by Skye Knizley
‘Home in on me, and hurry.’ Aspen replied. ‘I need the cavalry.’
She ended the link and drew her Javelina pistol before stepping back into the lab.
“FBI, you’re all under arrest!”
The lab techs turned in surprise then scattered like marbles dropped on the floor. One managed to slap a warning button on his way out. Alarms began to blare and strobes began to flash, turning the lab into a disco out of some deranged nightmare.
Aspen ran after them, muttering “It never works on television, either.”
She passed through the open doors on the far side of the room and entered a typical office building corridor. Blue carpet-tile, plain beige walls and bare patches where cheap faux artwork had once hung. The doors on either side were locked and sealed with heavy wooden beams, giving no escape for the fleeing technicians.
“Stop running, dammit, I’m trying to arrest you, not kill you!” Aspen yelled.
She hurried after them and fired a warning shot. Three of them slid to a halt and raised their hands, crying out in what Aspen thought might be Korean. The others had spread out, taking the stairs to higher levels. They weren’t important, she only needed the techs to find out what they knew about the boss. They’d be let go with a wrist slap, anyway. The justice system was too bogged down to worry about people who were, by all appearances, just trying to make a living. If it wasn’t them cooking the drugs, someone else would do it. They weren’t the ones twisting arms and giving free hits to angsty teens.
“Lay down on the floor and put your hands on your heads,” Aspen said.
The three technicians complied and Aspen pulled a handful of zip-tie cuffs from her jacket pocket. “Cuff yourselves and stay put.”
She was waiting for them to comply when bullets rang out, smashing the windows and punching holes in the wall behind her. The magikal shield she’d cast did its job, bending the bullets around her, but it wouldn’t last forever. She took cover behind one of the pillars that supported the lobby ceiling and returned fire at the gathering of thugs standing outside. One went down clutching at his shoulder, the others returned fire, cutting a swath of destruction that killed two of the technicians and brought two exit signs tumbling to the floor in a shower of sparks.
“Is that you, Agent Storm the lesser?” Fish called from the doorway.
“That’s Kincaid to you, Fish. You’re under arrest, lay down your weapons and nobody else has to get hurt,” Aspen replied with more confidence than she felt.
“You’re a funny girl,” Fish said. “We’re going to gut you and leave your body for the storm.”
They started shooting again and Aspen huddled behind her pillar. She could feel pieces of the concrete and plastic structure falling, some of them landed on her back. It wouldn’t hold forever.
“Stop trying to think like Raven, what would Aspen do?” she muttered.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on her magik. She let it flow and shape in her hands until she’d created a ball of blue and white energy that coiled around her. When the gunfire lulled again and the thugs began to reload, she slid from behind cover and sent the magik outward. It exploded from her fingertips in a wall of blue lightning that passed through the doors and struck the gunmen, sending them tumbling backward into the snow.
As they tried to gather themselves, she stepped outside and conjured a fireball.
“Leave the guns alone and put your hands on your heads,” she growled.
“What she said,” Levac called, raising his badge and aiming his pistol at the men.
Aspen tried not to let the relief show. “What took you so long?”
Raven stepped out of the shadows with her silvered pistol ready. “I didn’t want to cramp your style. We good?”
Aspen looked at the gunmen. Those who could still move were struggling to put their hands on their heads. The rest lay where they’d fallen, bleeding from eyes and noses.
“We’re good,” she said.
She stepped over to Fish and looked down at him. “You’re under arrest. And now you’re going to tell me who is really behind this.”
Fish spit a gobbet of blood. “I ain’t telling you shit, you purple haired−”
Aspen held the ball of flame near his face and he recoiled in fear and pain.
“Don’t say it,” Aspen said. “I hate that word.”
“Why are we here, again?” Levac asked.
Raven shrugged. “I don’t know, she said something about the cavalry, but it looks to me like she’s got this all wrapped up.”
“Have we ever made a bust this big?”
Raven paused and gave it some thought. “First time we arrested Riscassi and all her goons four years ago?”
Levac made a show of counting the suspects and shook his head. “She got two more than us.”
Aspen glared at them, but she was trying not to smile. “If you two are through, can one of you call an ambulance and the other a paddy wagon?”
“That’s how you know she’s a rookie,” Levac said with mock sadness.
Raven nodded and fished her phone out of her jacket. “Nobody calls it a paddy wagon anymore, rook.”
“It’s all the television, rots rookies brains,” Levac said.
“Are you three for real?” Fish asked.
Aspen tossed the fireball over her shoulder where it vaporized a small snowbank. “Believe it. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney, I’m sure you’ll have Harmony DeGrey down at the station before dawn…”
Raven
Chicago FBI Office, 9:25 p.m., Dec 23rd.
“You sent her out alone?” Raven roared.
Fish and his men were in holding down at District One, Fish had refused to talk until his attorney arrived. Aspen was still there filling out paperwork and processing fingerprints. So far, all of the gunmen appeared to be Korean immigrants transported by ship from Canada. Cheap, illegal labor unlikely to go to the police and unlikely to talk for fear of being deported.
