by Gary Jonas
Kin edged close together, studiously avoiding their vampire cousins. Unlike the vampires, they talked to each other non-stop, probably about the upcoming feast. I was amazed at how brave the Kin had become once they set aside their differences. I was also a little taken aback by their numbers. Kin have shorter lifespans than the rest of us and mature quickly. A lot of these looked like they were in their late teens and early twenties. I wondered if they’d have another bloom after tonight, the way they did after the last big massacre. As I passed, I heard them whisper about me, the Midwife. I shook my head – I still had a hard time believing that term applied to me.
The rest of the crowd was made up of wizards both corporate and freelance. They mingled about as well as the other two groups. Though from what I saw, they took the most selfies, especially the ones keeping the mundane crowd safe. Good thing Snapchat stories disappeared after twenty-four hours.
I didn’t see any other Sekutar but I knew they were up by the stage, waiting. I figured Brand stood with them, now that Daphne was out of danger. He’d never give up the chance to deal some massive carnage. I wanted to get up there too for the same reason, but we had to hang back and wait for Ravenwood. Monster or not, he wasn’t taking any chances with insanity by getting too close to the stage.
Amanda’s smile about split her face. “This is like the freakin’ Battle of the Five Armies.” She craned her neck, searching.
“Who are you looking for?”
“I’m trying to find Peter Jackson. He’d better not be lurking around here, trying to turn this part into a three-hour movie.”
I twirled my katana. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Behind me, I heard, “Are you alone tonight?”
I spun around at Victor’s voice and nearly cut through his abdomen. He smiled at me, fangs tucked away. Just a handsome playboy out for a summer night’s stroll.
“I would have thought you’d bring your dog to the park, but I see no sign of a leash or of…Brand, was it?”
“He’s in the doghouse.”
Victor raised his right index finger. “Sorry. A moment.” With his left hand, he reached into his ear canal and pulled. Out came what looked like a thick, extra-long toothpick with a sharp, bloody end. He pursed his lips and looked up and to the right, waiting.
“Ah!” he said after a moment. “Now I can hear.”
“That’s a hell of an earplug.”
Victor turned it in his fingers, examining it. “Alder wood, with a bit of extra ensorcelling. Pierces the eardrum as sure as the heart, with scaled-down results. Quite effective. Takes a bit of time for the eardrum to heal up once it’s pulled out, but it does heal. Worth the hassle, so I’ve heard. Ha! Heard! Both Miranda and Miss West gave quite the account of what happens when we fail to protect our hearing from that ghastly flute, though Miss West’s was the more compelling of the two tales. Poor Nadine, Proctor and Janice.”
Victor’s attention went from me to Ramona. “And who do we have here?” His smile may not have shown his fangs, but it was no less predatory.
Ramona took my arm and leaned against me, possessive.
Victor laughed. “I see you’ve left your dog at home and brought your bitch.”
I grabbed the earplug from Victor’s hand and shoved it into his chest. As he lost consciousness, I said, “You’re right. Quite effective.”
TJ appeared behind Victor in time to lower the asshole gently to the ground.
“Nice to see you again, TJ.”
The Companion stared up at me, made his fingers into a V, pointed them at his eyes then back at me. “I’m watching you,” he added needlessly. Then his mouth widened into a smile. “And liking what I see. Girl, that was fast!”
“Don’t let Victor hear you say that.”
TJ looked down at the vampire’s face. “He’s out cold until I pull the pin. And I will, but first, let me say we should get us some lunch sometime.”
“You’re the second lunch date I’ve turned down today.” I wanted nothing to do with the manipulative little bastard. We walked away before Victor woke back up.
I realized we’d lost Grandmother Spider in the crowd just as a man’s voice called, “Amanda!” I recognized the slight accent as Blake Ravenwood’s.
Amanda turned until she spotted her boss. I watched several expressions chase each other across her face. Fear, uncertainty, and the most interesting – desire. It was quick, and I almost didn’t see it as she covered everything with a business-approved smile. I wondered if Amanda was even aware of the emotion.
