by Gary Jonas
“Oh, like the time Saruman tried to deactivate me? I understood that loud and clear.”
“No, Kelly, that was Anselma. The High Wizard wasn’t behind that—”
“He must have been high when he thought he could get away with it.”
By now, I had Grandmother Spider cracking up.
“Miss West,” Ravenwood’s voice came closer – smooth, with a hint of a chuckle in it. “If I may?”
“Um…”
“Miss Chan? It’s Blake here. We need to talk business.”
“I have nothing to say to you. Goodbye.” I hit the ‘hang up’ button and the phone booped when it disconnected.
“I understand,” Ravenwood continued, his voice rising loud and clear from the phone on the coffee table. Fucking magic. “So let me do the talking.”
“Like I have a choice.”
“This is bigger than our misunderstanding, and I do want to get you on my day planner for lunch sometime to clear that up. There’s a fantastic steakhouse nearby—”
“Not interested.” I rolled my eyes at Kess, who worked there.
“Later then. Here’s the deal. In an unprecedented move, DGI and the Rocky Mountain Vampire Council are teaming up to battle the oncoming undead onslaught.”
“Wow. Your PR person writes fast.”
“Yes, actually she does. I’m inviting you to join us in the upcoming battle against unending madness and enslavement by becoming the liaison between us and the rest of the Sekutar warriors, as well as the Kin.”
“I guess I’m chopped liver,” Grandmother Spider said, her face a mess of wrinkle from smiling.
Ravenwood apparently didn’t hear her. “Because, Miss Chan, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“You have no idea.”
“But I do. Amanda…” —his voice grew softer as he moved from the phone – “May I call you Amanda? Amanda here has been instrumental in keeping us up-to-date on your efforts to stop this cataclysm. A commendable job.”
“Stop kissing my ass. What do you really want?”
Some of the smoothness evaporated. “All right. What’s the saying? Brass tacks. You have other friends who we need as allies to defeat this thing.”
“Here we go,” Grandmother Spider rubbed her hands together. “Let’s see what kind of beads he wants to trade.”
“What friends?”
Ravenwood made a sound between a throat-clear and a chuckle. He obviously couldn’t hear Grandma. “Insiders, shall we say.” The temperature of his voice dropped a couple degrees. “People who have dealt with this type of magic before.”
“At least he knows they’ll lose without me.” Grandma cracked her knuckles. “Ask him what he’s willing to give in return. This should be good.”
“If I do know these people, what would you be willing to trade for their help?”
“Well, we could ease restrictions on access to the one-ninety-one ley line, for starters.”
“Like I said. Beads and trinkets. Little streams of power that belong to us anyway.” Grandma shook her head. “Tell him we want Na-ngasohu set free.” She looked me in the eye and my neck prickled.
“Don’t insult them. Set Na-ngasohu free or no deal.” I stumbled over the unfamiliar word, but Ravenwood couldn’t mistake the tone.
Heavy silence. “I can throw in access to the I-25 line. But the Kachina was part of an old agreement—”
“So I guess you’ll be telling Victor and the rest of the vampires that DGI stepped on its dick and they can all look forward to being slaves to a sadistic love bug god. That oughta play well.”
Grandma toasted me with her coffee cup.
Ravenwood cleared his throat again. “We hoped to use Na-ngasohu in the battle ourselves.”
Grandma snorted. “And compound the problem by four.”
“Set him…it…free instead and maybe we won’t all die.”
“Die? Death would be a blessing.” Grandma sipped her coffee.
“Or become giant cicadas ourselves,” I added. “Which is worse, I think you’d agree.”
More silence. Then, “We agree to the terms. We will bring Na-ngasohu to Cheesman Park when we gather for battle post-sunset. Amanda can facilitate the release.”
I looked at Grandmother Spider. She nodded.
“That’s acceptable.”
“Excellent.” Ravenwood chuckled. “Now that we’ve settled, do me the kindness of setting a little time aside in your agenda for lunch. I like how you negotiate.”
