“It is more than I ever sought or thought I was,” David agreed quietly.
“Indeed.” The blind woman smiled. “But my manners. I am Leila Walker, the first Seer of our time. Not a Battle Seer, I lack that side of your gifts, Commander White, but a Seer nonetheless.”
“She does herself little credit,” Riley said. “I’ve seen Leila fight. Don’t let her age fool you—I would not fight her today.”
David had seen Lord Riley fight. David had seen Lord Riley go spell for spell with some of the most powerful vampiric Mages of their time. He’d say the most powerful vampire Mages alive, but, well, the ones that had faced Riley weren’t anymore.
“It is not a title, Lord Riley, like your Lord General,” Walker told the Elfin Lord. “It is simply what he is and what I am not. I can See the future, but I am a mortal woman otherwise. Our friend here has completed his apotheosis.
“You stand, my Lord Riley, with the first Immortal of our time. The Battle Seers stood at the right hands of Gods.”
“And how many of them actually got to live forever?” David asked dryly, though the word Immortal twisted his soul in ways Battle Seer didn’t.
She laughed, coughing after a moment.
“It is not given to me to peer into the distant past, child,” she told him. “But believe me when I say I would know if any of them still walked this world. So, I would guess…none.”
“If you have Ms. Walker here, part of my warning is unnecessary, I think,” David said. “I had…visions of what is to come.”
“You may be more useful than you think,” the old Seer told him sharply. “Did you know, child, that we cannot see the future past the moment of our death?”
“But our fates are not fixed,” David objected. “We can avoid death we foresee. How can our future death limit our Sight?”
“Because most of us are mortal, boy,” she replied. Walker nodded to Riley, who came over and wrapped a blanket over her before rolling her wheelchair into the hotel. “I am dying. It is not a question of illness or injury or magic or any such thing that could be avoided or healed. My body is failing, and I am not a regenerator.
“I have about three days,” she continued calmly. “I can feel the storm coming, Commander White, but I cannot See what is coming upon us.”
“Leila is why I have gathered this army,” Riley told them. “We don’t know how long we have, but we are running out of time. You have Seen what is coming?”
“I have Seen the end of the fucking world,” David admitted. “What can we do about that?”
“Spit in the eye of apocalypse and demand a stay of execution,” the Lord General said with a smile. “I, for one, will not go calmly into the night.”
He gestured around the hotel.
“Neither, I’m sure, will anyone else here.”
Riley drew the curtains to protect the vampires and took a seat. With a gesture, he conjured a vaguely translucent humanoid form to bring everyone drinks.
“Now, David, please. Sit—and tell me what you have foreseen.”
When David was finished, everyone in the penthouse suite was silent for a long time. Riley eventually stood and crossed back to the patio doors, holding out his glass for the construct to refill with scotch as he pulled the curtains partly open to look out over Lake Michigan.
“That’s worse than I feared,” he admitted. “Worse than I’d ever imagined.”
“There has to be some way we can stop it before it starts,” Reginald pointed out. “If we find the host for this Herald, the girl this Buckley is protecting…”
“He is shielding himself and her,” Walker said firmly. “It was the first thing I tried while our friend was speaking. If David, with Lake Tahoe’s power behind him, could only see him and not where he was…”
The Seer shook her head.
“We may get lucky again,” she concluded, “but I fear that this time, we cannot stop this before it comes to pass.”
“I’ll pass word for our contacts to keep their ears to the ground,” Riley noted. “But much as I’d hope to keep Black Echelon an omega plan, it appears we must now plan for a certain apocalypse.”
“Black Echelon?” David asked.
“This.” The Elfin Lord gestured around. “We’re not Elfin. We’re not vampires. The Conclave and the Familias have both contributed people and…sympathetic members of both continue to funnel us funds, but most of this is being underwritten by myself and Reginald.
“Black Echelon is something new. A final line of defense. If we cannot prevent the apocalypse, then Black Echelon will be the shield that allows parahumanity to survive it.”
“And that’s what you wanted to recruit us for,” Kate concluded, her hand sneaking into David’s. He squeezed her fingers as Riley nodded.
“I am assembling strike teams, similar to the ONSET teams the government has disbanded, to intervene in critical situations,” the Elfin Lord replied. “I want you each to lead one.”
“So, what, we’re rebuilding ONSET in secret?” David asked.
Riley laughed.
“Hardly. At its weakest, ONSET had over a dozen teams. We will have…five. Reginald here will command one.” He gestured to the vampire patriarch. “I will command another. You two will each lead one.”
“Who gets the fifth?” David said.
“Who do you think?” Riley asked. “I hope to see Michael O’Brien arrive tonight, along with some of the more…esoteric supplies promised to me. We expect to be receiving a number of the Wings the Seraphim use as a delivery device for their drugs.
“Hopefully, we’ll have time to train our volunteers in their use.”
“Surely, we should have some time,” Reginald said. “From what David said, we should still have some weeks before the Herald is born, and his vision of the future showed the Herald as a man grown.”