Blake Ravenwood cut through a crowd of vampires like a knife through rancid butter. Two bodyguards flanked him – standard-issue thugs I could take down in a matter of milliseconds, so they didn’t hold my interest. Blake Ravenwood did, however.
Tall, I’d put him just under seven feet. Dark hair carefully styled, slight olive complexion, thin without being gangly, confident carriage, Armani suit, Gucci shoes. In one hand he carried a velvet bag designed to hold a bottle of wine. I felt faint magic coming off him like a cloud of expensive cologne. He didn’t need to pull magic up – it stayed with him. No five-second rule with Ravenwood. If he was going to blast you, it would be instantaneous.
He strolled the rest of the way like this was a company picnic. And maybe it was. I didn’t sense any fear or even anxiety coming from him. His bodyguards – a whole head shorter but both twice as wide – were another story.
“Amanda. Ms. Chan. And?” He smiled at Ramona.
“Dr. Ramona Honani.” She pointed to the bag. “I believe that’s mine.” The strength in Ramona’s voice impressed me. She refused to let Ravenwood intimidate her, though he was unquestionably the most powerful being in the park.
Ravenwood glanced down as if he’d forgotten he carried anything. Then he presented the bottle to Ramona with both hands. “A token of the new alliance between DGI and the native peoples of this land. History has not been kind, but I hope this goes a little way to restoring your faith.”
Ramona peered over her glasses and met his eyes. “Are you kidding?” She took the bottle and cradled it to her. It rumbled like thunder. She dismissed Ravenwood with a shake of the head, turned and marched away. I followed, leaving Amanda to say whatever she wanted to her boss. We needed to get to the stage, but first we had to find Grandmother Spider.
We wove through the crowd as Ramona tracked her Grandma. The old woman stood under an old cedar, almost invisible in its shadow, a small, inconsequential-looking figure. She smiled when she saw us, her eyes resting on the bottle. Ramona handed it over to her with an air of reverence.
“Potential quantum energy?” Grandma teased her granddaughter.
“It could possibly be a Kachina,” Ramona teased back. “If you take those old stories literally.”
“It’s all the same to me.” Grandma stroked Ramona’s face. Then she pulled the drawstrings apart and lifted out the bottle.
“Loloma, old friend. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble for you.”
At her words, I fought back a terrible possibility about Grandmother Spider.
The clear glass was scratched up enough to obscure the light coming from the cork-stoppered bottle. An old label, yellowed and peeling, claimed the contents could cure cholera, distemper, melancholia and rheumatism. A small stone rolled inside when Grandmother Spider tilted the bottle.
“That’s how they got you,” she said. “Baited the trap with a little meteorite.”
The light inside flickered like distant lightning.
It was answered with a blast of multicolored rays from the stage.
Showtime.
Chapter 33
The crowd sent up an unholy roar. It was met with the first deep notes and hum of DJ Trixster’s biggest hit. The lights streaming from the stage made it impossible to see anyone up there. Maybe they’d show, or maybe they wouldn’t – in which case, this was going to be a long, drawn out mosh pit.
“Time to let the Kachina go?” I asked Grandmother Spider.
> She beamed at me. “Good girl. But no.”
A crowd of Kin circled us facing outward like an honor guard, their fangs and claws ready to do some serious damage. I didn’t know what good that would do when the bodies started coming up from the ground. For all I knew, we stood right over an unmarked grave. Then I realized the Kin were there to protect us in case the surrounding vampires went crazy-side up.
Cute little things, ghouls. I hoped I wouldn’t hurt any on my way to slaughtering some rabid bloodsuckers.
With a start, I remembered the possibility of my body incorporating the vampire blood. Will I turn? Lose my mind?
Long shadows blocked the lights from the stage. Human, insect, hard to tell. Kokopelli and Kokopelli-Mana were in the house.
I watched three Sekutar climb the front of the stage. Backlit, I couldn’t tell who they were but I figured one had to be Brand. Kokopelli-Mana hurried to greet them with her pipe. They seized up, curled into balls and dropped back down into the crowd. My heart jumped in my chest.
