by Faith Hunter
“The storm’s getting worse again,” Alex said, concentrating on the tablets on his desk, tapping and swiping. “The forecast is all over the place. The temps have dropped by ten degrees in the last four hours.”
Eli said, “It’s early for an ice storm but not impossibly early. With the storm on the Gulf moving north and the Arctic edge moving south along the Mississippi, bad storms should be expected.”
“But one front is supposed to give way to the other. These are heading right for each other and now the National Weather Service thinks they’ll meet right here. Like a storm apocalypse.”
Lightning hammered the earth again. Lights went out. Le breloque glowed in the darkness from my bedroom door. I shimmered into the Gray Between and back out, my silver magics passing through me in a Vitruvian Man pattern, a witch pattern, a pentagram. I didn’t like this. At all. But at least time didn’t bubble.
“Don’t believe in coincidence,” Eli said.
“Nope,” Alex said.
“So it’s witch shi—crap, or vamp crap, or Gee DiMercy, the storm god, crap.” Alex shoved his moisture-kinked hair up high, where it stayed in place.
“How about we gear up and check out HQ?” Eli asked me. “The ballroom upgrades should be nearly done by now.”
I nodded and went to my room to change. Again. Outside, the storm blasted the earth.
• • •
We played rock-paper-scissors and Eli lost. He donned a military poncho when he went to bring the SUV around. In appreciation, I made a double espresso for him and a chai for me while I waited, and poured them into insulated travel mugs. Win-win as far as I was concerned.
On the way to the Mithran Council Chambers, better known at Yellowrock Securities as Fanghead HQ, among other less-than-respectful names, he gave me a litany of the security upgrades and I listened with half an ear. The European vampires were coming sometime, whenever they finished yanking Leo’s chain and got around to the actual visit, and Leo was planning to hold the initial reception in the ballroom.
We were turning the corner to the drive when the power to the streetlights—which had come on because of the darkness of the storm—blinked off and on and off as the power fluttered. The entire city went dark. Eli’s cell rang, the call coming over the car’s electronic system. “Derek,” Eli said, seeing the name on the car’s synced coms system. “Go ahead.”
“There’s a security problem at HQ from lightning strikes. I’ve got men checking it out.”
“Copy. We’re on the way to inspect the back entrance and the ballroom,” Eli said. “We’ll be on coms if needed.”
“Copy.”
The connection ended and I decided I needed to confess the problems with my magic. “So, there’s this little problem,” I started.
Eli didn’t say anything. He didn’t react at all. At the words little problem, he had entered the Jedi voodoo stillness he achieved when he was shooting. “The storm?” I continued. “The one that’s making le breloque spark? It’s making my skinwalker magics spark too. I’m doing the whole time-travel thing almost every time the lightning strikes. I thought it would be better after going to water, but it did it again in the shower.”
“Go visit Sabina if she’s in. Or the crazier one, Bethany. Both of them know what you are. Both have witch magic of one kind or another. They may have thoughts about what’s happening. But stay away from the electronics and the windows.”
At the last part, I wanted to go Duh. I wasn’t in the mood to visit either of the priestesses, even if they were old enough to be awake in the daylight. One was spooky crazy. The other one was just nutso. I avoided interpersonal interactions with them like I would a plague victim. But it was all good advice. I said so. Eli gave me his battle nod, more of a twitch than anything else. We pulled around back to check out the spike strips in the entrance drive and the laser eyes and the cameras, but as we braked, the lightning got worse, the cold got colder, and the rain got harder, throwing up a thick white mist to mix with the odd fog. It was disconcerting and my magics did the time-stutter again. So I left Eli to the inspection and ducked inside between lightning strikes.
