Thicker Than Blood

by Annie Bellet

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the candles extinguished themselves and my fingers uncurled of their own volition. I dropped the knife, holding my left hand aloft. In my palm, floating over my skin, was a small ball of white light.

  The difference between this magic and what I was used to was impossible to explain. Like the difference between being cold and holding an icecube. There was no rush of power in me, no euphoria like I felt when working my own magic. Just a weightless ball of light and a grim satisfaction that I’d made something work.

  “Cantrip, achieved,” I said, risking a look at my audience. I was afraid to move. The light wouldn’t last outside of the circle anyway, if my interpretation of the spell was correct.

  Alma and Cora clapped. Jaq and Salazar were smiling. Noah stood in shadow near the door, his face unreadable from this distance. Kira gave me a slight nod, like a fencing opponent acknowledging a touch point.

  Not so useless after all. Feeling better than I had in days, I got slowly to my feet and closed my hand, extinguishing the ball of light.

  “Can I come back to the big table now?” I asked.

  “Hey,” I said to Jaq, since we were bringing up the rear of the group heading back to the war room.

  He turned and looked at me, his bland face expectant.

  “Uh, so, do you have a preferred pronoun?” I asked. Yeah, that had sounded more polite and way less awkward in my head.

  He chuckled. “He and him is fine. I find it easier to be male in this world, most of the time,” Jaq said. “But thank you for asking. Most people just assign whichever they are more comfortable with.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. At least that was out of the way. He’d smoothed it over and made me feel less like an ass. I appreciated that.

  Breakfast dishes had been cleared away, but there was fresh coffee at one end of the table. I grabbed a mug, adding milk and sugar to make it palatable.

  “Want a little coffee with your sugar?” Cora asked. She and her twin giggled.

  “All right,” Kira said, calling the meeting to a semblance of order before I could respond. “So, Jade, you can make us see the invisible fence? What about the mines or traps or whatever?”

  “I probably can,” I said as I took my seat by Jaq. While I wanted to be useful and look competent, overselling my new wizard powers could get us all killed. Pride cometh before the fall and all that jazz.

  “If I can see the fence,” Jaq said, “I can nullify the magic.”

  I gave him an appraising look, wondering not for the first time what exactly this mild guy was. I’d asked enough awkward questions for one day, however, and in the end it was probably none of my business.

  “Can you do that to the mines, if this spell lets us see them?” Alma asked.

  “I assume touching them would set them off?” Jaq looked at Salazar, who nodded. “Then no. We could try, but likely they would trigger before I was able to destroy the magic.”

  “If we can see them, we can walk around them,” Kira said.

  “What about guards and cameras and stuff?” I asked.

  Kira sighed and the twins giggled. From their looks, I guessed this stuff had been covered. Too freaking bad. I hadn’t been here.

  “No cameras,” Salazar said. He smiled at me and gave a slight nod, as if to reinforce that he didn’t mind going over it again and was on my side. “The government would have to pay someone to watch them. With the magic and the nature of this place, nobody is that worried about people coming in. Which works to our advantage, fortunately. There are external guards, but they are on stationed at the main entrance tunnel and garage, which is here.” He tapped his drawing a short distance away from the twist in the building. “If you’re careful, no one will be looking this way, and the building creates a hill, so there isn’t line of sight from the main entrance.”

  “Speaking of magic,” I said, trying to order my thoughts. “Who put these protections in place? Is there a coven or resident magic user we need to worry about?” For all I knew, they had a sorcerer on staff. That would make things even more dangerous.

  “No, nobody in the building,” Salazar said. He shifted his weight in his seat and met my gaze with an uncomfortable grimace. “It was done by a sorcerer, on contract.”

  “Samir,” I said. I recalled what Salazar had said at the scene of Peggy’s murder a few days before. Had it only been days? A week, maybe. It felt like a lifetime. I started to wonder if the order to cover up the supernatural nature of the crime and get out of town had been because of whom Samir was friends with. “He’s got friends in high places, I suppose,” I added.

  “I wouldn’t call them friends, but he’s greased a lot of palms over the years.” Salazar picked up his coffee mug and swirled it around, his lips pressed into a tight line.

  “At least he’s otherwise occupied,” I said. With trying to kill me and my friends. I left that part unsaid.

  “Best to go in near dusk, though,” Salazar said after a moment of silence.

  “The spell won’t last past dark,” I said.

  “It’s not that far from where we can set up to the hatch,” Cora said. “If we can see where to go, even at a very slow walk, we should be able to get inside within twenty to thirty minutes, at most.”

  “If she can see the mines and the fence, Jade could walk herself in, maybe?” Alma said.

  “No.” Kira looked at me, then at Jaq. “She needs Jaq to nullify the fence, or fences. There might be more than one, remember? And since neither of them can fight, at the least I’m going with them as contingency.”

  “No plan survives engagement with the enemy,” Alma said. “We’re going, too.”

  “You are?” I pictured them wheeling across a minefield before remembering they were shifters. I had the grace to blush. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Cora said, smiling.

  “We might look like two wheelchair-bound, joined-at-the-literal-hip cripples, but with our powers combined, we kick serious ass.” Alma grinned and high-fived her twin.