Raven was now in King’s office, heated enough to spit nails and rip down trees. She glared at King across his desk and tried not to pull the top off with her bare hands. Though it was the biggest office in the department, with glass walls and a wide wooden desk circa 1942, it wasn’t big enough to hold Raven’s anger.
King steepled his fingers and peered at her over them. “I did not. Jynx Kane is her backup.”
Raven closed her eyes and shook her head. “Jynx is two thousand miles away, Abraham, and you know that. What was she supposed to do, teleport?”
“Arrangements were made. I didn’t expect Agent Kincaid to find success so quickly,” King replied.
Raven felt a sense of pride at that, Aspen was her wife, her familiar, and damn good at her job. She was a better investigator than Raven felt she would ever be, because Aspen went with her brain, not her instincts.
“You shouldn’t underestimate her, but that isn’t the point. You sent my wife out to investigate Thirst dealers behind my back,” Raven said.
King’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “I don’t need your permission, Agent Storm. This is my agency, not yours.”
Raven sat back. “Aspen is my responsibility. I should have been told you sent her on an investigation.”
“She could have told you, Raven. You are in constant contact, are you not?” King asked.
“We only use the connection in an emergency,” Raven replied.
But he was right. Aspen could have told her at any time, yet she didn’t. She hadn’t even mentioned it during her voice message, not really. Raven knew why, but it was easier to be angry at King than accept that they were trying to protect her. She didn’t think straight, not when it came to Thirst and the vile men who pushed it on unsuspecting people.
“She was trying to pr
otect you, Raven. So was I,” King said, giving voice to her thoughts.
Raven shook her head. “I don’t need protecting.”
King sat forward. “Don’t you? Raven, you’ve handled some of the most difficult cases we have on record. You never stop, you never take a day off and you never rest. It is wearing on you. You’ve struggled since the Magik Mirror sent you back in time, and that’s understandable. You’re as much my responsibility as Aspen is yours.”
She hated that her pain, her exhaustion was so plain for others to see. She raised her eyes and met King’s stare. “Thank you, but I don’t need protection. Just the time off Aspen and I requested.”
King gave up and shuffled papers around his desk. “And you shall have it once this case is closed.”
“Thank you.”
Levac knocked on the doorframe and leaned inside. “Arden is ready in the interrogation room.”
Raven stood. “Did she ask for an attorney?”
“No. She says she won’t be answering any questions and doesn’t need a barrister,” Levac said.
“That chick creeps me out,” Raven said. “It’s like she’s half out of time or something.”
Levac shrugged. “Not the first time we met a villain out of their own time.”
Raven nodded and led the way through the silent office to the elevators. He was right, they’d met people from all walks and times, but this felt different. It was like Arden was familiar with the modern world, but it was filtered, as if viewed through a keyhole.
The elevator opened in the sub-basement, with its concrete walls painted green and white tile floor. Fluorescent fixtures glowed every ten feet and exacerbated the feeling of being in a modern dungeon, which is essentially what it was. This is where the scumbags were kept before being shipped off to New York.
A Marine was standing outside the door to Interrogation A. Raven handed him her sidearm and one blade, then entered, leaving Levac to observe from the adjoining room. Arden was seated at the bare steel table with her hands cuffed before her. Raven entered and sat opposite, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on her side of the room.
“Rupert tells me you declined a barrister.”
Arden smiled. “I’ve no need of legal counsel.”
“Why barrister? Why not lawyer?” Raven asked.
“Barrister is the term I am familiar with,” Arden replied.
Raven sipped her coffee and stared at Arden. The witch seemed calm and confident, not entirely uncomfortable in the steel cuffs that bound her wrists. That was unusual, even hardened criminals felt some measure of oppression and fear when confronted with thirty feet of concrete and steel. The inevitably of their demise set in and they became open to making a deal, providing any information that might shorten their sentence or keep them from a cell entirely. Not Arden. Either she didn’t understand the situation or she simply didn’t care.
“What did you want with Rupert’s blood?”
“I told you, Lady Raven, none of your business,” Arden said.
“Arden, you’re here on charges of attempted murder of two Federal agents, the murder of Pandora and Ashwell Tempeste, the murder of Jensen Murphy and possibly Franklin Drake. You might want to start cooperating,” Raven said.
Arden leaned back as far as her chains would allow and smiled. “I have killed no one, Lady Raven, and I am not afraid of human justice.”
She wasn’t, Raven knew. Arden smelled confident, not a hint of fear or nervousness.
“What about the justice of a witch? It is still customary to burn witches for their crimes,” Raven said.
Arden paused and, for the first time, showed a hint of nervousness. “You would not, it is against the Laws of the Night!”
Raven shrugged. “You might want to look a little more into my family. Lord Strohm, as you call him, was responsible for wiping out most of the casters in the northern hemisphere, including witches, warlocks and fae.”
“Only those who were disloyal to him!” Arden snapped.
“Disloyal to the house, you mean,” Raven said. “I represent the house as Fürstin, a house with two dead members and two more threatened with death. Torching you seems like justice to me.”