Once in HQ, I wandered the halls, seeing only humans because even though it was storm-dark out, it was still technically daylight, and the noon hours were the middle of the sleep cycle for vamps. Lightning came in groups—bunches? clumps? gaggles?—and my magic continued to splutter and sputter, sometimes bubbling time, sometimes not. I discovered it was wise to simply stop in place each time it bubbled and wait it out; otherwise I’d appear to vanish to the humans around me. I didn’t want stories of ghost-Jane to start circulating. The stops made me acutely aware of HQ. The carpet or wood flooring or tiles under my feet. The lighting. The security cameras placed prominently in corners. The real cameras better hidden in picture frames and light fixtures. The colors, textures, decorative and architectural elements that seemed to flow from one area to another. Leo had money, and his personal and business space screamed class. Not something I knew a lot about. His people screamed it too, in the way they walked and moved, their posture self-confident, the quality of their clothing and uniforms. Leo had spared no expense making his people feel comfortable. He never had. They looked cared for and they smelled safe and happy. I’d been in vamp households and clan homes before, and few were as contented-smelling as this one. That implied that they really liked it here. How much of their contentment was because they were blood-bound? Addicted to vamp blood. High on blood. They had asked to become bound. Signed contracts for that. Entered into the blood-meal relationship with eyes wide open, knowing that once addicted, they could never leave, not and maintain the youth and vigor that vamp blood gave them. But that was the case in every vamp home. What about this one made it smell happier?
As I maneuvered through the hallways, I found my hand on my throat, at the place where Leo had bitten me. When he had tried to force me into a blood-bound relationship. Had he expected that once I was bound to him I’d want to stay that way? And why had he claimed me? I had to believe that it was to keep me from being claimed by the EVs. I was a valuable resource he didn’t want to lose until after the EVs were defeated. And . . . when binding me didn’t work, he gave me a primo. Sneaky bastard. I needed to talk to Leo about a lot of things. Someday. When the world wasn’t trying to fall apart.
Mixed in with contentment, the hallways were also full of the other scents that permeated a vamp’s household, that mixture of dry herbs and wilting funeral flowers, sex and excellent coffee, gunpowder, blood, and sweat. The smell made Beast—a predator herself—sit up and take notice. Good vampire smell. Smell George. Smell Leo. Mates . . .
Yeah. No. Down girl. Not plural. Not the fanghead. Only Bruiser.
Beast hacked with laughter.
Not knowing what else to do (and feeling a sense of disaster in the worsening storm), I stopped humans to talk about the weather. I wasn’t the chatty type, but their surprise at my noticing them seemed odd. I always noticed—the way they moved, the way they smelled—I just didn’t engage in useless conversation. Even now. This convo about the weather was important because the weather was not acting like itself. Not that the humans had noticed. No one had any ideas about the weird storms, and most locals pointed to the fact that New Orleans always had weird weather. “What’s new?” was the most common reaction. As the minutes passed, I reached the lower levels, where the effect of the lightning was less. It seemed that being underground even a bit abated my magic’s reaction to it and the stuttering of time eased.
I ended up in the workout gym, where I discovered Gee teaching swordplay with two wooden sticks to an advanced student. The woman was Ro Moore, a self-proclaimed Alabama backwoods hillbilly, boxer, wrestler, and MMA cage fighter. Ro had no fear and didn’t believe that there were limits of any kind on her abilities. She was putting on a show for the gathered security types in the Spanish Circle form of sword fighting, also known as L
a Destreza. She’d be peppered with bruises tomorrow, because if Gee was holding back, it didn’t show. The clack of wood staves was so fast I had to pull on Beast-vision to follow. With each hit, Gee was whapping her hard, but the slender, muscular woman wasn’t backing up. She even managed three touches on Gee, which humans never did. I didn’t know which vamp she was drinking from, but whoever it was had given her remarkable strength and speed. Sword work seemed to be something Ro was born to do, her prominent shoulders, narrow waist, and long arms giving her a long reach, longer than Gee’s. But Gee was inhumanly fast. He backed her up a step. Then two.