  “You two kick virtual ass also,” Kira said. Her whole expression softened when she looked at them, making her appear almost human. It was hard to dislike someone who clearly cared so much about her people, but I kept right on trying.

  “By day, we’re white-hat hacking mavens,” Alma said.

  “But by night, we become a Mayan jaguar goddess!” Cora laughed.

  “You’re Mayan?” Salazar asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Well, a couple generations back. We were raised in Las Vegas,” Alma said.

  “Mayan sounds cooler than kids from Nevada,” Cora said.

  “So we have a rough plan, then,” Kira said. “How long will the spell take to cast?”

  I took a sip of my coffee and thought about which spell to use. The scroll one was elegant and fairly simple, though the ingredient list was longer. The one in the book was more complex verbally, but with a shorter list of things. I wasn’t sure about either or even which I wanted to try yet, so I gave it my best guess.

  “Not long, I don’t think. Ten minutes at most?”

  “Can you cast it here first?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. I’d thought about this already. “There are two spells that might work, but both have time limits on them that aren’t clear. Sunset is pretty clear, but there’s stuff about the length of time it takes a candle to burn down, and one spell only works outside, I think. To be safe, I should do the magic as close to the time we’ll need it as possible.”

  “All right.” She sat back, wheels clearly spinning in her mind behind her icy eyes. “Here’s the plan. We’ll drive up behind the prison. Salazar said there is an old logging access road that can get us within a mile. We’ll hike closer, do the spell there, and then head in. Salazar will meet us at the hatch. Once there, the alarms go off, yes?” She looked at Salazar.

  “Yes, alarms, guards, the works. The place is guarded by a few NOS agents, but mostly contracted shifters.” Salazar
added that last part looking at me, so I assumed he’d been over that and was saying it for my benefit.

  “Jade heads to her father, we head toward the entrance, hopefully drawing attention with us. After that, we leave, and Jade, you’re on your own.” Kira gave me a look that spoke volumes about her opinion on my chances of success.

  “How do I get into the cell?” I asked Salazar, ignoring Kira.

  “I’ll get you a passkey. It’s a room, technically, not a barred cell. I would tell you the number right now, but I have to look up the exact one in the system. Doing so will flag me, but fortunately bureaucracy being what it is, I won’t be questioned until long after we’ve escaped.”

  “We could try to hack in now and find out,” Cora said. She cracked her knuckles.

  “Internal system. No way to hack from the ouside,” Salazar said.

  “Damn,” Alma said.

  “How are you guys going to get out?” I asked.

  “In a blaze of teeth and glory!” Cora said. They both started giggling again.

  “We’ll worry about that,” Kira said with a quelling look at the twins. “You just do whatever you have to do. The Archivist says your father will get you out.”

  “He will, if Jade can convince him to help her,” Noah said from his post against the wall near the door.

  “Okay, final question,” I said after I’d drained the last of my coffee. “How do we get there? Isn’t South Dakota, like, a day of driving away? Also, covered in winter?”

  “Leave that to me,” Jaq said.

  “We can drive there in less than four hours,” Kira said. She smiled at me, all teeth.

  “How, exactly?” I set my coffee mug down and raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Magic,” she said.

  I took another shower and gathered my few things. This was it. All the worrying and planning was more or less over. In a few hours, I’d have answers. At least, I hoped.

  Someone knocked on the door as I was getting dressed. I finished tugging on a clean-ish long-sleeved shirt and called out for whoever it was to come in. It was the Archivist, which surprised me. He hadn’t been the knocking type up until now. Maybe he’d known I hadn’t been fully clothed yet, which sort of defeated the politeness of his knock, since I couldn’t think of an explanation for how he’d know I was half naked that wasn’t more awkward than walking in on me.

  “They ready?” I asked Noah as he entered.

  “Yes,” he said. He closed the door behind him and stood with his hands behind his back, almost like I imagined a formal butler would stand. “There is a box of the things you asked for in the vehicle, along with the book and the scroll. I’d like those back, by the way.”

  “I don’t plan on taking them with me. I’ll leave them in the RV and tell Kira to return them. Good enough?”

  “That will do,” he said. He brought his hands out from behind his back, revealing a sheathed dagger in them. “This is yours.”

  “I meant like a pocket knife or something,” I said, not understanding. My ingredient and spell component list hadn’t had a dagger on it.

  Then I looked more closely at the knife, taking it in my hand. I nearly dropped it when I realized what it was. Samir’s dagger, only somewhat changed.

  “I traded this to you,” I said. “Why are you giving it back?” He didn’t seem like the charity type.

  “I have a feeling you might need it,” he said cryptically. “These are blades of prophecy, which you might find useful.”

  “Blades of prophecy? That sounds not at all ominous,” I muttered. I pulled the dagger from its sheath. It was changed from when I’d had it. The blade was silver on one side now, black on the other. Marks ran down the blade, runes and symbols in a myriad of languages, the least ancient of which was Greek. Alpha and Omega. Each symbol pretty much meant the same thing. Beginning and end.

