by Eileen Wilks
Cullen dodged.
One huge foot lifted as the demon tried stomping on him. He threw himself aside, rolling as he hit the ground, and came up running. No point in hanging around to fight, not when there was a good chance he'd lose.
He made for the church. It was tiny and crumbling, but those consecrated walls should repel the demon. He felt rather than heard the thing's feet thud against the ground behind him. So why he could feel that, when the thing wasn't present enough to be seen or heard? He knew damn little about the dashtu state, but—
Damn! That thing could jump!
Cullen skidded to a halt. The demon had leaped over him, landing less than ten feet away. Its snout darted toward him even as the rider sent the glowing loop she controlled his way.
No time for a spell or to draw down from his diamond. Cullen did the one thing he could without weapons or spells. He flung fire at it.
The creature bellowed as flames crawled up its belly and chest. It tossed its head, staggering back so fast its rider lost control of her lasso. The glowing loop snaked wildly through the air.
Cullen was already running the other way when the loop whizzed over his head. The demon was annoyed, not stopped. Not enough of it was physically present for normal fire to do real damage, and Cullen needed a boost from the diamond to call mage fire.
Probably just as well. Mage fire was the devil to control.
He ducked between two houses, where the demon's bulk wouldn't fit. Unless, that is, it could slip deeper into dashtu so its mass could overlap with—
A glance over his shoulder told him it could.
He popped into a yard overrun with chickens, which squawked and fluttered and generally got in his way. And kept running—into the trees and up a winding mountain path.
An hour later he perched in a gnarly oak tree surrounded by thousands of others. His chest heaved. The muscles in his thighs jumped and twitched, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. The legs of his jeans were wet to the knees.
A butterfly with wings the color of sunrise drifted past like a scrap of tissue paper. Monkeys screeched nearby. He was maybe eight or nine miles from the village and at least a thousand feet higher.
Time was on his side, he told himself. Eventually the woman would have to give up. Legend said that some adepts had been able to sustain an astral body for nearly a full day, but he was damned if he'd credit that bitch with an adept's abilities. Another hour or three, and she'd have to return to her physical body.
He just hoped she took her demon with her when she left.
As the sweat cooled on his body, he shivered, but not really from the chill. Twice he'd thought he'd gotten away; twice the demon and its rider had found him.
How? That was the twenty-thousand-dollar question.
Not psychically. He was sure of that; his shields were locked down tight, and they'd kept out a crazy telepath assisted by an ancient staff. Nor did he think the demon was using scent, not after he'd splashed along that damned creek. Hearing was theoretically possible, he supposed. In his wolf form, he could distinguish between one beating heart and another, but he had to be pretty damned close. He didn't think his heartbeat was giving him away.
That left vision or magic. Maybe the demon was Davy Crockett on steroids and could spot Cullen's traces whether he went down a creek, over boulders, or made like Tarzan through the trees.
Or maybe the demon's rider had some kind of magical fix on him.
Last night something had brushed against his shields. He'd assumed it was Sam. Too bloody sure of himself, he thought now, bitter at finding himself a fool. He should have been warned. Instead he'd been smug, knowing nothing could get through. He…
Cullen blinked. How did he know nothing could get through?
Dumb question. He tested everything. When he'd devised his shields…
The flush of vertigo hit so suddenly he nearly swayed right off his perch. He grabbed the trunk, sweat popping out on his forehead.
When he'd devised his shields. That's what he'd thought just before falling off into… nothing. Because he couldn't remember testing the shields. He couldn't remember coming up with them in the first place.
Them?
Cullen's fingers dug into the bark. He stared out at the jungle, seeing nothing. A beetle as big as his thumb investigated his hand. He ignored it.
He had a shield. One shield, singular, that protected him from any sort of mental attack. And he had no idea where it had come from, or why he kept thinking of shields, plural.
Someone or something had messed with his mind, swallowed part of his memory.
He began tracking his memories, plucking at one, then another, trying to figure out when he'd acquired his shields. When had he first begun relying on them?
It didn't take him long to turn up an answer. That day wasn't one he was likely to forget. He could make a good guess about the culprit, too, though not the motive nor the man's current location. Lucky him, though—he knew someone who could help. Someone with access to all sorts of information.
Gradually, the silence penetrated his concentration. No birds called, no monkeys fussed and chattered. The forest was quiet… and drifting faintly in the air was the stink of rotting flesh.
Son of a bitch! He didn't have time to play hide-and-seek. He needed to be out of this damned jungle and onto a plane.
When the demon's questing snout preceded its ungainly body up the path twenty feet from Cullen's tree, he was standing on the ground at its base. He waited with one hand closed around the little diamond at his throat, the other outstretched.
"All right, sugar," he murmured. "Have it your way. You want to play? I'm ready."
SEVEN
CYNNA skidded into Headquarters at two minutes after ten o'clock. Elevators never come when you're late, so it was 10:07 when she arrived, only slightly breathless, at his secretary's desk. "He's expecting me."
Ida Rheinhart was older than God and a lot meaner. She looked at Cynna over the top of bright red reading glasses and handed her a folder. "He was expecting you at ten. Everyone else is here already. Conference room B-12."
