“How does that work?”
“Magic.” He must have seen from my face that I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “Look, it’s a different dimension. All the mounds are interconnected, like different rooms in a very large house. To go from here to New Mexico or to Ireland, I just walk from one place to the other. They’re all basically the same distance from each other. How many passports do you have?”
I hesitated, then decided to tell him the truth. “Five, all in different names.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. We continued looking at the Knights’ possessions, sorting things into piles. When we finished, we had eight credit cards, eight passports, over three thousand dollars in cash, four swords that Oriel pried the rubies from, four pistols, seven knives, four silver crosses that he said he would melt down, four room keys from a local hotel, and various photographs and personal items that weren’t of much interest. We had left the keys in the SUV, which was unlocked. I hoped someone would steal it.
“Now that you have all of this, what are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“Some I’m going to give to Frankie Jones, the assistant district attorney. I’m also going to give the credit card and identification information to a hacker friend of mine. I’ll pay him with some of the money.”
“And what are you going to do with the rest of the money?”
“Take you out for a night on the town. Dinner at the fanciest restaurant and tickets to a show. You wouldn’t happen to like ballet or opera, do you?”
Chapter 11
I had to go to work that evening, so I only had time to quickly thank Oriel for his help. We took a shower together, and then he drove me to Rosie’s. When he let me off, he promised to come back for dinner and give me a ride home.
I skipped into the bar, and although I tried to wipe the smile off my face, it kept coming back every time I thought about Oriel. I felt very different than when I dated Trevor or Lucas and wondered if I might be falling in love. If not, I did like whatever it was I was feeling.
Sam came out of his office and stood watching me clean glasses.
“New boyfriend treating you well?” he asked.
“Yeah, he is.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”
I felt myself blush.
“I recast those wards,” he continued, “and hid the rubies inside the door frames,” he said. “What was the fourth one for?”
“For you. It’s probably a good idea to have it set in some kind of jewelry you can wear.”
“Thank you. How many of those things do you have?”
“Roisin sent me twenty before she retreated into the mound. Bob and Lizzy came by and gave them to me yesterday. I gave one to Steve and figured I’d give a couple to Frankie, for her and her dad, one to Dan Bailey, one each to Josh and Trevor. If you know people who should have one, let me know. I wish I had enough for every mage in town, but harvesting them is bloody work.”
He nodded. “I’m sure it is. But if the spells work this time, at least we can provide a sanctuary here at Rosie’s.”
McGregor came in for dinner and sat at the bar.
“What do you think about the ley lines?” I asked him when I brought him his beer.
He shook his head. “Never felt anything like that, and I’ve never heard of such a thing. It feels like the whole world is going crazy.”
Carefully watching his face, I asked, “What do you think about the Knights Magica?”
His expression froze. “Why do you ask?”
I waited, not saying anything.
After a few moments, he blew out his breath and said, “That’s who destroyed our building in London. It wasn’t reported in the press, of course, but they also launched an assault on our main headquarters outside of Windsor that same day. With the lines going crazy, it was a massacre.”
“How did you manage to escape?”
“I was in Belfast.”
“You’re a Hunter.”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
“And you came here to find me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I assumed you were the one who killed Rudolf Heine. That was the report we received, anyway. If anyone could have killed that devil, it would have to be someone as strong as the Scorpion. There is strength in numbers, even if that number is two. I told you, I need an ally. If I’m going to survive, I need help.”
I shook my head. “There are still other Illuminati you could turn to.”
He sighed. “Why did you run? You could have found Illuminati to shelter you when the Knights destroyed the City.”
I tucked that away. Heine had also believed the Knights destroyed the City of the Illuminati.
“The Illuminati lied to me. I thought they were a force for good, but I discovered they are a force for evil. I do care about my immortal soul.”
“As do I. I’m not that much older than you are, and it took me a long time of trying to reconcile the inconsistencies in what I was told and what I saw. About two or three years ago, I finally figured out what the Illuminati truly were. I’ve been trying to find a way out since then.”
He seemed sincere, but I wished I had a truth spell. I wondered if Jolene or Sam knew one, but many magic users thought such a thing was a myth. I did know that was a lie, since the artifact that destroyed the City of the Illuminati revealed Truth in all things. I decided that while I wouldn’t trust McGregor, I would play along and let Sam and Oriel know about him.
“My landlady says she has an apartment for rent,” I said. He looked surprised. I wrote down Eleanor’s address. “She said for you to go by and talk to her.”
McGregor hung around at Rosie’s for a few more hours, and actually tried to socialize with some of the other customers. He played darts for a while, flirted with a few women, then said good night around ten. As he was saying goodbye to me, Oriel came in. From McGregor’s reaction when they passed each other, it was obvious that he could tell that Oriel was not human.
“I might get jealous,” Oriel said with a grin as he sat down. “Every time I come in here, that guy is chatting you up.”