Ro ducked beneath Gee’s staves, dropped to one knee, and swept her other leg out to impact Gee’s knee in a move I had learned in the dojo. Gee’s leg buckled and he nearly fell. Instead, he swept around and caught both of Ro’s practice sticks in his, did some kind of swivel motion, and ripped them from her hands. There was a collective intake of breath among the watchers and an instant of silence as the sticks flew. They smashed into the wall across the room in a clatter.
But by then Ro was dead. Not dead as in lifeless, but as in flat on her back, Gee’s staves at her throat, crossed for a scissors move that would have sliced her head off had the staves been blades and the fight been real. One of his feet was on her abdomen; the other pinned her right hand. She was immobilized. And Gee was ticked off.
“Who taught you this move, human?” Gee demanded.
“An old man named Clementine. A cage fighter who thought I showed promise.”
Gee backed away, crossed his staves in front of him, and bowed. “You have done well. Next time follow it up with a strike to the jaw and one to the heart. Go ice your knee. Drink from your mistress this evening. You will need healing, as will I.”
Ro rolled to her feet and backed away, far enough for Gee to miss if he was planning a sneak attack. She crossed her hands as if she still held staves and gave him a deeper bow, but without taking her eyes from him. Smart woman.
Gee was about to call the next student when I pulled my magics close to try to keep them steady and said, “A moment of the Mercy Blade’s time for the Enforcer?”
It was a formal request. I was getting good at using the ceremonial speech of vamps, which worked better than, “Hey you, Bird Brain. Got a minute?” My invitation was all proper and curly, like calligraphy of the mouth.
Gee scooped up Ro’s staves in addition to his own and headed my way. He was dressed in skintight black, his dark hair tied in a short queue, and he sauntered across the floor as the gathered humans dispersed into small groups. Gee was fine, despite the blow to his knee. Whatever Ro had kicked, it hadn’t been his real knee, but some other bird body part hidden by glamour. A lot of people now knew he was bird-shaped in his natural form, but he didn’t show that off unnecessarily.
Oddly, Troll, Katie’s primo, helped Ro out the back door, which claimed Ro for Katherine Fonteneau, aka Katherine Louisa Dupris, Katherine Pearl Duplantis, Katherine Vuillemont. Katie was Leo’s heir, owned the oldest continuously operating whorehouse in New Orleans, and never showed any interest in her blood-servants or scions learning swordplay.
I was watching the pair so tightly that I missed the toss and caught the staves only inches from my face. Barely blocked the Mercy Blade’s strikes, three clacks of wood against wood. Parry and block were often considered cheating in the vamp version of La Destreza, though the archaic rules were confusing. I blocked three more strikes and caught my balance. Attacked, circling my staves, still heated from Ro’s hands, circling, thrusting, moving forward, drawing on Beast’s speed in addition to my own skinwalker speed.
Fun, Beast growled deep inside. Play with mouse.
Lightning struck, a crash-smash-bang of thunder that shook the building. HQ, struck by lightning. The Gray Between ripped open and the world went still and silent. Gee’s face was frozen in a look of intensity. His lips were slightly parted so he could breathe steadily, his feet were planted securely on the wood gym floor, and his black hair was a solid glisten where the light hit it. His glamours were an interlocking, underlying patchwork of power-reds from scarlet to crimson to cerise. Lots of blanketing shades of lavender and grape and periwinkle and amethyst. And all glowing with magic to Beast-vision. I stepped back from Gee’s staves to keep from drawing him into the time bubble with me.
In the room beyond I could see the blood-servants and -slaves, watching us with a sense of expectation and excitement. All but Ro, whose eyes were narrowed and cataloging the scene that Gee and I made. I walked toward her and took in Troll’s expression and the protective hand on her arm. Interestinger and interestinger.
