . . there’s a good chance we won’t make it through this tonight.”
“I see,” she’d said in a small voice.
“Look, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be the world’s shittiest mom, and I have no right to give you advice. But maybe if Grace met Will . . . maybe if she understood why you couldn’t marry John . . .”
There was a long silence, and I was sure I’d overstepped. But all Sashi had said was, “What do you have in mind?”
Now that I was standing across from the alpha werewolf, I struggled for the right words. “This morning, when Noah was attacked,” I said finally, “I made a call to a healing witch I met in Las Vegas. She took a late-morning plane and got here in time to save him.”
“A healing witch,” he echoed.
There really wasn’t any way to sugarcoat this. “Will . . . it’s Sashi.”
His face changed. Actually, his everything changed. His body language went from loose and relaxed to sort of defensive and prepared. Like he thought I was about to kick him in the teeth, and there was nothing he could do to stop me. “My Sashi?” he said, in a voice that sliced at my heart.
I nodded. “She’s in town, although she’
s on a late flight back to Vegas in a few hours. If . . . you know. You wanted to talk to her.”
He stared at me. “Why did you . . . I mean, how did you and her . . .” He drifted off, and then sort of shook himself. “Does she want to talk to me?”
Not really. But Sashi felt that the news should come from her, which I had to respect. “She thinks it might be a good idea,” I said carefully. “But it’s up to you.”
“How do I . . . should I call her?” The alpha werewolf of Los Angeles suddenly looked like an uncertain kid on his way to pick up his prom date.
I checked my watch again. “She should be parked out on the road.”
He turned and started toward the door before pausing. “Thanks, Scarlett,” he said quietly.
I felt like I should add something. Wait until you learn what I’ve been keeping from you. But I just nodded and headed back into the conference room, shutting the door behind me.
Dashiell called me over. He was standing with Beatrice and Hayne, who looked a little guilty. “Did you invite a boundary witch into my territory?” Dashiell said, his face clouded over with annoyance.
Oops. With everything that had happened, I’d completely forgotten that Katia was coming to help Wyatt. But she would have called Hayne when she arrived . . . and Hayne would have felt obligated to tell Dashiell. I couldn’t really blame him for that. “Uh, a little bit?”
Dashiell frowned, and I rushed to add, “Look, it didn’t seem like a big enough thing to wake you up over during the day. But yeah, I thought if Katia had any chance of saving Wyatt, it was worth a phone call.” And, okay, I’d forgotten about it.
Beatrice laid a hand on his arm, and he sighed. “Sometimes,” he said tiredly, “I honestly think you’re trying to drive me insane.”
“It’s really more of a fringe benefit than an overall goal,” I said helpfully.
Beatrice shot me a look. “I’m sorry,” I added, more contrite. “It’s been an intense week.”
Dashiell just waved me away.
Chapter 43
When most people think of rivers, they think, you know, “large body of quickly moving water.” But the Los Angeles River is different. Mostly, it’s a gigantic concrete trough that usually has a trickle of filthy liquid running down the middle. You know the big race at the end of Grease, where they’re in the wide concrete channel that’s completely dry except for a tiny bit of water? Yeah, that’s the LA River. It’s littered and polluted, and until very recently, it was one of many ugly things in Los Angeles that people just sort of averted their eyes from, like homeless people, graffiti, and the condition of all public bathrooms.
In the last decade or so, however, activists had made serious efforts to “rebrand” and revitalize the river, starting with removing the concrete bottom from many sections so native plants could grow in again. New parks had also sprung up along the river, and bike trails, and there were places where you could even kayak.
The vast majority of it, however, was still a wide, dry channel. And if you weren’t concerned with being seen, or facing possibly violent homeless squatters, you could use it to move through most of the city. There was no traffic, no crowds of distracting humans. And, best of all, no one paying attention.
Kirsten had called in the witch who did volunteer work for the LA River, and she’d arrived at Dashiell’s house within fifteen minutes, which was pretty damned impressive. Her name turned out to be Paloma Greene, which really, really sounded made up, but then again, that could just be LA for you.
I was expecting some variation on “New Age hippie,” but Paloma arrived in jeans and a button-down shirt, smelling of fertilizer. She was about fifty, with short, sensible black hair and the look of someone accustomed to running four lives at once. A mom look. “I was working in the garden,” she said, unconsciously scrubbing her hands together, though they didn’t look dirty. “What do you need?”
Kirsten explained, and Paloma went over to the map still spread across the conference-room table. She stood there for a few minutes with her hands on her hips, looking over her options.
Part of the recent revitalization project had included setting up a bunch of new parks along the river, or sprucing up existing parks to encourage people who wanted to use the channel for bike or walking trails. Paloma pointed at a green spot very close to Long Beach. I squinted to read the name: Maywood Riverfront Park. “This one,” she said. “There are residential homes around the park, but most of it is fenced and contained. And the entrance from the river forms a choke point.”