“Talking to people is part of my job. Should I get jealous if you talk to other women?”
He shrugged. “Humans have some strange concepts. Fidelity, chastity, virginity. The Fae have never understood why humans get so wound up over sex.”
I brought him a beer and a shot. “So, it wouldn’t bother you if I slept with someone else?”
“I might kill him, but I wouldn’t be angry with you. It’s in women’s nature to take many lovers.”
“Not in men’s nature?”
“We serve women. It can be dangerous to spurn a woman. Women don’t take rejection well.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I wished Lizzy was still around so I could ask her about Fae relationships. I’d never thought about whether they were different than humans in such matters. And for all I knew, Oriel was simply pulling my chain.
I took my break, and we ate dinner together at a table in the back room. When I returned to work, he came back to the bar and ordered another beer. He told me about the work he was doing restoring the car he had bought partly with the money I paid him, and the rest of the evening went quickly. Later, he took me back to my place. Once we were alone, we had better things to do than talk, and I forgot to worry about what he said about relationships.
Oriel decided to keep one of the swords, and I stashed another one in my closet. I took the remaining two out to Gilles at the sword club.
“Ah,” he said when he opened the box. He pulled one sword out of its scabbard and made a few moves with it. “I haven’t seen one of these since I came to America.” He fixed me with a stern look. “Did you come by them honestly?”
“I took them from people who tried to kill me,” I answered.
He nodded. “That is good. Thank you. I think Michaela might like one of these, and I’ll add the other one to
my collection.”
When I arrived at work later, the buzz was about the Knights Magica’s invasion of Westport. The rumors I heard said that between a hundred and three hundred Knights—depending on which person you listened to—were taking up residence in the city’s Universal churches.
Frankie and Jordan Blair came in for dinner.
“How are you doing, Captain?” I asked. He had taken a couple of bullets before New Year, and his recovery had been slow.
“Just about back to normal,” he answered. “The doctors say that I’m well ahead of schedule.” He winked. “I didn’t tell them about the potions Frankie gave me every time she visited.”
I mentioned the rumors when I brought them their drinks.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to share your sources of information,” Frankie said.
“Uh, like what information?”
“About world affairs. The Universal Church, Knights Magica, ley line disruptions, that sort of thing.”
“TV news, Google, listening to people talk. Why?”
They stared at me as though they might be able to see inside my head. Finally, Frankie said, “I get routine bulletins from the FBI’s Arcane Investigations Section, along with occasional alerts. I showed you a couple of them. But you tell me about stuff days or weeks before they do.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “I just listen and put the pieces together. I mean, as far as the Church and the Knights, all you have to do is pay attention to see what they’re doing. When the Prelate was assassinated, the new Prelate had Knights for his security instead of the normal security personnel. Anyone who was paying attention would have noticed that.”
“To answer your question about the rumors,” Blair said, “a chartered plane landed last night with around two hundred men and women—mostly men—wearing those black uniforms with a cross on the breast. Then the six o’clock train from Portland brought a hundred more. Buses from the Universal archdiocese picked them up and took them to the churches here in town.”
“Lovely. I hope someone warned the vamps and shifters. The Knights don’t like supernaturals.”
Blair shook his head. “We know that someone doesn’t. The slaughter is worse than when the bounty hunters were here last fall.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t expect me to go undercover for you. The Knights already know who I am.”
“Stabbing one of their leaders probably didn’t win you any friends,” Frankie said.
“They started it. But what makes us so special here in Westport?”
“We’re not,” Blair said. “The FBI says they’ve brought more than ten thousand people into the States, all on Holy City diplomatic passports. New York City and Washington are flooded with them.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Frankie said, “about us not being special, that is. We’re getting as many Knights as Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco. The Order is setting up their Northwest Pacific headquarters here. The ley lines, you know.”
I took their orders, then went and got the bag with the stuff Oriel and I had stripped from the Knights we killed.
“What’s this?” Blair asked.
“Some of the Knights in town had these things in their pockets, but they don’t need them anymore.”
They peered into the bag, then Blair reached in and pulled out the packet of passports held together with a rubber band. He looked through them.
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. I thought so,” I said.
“Where are their swords?” Frankie asked.
“Do you know how to use a sword?”
“Well, no.”
“Trust me, they’ve been donated to people who do.”
“And the rubies?”
I held out my hand and dropped two of said rubies into her hand. “For you and your dad.” I pulled my pendant out from under my shirt. “They work. The Fae gave me some to distribute as I see fit.” I realized I hadn’t answered her question, but I wasn’t going to tell her about Oriel.
Chapter 12
Jolene and I stood on the sidewalk watching a convoy of three large black SUVs roll by, each with eight black-clad men inside. It had become a regular sight in Westport as the Knights of Magica made their presence visible in the city.