“I don’t do kindness.” I smashed my phone with my fist. Luckily, I had a back-up. I’d taken to buying phones two at a time since they had a tendency to end up in pieces.
Chapter 30
Kess chauffeured us back to my place. The sounds of women sparring punctuated the air. I could smell sweat and hair spray from the foyer. Home sweet home.
“That’s it, ladies! See you all next time.” Jessica finished up the class. She and Monique came out together. Monique smiled when she saw me.
“Miss Kelly!”
“Hey, girl.” We fist-bumped. She studied my hair. The patch that the hell-bug tore out healed, but the hair was gone. Only a little fuzz covered the spot.
“Not sure I like that look, Miss Kelly.”
“Me neither.”
“Heard you were under the weather. You look a little down. Hope it ain’t this whack thing they got from the rave.”
“Nowhere near it.” I touched Monique’s shoulder with the hand her aunt had healed. “You should really go see Lina though. I think she’s getting over a touch of it.”
Monique’s eyes widened and her mouth opened slightly. Then, she pressed her lips together. “Aunt Lina can take care of herself. She’s proven that.”
Jessica gave me a concerned look and I shook my head slightly.
Monique looked back and forth between us. “Don’t you both start on me.” She looked disgusted. “I gotta get to church. I’ll go see my auntie when she gets right with Jesus.” She threw a towel around her shoulders and headed for the showers.
Jessica watched her go, clearly torn between following her and catching up on my day.
“You can’t fix that, Jessica.”
She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. So, where’s Brand?”
“Yeah.” Amanda walked out of my office. “Where is gorgeous?”
“Gorgeous is dead to me.”
“Wait, you killed him?” Amanda covered her mouth.
“I said dead to me, not dead.”
“I knew something was wrong, the way Juke talked.”
“Come on.” I motioned for Jessica to follow me into the office, where Ramona and Grandma waited. I went over the last few hours.
“Sorry, Kel,” Amanda patted my arm.
“Me, too.” Ramona barely hid her glee.
I brushed them off. “Update me, Amanda.”
“Here’s the deal. The concert begins at nine. Sun sets at seven-thirty. That gives the vamps time to get in place. They’ll persuade any mundanes to leave the area. So will their Watchers and Companions. They’ll fill the park and cemeteries, as will DGI. All hands on deck, time and a half pay.”
“That’s nowhere near enough people.”
“It’s not just DGI. There’s a temporary moratorium on fining freelance witches and wizards. Actually, we’re hiring them for the night. That’s another two hundred people.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Oh no, this is big. Folks are coming in from up and down the Front Range and across the divide. It’s a freaking Homecoming. Even my family’s coming.” Amanda’s cheeks reddened.
“Yikes.”
Amanda came from a line of especially powerful and fiercely independent wizards.
“I know,” Amanda said. “I haven’t told them I work for DGI. But none of them are staying with me.”
“Good.”
“And then there are the Kin and the Sekutar, thanks to you and Jessica.”
“How will the bloodsucke
rs keep from falling under Kokopelli’s flute?”
Amanda grinned. “Can’t say yet, just in case someone’s listening. But you’ll see.”
“Something from Tally’s?”
“Oh, no. They’re in deep shit for the part they’ve played. We’re voting with our dollars. Or lack thereof.”
“What’s the plan for getting the flute?”
Amanda snapped her fingers and my fish’s bowl lifted into the air and floated to her hand. “That’s up to us here in this room. Ravenwood doesn’t think Kokopelli and his girlfriend will even show. DGI’s using every crystal ball and scrying mirror in the building. They’re looking and not finding. All the DJs need to do is to stay hidden and broadcast their music over the magical equipment, which is already in place and heavily warded. We’ve lost four wizards already, trying to take it out.”
“Dead?” Ramona asked.
“Nope. They went absolutely insane. Dangerously insane. Even Ravenwood won’t go near it now. No one will.” The fishbowl floated back to the table.
