Niko helped me stand, and I tested how well the ankle was going to hold me. It didn’t hurt as much as I expected, thanks to Niko’s first aid skills.
“Truck’s here,” Mr. Pitt called from across the garage. “Let’s get going.” He disappeared behind the plastic. Isabel marched after him.
“You don’t by chance have a mammoth collar and leash in your trunk?”
Niko shook his head. “I left them at home this morning.”
“Damn.” How in the world was I supposed to take a five-ton creature for a walk?
I blinked to normal vision on the off chance the pooka would look like something completely different in normal sight—if the demon had taught me anything, it was that Primordium and normal sight didn’t always translate shape in the same manner.
Harsh bright overhead lights cast a dozen bulbous mammoth shadows across the garage. I squinted, shielding my eyes to take in the pooka’s complete form. He looked exactly the same in normal sight, only entirely onyx black from trunk tip to short, swishy tail. I doubted generations of archaeologists had mistaken the color of an entire species, which meant the pooka wasn’t completely in line with natural rules. Considering it had just birthed itself from pure lux lucis and atrum generated or accumulated by the human population growth in the area, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“What’s the rush?” Niko asked.
“Isabel. She wants him removed from her region. She says I poached him. Does that make sense to you?”
Niko nodded. “I’ll explain. Later. Where’s your coat?”
“In my car.” As if my body needed the reminder I was underdressed for midnight in November—no, December now—a shiver chattered my teeth.
“Lead the way.” Niko gestured to the pooka rather than the exit.
I took a deep breath. From what I knew of species who imprinted, they tended to follow the creature they imprinted on. I hobbled up to the mammoth, stopping short of his tusks, which left me nearly eight feet from his face. In normal sight, his eyes were liquid gold, beautiful, and much easier to look at than the swirling vortices in Primordium. “You ready to move this party to my region?” The pooka blinked thick lashes, and while my mammoth-expression-reading skills were rusty, I thought he might be confused.
“This way.” I turned and hobbled toward the exit. When I looked back, the mammoth hadn’t moved. “Come on.” I motioned with my hand like I would at another person. He curled his trunk at me.
“Maybe if you touch it,” Niko suggested from where he’d remained across the garage.
I blinked back to Primordium, wary of the pooka’s dual nature. I didn’t want to blindly rest against atrum. Wincing, I hobbled back to the pooka and reached a hand out to him. Mirroring my tentative gesture, the pooka lifted his trunk to my fingers. He snuffled my hand and arm with the tip of his lux lucis trunk and I gently petted the coarse skin.
Thinking of the Black Stallion movies I’d been enamored with as a child, I decided to test Alec Ramsay’s way of “leading” the black stallion by walking beside his neck. I turned to face the same direction as the mammoth. The mammoth gently wrapped his trunk around my forearm. Taking a deep breath and trying to project what I wanted, I took my first hobbling step. Then another.
The pooka let me walk three steps before he moved, shuffling along beside me as calm as could be. I grinned at him.
“We make great gimp twins.”
The mammoth’s tusks pushed through the plastic before I got close, but I tried to hold what I could aside so it wouldn’t hit his face. The plastic ripped as it spread around the mammoth’s massive body, and I thanked my luck the pooka wasn’t spooked by the sound.
The world outside had righted itself. The hounds were gone, as were the enforcers and their vehicles. The flocks of birds had scattered along with the smaller creatures in the shrubbery. A faint glow of lux lucis coated the roof edges like a dusting of snow. On the ground, swaths of atrum remained from the stampede of imps and vervet, though a few charcoal strips showed the enforcers had done some cleanup work after netting the hounds. There was a lot more work to do, but fortunately no one expected it of me: Keeping my feet clean of atrum while walking across the blackened ground taxed my current energy level.
I glanced behind us. Where the pooka stepped, faint imprints of mottled black and white footprints remained. However, once the pooka lifted a foot, the energies canceled each other out, acting the way I’d learned lux lucis and atrum were supposed to behave. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t have to run around after the pooka, cleaning up every footprint.