“You say they take witches as well as mages?” she asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know anything about how they use them, or what kind of training their witches receive, though. Supposedly, they deploy women and men in their fighting forces, but I haven’t seen any women.”
“There was a woman in the meeting their leaders had with Frankie the other day. Arrogant sons of bitches.”
“Oh? What was the meeting about?”
“Basically telling us to stay out of their way, although they were a little more polite than that. A lot of talk about improving security, protecting the churches and other Universal properties, but there were also a few comments about ‘undesirables.’ Your buddy Bonato mentioned ‘creatures without a soul,’ which we took to mean shifters and vampires.” She grinned at me. “He looked pretty good for someone who recently took a foot of steel in the belly.”
“They probably have several healers. Were they carrying swords?”
“Nope. Can’t bring them into the building. Metal detectors, you know.”
There were more Universal churches in the city than I had been aware of. I knew of three—large and very impressive—but I didn’t know the city very well, and an online search turned up a list of ten.
An old monastery on the coast north of the university was converted into the Knights’ headquarters. Sam told me the place was built in the late 1800s, but only a handful of monks still lived there. They worked the vineyards planted on benches carved out of the hills surrounding it. A week before, construction started on a number of new buildings on church property. It looked like the Knights planned to stay.
“Frankie also had a meeting with Gabriel Laurent and Eileen Montgomery last night,” Jolene said. “They are very concerned. Said that the Knights are out hunting vamps every night. Laurent has hired a lot of shifters to provide security during the day.”
“I wonder how long before we have open warfare,” I said.
“Captain Blair said the same thing. Unfortunately, we’re unable to share our concerns with the mayor and the police chief, since paranormals and supernaturals don’t exist.”
“And how long will that last?”
She just shook her head.
The wards that Sam set on Rosie’s, anchored by the rubies, worked. No one inside the bar felt the latest disruption of the ley lines. When word of that spread, business picked up considerably. No one knew when the next event might take place, but being able to go somewhere and relax without worrying about getting your mind scrambled was a big deal.
Eleanor rented the apartment to McGregor, and Sam called the former Hunter in for a long heart-to-heart talk. His feeling was the same as mine—McGregor came across as sincere and non-threatening. I also introduced him to Michaela Gallagher, and she allowed him to join the sword club. That gave me someone to spar with in addition to Michaela and her ‘sister’ Donna. The dhampir were much stronger and faster than I was, and they really helped me hone my skills, but it was nice to work out with someone closer to my physical abilities.
It didn’t take a genius to know that the Knights’ attack on me so close to my home wasn’t a coincidence. Between my fight with them outside of Rosie’s and busting up their plan to kidnap Lizzy, I assumed I was on their radar, so I took precautions.
I was fairly confident that my personal shield would protect me from another assault, and I carried my sword everywhere I went, but I was afraid of what a fireball would do to my shiny new car. Rudolf Heine’s demise offered ample evidence of what could happen if the car’s gas tank blew up. So, I walked or took the bus to and from work at those times when Oriel couldn’t give me a ride. His magic protected his car, but I couldn’t cast that kind of spell. Besides, he wasn’t around all t
he time. He and his fellow Fae who had stayed in Westport seemed to spend a lot of time hunting Knights.
The walking path along the creek behind my building led to a bridge over the river and into downtown in one direction, and out into the East End, past Rosie’s, in the other. Along the way was an old flour mill that had once used the creek to power its operations. Long abandoned, it was surrounded by a rusty fence with so many holes that it kept no one out.
The weather was nice for a change, so I walked to work. I was strolling along enjoying the beginnings of the sunset and the sunshine on my face when a couple of Knights showed up. Their age and body language told me that I wasn’t dealing with fresh-faced recruits. A glance behind me showed another man on the path, but he was at least a hundred yards away from us.
I didn’t bother with small talk and drew my sword as soon as I saw them.
“Miss McLane,” one of them said, “there’s no need for that. Seneschal Bonato would simply like to have a word with you. If you come with us, you will suffer no harm.”
I had suspected Bonato was a leader in the organization but didn’t know how high in their hierarchy he was. A seneschal was the equivalent of a general. I immediately regretted not killing him.
“He knows where I work. Tell him to come see me.”
“Ah, but there is a lack of privacy there.”
“Personally, I prefer having witnesses. The last time we spoke, we didn’t part on the best of terms.”
“A misunderstanding, I’m sure. He has personally told us that he is willing to extend you forgiveness.”
“That’s sweet of him. Tell him I accept. Now, I’m going to be late for work, so if you would please allow me to go?”
“We can offer you safety,” the other man, the older of the two, said. “The Illuminati are no more, the remnants of your filthy order are scattered and on the run. You should be glad that we are willing to forgive you and accept your fealty instead of submitting you to judgement.”
“That is big of you. If the last set of assassins you sent after me had extended such Christian charity, they might still be alive.”
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