She started to explain—Ida had that effect on her—but closed her mouth. What was the point? Ida had never been late in her life. But that was easy for her, because she never left her desk. Cynna was pretty sure she curled up beneath it at night, waiting to snatch unwary agents or cleaning people who trod too close to her lair.
Cynna tucked the folder under her arm and hurried down the hall. She hadn't expected they'd use a conference room. Apparently this was a bigger meeting than she'd thought.
That worried her. The news this morning had been decidedly odd.
The demon she'd killed had been given a big play, of course, but that was only one of last night's oddities. The New York Times online edition reported all sorts of sightings—of lupi, yeti, banshees, even fairies. Of course, people claimed to see things they hadn't really seen all the time, but what about that brownie reservation in Tennessee? Supposedly it had doubled its population overnight.
A school bus in Texas had disappeared on the way back from a football game; drivers around it claimed they'd seen it vanish. A well-known medium had announced the end of the world. So had an infamous terrorist organization. Not that Cynna put any stock in end-of-world bullshit, but something was up.
She shoved open the conference room door and stopped dead. Two dozen people sat around the dark wood table. Every one of them turned to look at her.
"Sorry. Car died." Jesus. She'd never seen this many of the Unit's agents in one meeting before. And it wasn't just Unit agents at the table. Not even just FBI.
Sherry O'Shaunessy, the high priestess for the oldest and largest Wiccan coven in the country, sat beside a short, dark-haired man in a clerical collar. Cynna was pretty sure he was Archbishop Brown, a fiery Catholic with reformist leanings. She didn't know the old guy with Einstein hair or the bald man built like a pro wrestler, but she recognized the woman sitting on Ruben's right.
Ruben sat at the head of the table. Nothing about his appearance explained the respect he commanded. He was painfully thin, making the custom-tailored suit a necessity. His nose was large, and Cynna knew for a fact that his wife cut his hair. He'd mended his glasses with duct tape again. On his good days, when he could walk with a cane, he was slightly above average height.
Cynna hadn't seen him on a good day for over a year. Today, as usual, he sat in his motorized wheelchair.
Ruben gave her a nod. "Gentlemen and ladies, this is Cynna Weaver, one of my best agents. Her particular Gift is Finding, but she's trained in spellcraft and demonology as well. Cynna, Agent Yu just finished summarizing two of last night's ASEs—ah, excuse me. Some of you aren't familiar with our jargon. ASE stands for apparent supernatural event, which is the designation given to events that meet our criteria for investigation."
"Two?" Cynna repeated, zeroing in on the important part. "How many ASEs were there?"
"Since ten o'clock last night, we've received fifty-seven reports of ASEs from official sources and two hundred forty-two reports from unofficial sources."
Cynna's jaw dropped. That was beyond unprecedented. It was… scary as hell, she decided.
She wasn't the only one shocked. Ruben had to quiet the questions and exclamations with a raised hand before continuing. "This is more than ten times our usual load. Since we can't suddenly acquire ten times our usual personnel, we're forced to apply triage. Only the most critical incidents will be handled by Unit agents. For the rest, some investigations will be delayed, some will be left to local authorities, and some will be turned over to our non-Unit colleagues in MCD. I realize," he added with a brief smile, "that will displease some of you."
No duh. In Cynna's opinion, most of MCD—the FBI's Magical Crimes Division—was staffed by pencil pushers and exterminators. The pencil pushers were useless. They wouldn't know a spell after it turned them small, furry, and fond of carrots. But the others were worse—MCD agents who'd tracked down lupi and others in the bad old days, before the Supreme Court changed the rules.
Exterminators wasn't Cynna's nickname for that bunch. It was what they'd called themselves.
"However," Ruben was saying, "because these events lie within our jurisdiction, we will retain some control. MCD agents will be loaned to us and will report to Special Agent Croft."
Cynna's eyebrows shot up. How had Ruben pulled that off? On paper, the Unit looked like part of MCD. In practice, Ruben operated free of the nominal chain of command, which did not endear him to the rabidly territorial head of MCD.
She glanced at the presidential adviser. Had she leaned on MCD? What was going on here?
Ruben shifted in his chair. "So far I've referred only to ASEs within our borders, but the United States wasn't the only country affected by what happened last night. For example, in Dublin a pair of banshees—"
The bald guy snorted. "If I had a dollar for every Irishman who claims to have seen a banshee, I could pay off the federal debt."
Ruben nodded politely. "Perhaps, though I believe there are somewhat less than eight trillion Irishmen. But irrelevant. This sighting was witnessed by the Japanese prime minister—you may recall he's on an official visit to Great Britain—as well as three journalists and two members of Parliament. And that was a single example. Ms. Pearson brought me a report, which I'm unable to share with you due to security constraints, but it confirms my gut feeling that we are dealing with a worldwide phenomenon."
Holy shit.
"Perhaps all of the consequences of this unknown phenomenon have already occurred. Perhaps not. My strong feeling is that we've seen only the first wave—that more will follow."
One of the Unit's agents said quietly, "One to ten, Ruben?"