Arden paused and Raven met her gaze. There was fear, now, but only a little. Not enough. After a moment, the witch looked away.
“You will not execute me, Lady Raven. You are just and would never murder someone you have in your care,” she said.
“I would if it was a just punishment,” Raven said. She stood and moved to the door. “Think about it.”
She knocked and the Marine opened the door for her. She stepped outside and let the door close with a loud bang.
“Call down to the cells and have her moved. Be careful, she’s a witch, there is no telling what she’s got up her sleeve,” Raven said.
“At once, Agent Storm,” the Marine said.
Raven joined Levac in the observation room that was adjacent to interrogation. It was a small room with audio-visual recording equipment and a two-way transparent aluminum wall.
Levac was seated ass-backward on a chair with a file open in front of him.
“Did you learn anything?” he asked.
Raven dropped into the chair beside him. “She’s brave, knows the Laws of the Night, but doesn’t know much about my family. Not really. What about you?”
Levac tapped the file. “Her workup came through, there isn’t much to work with. No driver’s license, nothing in AFIS, no social security number, she doesn’t exist in any of the official databases.”
He flipped a few pages. “I found one reference to an Arden in the House Tempeste files, if it’s the same one she was a fae indentured to a witch named Winter.”
That was a name Raven had heard before. The Lady Winter had been a witch feared even by vampires and lycans, a treacherous woman who used her powers to freeze her enemies and destroy entire towns. The official record was that she’d been burned for her crimes in the mid 1800s, one of the last witches burned in the Chicago area.
“I’ve heard that name, she was burned−”
“In 1834,” Levac finished. “Guess who her belongings were sold to?”
Raven thought for a second, rubbing her lower lip with her index finger as she considered the implications and clues they’d gathered.
“Rosemary Kerr,” she said at last.
“Got it in one, boss. She bought the house and its contents for a song in 1872,” Levac said. “House Karayan kept records and gave them to House Tempeste.”
“Was there anything in the archive about Rosemary Kerr?”
“Nothing, it’s the only time she’s mentioned at all, but it looks like some of the pages are missing,” Levac said.
“Karayan was Master for a long time and he was a slimy bastard. It’s possible he was associated with this Kerr and deleted the records. Or had them deleted,” Raven said.
She’d met Karayan in 1943, he’d been a weak vampire who used intermediaries, actors and underworld connections to hold the throne. He’d died, or so she thought, at her father’s hand the same day she’d blown up Black Eon. A thought came to her.
“Do you remember how long it was before Strohm came to power?”
Levac pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair. “There were several temporary Masters and Mistresses, including an Elizabeth Bathory who is still at Court. Late 1950s early 60s I think is the official reckoning. Maybe earlier, why?”
Raven peered through the window at Arden. “Because all of this is connected. It always is.”
As she watched, the Marines appeared to take Arden away. The witch went quietly, without complaint or any attempt to cast a spell. Raven found that unnerving. Arden was powerful enough to at least make an attempt, it didn’t make sense she would be so compliant when she’d fought to kill before.
“
It bothers me too, Ray,” Levac said.
Dwelling on it wasn’t going to make it any clearer. It was like putting together a puzzle with corners missing, an almost impossible task. You just had to keep plodding until you found the missing pieces and the picture fell into place. She just hoped it would make sense when she finally found that missing corner.
“Go home, Rupe. Get some sleep. I’m going to check in with Aspen and do the same. Tomorrow is another day,” she said.
Levac nodded. “Don’t have to tell me twice, boss. See you on the flip side.”
Raven followed him out to the parking lot and watched him drive away in his FBI issued sedan. At least it had four wheel drive, which made it a much better vehicle than the Nash he usually drove. Then again, a cassette deck would have been an improvement to the little Metro.
When he was out of sight, she looked back at the storm clouds circling overhead. Red-tinted lightning flickered around Willis Tower and she felt the low rumble of thunder before she heard it. She’d never seen a storm like this, the clouds seemed to be circling overhead like a slow hurricane, not blowing off the east like most winter storms did. She was no climate scientist, but she’d lived in Chicago long enough to know that this wasn’t a normal weather pattern, not by a longshot.
She stepped off the curb and hurried to the waiting Jag. It was already covered in snow and she spent several minutes clearing the frozen clumps away before climbing inside and starting the engine. The little V6 started with a rumble and she put the car into gear before guiding it onto the street. She’d never seen so much snow in her life. It was piled on street corners and at the back of parking lots, anywhere the plows could find to get it out of the way and make the streets passible. It was a holiday cartoon brought to life.
She stopped at the next intersection and glared at the stop light casting its hazy red glow on the street. The cold, the case, it was all getting on her nerves. King was right, she needed an actual vacation away from cases, monsters, Court nonsense, she needed a chance to heal and take stock of what mattered to her.
An orange plow rumbled past pushing a pile of snow that must have been fifteen feet high. Raven watched it disappear down the street and turned her attention back to the light. Why was it taking so long?