War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  I waited, expecting more attackers. It took a couple of minutes, but three more men made their appearance at the foot of the stairs. Two fireballs roared up toward me, and I ducked back until they passed by, then I popped back around the corner and fired three shots. They all ricocheted off a shield. Evidently, the third man was an aeromancer.

  Pulling back out of their sight, I ejected the magazine from my pistol and loaded more ammunition. By that time, I was sweating. If I ran, they had a clear shot at me in what amounted to a tunnel between two buildings. If I stayed where I was, they could advance on me behind the aeromancer’s shield.

  Looking around for another way out, I couldn’t see one. There weren’t any doors in the buildings to either side. I took inventory of the magitek devices I carried and realized I didn’t have any that might help me.

  In desperation, I activated another box—an enhancer—and linked it to my father’s lightning box. I hadn’t ever tried that before, so I didn’t know if it would do anything. Taking a deep breath, I dove forward into the archway, activating the third setting on the lightning box and pulling the trigger on my Raider as fast as I could.

  The thunder was deafening in the closed space as a massive lightning bolt exploded down the stairway. When my sight returned, I saw three bodies sprawled on the stairs. The walls of the two buildings and the stairs were scorched black. Beyond, the park was on fire, and the fountain I’d hidden behind was destroyed.

  I rose and stumbled away, half-blind and totally deaf. I made it to the next street, emerging into a very quiet evening. People on the street stared at me. I broke into a run, putting as much distance between me and my attackers as I could.

  Half a block away, I turned and looked back. Every person on the street was still frozen, some looking at the space between the buildings where I had been, some watching me. No one came out of the walkway.

  A uniformed cop came toward me, pistol in his hand and fear evident on his face. He shouted something, but I couldn’t hear him. I held my pistol out to my side. He shouted again, and this time I read his lips and dropped my gun, wincing slightly as it hit the ground, and hoping it didn’t discharge.

  “I’m a cop,” I said, but I couldn’t hear me either. “Captain Danica James, Arcane Division. My badge is on my belt, right side, under my jacket.”

  He didn’t look convinced. He said something else, and I figured out that he wanted me to turn and face the wall. I spread my arms, my hands held wide away from my body. Shrugging my jacket off my shoulders, I said, “I’m going to drop my jacket.”

  I managed to wriggle out of the jacket and let it slip to the ground. With one foot, I kicked it away from me.

  “My ID is in the inside left-breast pocket,” I said, then cursed myself for my wording as his eyes flickered toward my chest.

  Another cop approached, bent down, and picked up my jacket. He fished inside it and pulled out my ID on its lanyard. After looking at it, then at me, and assuring himself the picture matched my face, he nodded to his partner.

  “Sorry, Captain,” he said. I faintly heard that as my hearing began to return. The second cop stepped forward to hand me my jacket.

  “Not a problem, officer,” I said. “Following proper procedure will keep you alive long enough to draw your pension.”

  I saw him relax a little and felt tension flowing out of my body. I slowly bent down, picked up my Raider, and holstered it.

  “What’s going on?” the first cop asked.

  “I was ambushed in the park.” I gestured toward the walkway between the two buildings. “Mages.”

  The second cop moved as though to go check it out.

  “No! Don’t go in there. Call for Arcane.”

  The cop pulled out his radio and made a call. My hearing was returning, and I could hear all the bystanders talking and calling out. A drone with the markings of a media company circled overhead.

  Aleks glanced at his watch as I approached. “I was beginning to think you’d stood me up,” he said as the maître d’ showed me to his table. I knew I was forty-five minutes late, and wasn’t sure he would still be there.

  “Small problem. Thanks for waiting.”

  I looked up at the waiter, who had evidently been waiting for me along with Aleks and appeared immediately.

  “A double Irish whiskey. On second thought, make it a double.”

  “A double double Irish whiskey?”

  “Yeah. It’s been a rough day.”

