It depended entirely on what I was wielding it for. It depended on what I was fighting for. Was it important enough?
I realized the gangster code wasn't going to cut it anymore. I couldn't take a life and then shrug it off because of my victim's choice of profession. That was just rationalization. It always had been, and I'd always known it. If I was going to call myself a soldier, I'd have to start acting like one. I didn't believe I was an instrument of God's plan. God didn't speak to me and He never had. But I had a righteous cause, just the same. I was willing to die for it. I was willing to burn for it, if it came to that. I had a battle to fight. Now I just needed an army.
I hugged my mother, tightly and for a long time, before Honey and I left. And for the first time in my life, I was at peace with myself as we drove toward Crenshaw. I felt like a faithless Abraham climbing up the mountain with his son in tow, but I was at peace.
Chavez had set up our field headquarters in a vacant suite in a strip mall on La Tijera. The suite was the only space in the mall that was open for business. The taggers had moved in over the last couple days, and the building had become a complex nexus of converging lines of magic that now crisscrossed the neighborhood. Outfit gangbangers stood watch outside the entrance, and they all had enough juice that they didn't need any heavy weaponry.
Honey had replaced the summer dress with a biker-girl ensemble-black leather from head to toe, including the cute little hat. It was bound to cause a stir, but I was glad she wasn't going in naked.
The suite was large for that part of town, but it was still a tight fit for the twenty or so outfit guys milling around inside. Vernon Case was there, and Chavez, of course. Rashan was there, too. Sonny Kim and Ilya Zunin stood to one side, keeping to themselves. I saw a few of the big hitters I'd asked Chavez to bring in. Even Anton was there, but probably only because he'd been in it from the start, when he found Jamal's body. It was a courtesy-his juice would have never gotten him in the door.
When I walked in, Rashan started clapping and everyone else quickly joined in. There were cheers and such witty salutations as "Long live the queen!" I blushed and tried to cover it with a scowl. In the outfit, promotions are typically private affairs between you and your boss. They're usually met with more resentment than praise, at least until you've busted enough heads to make it stick.
A few of the guys started yelling "Speech! Speech!" I started to tell them to shut the fuck up, but then I saw Rashan nod. "Do it," he said, mouthing the words. Honey flew over and hovered near him, whispering something in his ear. She drew a few stares, but mostly everyone's attention stayed on me.
Jesus Christ. I walked slowly to the front of the room and looked out at the assembly of hardened career criminals while I tried to think of something to say. I had in mind to give them a rousing speech, do my part to rally the troops. Unfortunately I suck at inspiration.
"We've had a good run," I said. It was a great start-if that didn't get them fired up, what would? "All of us in this room, we have juice. We have power. We live a life normal folks can't even imagine.
"That life is over." I dropped it on them and let it sit there. I heard some whispering and saw more than a few unhappy faces, but mostly they just looked at me.
"Something's coming, and it's a lot worse than Papa Danwe. And after that, it's going to be something even worse…and it's never going to end." I was thinking about the Firstborn, demons, and their lust for dominion over the earth. I didn't think it was time to tell my soldiers everything I knew about what was coming. Not yet. "We're going to be asked to fight, and die, and not for our own wealth and power. That's something we've always been willing to do. We're going to be asked to die for the soccer moms and the welfare queens, the lawyers and the bums. You probably don't even like these people very much. We're not like them. We're not part of their world. We're the hidden masters of a secret underworld, and we ignore them because we can.
"We can't ignore them anymore. The world needs saving-but it's their world, not ours. It's always been their world. We've just been living off the crumbs.
"We call ourselves soldiers. Starting today, that's what we are. Starting today, we're not just an outfit, we're a secret army. We have to fight, because there's no one else to do it.
"No one's going to thank you for it. To the people you're saving, you're just another fucking monster. The only ones who are going to know you're a hero are the men and women standing beside you."
They looked like they wanted something more, but I didn't have anything else. "That's it," I said. "That's all there is. If you're thinking this isn't what you signed up for, you're right. You can leave, right now. No hard feelings. I just don't have the time to try to change your mind."