“Kokopelli will be there. At Cheesman.”
“Grandma, how do you know?” Ramona took her glasses off to clean them.
“Because that is where Ravenwood will bring Chasing Star Dancer. Kokopelli wants him. That’s why he came to Denver.”
“Is he like the Kachina Ramona carried around her neck?” I asked.
“Yes and no. Kachinas bring gifts in return for the gifts we give them. Most bring rain, essential in the dry Southwest. Na-ngasohu, Chasing Star Dancer, brings a little more to the mesa. He brings meteor showers.”
“Now I get why Ravenwood wanted to use him in the battle.” I pictured swarms of rocks pummeling zombies. And everything else.
“For this battle, and more. Any meteor that falls, Chasing Star Dancer can raise to life and send back to the sky. Unless someone with powerful medicine keeps them here.”
I shook my head. “That’s why DGI took him. Another attempt at raising an army. Wizards never fucking learn.”
“Kokopelli wants to corrupt Chasing Star Dancer and use him to raise more dead. But once he’s free, Chasing Star Dancer will serve the people differently in this battle. You’ll see.”
“If we gather the Sekutar at Cheesman, we can eliminate Kokopelli.”
“That’s not how we’ll win.” Grandmother Spider folded her hands on the table and looked at her granddaughter.
Ramona smiled. “I can take out the sound system. Where magic failed, science—”
Grandma interrupted her. “That’s not how, either. We will win through our own sacrifices.” She smiled and unfolded her hands to show three flat-sided sticks, one side black and the other white. She smiled at me. “Sacrifices and subtle cunning.” Grandma stood up. “But now I need to stretch my legs. Jessica, will you show an old woman around the block?”
“This block?”
“Maybe farther than a block. I saw a donut shop. It looked interesting.”
“Um, sure.” She looked at me and shrugged. I nodded back. She could defend herself easily. Not that she’d need to, escorting a goddess down Colfax.
Ramona glanced at me and left the office.
I groaned and put my head down on the desk.
“Sorry about Brand.” Amanda stroked my hair.
“You know, I need to follow the advice I give my students. Never date a guy who’s tried to kill you.”
“That’s some solid advice, there, Kel.”
“Having a boyfriend is hard.”
“I never found that to be true,” she said. “Except for that one time I fell in love.”
I lifted my head. “What happened?”
“I moved on as quickly as I could. I don’t need that kind of misery.”
“You’ve kept Juke around longer than I’ve seen you keep anyone else.”
She smiled to herself. “I might be a glutton for punishment every now and then.”
Amanda’s phone rang – Juke’s ringtone, Mission Impossible. “Speak of the devil.”
“I’ll give you some privacy.” I left before I had to listen to Amanda flirt with Juke.
Chapter 31
I heard a sound in the dojo and stopped. My place should have been empty of students. I crept down the hall.
Ramona stood barefoot on a mat. She’d changed out of her bloody suit and into yoga pants and a tight tank top. She held a standard pair of tonfa and studied herself in the mirror on the back wall.
“Widen your stance and bend your knees.”
She watched my reflection approach her and smiled. “I could say the same to you under different circumstances.”
“I thought you went with your Grandma and Jessica.”
Ramona lost her smile when she realized I wouldn’t play along. “They’re fine. I’m the one who needs to learn to fight. Big battle ahead, you know?”
I thought of Lina. “We all fight the darkness in different ways. Maybe you don’t belong on the battlefield.”
“Grandma thinks I do. I saw it in her eyes.”
“Then, here.” I adjusted her upper body and used my foot to push hers out farther until it lined up with her shoulder.
“I thought you said I didn’t belong on the battlefield.”
“You don’t. But, I told you I’d teach you in the dojo, and I keep my promises.”
She leaned back against me. “I like that in a woman.”