  “The blade is joined together again. It will not leave you like before. Be careful with it. It is a knife of ending. It can kill almost anything.” Noah’s gaze was so intense it made me uncomfortable.

  “Almost anything?” I peered at it. Looked like a knife to me. It had acted pretty strangely when I’d had it, though. I had no problem believing it was magical. “What would happen if I were to stab Samir with it?”

  “I have no idea,” Noah said. “I do not like guessing, but I imagine it would destroy his flesh, at the least.”

  “Leaving his heart?” I guessed. Guessing was like my middle name lately. “So, again, why you giving this to me?”

  “Prophecies,” Noah said with a smile. “We’ll call it a hunch.”

  “I thought you didn’t like guesses?”

  “Instinct is not the same as supposition,” he said with one of his deliberate, creepy shrugs.

  “Fine,” I said, re-sheathing the blade. “But can you hand it to me again, and this time say, ‘It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this’?”

  “No,” the vampire said, his smile disappearing. “Follow me.”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” I muttered as I shoved the dagger into my backpack and followed him out.

  “There are a few rules of van club,” Jaq said. He stood in the doorway between the driver’s section of the RV and the living room section.

  “Rule one: you don’t talk about van club?” I guessed.

  It got me a giggle from the twins at least. They were seated on a narrow couch to one side, canes leaning between their legs. Apparently they could walk, but Cora had told me they preferred the chair due to their twisted hips. Kira, Salazar, and I were crammed on another bench behind in a narrow table.

  “Sure,” Jaq said. “Actual rules. Don’t come up here or bother me while I’m driving, for any reason. You are spurting blood out your neck, there’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Any reason. I mean it. Next rule: do not open the windows or pull back the curtains until I tell you it is safe to do so. Do not try to exit the vehicle. If you hear something weird outside, ignore the shit out of it. Clear?”

  “Crystal,” I said. “What is going to happen, exactly?”

  “I’m going to drive,” Jaq said. “The roads I’m taking aren’t really meant for mortals, so we go fast and hope nothing notices.”

  “What if something notices?” I had an image of Cthulhu in my head the way he was talking. Waking old ones or whatever. There was definitely a vast amount about this world I had no knowledge of. It made me feel very small.

  “We die,” he said. “But don’t worry; I’ve never had that happen. I’m good at what I do.”

  “Let’s go,” Kira said. “We are on a clock, after all.”

  All the curtains were closed and Jaq went into the front, shutting a sliding door behind him.

  “I’m going to grab a nap, if that’s all right?” Salazar said to Kira.

  “We’ll show you to a bunk,” Cora said. The twins heaved themselves up, leaning heavily on their canes. “Then we’re gonna sleep too, I think. It’s easier to make this kind of trip if you aren’t awake.”

  That left Kira and I sitting in silence at the table. The engine started and we rolled out of the garage. Kira pulled out a gun and started taking it apart, her message that she wasn’t interested in small talk loud and clear.

  I moved to the couch and tried to close my eyes. All my worries were waiting there for me. Could I work the spell? Was Harper still alive? Would Alek ever forgive me for abandoning them? Sleep was so not a thing I was going to be able to do. I opened my eyes again as the RV went over what felt like a speedbump. The road noise died, leaving behind only engine sounds as though the tires were no longer on a hard surface. It was eerie.

  Kira was bent over her gun, wiping down parts carefully with a soft cloth before fitting them back together again. She looked so much like Alek in that moment. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. She looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “So,” I said. I couldn’t talk about Alek—that seemed like a hot button from hell for her—so I went with the only other topic w
e had in common. “What kind of games do you play?”

  “What makes you think I play games?” she said.

  “Your tee-shirt? Things you’ve said? It’s pretty obvious.” I fought not to glare at her. She made it damn hard to crack her icy exterior.

  Kira looked down at herself. She was wearing black cargo pants and a grey teeshirt that said “Frag the Weak” on it.

  “Counterstrike,” she said. “Though I play other things, especially any kind of horror game. You?” she added in a tone that made me think she might actually want an answer. Maybe the ice was cracking.

  “RPGs mostly. You’re good with guns, I bet, like…” I stopped. Shit. It was too damn tough not to mention Alek. I missed him like hell.

  “Like my brother?” she said. She slammed the clip home in the gun.

  “Sorry,” I said. “The twins said he executed a friend of yours? As Justice?” Fuck it. If we were going to talk about him, I figured we could talk about all of it.

  “He didn’t tell you?” Kira put the gun into a holster and set it aside, which made me feel marginally less nervous.

  “No. He doesn’t talk about family much.” I shook my head.

  “My friend’s daughter was slain by a group of human scum. We shifters don’t have children often, or easily.”

  I nodded, not daring to interrupt.

  “We were hunting them down, but my friend got to them first. He went a little mad—understandably, mind you,” she went on. “He killed the three men who had taken his child, but he went further than that. He killed their families.” She looked down at her hands on the table and took a deep breath. “It was bad, I know. But he was so lost in hurt and grief. Human law enforcement was up in arms about the killings and it was going to be tough to keep it quiet. I think that’s why the Council sent a Justice.”