Niko walked around us, moving faster than my shuffle despite being weighed down with Jacob’s artillery. The pooka followed him with his whirling irises. I saw a gorgeous man with an impressive and enviable soul. I wondered what the pooka saw. He’d imprinted on me, a woman with a soul of pure lux lucis, but the pooka was equal parts atrum. Did he find Niko repulsive? Did he have the usual evil creature’s desire to devour enforcers?
I checked the trunk wrapped around my arm. Still solid lux lucis.
Niko dumped his armfuls beside his BMW, then strode to my car, my purse in his hands. In my pooka preoccupation, I’d forgotten it. I patted my hip, checking for Val; the book lay securely against my side.
We navigated the opening in the fence that someone had pulled wide. Our destination was obvious. Backed up to the edge of the construction site idled a wide-load flatbed trailer attached to a semi. The driver waited in the cab, and Mr. Pitt stood near the back of the flatbed. He eyed the pooka hungrily, and when we got closer, my boss gave the pooka a shallow bow. The pooka inclined his head in return.
I hissed in pain when I stepped onto the ramp with my sprained ankle and the slant engaged swollen ligaments. I staggered toward the pooka and latched on to his offered tusk. When I grasped it, he lifted me into the air, and I dangled two feet above the ground for a few shuffled steps before the pooka set me down on the flatbed.
“Thank you,” I said when I remembered how to breathe. I hobbled forward, knees absorbing the wobble of the trailer when the pooka climbed aboard. I situated us near the middle of the flatbed. It was plenty long, but not wide enough for my comfort. I would have appreciated some walls or railings. This kind of truck usually hauled oversize tractors and construction equipment. In other words, items that didn’t possess legs attached to a brain that could spontaneously decide to disembark while the truck was in motion.
“Madison.” Niko stood beside the trailer, holding my coat in his hands. “Here.”
I crouched and took the coat from his hands, straightening too fast and making myself dizzy. The mammoth was big enough to step on me when I was standing. Crouched, it might not see me before squishing me.
I shrugged into the coat, shivering despite the added warmth. The mammoth poked the thick fabric with the tip of his trunk, snuffled, then took hold of my wrist again.
The ramp retracted automatically, and Mr. Pitt gave a signal to the driver. The truck lurched into gear and eased away from the construction site. Exhaust billowed from the tall pipe behind the cab, blowing over us. I eyed the pooka, waiting for signs of panic. In turn, he watched me, as if waiting for the same signs in me. Not knowing what to do, I petted his trunk with my free hand.
“This won’t take long.”
I glanced back toward the garage as we crawled across the smooth blacktop of the parking lot. Niko crouched near his car, and lux lucis shot from his hands, racing across the atrum-tainted ground, eating away the blackness in an enormous arc. He stood, lifting a phone to his ear as he walked to the driver’s door of his BMW. Mr. Pitt was already in his tiny Fiat, and he zipped down the row beside us before pulling out in front of the truck. Isabel followed him in her Corolla. I looked for Illuminea or security guards or even imps lurking in the bushes, but other than our small entourage, the grounds were empty.
Cold air trickled through the warmth of my coat and numbed my legs. I shivered and shifted closer to the mammo
th. All fear, even of being trampled, blew away with the wind. The peace I remembered feeling when waking up in the construction site returned. I snuggled against the pooka’s woolly leg, and he shifted his energy so I lay against pure lux lucis. I braced myself as the truck took the first gentle corner, and the mammoth shifted to regain his balance. The flatbed rocked, then steadied when the mammoth stilled.
Nothing in my life prior to this moment prepared me for standing on the back of a wide-load flatbed, one arm held by a prehistoric creature, my body pressed against his warm front, traveling down Roseville’s nearly deserted streets at forty miles per hour, yet it felt as natural as breathing.
I wondered what the few people who passed us thought. Cars slowed and drivers stared. Did they think the pooka was a prop for a float or an exhibit for a museum? How did they reconcile how impossibly alive the mammoth appeared? For once, the magic of my secret world was visible to everyone, but did they really see it, or did they discount it, inured to the fantastical by movies and their limited grasp of reality?
