“We should have got coffee at the station,” Carmelita whined.
“Oh, no. You’re not going to take the easy way out. Sick leave is not an option today.” I fished a bottle out of my jacket pocket and passed one of Kirsten’s potions to her. “Drink this and shut up.”
“I’m going to tell my daddy you’re mean to me.” She drank the potion and shuddered.
“He’ll thank me when he sees how my elegant example is influencing your growth into womanhood.”
She cracked up.
A couple of blocks farther along, I heard some unusual sounds. Of course, since we were the only people out on the dead-silent streets, any sound was unusual.
I turned down the next street, then stopped at the end of an alley. A bunch of purple monsters were raiding the dumpsters. Not demons, but some of the creatures that lived along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. The Rift ensnared a wide collection of beings, not all of them intelligent, and most of them not what humans would call civilized. I had once run into such a being after he killed two drug addicts he thought were trying to steal his food.
“What the hell are those?” Carmelita asked.
“I don’t really know. Nasty and smelly, savage but intelligent. If our city fathers had any brains, they’d contract all the garbage collection in the Metroplex to them.”
“Are we going to do anything about them?”
“Nope. Considering the state of things around here, normal trash collection probably won’t happen anytime soon. Those purple guys will help keep the smell down.”
I drove on.
The next group of Rifters we encountered was not so benign. Three demons were using their magik to break into an apartment building. Demons preferred their food alive, or at least very recently dead. I screeched to a stop, and we both jumped out with our pistols drawn.
“Stop right there! On the ground!” I shouted.
Two of them didn’t pay any attention. The other one whirled around and cast an ice spell at me. I activated my father’s electrical box even as I dove and rolled. I heard Carmelita’s gun fire three times, and when I came to my knees, I saw the demon on the ground. He still had his head, so I aimed a shot at his head, then fired at one of the demons still battering the ward on the front entrance of the building.
I hit one, and Carmelita hit the other, drawing attention of both of them. They left off what they were doing and charged us. A moment later, three headless demons lay on the street.
We ran into similar situations twice more that day. Mostly the elves just watched, but they stepped in a couple of times when the numbers weren’t in our favor.
Late in the afternoon, we came across a gang of about ten human teenagers breaking into a shop that sold food, tobacco, and liquor. Carmelita and I managed to bag two of them, and the elves brought us two more, but I doubted any of the ones we caught were the leaders. Just the youngest and the slowest. It did give us an excuse to go back to headquarters and book them in.
“Can we get something to eat now?” Carmelita asked.
I figured it would be a long night. “Sure. Let me make a phone call.”
I called Kirsten. “How is Aleks’s food supply?”
“He’s a bachelor,” she replied. “Junk food and beer.”
“If I bring supplies, will you cook them up?”
“And marry you.”
We hit one of the grocery stores that had been looted, and collected a substantial portion of what the original looters missed. I figured it would all spoil before the owners were allowed back, and it would get thrown away.
We drove over to Aleks’s place, and the elves cast a ward on my car. Aleks came down to let us into the building and help us cart the food upstairs. Kirsten shook her head at what we’d brought, then set to work.
After we polished off one of the most creative dinners I’d ever seen her cook, Aleks asked, “What’s going on tonight?”
“Probably more of the same,” I said. “From what I could tell driving around today, more than half of the properties down by the harbor are undamaged, and things are better up here. The vandals still have a lot of work to do.”
“Mainly we’re concerned about protecting residences,” Carmelita said. “It looks like the demons are trying to draw troops away from the front lines.”
I nodded. “Sometimes it’s a choice between property damage and people getting eaten. One of the things my boss is worried about are air strikes against Police Headquarters. We expect another assault on the seaport as well.”
“Do you need help?” Aleks asked.
I got up and walked to the window. His apartment was on the ninth floor, with a view of the harbor and south. The sun was setting, but there weren’t a lot of lights coming on in the city.