I stopped talking and pointed to the door. No one left, though a few of them shifted uncomfortably and stared at their feet. I waited long enough for it to get awkward, and then I waited some more. Now that I had them thoroughly demoralized, it was time to wrap up.
"Let's go to war," I said.
There were no rousing cheers, no oaths or vows, no dramatic salutes. They just stared at me. Then Anton waddled forward, a forgotten, half-eaten sandwich hanging at his side.
"Will we still get paid, Domino?"
There were a few chuckles, then a few laughs, and then the whole room was roaring. Anton looked around, bewildered, an uncertain smile pulling at his cherubic face.
"Yeah, Anton, you'll still get paid. Matter of fact, I'm going to give you a fucking raise." Laughter coursed through the group like the Wave at a football game. Even Rashan was laughing.
I realized Anton had accomplished something I'd utterly failed to do on my own. That he did it unwittingly goes without saying, but that didn't make it any less important. The gangsters in the room had made their choice, and most of them would stand by it. But Anton had brought them together. Anton had made them feel good about themselves, and about each other, just by being Anton. I could give them orders-my rank and my juice gave me that right. But it would take more than rank to make an army out of them. It would take a lot more than juice to lead them.
Chavez called me over to a long conference table in the center of the room. A large map of L.A. was spread out on the table. Glowing lines marked our borders and those of Papa Danwe's territory, as well as the tag networks that snaked their way through South Central and converged on Hawthorne. The location of the gate was circled in pulsing blue light.
"The strike team is ready, boss," Chavez said. "We've still got taggers out there on the street, but we've got enough juice to go when you say go. We were even able to run a couple lines all the way up to the factory grounds."
"What's Papa Danwe doing?"
"We don't know, but the pot is boiling. He's got a lot of fucking juice in there. If we're going to hit it, we got to go soon."
"Okay, I want five guys. Frank Seville, Ismail Akeem, Amy Chen." I looked over at the big hitters where they huddled together trading gossip and lies. "Pick two more, but not Wale. I don't trust that guy." Simeon Wale probably had more juice than the others, but he had a bad reputation even in a hard crowd. He also ran a crew in South Central, and he'd been a little too friendly with Papa Danwe in the past.
"That makes five anyway, boss," Chavez said. He tossed his head in the direction of Sonny Kim and Ilya Zunin. "Those guys say they're in. They insisted." Chavez shrugged. "That don't mean anything, though."
"Yeah," I said, "that's good." I waved my allies over and shook their hands.
"Thing is, boss, why just five? Everyone here is ready to go. Let's call in the fucking cavalry. Why hold back?"
"Manpower isn't the problem, Chavez. You did great with the tags, but we're still going to be sucking a dry tit compared to what Papa Danwe has in there. What juice I've got, I want my best guys tapping it." We also needed the others with their own crews. They had to get their soldiers ready for block-to-block fighting if we failed and the fairies came through.
My boss knew what I had in mind, and h
e started clearing everyone out. Pretty soon, it was just Chavez, my strike team and me. And Honey. She mostly kept to herself, but she didn't leave my side.
I laid out what we were up against, even though I knew they'd all heard the story by now. We studied the map and planned our approach, following the tags that stretched into Hawthorne like a clawed hand.
"If everything goes just right, it's not going to be that complicated," I said. "We move in fast and take out Papa Danwe's soldiers. I take down the wards." I was pretty sure there were fairy wards on the gate-that's why I hadn't detected them. But I was also confident the changeling's juice would allow me to take them down. I'd also have Honey backing me up.
"Once we crash the gate's defenses, any one of us should be able to destroy the hardware," said Sonny Kim. He looked at Zunin as if to say, "Even you."
"I don't like the juice situation," said Amy Chen. Amy was as petite as Terrence Cole was wide. She might have been five feet in heels, and she couldn't make a hundred pounds with a thumb on the scale. She looked impossibly young but her power was very old and very strong. The combination was exotic and sexy, but every guy in the outfit was scared shitless of her.