  Chapter 32

  “Okay,” Whittaker said, “I’ve read Novak’s official report. Why don’t you tell me what really happened.”

  We were sitting in the Commissioner’s office the morning after I’d been ambushed.

  “I was on my way to Lonsby’s to meet a friend for dinner,” I said. “I cut through that little park across from the Hedrik Hotel, and the next thing I know, someone’s tossing fireballs at me. There was also an electrokinetic. I defended myself.”

  Whittaker nodded. “Quite ably. We recovered nine bodies, and three more men were admitted to the hospital with severe electrical burns.”

  “I only saw seven.”

  “Whatever you unleashed into that park would have done your grandmother proud. Our experts estimate the power of the lightning bolt that hit the park at about a billion volts—as strong as a natural lightning bolt. A large cloud-to-ground natural lightning bolt. With the energy contained by the buildings around it, all that force was amplified.” He leaned back in his chair. “Now, how in the hell did you generate that much power? I thought your electrokinetic talents were very weak.”

  I licked my lips as I pondered what he said. My grandfather’s experiment with magikally enhancing a nuclear bomb flashed through my mind.

  “You know that little lightning box I carry? The one my father made for me?”

  He nodded.

  “I linked an enhancer to it.”

  His mouth fell open, and he stared at me. He acted like he was about to say something a couple of times, but the wrinkles in his forehead and his frown deepened each time. Finally, he shook his head.

  “Holy Mother of Jesus,” is what finally came out.

  The discovery I had made excited me. “That box has several settings, and although I never thought about it before, I think I now understand how he built it. I think it must contain a stepped-phase enhancer coupled to an electrokinetic storage unit that draws on my natural electrokinetic magik. Add a more powerful enhancer to it, and if the effects multiplied at a logarithmic rate, that means that…”

  Whittaker waved his hands. “Stop. You’ve just sailed way past my technical understanding of magitek. I’ll take your word for it. I don’t even understand how my magik works, just how to apply it. My degree is actually in geology.”

  My boss was an earth mage, a geomancer. Not a lot of call for causing earthquakes in an urban environment, so I’d never seen him actually use his magik. Geomancers usually found jobs in mining and construction. Need a tunnel through a mountain to build a road? Hire a geomancer. Need a hundred-foot-deep hole for the foundation of a skyscraper with underground parking? A geomancer could do that in a day, whereas mechanical equipment would take a month. As long as you had a place for him or her to put the dirt and rocks, of course.

  “I didn’t know you could do something like that,” he said.

  With a shrug, I said, “I told you I’ve never tried it before. I was in a tough place. Two pyromancers were coming after me, protected by an aeromancer. No place to run. I’ve linked multiple enhancers together when I didn’t have one large enough to do the job, but that was a temporary solution. So, I gave it a shot.”

  “Well, we have the identities of the men who attacked you. Three of them are, or were, Findlay guardians. Two were Moncrieff guardians. I think it’s pretty obvious who ordered the attack, but the way things stand, there’s not much we can do about it.”

  “Take it to the Magi Council and impose sanctions?” I suggested.

  He shook his he
ad. “About the only leverage we have is to cut off their access to the Port of Baltimore, and we’ve already done that. The only Findlay ships allowed into the harbor are those your grandmother authorizes. Moncrieff, Akiyama, and Findlay ships sailing under Courtney’s orders are blocked, and they’re blocked from Montreal as well. They’re using Wilmington for all their shipping to the east coast.”

  He offered to assign extra men to me as bodyguards, but I turned that down. I already had two elves following me around after Siarin and Llerywin reported the ambush to my mother and grandfather.

  Gildor and Elbereth had introduced themselves to me, but as far as I could tell, they changed the glamours they wore on a random basis. They would have stood out otherwise. Gildor was as tall as my grandfather, with bronze hair and bronze eyes. Elbereth was around six feet eight inches tall, with silver hair down to her butt and silver eyes. They also glamoured their car. I was fairly sure they were the two cops who followed me to work that morning. I assumed there were two more who would work the night shift.