Ruben gave him the faintest of smiles but spoke generally to all of them. "Sean's in the habit of asking me to pluck a number from thin air to back up my hunches. On a scale of one to ten, he's asking now how certain I am that I'm right." He looked at Sean. "I'd give this one a ten."
Cynna shivered suddenly. She knew about Sean's scale, including the part Ruben hadn't mentioned. Ten meant Ruben was slightly more sure of this hunch than he was of gravity.
"Yet we need more than my gut feelings. We need to know what happened, whether it could happen again, what the consequences might be. The president has asked me to create a task force to answer these questions. Dr. Fagin will head this task force."
Einstein-hair was doodling on a pad of paper. He looked up to smile vaguely at them.
"Archbishop Brown and Ms. O'Shaughnessy have also agreed to serve, and Hikaru Ito will be joining them soon. Dr. Fagin has the authority and the budget to add to his staff as needed. They will require your utmost cooperation and have been granted security clearances that will allow you to freely answer any questions."
He shifted again. Cynna hoped he wasn't having one of his bad spells, when his muscles ached constantly. He'd probably been up most of the night.
"Some of you have already received your assignments and are eager to be off. I think you understand now why I delayed your departures for this meeting. Before you go, you need to know two more things. First, I will be unable to monitor individual investigations as I normally do, nor can even one of my Gifted agents be pulled from the field to assist with coordination. We have too many fires to put out. Therefore, for the duration of this emergency, field agents will operate with full field authority. Get your codes from Ida before you leave."
Full field authority. For all of them. That slid down Cynna's gullet and settled in her stomach with all the comfort of a lumpy rock.
"Second, you are to consider this morning's briefing highly confidential. Full field authority permits you to reveal classified information if such revelation is essential to your investigation. It does not allow you to discuss it around the water cooler."
There was a bustle of papers and movement as Ruben dismissed those agents who had their assignments. Cynna was so busy assimilating the morning's shocks that she didn't notice Lily until she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Come on. You're with me on this one." Lily grimaced. "Though we'll have to use your office. They haven't assigned me one yet."
EIGHT
LlLY felt short, tense, and awkward as she kept up with Cynna's longer legs. She needed to explain that she hadn't asked to be put in charge; that was Ruben's doing. But they couldn't discuss that or any of the morning's shocks in the corridor.
When they reached the elevator she thought of a way to break the silence. "Car trouble?"
Cynna grimaced. "Son of a bitch turned belly-up on I-235. I should've taken the Metro, like usual. Cars hate me."
The doors whooshed open and they joined three others. Lily didn't know any of them, but Cynna exchanged nods with an older man. After that, they followed the usual elevator protocol, pretending they didn't see the others trapped in the little box with them. "All cars?" she asked. "Or just that one?"
"Any of them I drive too often. Computers hate me, too. So do cell phones and remote controls, and I gave up wearing a watch years ago."
"Wait a minute. You use a cell phone."
"Sure. And most of the time it works. But if I leak, it doesn't."
"Leak?" Lily said. "Leak magic, you mean? I know some of the Blood don't deal well with technology, but I hadn't heard of any Gifted having problems."
"Most don't, but—"
The doors opened. Cynna finished explaining as they left the elevator for a long hallway. "I wear a lot of my magic on my skin. It's locked up in the kilingo and kielezo—the two kinds of what you'd call tattoos—but sometimes there's a discharge, like static electricity. Then things go wacko."
"Magic can interfere with technology?"
"Sure, but the little bit that floats around loose is weak, not enough to…" Cynna fell silent as the implications sank in. "Holy shit."
"Yeah." Loose magic hadn't been a problem before, but if last night's phenomenon hit again… Lily added that to her list of things to worry about when she had time. "What's 'full field authority'?"
"Scary." Cynna stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like the others spaced with metronomic precision along the hall.
"I was hoping for a more precise definition," Lily said dryly.
"Just a minute. Put your hand here, next to mine." Cynna flattened her palm on the door above the knob. "I want to key it to you."
Puzzled, Lily did.
"There," she said after a moment, and moved her hand to turn the knob. "You'll be able to open it if I'm not around."
"Most people use keys."
"So do I."
Not the usual sort, obviously. Lily followed her into a small office made smaller by a cacophony of objects: a desk bearing the expected computer and such, yes, but also a sitar, two dead plants, a human skeleton, a bookcase crammed with peculiar objects—the shrunken head was an eye-grabber—piles of baskets and files and papers, and a little fountain.
To her surprise, the fountain was burbling away. "Where do you pace?"
That brought a grin. "It's a challenge. Full field authority," Cynna said, grabbing a stack of files from the visitor's chair and dropping them on the floor, "means you can commandeer just about anything, no forms to fill out, no questions asked. Supplies, personnel, weapons, airplanes… technically you could call in the army, but I don't think anyone's ever done that."
Cynna was right. That was scary. "Ruben said something about a code."
She nodded and plunked herself down on the corner of her desk. "On the rare occasions when a Unit agent is granted full field authority, he or she gets a code number. That's the authorization, but it's only good for a short time. Ida will tell us how long our codes are good and what the procedure will be to invoke them."