Would they remain so conveniently dismissive when I walked around with a mammoth every day?
The wind scooped up my worries and carried them away. On the rim of the horizon, a faint glow announced the approaching dawn. I yawned, careful to avoid a mouthful of bugs and fur. I went on alert as we neared ground zero. If anything was going to call lingering evil to the surface, it was my pooka.
The truck barreled past the hotel without incident.
We drove straight to Illumination Studios. The driver parked on the curb rather than attempting to navigate the tree-studded lot. Niko pulled into the parking lot behind us, joining a cluster of cars and white-souled people.
“Welcome to my region,” I said.
The pooka looked around. Tucked against his chest, I didn’t have to duck to avoid his swooping tusks.
The driver leapt from the cab. Gray patches clouded the man’s soul, but I thought he might have been CIA anyway; he didn’t glance at the mammoth or me, didn’t say a word, and didn’t look the least bit curious. He hit a button that lowered the ramp before jogging back to the warmth of the cab.
The flatbed didn’t have room for the mammoth to turn around, and the drop-off was too steep for his injured leg. That left us with backing up, which proved much slower for the enormous beast than going forward. I stood between his tusks while the mammoth navigated one careful footstep at a time. He maintained his grip on my arm the whole way, and I fancied myself his safety blanket, which amused me.
When he reached the pavement, I gripped his tusk. He obligingly lifted me over the ramp to flat ground. Together, we turned toward the congregation.
Kathleen, Liam, Isabel, and a wiry woman with a geometric soul that marked her as a warden stood to one side. Mr. Pitt stood near them but clearly not with them. Clumped between the factions were Summer, Rafi, and Liam’s warden-in-training Sheila. Niko pulled into the lot and strode to stand near the enforcers, unaligned with either Mr. Pitt or the other wardens.
Sheila tried to maintain a stoic expression, but her eyes kept widening each time she looked at the pooka. Everyone else stared with serious eyes and heavy frowns.
Dread settled in my midsection. This wasn’t a welcoming committee.
16
Magic Happens
No one spoke as the pooka and I traversed the otherwise empty lot. I’d all but forgotten the promised council. It hadn’t been important while I’d been bonding with and unskewering the pooka, and I honestly hadn’t expected it to include me.
The worries I’d dismissed during the surreal drive settled into my body with each step. Isabel’s face was set in grim lines echoed by the wardens flanking her. I swallowed, my throat dry, and gave the pooka a reassuring pat. Whatever this was, I would make sure no further harm came to him.
“I recognize the evoked council,” Liam said once the pooka and I came to a limping stop.
“I answer.” Mr. Pitt stepped forward. I gasped when his soul pivoted as if attached to an axis anchored in his belt. The strange white shape stretched and spread around him like a bizarre, angular tutu.
“I evoked,” Isabel said, stepping forward. Her soul fell flat around her waist, the long smooth line of one side aligning with Mr. Pitt’s.
“I preside.” Behind my warden, Liam’s soul sprawled across two parking spaces, aligning with portions of Mr. Pitt’s and Isabel’s soul.
“I preside,” said Kathleen. By the time her soul fell, I recognized the pieces: Their souls held the shape of their regions, and they fit together like puzzle pieces. Mr. Pitt’s was by far the smallest, right there for everyone to see.
“I preside,” said the warden I didn’t know, stepping in front of Mr. Pitt, making her the warden to the area north of Roseville.
“Evoked, answered, and locked,” Liam said. A cycle of lux lucis shifted through the wardens before their souls snapped back into place. Mr. Pitt checked faces warily and the warden I didn’t know shuddered openly. Only Kathleen of Folsom seemed unaffected by the energy transfer. Liam stepped back, a deep furrow between his brows. The rest resumed a semicircle around me, but gossamer strands of lux lucis stretched between the wardens. Summer, Rafi, and Sheila discreetly shifted to avoid coming in contact with the immaterial filaments. Niko stood well clear.
“Margaret,” the wiry warden introduced herself to me. She glanced over my shoulder at the pooka. “I’ll shake your hand later, if you don’t mind.”