  I went down to my office, checked in with the detectives who reported to me, stole a cup of fancy coffee from Novak, then entered my private domain, where Carmelita and Luanne were busy dealing with paperwork.

  Pulling up our caseload on my computer, I took care of my bureaucratic obligations, assigning new cases and reading reports. With the additional manpower Whittaker was hiring, I had enough detectives to cover all the crimes on the list, and I rather wistfully wished I had something to do that was more exciting.

  It was close to noon when Kirsten called. “Are you really busy? There are a couple of women here looking for you.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Beatrice and Karolyn Moncrieff.”

  “Don’t let them out of your sight. They’re probably there to plant a bomb. I’ll be right there.”

  I practically flew out of the office, grabbing my coat and telling Luanne and Carmelita, “Both of you, with me.”

  Novak and his partner were out on a case, but I had faith the disguised elves wouldn’t let me escape their protection. As I trotted down the street, I reviewed what I knew about my two cousins. Their grandfather George and their mother—my Aunt Courtney—were weather mages. Karolyn had a number of the talents that went into that, but the talents didn’t all fit together properly. Still, she was far stronger magikally than anyone I wanted to tangle with.

  Beatrice was younger than Karolyn and me by about ten years, and I didn’t know her at all. She had always struck me as shy and mousey, and I couldn’t remember a thing about her magik. Her father, David Moncrieff, had been a medium-strength aeromancer and a weak pyromancer. From the research I did at the time of the demon murders at Findlay House, I gathered that his ambition was his strongest attribute—probably a major reason his older brother Alan sent him to North America rather than keep him home in Scotland.

  Luanne was doing a good job of keeping up with me, but Carmelita was practically running and falling behind. I stopped and let her catch up.

  “Look,” I said, “a friend of mine runs a witchy apothecary shop. Two women—mages—who are definitely not friends of mine just walked into her shop asking for me. Carmelita, I want you to go around the back through the alley and set up an air shield to prevent anyone from leaving through the back gate. Luanne, I want you to come inside with me.”

  Luanne was a medium-strength aeromancer—not in the same class as Carmelita or Mychal—but I figured she could handle an air shield of sufficient strength to blunt an attack from my cousins.

  When we reached the block with Kirsten’s shop, I sent Carmelita down the alley. “It’s the third gate on the right.”

  Then I grabbed Luanne’s sleeve and pulled her close. “Stay right next to me. If I reach out and grab you, shield both of us, okay? If things go south and I’m too far away, shield yourself.”

  She nodded. Her face showed excitement, but not fear. I thought that was a good sign.

  We entered the shop and saw Kirsten standing behind the counter. Her eyes met mine, and she gestured with her head toward a small alcove where she served tea to special customers. I walked over there and found Karolyn and Beatrice sitting at the small table, a teapot in the middle of it. Each of the sisters had a dainty teacup in front of them.

  “What can I do for you ladies?” I asked.

  Their eyes looked beyond me, taking in Luanne and a petite young woman—I assumed it was Elbereth—who had followed us into the shop.

  “It’s a private matter,” Karolyn said. “Family business.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me, but I dealt with a bit of family business last night, and it wasn’t pleasant.”

  Karolyn shook her head. “No tricks, Dani. We’re not here to kill or kidnap you.”

  Beatrice anxiously played with her teacup, picked up one of the little cookies from a plate, then put it down. She turned her face up to me, and I could see she was in some distress.

  “It’s about Dad,” she said.

  Karolyn didn’t look very happy either, nor did her face display her normal disdain for me.

  “Luanne, can you throw a soundproof shield around this little room?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do it, please.” I stepped into the alcove and took one of the remaining chairs. Sound from the outer room ceased.

  “Okay, what’s going on?”

  Karolyn braced herself, acting like she wanted to say something, but hesitated. She tried again but couldn’t manage to speak.