"I do not like it, either," Akeem whispered. He always whispered. He was Somali, some kind of witchdoctor or juju man back in the day. He said he always whispered so evil spirits wouldn't know what he was thinking. Rumor said the whispering was a side effect of repeatedly subjecting himself to ritual possession. "But what is worse? Do we attack with less juice than we would like? Or do we wait for more tags and give this King Oberon a chance to open the gate?"
No one had an answer for that. I realized that either course could be a mistake, and the mistake could be a disaster.
"I don't think we can assume Oberon will give us time to lay down more tags," I said. Akeem nodded in agreement. "But I'm also worried about the juice," I finished, and Amy winked at me. "Honey, what do you think?"
The piskie had been sitting on my shoulder, like a pirate's pet parrot, and she jumped to her feet. Maybe she was surprised I'd asked her opinion. Or maybe she'd fallen asleep.
"I wasn't told anything of King Oberon's plans. I don't know when he will come. But I think it will be soon."
"Okay, thanks, Honey."
"I'm not finished, Domino," the piskie said, sparing me an annoyed glance. Whatever else it had gotten me, it didn't seem like my promotion had earned me any deference from the people in the room. Then again, what could I really expect from gangsters and fairies? Hell, I'd been known to crack wise with Rashan from time to time.
"Like I was saying, I don't know when the gate will open. But maybe I can find out. I could go to the Between, you know, scout it out."
I smiled at her. "That's a good idea. It won't take long, and we'll be able to see what kind of force Oberon has deployed at the gate, maybe get an idea of when he will move."
"We?"
"Damn right, we," I said. "I'm coming with you."
Honey was right-even inside my condo, nighttime in the Between was really blue. An eerie, ghostly blue that cast a nimbus over everything, like the light from a TV set that's always just around the corner. I fetched Ned from the closet, then we hoofed it in no time to the Hawthorne city limits.
We materialized in an alley about a mile from the factory, right in the middle of an armed encampment of sidhe warriors. There were nine of them: six men and three women. They'd scavenged fuel from Dumpsters and old buildings, and they were sitting around an honest-to-God campfire. The fire didn't do much but brighten the ambient blue a little, but it did seem to be throwing off some heat.
The fairies were sitting there, at their fire, wearing silver chain and dark leather, whipping up a quick dinner in small copper pots and sharpening long, slender swords just like the ones the sidhe warriors had brought to my condo. Fey horses the size of Clydesdales were tethered in a line along the edge of the alleyway.
"The Renaissance Faire isn't for a few months yet," I said.
The elves froze and stared at me for a long moment. Then they leaped to their feet and attacked. Honey missed most of the fun in the early going, because she darted straight up and hovered over the alley, roughly parallel to the roofline of the adjacent buildings. That didn't leave the fairies with a whole lot else to think about, other than me.
Three of them came at me with the weed whackers, while the other six hung back and lobbed glamours at me. I still couldn't use sorcery in the Between, but my own glamour worked just fine. I huffed and puffed and managed to block most of the spells that floated toward me like bad air. One got through. It settled over me and worked its way inside, and it turned me into a toad.
This was a bad choice of spells to use on me, all things considered, though the elf had no way of knowing that. I just hopped around and waited while the sidhe warriors sheathed their swords and started laughing. Then I shifted back to the Domino-shaped body I prefer, drew Ned and gunned a couple of them down.
"Ribbit," I said.
Honey corkscrewed down toward us, dropping pixie dust on the elves like confetti at a parade. Three of them collapsed on the street, laughing uncontrollably, and I was pretty sure Honey's magic was the cause rather than my amphibian humor.
One of the warriors had gotten close enough to take a swing at me, and his sword lashed out, reflecting the blue night as it swung in a flat arc at my head. I brought Ned up and caught the blade on the barrel. When the silver touched iron, there was a flash of sapphire sparks and the sword shattered.