“We could use some more eyes,” I said. “Look out for any incursions. Our front is fairly porous—just not enough men. If I was one of the Akiyama commanders, I’d be trying to infiltrate fighters into the city.”
As I watched, fireworks started in the distance. There were two major fronts to the south—the airport and the seaport. It looked as though the battles were resuming in both places.
“Why don’t they give it up?” Kirsten asked. “They suffered a major defeat last night. Why don’t they just quit and go home?”
“Too much sunk cost,” Aleks replied before I could say anything. “Both money and prestige. Akiyama has tossed the dice, and they have too much at stake to pull out now. The incremental cost of staying and losing isn’t much more than what they’ve already lost.”
“Hiroku got away last night,” I said. “I assume they’ve set up a new command center in Wilmington by now, so their efforts should be more coordinated tonight.”
“Assuming he got off the Elk Neck Peninsula,” Aleks said.
Carmelita shook her head. “He’s a hydromancer. He got out.”
Half an hour later, she and I headed out with Llerywin and Elbereth, who had evidently drawn the short straws that night. We drove around, looking for any signs of trouble, and when the buildings didn’t block our sight to the south, we could see the flashes of battle on the horizon.
It was about nine o’clock when the first reports of infiltrators came in. A uniformed cop reported armed men coming ashore in the Canton area. It had once been a fashionable neighborhood, but the rise in sea levels had inundated the lower areas, and by the time I graduated from college, the water lapped against the foot of the hills rising to the north of the harbor.
We drove in that direction but ran into more armed men before we got there.
“Enemy in Fells Point,” Carmelita radioed the dispatcher. “We have multiple infiltration points along the Inner Harbor.”
“Tell them not to pull men from Federal Hill,” I said. “We need to be careful, or we’ll end up playing whack-a-mole.” Federal Hill was south of the Inner Harbor and bordered by the Patapsco River on the other side. If the enemy captured that high ground, they would control the harbor and downtown.
She passed the word along while I found an alley to park the car.
“Carmelita, can you lift us onto the buildings? I think we have a better chance from the rooftops.” All four of us were armed with magikally enhanced laser rifles and Raiders, and the elves had their bows. We all had magik of one sort or another.
Llerywin laughed. “We can climb without help. Where do you want us?”
I directed them to a couple of buildings, then my partner lifted us to a roof on the next street over. We were able to cover four streets that way, so the men sneaking toward us would have to change their course to get past us. We waited.
From my perch, I spied the first soldiers coming up the street in our direction. I aimed at the man farthest away from me, and shot him. He didn’t even flinch. Obviously shielded. I picked out another man and shot at him. He was also shielded. The good thing about the laser, though, was that neither man seemed to notice.
I accessed my little electrical box, paired an enhancer with it,
and switched it to the highest level. When I triggered it, a massive bolt of lightning crashed down on the men below me. When my vision cleared, the street was empty of men standing upright. Shielded or not, the concussion had knocked them all off their feet. I hoped it had also rattled their brains. I aimed the laser again and fired at a man crawling. He collapsed. I looked for anyone else moving, but I could tell that my companions were also shooting at the wounded.
It was another minute or so, but a fireball arced up from two streets over toward my position. I kicked the laser up to full power and fired at it. The fireball disappeared, and I felt inordinately pleased with myself. Then a bullet or some other sort of projectile hit the edge of the roof next to me, and I ducked back.
We exchanged fire with the men on the street for about five minutes, and then I got a call on my radio.
“Captain James,” I said.
“Captain, this is Staff Sergeant Lewis with Whittaker’s Second Arcane Battalion. We’re moving up on your position from the north.”
I directed them to flank our adversaries and try to come on them from the rear. Another ten minutes, and a fusillade of fire erupted below us. Several of the Akiyama men tried to run out of the streets where they had been hiding, and I loosed another lightning strike on the street. Things got a lot quieter after that.