  “Our mother killed our father,” Beatrice blurted out. “She and Karl drowned him in the bathtub.”

  “I see. Did anyone witness this murder?”

  Beatrice nodded. “I did.”

  Well, that put a different light on things. My mind raced. I probably couldn’t arrest Courtney, let alone prosecute her, but one of the first things that flashed through my head was what Alan Moncrieff, the Family head, would think about his brother’s demise.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I knew that Beatrice and her father were close, but I had been told he and Karolyn didn’t get along at all. No one had mentioned the relationship between Karolyn and Beatrice. Karolyn reached out, took Beatrice’s hand, and squeezed it. The two sisters looked at each other, and Karolyn nodded. She didn’t let go of the younger woman’s hand.

  Haltingly at first, Beatrice began to tell her story. She had gone to her father’s suite of rooms at the Moncrieff estate at Elk Neck to talk to him. The door off the hallway was unlocked, so she entered. The lights were on, and the bedroom door was open. She heard noises, and she followed the sounds to find her mother and Karl Rudolf drowning her father in the bathtub. Horrified, she ran to Karolyn. When the two of them returned to their father’s room, they found him dead.

  I listened to the whole story without interrupting. Beatrice was in tears by the time she finished. Karolyn’s face showed rage.

  “I’m not sure I can do anything,” I said. “Commissioner Whittaker and I discussed your father’s death, and we don’t see any way that we can investigate it. The situation with Moncrieff and the Council isn’t exactly cordial. What I would suggest is to contact your Uncle Alan and tell him what you told me.”

  Karolyn shook her head. “Moncrieff has sold its soul to Akiyama. I’m sure Alan would be outraged, but he’s kind of stuck. He backed Mom’s play to ally with Benjiro, and defied the Council.”

  “Does your mother know, or suspect, that you saw what they did?” I asked.

  Beatrice shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “We didn’t tell anyone that he was dead,” Karolyn said. “We let his valet find him. I didn’t want Mom suspecting anything. I don’t trust her.”

  “I can understand why,” I said. “What about taking a trip to Scotland? Do you think your uncle will protect you?”

  The women looked at each other, then Karolyn shook her head. “No idea.”

  “Do you trust Olivia? What if I could smuggle you
to Ireland?”

  Blank looks. Beatrice turned to Karolyn, whose eyes took on a distant look as she stared past me. After a minute or so, Karolyn said, “At least she wouldn’t try to murder us. Is that where she is?”

  “She and Osiris. That’s why your mother hasn’t been able to consolidate her hold on Findlay. They have Kennedy protection there.”

  Karolyn gave a jerky nod. “That might work. How?”

  “Whittaker can get you on a plane. We still hold the airport here. We’ll need to get your statements for evidence if we ever bring your mother up on charges before the Council. Where are you staying?”

  “At Elk Neck. Mom and Karl are living at Findlay House,” Karolyn said.

  We agreed that they would come into town Saturday evening, as though they planned to go clubbing, and spend the night.

  As I walked them out of the shop, Karolyn hung back.

  “I know you and I have never gotten along,” she said. “I was really nasty to you when we were girls. And it’s not like the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or anything like that, but you’re a straight shooter. You’ve got that morality thing, and I know you won’t stab me in the back.”

  She took a deep, shaking breath. “What Beatrice didn’t tell you was that Dad’s bed was all messed up and there was a bottle of wine with two glasses on the bedside table. When she saw them, Mom was naked but Karl was clothed. She got Dad drunk, took him to bed, then afterward I guess they went to take a bath. Candles and everything. Karl came in, and they killed him, then they went back to her room and spent the night together. I’ve been such a damned fool.”

  She shifted her gaze toward Beatrice, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for her.

  “I love that girl. She’s really sweet, kind, vulnerable. Everything I’m not. She used to follow me around like a puppy when she was young. Mom never had time for her. For either of us. If they hurt her, I’ll kill them, and that’s a promise, not a threat.”