"Sorry about that," I said to the elf, who stood there staring dumbly at his broken sword. Then I shot him in the head.
As necessary as it may be, witty banter in the midst of battle is never the most efficient angle to take in a fight. While I was commiserating with the sidhe warrior, one of the remaining three drew a silver hunting horn from her pack and lifted it to her lips. I cursed and was just able to aim and fire Ned before the sidhe sounded the horn. The shot took the elf in the chest and she crumpled without a sound.
Honey's sword was out and she was dueling two of the sidhe. They looked like they were trying to swat a fly with machetes. I couldn't get a clean shot with Ned. The elves lunged at Honey, and her blade flashed, slicing open a slender throat. She spun in midair and planted her sword in the other sidhe's eye. The piskie flicked emerald juice from her blade as the bodies fell.
"Domino, follow me." Honey flew into a nearby building and I followed her up three flights of stairs to the roof. The piskie flew to the edge and looked back at me.
"I saw it when I flew up here at the start of the fight," she said. I came up beside her and looked out over the city. Our vantage wasn't that high and we were encircled by the pale mist. But I could see what I needed to. We hadn't been unlucky appearing in the middle of the fairies, because they were everywhere. Some of the sidhe were camped, but others marched along the streets in columns that trailed into the mist.
A fey army was mobilizing in South Central L.A. Fourteen "We have to go, right now," I said when we made it back to the field headquarters in Crenshaw. I briefed my team on what I had seen while they gathered the weapons and arcane paraphernalia they'd need for the attack on the gate.
"We stumbled on an encampment a mile from the factory," I said. "They're all over Hawthorne. It seems like the whole Seelie Court is encamped in the city."
Honey disagreed. "The Court is vast. It's a nation, Domino. What we saw is just an army."
"The point is, Oberon has moved an army into position around the gate. Rashan seems to think he won't send them through all at once, but he's obviously ready to send some of them. That gate is going to open soon, and we don't have time to wait for more tags."
"We will make do," Amy said. She already had her shit together, and she sat quietly, preparing herself.
We piled into Frank Seville's Hummer, and I rode shotgun while he drove. Literally-I'd grabbed the Mossberg out of the trunk of the Lincoln before we left. The weapon might come in handy if the juice ran
low during the fight.
We'd done everything we could to keep a lid on it, but civilization was coming undone in Crenshaw, and things grew steadily worse as we drove through Inglewood toward Hawthorne. The orange glow of fires dotted the skyline in every direction, and the only people on the streets were looters and thugs.
Honey and I went to work on the other members of the strike team, putting glamours on them that would offer at least some protection from fairy magic. I was hoping it would be an unnecessary precaution. If we destroyed the gate quickly maybe we wouldn't even see a fairy, let alone have to fight one. I wasn't willing to bet on it, though. And I didn't want to think about what would happen to my team if they went up against the sidhe completely unprotected.
At Centinela and La Brea, a line of burned-out cars had been towed into position across the street, forming a makeshift roadblock. I was willing to bet we'd find more just like them blocking all of the major arteries into Hawthorne.
Seville stopped and began backing up, and then the Hummer was rammed from behind by a massive green waste management truck. We were thrown forward and smashed into the roadblock, just as a rocket-propelled grenade detonated against our left front fender and tore away most of the Hummer's front end. The airbags deployed as the ambushers unloaded on the mortally wounded vehicle.
I threw up both my physical and magical shields as I battled the front and side airbags. I couldn't see anything, and all I could hear was the cacophony of combat spells and automatic weapons fire tearing the SUV apart. My defensive shields wouldn't last long, and if we couldn't get clear of the ambush, we were going to die.
I've mentioned before that I can't fly, and this is true. I can use my telekinesis spell on myself, or, say, a vehicle I'm in, but I'd discovered soon after learning the spell that this isn't the same as flying. The telekinesis spell is simple force magic, and what control it offers is a little crude. It's great for tossing vampires around, and it serves as the basis of my levitation spell, but it's not so great for flying.
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