Back at Gee, I realized that I wasn’t cramping. My stomach wasn’t constricting; I wasn’t throwing up blood; I wasn’t nauseated. I looked at myself in the Gray Between. My body was a shadow of matter. My souls were golden wisps of light, swirled around one another, intermixed. Beast moved up into the forefront of my brain and panted, watching what I was watching, understanding what I was understanding. Maybe better than I did. My magic was in a pentagram, a star geometry, stable motes of power moving like the new normal in the slice of time around me. But the scarlet motes always seemed to be moving just ahead of my skinwalker magic. Leading instead of being herded? That was a scary thought. The one perfect thing about my magic was the empty place against my heart where the shadow of murder had been. Now there was a feathery light there, bright and sweeping. Light. That was unexpected.
Either the storm was doing something to my magic, or being taken to water had done something to my magic, or the new Vitruvian Man motes had done something to my magic, or some combo of the three. The star shape, or pentagram, had proven to provide the best geometric and mathematical stability for magical workings, and was best when five magic users came together to work energy to a purpose, what laymen called a spell. I had five of the little red motes zipping through me and around me, in a working that appeared to be part of me. Either it had fixed the problem with my skinwalker magic or it was about to try to kill me.
Beast. Talk to me. What’s happening here?
Angel Hayyel happens. Purpose of light. Like purpose of Beast is to hunt.
That isn’t overly helpful. Got anything more?
The angel Hayyel had appeared in my presence once, and his hand had changed me and everyone in the room with me. No surprise that the celestial being was an ongoing problem. Beast?
Beast didn’t answer. I knew she had talked to the angel who had appeared in my life for all of maybe four seconds. And I knew that the angel’s time with Beast was longer than his time with me. And whatever he had done had created this ability to bubble time. It had given others certain skills and certain gifts and certain punishments. I wasn’t sure what bubbling and bending time was—a gift or a penalty. Maybe both.
I’d gotten too close. Around me, time stuttered and Gee’s staves moved several inches in a swing that would have impacted the side of my head had I not ducked. Instinctively, Beast pulled on the bubble of time and it stabilized. Now that . . . that was interesting. And I had seen how she did it.
I gripped my staves and went behind Gee. Without touching him, I set the hard wooden shafts in two delicate places—assuming his bird had parts like humans did—leaned in, and the Gray Between dropped. Sound slapped my eardrums like two palms clapping on the side of my head. I yanked the staves up and back, snapping one stave between Gee’s legs and one against his throat, yanking him back against me and applying pressure all at once.
Gee made an eep and froze in place. His breath made a whistling noise. A blood-servant hooted approvingly. Others applauded slowly, as if still trying to figure out what they had seen. Or hadn’t.
“Enforcer,” Gee greeted me, motionless and formal.
“Bird Man,” I greeted him back, softly. “How’s it shaking?”
“I have nothing that shakes. I am healthy. And you, Enforcer? Are you well?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “At the moment in a most uncomfortable position.”
“Continuing: I let you go, we bow to each other, and we chat off the record.” I hoped this took us from formality and fighting and into conversation.
“You wish to gossip?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Agreed.”
Gee dropped his staves. I stepped back and crossed my hands at the waist, the staves sweeping out behind me. We bowed in that formal manner and I set my sticks on the floor.
“Would the Enforcer care for tea?”
“I would.”
Gee snapped his fingers and Brenda Rezk inclined her head. It looked like the security person from Atlanta was learning how to be a servant, which was part of every good blood-servant’s job. She was a prideful but resolute woman, determined to move up in Leo’s ranks and doing a fine job of it, though serving tea didn’t look like her cup of the beverage. The fact that she was working directly with Gee, however, suggested that she might be up for the number one or two security spot when the new Master of the City took over in Georgia.
I placed my staves into Brenda’s hands and followed Gee from the gym into the cleaner-smelling hallway. Less sweat and blood and fighting pheromones and more soap, shampoo, food, coffee, and tea scents. Gee led the way to the small room that was used as a consultation room and gestured me to one of the sofas. I had few happy memories of this room simply because bad stuff had happened here. But I took a seat and tea was delivered by a gray-liveried servant wearing white gloves, overseen by Brenda. Tea and little sandwiches and a small plate of fruit. Beast sneered. I ignored her.