The flute started. I braced myself, prepared to control my transformation. But the voices never came whispering. I smiled, eyes on the vampires, ready to kill.
The crowd tensed. The vampire’s earplugs held.
Grandmother Spider called Ramona to her side.
A rumbling expanded out from under the stage and crossed the width and breadth of the park.
The earth trembled.
Then broke apart as hundreds of living dead rose from the lost graves of Cheesman Park.
Some Kin, vamps and wizards never had a chance as the zombies rose under their feet and tore them apart. I swung at the closest body that sprang up from the ground. Orange fire burned in its empty eye sockets. It reached for me and I took off its arms. The thing moaned and the sweet reek of death and spoiled earth poured from its mouth. Ramona gagged behind me. Another swing and the zombie’s head sailed over the crowd. The body kept coming. Bone fragments, rotting cloth and clods of dirt exploded everywhere as I battered it to pieces.
The ghouls grappled with the dead. They bit down into the corpses, devouring old fears gone putrid. The zombies pummeled their attackers, breaking bones and smashing organs. It was hard to tell who was winning as I broke through the circle and cleared a way for Ramona and Grandmother Spider to get to the stage. Fuck Ravenwood for making us meet him toward the back. Coward.
“Now would be a good time to release Chasing Star Dancer, don’t you think?” I called to Grandma.
She shook her head.
The zombies that managed to get past my whirling blade struck with an inhuman strength born of the ground. Every blow felt like a collapsing wall. A zombie got in too close behind me and punched my back. I felt my scapula shatter and my right arm stopped working. A vampire shadowed in and ripped the thing’s head off. He bared his fangs at me in crazy triumph.
Great. Now I owed a bloodsucker.
Another zombie grabbed the vamp and dislocated his arm. I thrust my blade up between the bodies and sliced through the zombie’s arms. The vampire laughed and shoved his shoulder back in place.
Debt paid.
I kicked against the undead pricks. The world was a sea of vile moving earth and bones and orange foxfire straight from hell. Each zombie was harder to kill than the last. Taking off their heads only slowed them down. The wizards had the right idea, blasting zombies to bits. Magic flashed among the crowd, each blast taking out another foe. The Kin feasted on the dead and undead, whether zombie, vampire, wizard or other Kin.
Mundanes watched from their protected shelters. God only knows what they thought they saw.
I stepped on what was left of a vampire.
Watchers moved in and out of shadows cast by the light of futile magic. Zombies pulled them back out and tore into their throats, chests, faces, whatever their teeth could bite.
I heard gunshots. Some wizards just pack wands. Others back up their magic with a trusty M9 Berretta.
Bullets bounced harmlessly off an invisible force fronting the stage, probably the same magic that protected the sound equipment.
I saw movement in the sky and chanced a look. Ravenwood floated over the crowd, shouting orders like a general. Magic blasted from his hands.
Show-off.
Amanda floated near him. Unfuckingbelievable. When did she gain that kind of power? If any of her relatives happen to look up, well, I guess the familiar’s out of the bag.
All the time I wondered when Grandma would release the damn Kachina and maybe turn the tide.
The music grew louder as we neared the stage. My scapula healed in time for another zombie to land a punch to my hip, shattering it. I slipped and fell. The ground was a stew of blood, muddy clay and offal. Ramona helped me stand as a zombie grabbed her. Grandmother Spider brushed her hand across its head as the bottle flashed lightning-bright. The power it sent down her arm fused the zombie into glass. I looked back at the trail of statues she’d left as we snaked through the crowd.
Cool.
Ramona stared at her Grandma. “But…you’re just a doctor.”
“Like you.”
Ramona smiled.
Grandma handed her the bottle just as a zombie reached for Ramona’s hair. She grabbed its wrist and the zombie turned to glass.
After that, Ramona made all the statues.
We were almost to the stage when the flute music changed, became rhythmic – a chorus of cicadas in the middle of a summer’s night. Grandmother Spider stopped and stared.