I closed my gaping mouth and nodded.
“Here is the source of all our problems.” Isabel pointed at me.
I bristled. I may have been untrained and new, but that didn’t make me a source of evil. Then I realized no one was looking at me. They were all looking at my pooka. I opened my mouth to protest, but the words didn’t materialize. The pooka had raised holy hell in the garage just a few hours earlier.
“Tonight’s problems, yes, but not those of the last weeks,” Niko said calmly.
Everyone turned to face the optivus aegis.
“Of course it is,” Isabel said.
“No, Niko’s right,” Kathleen said. “Even one this big can’t be blamed for our problems. By its nature, a pooka’s half lux lucis, half atrum. If it were exerting power over all the localized evil, it would have exerted the same pull over all the creatures on our side, too.”
I released a pent-up breath. The pooka had knocked me unconscious, saved me from horse-size imps, and left me to die in the stomach of a vervet. I wasn’t deluded into believing he was a good creature, but I didn’t want him to be responsible for the plague of evil in the area.
I checked to see how the pooka took the news. His eyelids drooped. I hobbled a few steps forward. If he fell asleep, I didn’t want to be crushed.
“It may not have been responsible for the evil we’ve faced, but look at it.” Liam gestured at the pooka. I didn’t care for the calculating look in his eyes. “It’s huge. It’s twice the size of the last California pooka. And it’s in the hands of an untrained enforcer. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”
“I claim territorial right to the poached pooka and enforcer,” Isabel said. Liam jerked to stare at Isabel, clearly shocked. Isabel tilted her chin higher. “It’s my right.”
Territorial right? I needed a translator for this conversation. I glanced toward Summer, but the friendly enforcer watched me and the pooka with equal wariness. There’d be no whispered answers to my questions in this meeting.
“Madison didn’t poach anything,” Mr. Pitt said. “She had no knowledge of pookas before tonight—a fact I repeatedly spoke out against the last few days, considering the dangerous proximity in which she worked with it.”
I frowned. Mr. Pitt had been the first person to deny me knowledge of the pooka. He could have told me all about it before reporting my discovery to Liam and Isabel on Black Friday. Or was I missing some unspoken warden code?
“Furthermore,” Mr. Pitt continued, “she was exactly where you all decided she should
be.”
“None of us knew there was a pooka rising,” Liam said. He shifted to put space between himself and Isabel.
“None of us?” Mr. Pitt asked, arching a brow at Isabel.
She huffed. “I don’t report to you, Brad, or anyone else. Of course I knew there was a pooka incubating in my territory. I’ve known about it for years. Jacob’s been monitoring it since he took on the region. It should have imprinted on him.”
“You admit to inviting an enforcer into your territory, into the pooka’s hatching grounds. You can’t claim it was poached when you gave consent,” Mr. Pitt said.
“You put her up to it,” Isabel said, pointing at me. “You refuse to get her any training, and we all know it’s because you’re so damn scared for your job that you won’t give another warden authority over her. And this green, naive enforcer happens to stumble upon the pooka and bond with it? We’re all supposed to think it’s a coincidence and not your manipulation?”
“Wasting Madison at the mall was your idea, yours and Liam’s,” Mr. Pitt said. “But if you want to talk about power manipulations, we could start with your and Liam’s attempt to maneuver me out of my job through this butterscotch snickerdoodle ‘allocation of enforcer resources’ that deprived me of my enforcer.”
The pooka shifted restlessly, eyes fully open after Mr. Pitt’s increasingly booming argument. I patted his trunk, pleased to have my boss’s impressive lung power used in my defense, yet unable to verbally reassure the pooka without ruining Mr. Pitt’s moment.
“Brad’s right,” Margaret said, gaze shifting from the arguing wardens to the pooka and back. “It wasn’t his decision to place Madison in the mall. Isabel, you didn’t have to report the pooka, but if you had, we could have prevented this.”
“There was nothing to prevent. She should never have been in the parking garage.”
I met Isabel’s furious glare and opened my mouth to defend my actions, but Kathleen beat me.
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 24