“This is how you hold the tonfa.” I adjusted the weapons in her hands. “That allows you to swing—”
Ramona turned her head and kissed my mouth. She tasted of sage and rainwater and her lips felt as warm as sunlight. I swear I sensed the earth turning under my feet. I’d never kissed a woman, never thought about it. But I didn’t pull back until she finished.
She leaned in to kiss me again.
“No. Ramona, I’m sorry.”
“We could die tonight.” She laughed a little. “Did that sound as lame to you as it did to me?”
I smiled. “Pure cliché.”
“But still true.”
“Clichés usually are.”
“All the true stories have an element of cliché.” She put the tonfa down and turned to face me. “Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl meets girl….”
“And says no, because it’s too soon since girl lost boy.” Not to mention you’re a goddess-in-waiting who’s way above my paygrade and I’ve been told to let you down easy.
Ramona looked down, still smiling. Then she looked back up at me. Out of her heels, we were the same height. “So…too soon means there’s a chance later?”
I shook my head. Then I took her face in my hands. “You’re very beautiful and smart, and not meant for me.”
“I don’t get to decide that?”
“Not in this case.”
“I get the sense that it’s not your decision, either.”
Let my granddaughter down easy.
“Maybe it isn’t.”
Ramona reached up, wrapped her fingers around mine and drew my hands down. She held them and said, “Let me know when you’re free to make your choice.” Ramona moved in for a second swift kiss and I let her.
She picked up the tonfa and put them back, then I watched her walk out of the dojo with all the grace and glory of a full-fledged goddess. She may not have been ready for it in that moment, but I felt like I’d gotten a preview.
And when she transformed, she would be breathtaking.
Chapter 32
The warm day cooled when the sun slipped behind the Front Range. Shadows that grew west to east faded when the last rays disappeared. Streetlights took over where the sun left off and turned the long shadows into puddles under our feet. Even those disappeared as Amanda, Ramona, Grandma and I walked under the trees that fringed Cheesman Park.
“The park’s haunted,” Amanda said. “What do you think the ghosts will do when they see their own bodies rise?”
“That’s too philosophical for me.”
A small knot of people stumbled toward
us out of the park, their eyes glazed over.
Ramona stopped. “Zombies?”
Amanda touched her arm. “Of the vampire-zapped kind. Not our problem. Just tranced-out mundanes headed back home, thanks to the vampires.”
“I hope that’s the last of them. It’s getting late,” I said.
“Nope.” Amanda pointed to a wavering shield. “Too many showed up for the vamps to persuade on their own, so my people are trying to keep them shielded. They’ll see a different show from the rest of us. And hopefully make it out of here alive.”
“That’s a lot of energy to expend without profit. Ravenwood’s okay with that?”
“More than okay. It’s part of DGI’s community outreach.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Community outreach. From DGI. You’re joking.”
Amanda grinned. “It’s a whole new company with Anselma gone. The way he can tap into ley lines, Ravenwood’s in danger of flooding the market with magic. So, we’re giving some back to the community. Whether the community knows it or not.” Amanda twirled a long lock of hair around her fingers. “Blake’s really not the monster you’re making him out to be, Kel.”
“So it’s Blake now?” I shook my head and we started walking again.
Ramona watched the crowd of vampires, ghouls and wizards with wide eyes. She absently reached for the pouch around her neck, and must have remembered it was empty. She dropped her hand and we walked on.
I leaned in close. “It only gets weirder from here. Do you want to go back to the dojo? Jessica’s there.”
She looked sideways at me, paused, then looked at her Grandma walking ahead of us with Amanda. “No. I won’t be a disappointment.”
In the park, the vampires waited. Their Watchers and Companions moved among them with warm pitchers of blood and glasses at the ready. Some of the Companions didn’t bother with the glasses and happily offered their throats to their masters. They did all this without speaking a word, which I thought odd. I spied a Companion I know named TJ hovering next to his bloodsucking mistress. He did something to her ear, said something apparently funny because she laughed and rewarded him with a deep kiss. I caught his eye and he did an impressive job of pretending not to be terrified of me.