“Thank you, Paloma,” Kirsten said. “Will you join us? We could use your expertise.”
Paloma bowed her head. “I’m not sure how useful I’ll be,” she said. “But I will do my best.”
After that, it was a matter of getting everyone the park’s address and telling them to head down there immediately with whatever weapons they could carry . . . except for two of Dashiell’s vampires, who were out trying to press a noted veterinarian who worked with the LA Zoo to get some serious tranquilizer.
The idea was simple: if the witches of the Wild Hunt could only see the supernatural, we could draw them to wherever we wanted by gathering all of LA’s remaining supernaturals in one place. Instead of riding through the city lopping the heads off witches and werewolves who might be trying to hide or run, they would be drawn to the hunting ground we’d chosen.
It sounded easy in theory, but Kirsten and Dashiell, especially, had a hard time persuading their people to come be . . . well, bait wasn’t quite the right word, but it was probably the closest one. We needed to reach critical mass, and only by threatening and cajoling were the leaders able to convince everyone to join in. Dashiell could have ordered his vampires to come, since they’d all sworn loyalty to him to be allowed to live in his city, but he couldn’t do it over the phone, and he said that soldiers who were being forced to fight were not the kind of soldiers anyone wanted.
Happily, convincing other people to join us had been Will, Kirsten, and Dashiell’s problem, not mine. In the end, I think the tipping point was that those who refused would be taking their own kind of risk: after all, a werewolf on his own would still be vulnerable to the Wild Hunt.
I went down to the park with the first wave of people—including Jesse and Shadow, of course—because I needed to get inside the territory so Kirsten could set the humans-go-away spell.
She had offered to give Jesse a witch bag, which would have protected him from the spell, but he’d shaken his head firmly. “Then I couldn’t go near Scarlett,” he’d pointed out, taking my hand. “Where she goes, I go.”
Kirsten had looked from him to our joined hands, to my face, which was turning red. She’d given us a wide, sunny smile. “About damned time,” she’d said.
Dashiell must have called his contacts at the LAPD or the Highway Patrol, because Jesse raced the truck down the freeway doing nearly ninety, and we weren’t the only ones.
As soon as we arrived, I could see why Paloma had chosen this particular park. It was sort of wedge shaped, with one edge formed by busy Slauson Avenue, and the other by the river. The park itself formed the curved part of the wedge, enclosed (mostly) by an iron fence. That made me hopeful: many of the legends suggested that the Wild Hunt riders weren’t able to pass through iron. It was worth a shot, at least.
Speaking of which, Jesse had two guns in hip holsters, and he’d convinced me to take his Glock, which I’d put into a small-of-the-back holster. Under that I had my knife belt, and under that, the bulletproof vest. I felt bulky as hell, and I couldn’t see how the Luparii would be able to carry guns anyway—spectral guns?—but I wanted to be prepared. And as much as I disliked the things, I wasn’t at all opposed to bringing guns to a sword fight.
Shadow was trotting along on my other side, and I sort of wanted the three of us to start walking in slow motion; we were so obviously ready for a fight. We jog-walked into the center of the park, surveying the territory. “How do you want to do this?” Jesse ask
ed me.
“Humans-go-away spell starting on the other side of that bridge,” I said, pointing. “And closing off this section of Slauson Avenue.”
“That includes the bridge.” He grimaced. “It’s gonna piss people off.”
I sent him a sweet smile. “What’s the point of having city officials in your pocket if you’re not gonna take them out and mess with them once in a while?”
“What about the riverbed itself?” he said. “Are we closing off a section?”
I shook my head. “They might be able to feel the spell, or they might bring humans along for the specific purpose of feeling out traps. Let’s close the bike path, but leave the riverbed open.” That gave me another idea. “We should actually get a couple of human servants to hang out in the riverbed, a quarter mile in either direction. Like spotters.” I could ask Dashiell to get some of the human servants on it.
“I thought humans couldn’t see the Wild Hunt,” Jesse commented.
“Not the hunters, but if the Wild Hunt includes bargests, they should be able to see them.” I didn’t know about the horses.
I turned around. “The residential area is going to be a bigger problem.” There weren’t a ton of houses facing the park, but there were some. “Kirsten can set another humans-go-away, but when the vampires start arriving we should still have them go door-to-door.”
“Agreed.”
With that, there was not much else I could do except stay away from the edges of where Kirsten was planning to set spells. Jesse hurried off to talk to the people who were arriving, and I sat down on a bench in the middle of the park. Shadow jumped up on the bench beside me, causing it to quake, but when it didn’t collapse, she lay down, allowing me to lean on her like a pillow.
Within the next half hour, Kirsten—and the big group of chanting witches following her around—had almost finished setting spells on the edges of our target area, and the vampires were clearing the neighboring homes. Everyone in this part of Long Beach was going to have a sudden desire to go to the movies, or a bar, or whatever the vampires felt like telling them.
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