I checked, and our people had engaged the insurgents coming ashore in Canton. But there were also reports of gunfire and magik in Federal Hill. I resigned myself to not getting any sleep.
Chapter 47
The fighting continued for another week, then mysteriously, all the demons melted back into the Waste. The following night the vampires didn’t reappear. No one knew why.
A counterattack by Whittaker’s forces, including the drones that Mary Sue had provided, smashed the Akiyama forces surrounding the airport. That was followed by a frantic sea evacuation of their forces at the seaport. Most of their ships managed to make it back to Wilmington, but they sailed under constant harassment from fighter planes, helicopter gunships, and more drones.
The silence from the Akiyama Family was deafening. No announcements, no messages, no attempts at communication whatsoever—either from their headquarters in Nanking or from Hiroku in Wilmington.
Courtney Findlay-Moncrieff did send a letter of protest to the Magi Council, complaining about Whittaker’s troops surrounding Findlay House. She said they were preventing her from going into town to do her shopping and get her hair done, and they were preventing grocery deliveries. Not a word about the damage to the Moncrieff estate or its occupation by Council forces.
It was like they were pretending the whole thing never happened. I wondered what they told the widows and children of their fighters who would never come home.
The areas of the heaviest fighting—around the airport, the seaport, and Baltimore’s downtown—had sustained heavy damage. Kirsten knew a couple of people who worked in the construction industry, and they told her they expected to get rich over the next couple of years.
The Domingo and Novak Families—whose interests included insurance—were not pleased. They filed claims for massive compensation from Akiyama, Moncrieff, Rudolf, Johansson, and any other Family they could remotely connect to the war. Considering the current makeup of the Council, I thought they would probably win but have trouble collecting.
That would finish the Moncrieff dynasty for good. Alan Moncrieff was a prisoner in his own house in Scotland, and his heir had died in the fighting. Olivia sent for Karolyn, intending to install her as Moncrieff Family head—under her thumb, of course. I drove out to Loch Raven to talk with my cousin.
“Want to see a sick joke?” Karolyn asked when we sat down at my mom’s table. She shoved a small stack of papers toward me. “Novak and Domingo and Whittaker, and half a dozen other Families, want me to pay them two billion dollars for the damages Moncrieff and my allies caused.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Why didn’t they send this to my darling mother?”
“Because the Council doesn’t recognize your mother as having a legitimate claim to diddly-squat,” I answered. “That’s part of what I came to talk to you about. Olivia’s filed a petition to have you named head of the Moncrieff Family. She’s also proposed giving Novak the Elk Neck estate as part of a settlement, plus she’ll pay off the rest of Novak’s and Domingo’s claims against Moncrieff.” I didn’t mention that Olivia essentially owned Moncrieff and would use their assets to pay the debts. But she wanted Moncrieff’s Glasgow shipyard very badly, and two billion was far less than it was worth.
Karolyn stared at me with her mouth open. She sputtered a couple of times, shook her head, looked off into the distance, then returned her gaze to me.
“In return,” I said, “you must go to Scotland and stay there. Moncrieff will become a subsidiary of Findlay. You don’t have to be involved in the business. In fact, I think they’ll rather discourage it. But they want someone in the bloodline to help stabilize things.”
“A prisoner?”
I shook my head. “No, a figurehead. You can travel as you wish, and you’ll be handsomely paid, but your domicile for at least the next ten years must be in Stirling. The estate, the castle, is yours. The kicker is, she wants the same thing Courtney does. Your son William must be declared your heir and educated as Olivia directs.”
“Oh, shit. We’re back to trying to get him away from Mom.”
“Looks like.”
Karolyn rolled her eyes. “I hope you have another plan.”
Joren still had spies inside Findlay House. When we told him what we needed—young Mr. William Moncrieff—he shook his head.
“Getting in or out of that place right now is going to be difficult. As you might imagine, it’s a little tense there at the moment.”