“Neither of those will run on any mortal timeline,” Walker objected. “The girl may give birth tomorrow. The child is only a core, an anchor around which the Herald will assemble his earthly Awakened form before he links through.”
“Both Mantle and Awakened, of Earth and of the Pure,” David agreed. “About the only good thing to any of this is that by binding himself to the body Buckley is creating for him, the Herald is making himself vulnerable.”
Gabriel shook her head, the vampire Guardian speaking up for the first time since he arrived.
“Vulnerable is relative,” she said crisply. “You and Mason have fought Awakened. So have I. No one else here has.”
“Awakened can die,” David replied. “Pure can’t. I destroyed Ekhmez’s earthly form, but if they open a new portal on the scale of the Montana Incursion or worse…he could easily show up again. He was banished, not killed.
“By binding himself as Mantle and Awakened, the Herald can be destroyed.”
“And since the Herald is forged of the essence of the Masters, such destruction would weaken them,” Walker told them. “They will use him as a bridge, but in doing so, they make themselves vulnerable.”
“Well, that’s a plan, then, isn’t it?” Reginald said dryly. “Wait for the Masters Beyond to create an avatar on Earth, fight it, kill it. It’s only a demigod, right?”
“With a dragon,” Gabriel added. “I do not know of anything that can kill a dragon except another dragon.”
“Fortunately, we’re going to have one of those,” David told her.
24
Watching the news was a surreal experience these days. The supernatural underground of the world was slowly shuffling into the light, testing to see if they would be believed, poking to see if they would be accepted.
Every day was a new revelation for a world coming to terms with the wonders and horrors that had lurked in its shadow. Not all of the reactions were good.
David sat in the hotel’s lounge, currently converted to a self-serve wet bar, and watched a BBC commentator stumble through trying to report on a riot in Italy that had seen a dozen men and women lynched and their b
odies burned.
One of them had been a Mage who’d offered to provide their services to the local hospital. The others had simply had the misfortune of being his friends and acquaintances. One good-faith offer of help…and a dozen people had been killed for it.
The previous piece had been a “feel-good” story about a trio of older Native men in Peru who had, with the help of several local Catholic priests, used their inherited gifts of stone control to protect a surprisingly huge area from avalanches and mudslides.
As was typical of that kind of man in David’s experience, two of them had spent the entire interview utterly silent, and the third had spent most of it apologizing, through the priest translating for him, for the mudslides and avalanches they’d been too far away to prevent.
“Watching for the press conference?” Young suddenly asked. He looked up at the Second as she slid into the table next to him. “Isn’t Mason around somewhere?”
“Press conference?” he asked. “Kate’s in the armory, helping carve magic into gear. Echelon doesn’t have ONSET’s vast supplies of enchanted shit.”
“We’re lucky to have her,” Young replied. “You two, huh?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Not that we were being open about while we were in ONSET, but now…”
“Black Echelon isn’t that formal, no,” the pixie-haired Mage agreed. “Plus, from what you said earlier, we’re staring a full-blown apocalypse in the face sometime in the next few months. Take what you can get.”
He saluted her with his rum-and-Coke. Getting drunk had been hard for him since his powers had first awoken. Now that Tahoe had completed that process in memorable fashion, it was proving to be impossible.
“Agreed,” he said. “What news conference would I be watching for?”
He realized that more people were drifting into the lounge now, pouring drinks and taking seats to watch the big screen normally used for sports. Given the nature of what the Echelon was up to and the people Riley had recruited, it wasn’t much of a surprise that it was playing the news, but it was still a surprise to see the room fill up.
Especially as he realized everyone in the room except him was Elfin.
“We go now live to Las Vegas, where an unknown group of individuals calling themselves the Elfin Conclave have called a press conference to speak to the people of the United States.”
“That press conference,” Young said with a chuckle. “The Elfin have been preparing for this moment for twenty years. Now to see how the game plays out.”
The big screen switched to an auditorium decked in the glitzy style that could only be justified in Las Vegas. The events of the last few weeks meant that a potential major supernatural coming-out had a standing-room-only crowd of reporters, and the BBC camera crew made a point of sweeping their camera along the row of other cameras recording the event.
Three men and four women stood on the stage, all dressed in plain gray suits with gold oak leaves at their throats. David didn’t know them all…but the ones he did know were all Lords and Ladies of the Conclave, the leaders of the Elfin.
As the cameras turned on, one of the women stepped up to the microphone.
“Welcome, everyone,” she said loudly. “I’m…reasonably sure the only people in this room who know who I am are behind me, so let’s being with introductions, shall we?
“I am Lady Ekaterina Bogdanova, and I am the seventh-ranking member of an organization known as the Elfin Conclave.” She smiled. “I am also, like all members of the Conclave, a Mage of some power.
“We of the Conclave represent the leadership body of an organization called the Elfin, a social club of sorts that has grown across the United States over the last forty years based on mutual interest in the works of JRR Tolkien and access to unusual gifts and powers.