“Oh, no.”
The fallen Sekutar, the ones who had tried to storm the stage. The ones I’d seen curl up into a ball as they dropped.
Not a ball. A cocoon.
And that music’s the signal to hatch.
Over the flute, the sound of shattering glass. I looked at the apartment closest to the park. Windows broke outward like the building was spitting, and out poured human-sized beetles that clung to the walls. Backs crisscrossed with red V-stripes, they all looked up at Cheesman Park as one.
So, that’s where the rest of the drugs went.
The swarm of box elder bugs descended the building and disappeared behind a line of trees. A buzzing sound filled the air and suddenly the sky swarmed with flying hell-bugs.
I shouted at Grandmother Spider over the chaos. “Don’t you think now would be a good time to let the damn Kachina go?”
She smiled. “At my signal, ask me a fourth time, Kelly Chan.”
Three ten-foot-tall cicadas rose from the Sekutar’s cocoons. Their rapid healing powers turned on them and sped up the transformation. They attacked their former brothers and sisters. I hoped Juke and Brand weren’t two of the three. I blocked the thought and charged forward to stand with the Sekutar.
The cicadas emitted an ear-splitting sound that shattered the rest of the surrounding windows and probably cracked a few foundations.
There goes the neighborhood.
The sound flattened half the crowd. Only the zombies and deaf vampires were left standing, and even they looked stunned. My ears bled. And still the cicada sound went on until the inside of my skull itched and time ground to a halt.
And that’s when I heard Kokopelli speak.
Chapter 34
“Will you weave cobwebs across the sky tonight, old woman?” Its voice was a knife that sliced through rational thought. It made me want to tear my own face off and offer it up to him as a ceremonial mask.
This is only an echo of what the vampires suffered under him. And a preview of what life will become if we lose.
Grandmother Spider answered, “It is not yet time for the Blue Star Kachina. Ash will not fall from the sky.” The sound of her words soothed the madness like cool rain on a fevered brow.
“Then what’s in the bottle?”
“You know who it is. And I know you want him and why.”
Every word she said brought me back to myself.
Kokopelli laughed and I felt a million ants crawl through my brain. I fought the sensation, dete
rmined to keep my sanity.
“Give him to me. He is my brother.”
“Give him to me, for a lover.” Kokopelli-Mana’s voice was worse, a twisted version of Grandmother Spider’s that wanted me to come to her arms where she’d change me into—
Stronger arms wrapped around me, stopping me from walking to my death.
Brand.
He held me the way he did at the rave. His ears were stoppered up with a pair of earplugs he’d stolen off a bloodsucker. He leaned in close.
“Daphne was the last. I don’t leave anyone behind anymore, Kelly. Especially not the woman I love.”
He grounded and centered me, damn it. My kind.
And the soothing balm of Grandmother Spider’s voice cleared the rest of the insanity from my mind. “He is no brother of yours. He will never be your lover. You will put a stop to this.”
“No. Summer is our time. Your stories are told after the ground freezes and the snow falls. You have no power now.”
“No?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the three sticks she’d shown me earlier.
“You’re a foolish old woman. That game is for wintertime. We don’t play it in the summer.”
Grandmother Spider smiled and looked at me. “Now, Kelly.”
“Is….” My voice creaked out of me “Is it…time to release the Kachina?”
“Yes.”
And Chasing Star Dancer flew into the sky.
The stars disappeared behind thick clouds and suddenly the air filled with swirling snow. The ground frosted under our feet.
Grandmother Spider laughed. “Looks like winter came early.” She held up the sticks, fanned out between her fingers. “Let’s gamble!”
Chapter 35
We stood on the stage – Brand, Ramona, Amanda, Grandmother Spider and me – facing off against Kokopelli and Kokopelli-Mana. Or were we in a frozen desert at sunset, three mesas dark against the horizon? Or maybe we stood inside a kiva?
Amanda looked dazed. “How did I get here?”
Brand kept his arms around me. “I’ve got you, babe.”