“Do you have any information on Bill Moncrieff?” I asked.
Joren shrugged. “A little. He seems to be able to move around inside the compound, but he doesn’t go out, and no one comes to visit him. My sources list him as one of the people who always attend evening dinner with your aunt. I’ll have to ask for more information.”
“Who else always, or mostly, attends those dinners?” I asked.
“Karl Rudolf and Akiyama Hiroku when they’re on the premises,” Joren said. “At the moment, access is by helicopter only. Joseph Johansson, his wife Ivanka, Miriam Oliver, and Adam Veatch are the regulars. They were all staying at the estate before the battle, and haven’t been able to get out since.”
Karolyn nodded. “Mother’s closest friends. I suspect they’re all bedmates of hers.”
“Anyone from outside that she might be missing? A friend she’d like to see, but who is now cut off?” I asked.
She looked thoughtful. “Hmm. No one you’d know. There’s a guy she meets at a hotel in town every week.” She shrugged. “Dad had his own flings. Ever since I was old enough to understand what was going on, they both slept around.”
“How long has the guy in the hotel been going on?”
“Oh, God. Years. He’s her hairdresser.” Karolyn snorted. “He lifts weights, built like Adonis. I overheard her and Ivanka discussing him one time. She’s also a fan.”
“Is he talented?” I asked.
Karolyn snorted. “Evidently he is in the bedroom, but magikally? No. No magik.”
I had the seed of an idea, but I didn’t like it. Coercion was one of the major crimes the Magi forbade. An illusionist wouldn’t be able to pass a bedroom test, or at least I didn’t think so. And how many illusionists could style hair?
When I got back to the city, I reported to Olivia through my implant that Karolyn was amenable to her proposal, but that we didn’t have access to her son at the moment.
Then I asked Kirsten, Carmelita, and Aleks out for dinner at the Kitchen Witch. I needed devious people to brainstorm with.
I laid out the situation and some of my vague thoughts and waited for a response. It wasn’t what I expected.
“Dani, I’m very disappointed in
you,” Aleks said. “Coercion? How gauche. There’s a far easier way to get the hairdresser to do what you want.”
“What?”
“Bribery,” Carmelita and Kirsten said in unison.
“Good Goddess,” Kirsten said, “how dense can you be? The guy’s a gigolo. Just pay him.”
I felt like a dunce. “I guess I never think of that because I don’t have a lot of money.”
“Olivia does,” Aleks said. “Now, once we have the hairdresser in our pocket, what are you going to do with him?”
Chapter 48
“Mr. Rump? Mr. Richard Rump?” I asked the dark-haired beauty who answered the door of the penthouse apartment in a twenty-seven-story building overlooking the harbor.
“Yes? And you are?”
“Danica Findlay. I called for an appointment.”
“Oh, yes, please come in. You were recommended by Courtney Moncrieff, I believe?”
“By her daughter, actually.”
Her brow furrowed slightly. “May I get you anything to drink?” she asked. “Champagne? A cocktail? Coffee or tea?”
“Tea would be nice.”
She showed me into an expensively decorated ultra-modern sitting room with a wall of glass providing an incredible view of the harbor and south all the way to Annapolis, probably. I was sure the fireworks the previous week must have been spectacular from there. I wondered what the riots looked like from up there, the fires and the smoke and the looting.
“Miss Findlay?” A man’s voice sounded behind me, almost as deep and melodious as Aleks’s.
I turned to face him. “And you’re Mr. Rump?” He was handsome, with styled black hair, perfect teeth, and shoulders as wide as a door. His arms and chest strained his tailored shirt, and his slacks hugged an ass—or maybe that was a rump?—that I’d follow anywhere.
“Yes. Welcome to my salon,” he said, handing me a burgundy-colored business card with white lettering.
Richard Rump
Coiffeur and Cosmetologist
War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2) Page 27