“I amar prestar aen; Han mathon ne nen, Han mathon ne chae. A han noston ned gwilith. Im’ve tul-na nesta cin,” she said in soft Sindarin.
“The world is changed; I can feel it in the water, I can feel it in the earth, I can smell it in the air. I am here to help you,” she repeated in English. “We of the Elfin are the largest supernatural organization in North America.
“We have branches in every city, safe gathering places for the supernaturals of the world. And we have a message for you all:
“If you find yourself in possession of strange gifts and do not know where to turn or what you are becoming, come to us. If we cannot help you, we will find someone you can.
“And if you seek magical aid or supernatural healing, well, come to us,” she continued with a smile. “We have doctors and healers of a dozen different traditions of magic or gifts, and you will find their prices far more reasonable than you fear.
“Of course, this is the United States, and you must wonder if your health insurance will cover it. I’m sure they will…in time. But if you need our services now, look to our website for a list of agencies that have agreed to cover our services as part of their packages.
“Other services, well.” Her smile broadened. “We of the Elfin can put you in touch with almost any power you need. For a small fee, of course. We are available to help everyone, but we are not truly a charity.
“Our first mission is to show America that your supernatural siblings and neighbors are your friends. That we are also Americans.”
She raised a warning finger, delaying the onslaught of questions.
“But we must also, as we always have, protect the people who come to us,” she noted. “We are willing and able to serve as an interface between mundane and supernatural, to the benefit of both.”
She reeled off a website and a phone number, both of which the news agency flashed on the screen in text.
“Now I will, of course, take questions.”
The lounge deteriorated in loud conversations and arguments almost the moment Bogdanova had finished speaking. With a meaningful glance at Young, David stood and walked out onto the patio carrying his drink.
The wind was coming in off the lake with a bitter chill to it tonight, and he looked out over the water with a strange sense of sadness.
“White?” Young asked, stepping outside to join him.
“I’m fine,” he told him. “Just…realizing the world is never going to be the same.”
“Maiar, no,” she agreed. “On the other hand, we both know the best treatments for a lot of injuries and illnesses are a combination of high tech and high magic. Now those treatments will be available to everyone.”
“And so will everything else that comes with magic,” he agreed. “It’s not a bad thing, Brianna. I was never comfortable with the secrecy, it’s just… The world is never going to be the same.”
“Says the man who carried a magic sword in the service of the United States,” she said. “It had been changing for a while, just behind closed doors and hidden from the people. For at least ten years, the kind of people whose names end up in the newspaper have known where to find the real magicians behind a bunch of the quackery.
“The top Hollywood fixers have been sending old actors to us to keep them going a few more years for decades.” She shrugged. “We can’t change the fact that the clock runs out, but it’s in our power to turn it back…and isn’t it better to be able to do that for everyone than just a super-elite few?”
“If they can pay,” David replied.
“We’re Americans,” Young said dryly. “We work in the system we have. Yes, all of the insurance agencies currently listed on the website are fully or partially owned by the Conclave—but because some insurance companies already cover magical treatment, the rest have to.
“The Elfin are going to make money hand over fist for a while, but in doing so, we’re going to drag the world’s medical establishment kicking and screaming into the new paradigm—and if you don’t think that a good chunk of that money is going to be directed straight into charity programs to make sure everyone gets access to magical healing, you don’t know the Conclave!”
David chuckled
. That, at least, was true. The Conclave had its scrooges and its assholes, but most of the Elfin Lords and Ladies were good people. They’d make sure the benefits of magic were seen all around.
“A good reputation is the best way to protect us all,” he concluded, voicing the other major reason behind the Conclave’s plans.
“Exactly. We’re big enough and strong enough that nobody is lynching the doctors we send out,” Young said grimly. “And that lets the Elfin be the trailblazer who decides how the world works with the supernatural. How we normalize magic, werewolves, Empowered…even vampires now.
“Even the Familias are going to have to come out of the woodwork eventually, and if the Conclave is known and trusted, people will believe us when we back the Arbiter’s Peace,” she continued. “Without that moral authority, everything you did to end that bloody war will have been wasted.”
David snorted.
“And given that nuke is part of why we ended up here, I’d hate to see that,” he admitted. “I understand. Like I said, I even agree. But it’s a weird world to think of where I can actively put Battle Seer on my business cards…and know that people are going to understand at least half of it.”
Young laughed.
“David, I work for an Elfin Lord and the Conclave now has a website. Yeah, I hear you there.”
25
“Hey, cargo!”
Michael O’Brien appreciated the necessity of secrecy and the convenience of the military transport plane carrying him. He was still about ready to kill the copilot, whose name he had quite determinedly not learned after the man’s insistence on calling him cargo.
“Yes?” he growled.
“Coming up on the drop point. You better check the canisters on those pontoons!”
Michael sighed. If Savida had warned him that he was being dropped over water with compressed-air-fired self-inflating pontoons to keep him and the cargo afloat, he might have told the doctor where to stuff it.
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