by L. A. Banks
Loping over to her pile of clothes, Sasha picked up everything in her jaws except her boots, then went into the shadow of the front desk, shifted back to her human to dress quickly in the shadow lands, came back into the classroom through the door, and hit the lights.
“Okay, gentlemen. So now you’ve seen your first shape-shift. I’m a smaller version of what you’ll see in combat. The males are about one and a half times my body weight—and there’s a pure black three-hundred-pounder on our side. This is why it’s important for you to be acclimated before you have a weapon in your hand and before a supernatural is lunging at you full-force. You have got to be able to make a split-second decision, know if it’s friend or foe, and cover yourself,” she said calmly. “Get those men up off the floor in the back and any soldier who needs to go clean up, no problem.”
CHAPTER 20
“You did what?” Doc exclaimed into the speakerphone as the rest of the team at NORAD burst out laughing.
“OMG, Trudeau,” Winters said from the background.
“How many Marines hit the floor?” Bradley asked in his typical sarcastic tone.
“In all seriousness, Sasha, did anybody need medical attention?” Clarissa asked as the only calm voice in the group.
“No,” Colonel Madison said, entering the conversation. He didn’t seem the least bit amused, and his gruff reply made the team on the other end of the line clear their throats. “It is not something anyone sees every day, so the fact that some of the men were a little . . . wary, cannot be held against them.”
“Certainly not, Colonel,” Sasha said, forcing contrition into her voice. “What they witnessed might just save their lives.”
“Duly noted,” Doc said.
Sasha could just imagine him giving the group the eye along with hand signals to save the laughs for when the colonel got off the line.
“But we need your help with a theory,” Sasha said, frowning. She pushed back from the colonel’s desk and began to pace. It helped her think better. “I have no idea if this will work—and it’s all predicated on us having any success whatsoever on the mission we intend to embark upon tonight. But as I told you, we’ve got two known predators hunting humans. We’ve made an ID on one of them, but the other is still at large . . . we have no clue as to where it could be.”
She looked at Colonel Madison and ruffled the hair up off the nape of her neck, thinking out loud. “It left him alive, but for some reason didn’t attach to him as a carrier. It jumped on me, though, and I had to go get it cleaned off while I was in the lab . . . It also attacked Silver Hawk when he tried to engage it while on a vision quest, and he passed it to Hunter temporarily.”
“Are they clean now?” Colonel Madison asked quickly.
“You took the question right out of my mouth, sir,” Doc said into the speaker.
“Affirmative,” Sasha said, stopping by the window. “I don’t feel anything untoward here at the base, either . . . which makes me think it probably passed over that guy—the reporter who was also a sole survivor, like the colonel.”
“Russell Conway,” Winters said, the sound of his keyboard clicking away in the background. “But he’s not just some hotshot local-yokel reporter—he’s also an anti-paranormal hothead.”
“A what, Winters? Speak in plain English,” Sasha said, coming to the colonel’s desk to lean closer to the speakerphone.
“This guy has a long blog in the obscure rant communities online—you know, the same folks that obsess over Big Foot sightings. Anyway, Russell Conway goes by Wolfkiller100 when he posts . . . and I was able to find some old articles in the South Dakota Sentinel, since he often talks about the beauty of that North Country. There was a whole front-page story about a woman and a little girl being savaged by a grizzly bear thirty years ago, leaving a young teenage boy orphaned. The article said that the boy claimed the only thing that saved him was some sort of silver-and-turquoise Native American talisman that he’d begged for and that his mother brought him at the camping lodge gift shop earlier that day. The kid also claimed it wasn’t a bear, but a wolf—but authorities said a wolf couldn’t have done that level of damage to a human body unless it was a pack.”
“Are you serious?” Sasha sat down slowly. “How do you find this stuff out, Winters?”
“I told you, my kung fu is strong, Captain. But Russell Conway’s recent TV success made it a lot easier for me to dig into his background on the Web. I wanted to personally know who this guy was that had the stones to put together a team to go out in the bayou, and after we saw what jumped out of the cooler, I definitely thought we needed to know if we had a sole survivor carrying this contagion out to the general public.”
“Damn . . . I must have been slipping,” Sasha said, rubbing both palms down her face. “Good looking out.”
“You were infected, Captain,” Clarissa said. “Is there any wonder one thing got by you? That’s why you have us, your team, as backup.”
“Do we need to bring this guy in?” Colonel Madison said, becoming nervous. This time he stood and was the one who began to pace.
“I don’t think so,” Bradley said. “More than likely, just like you were clean after your tragic incident at the Bayou House, Conway was as well. All Winters’s research shows is that this man had an agenda when he came down here. He undoubtedly experienced an attack of some sort by a supernatural as a kid, and the local authorities suppressed it as a grizzly attack. Sounds like this guy has been trying to get vindicated all his life . . . sorta like the alien abduction people. He’s harmless—and God bless him; he got his fifteen minutes of fame at a very high price.”
“Yeah . . . and now, unfortunately,” Sasha said, “in order to lure the demon to a trap, we’re going to have to take that short-lived win away from the poor man.”
“How so?” Colonel Madison said, turning to look at Sasha directly.
“I don’t even know if it’ll work,” she replied with a weary sigh. “But the way we’re going to bait Lady Jung Suk out of hiding is by taunting her.”
“It’s risky,” Bradley warned, “but a good offensive move. Demons hate a challenge to their existence . . . so, a press conference saying that the U.S. military cannot authenticate the images in Russell Conway’s video would make it angry.”
“I’ll go to Conway and personally apologize to him,” Sasha said. “It’s not fair to make that poor man think he’s crazy when the colonel gets up on a podium and states that the Bayou House deaths are under investigation as possibly being a ferocious pack of feral dogs that have taken up residence in the bayou, post–Hurricane Katrina.” She looked at the colonel. “At some point, and I suspect in the near future, the government is going to have to take a position on this secrecy thing . . . too many civilians know, too many are getting hurt, and too many of our people in uniform have been deployed and are losing their lives trying to fight this stuff without the proper training.”
The colonel nodded. “I will definitely take that under advisement and pass it up the chain of command. After what I’ve witnessed with my own eyes, as well as how I saw those men react in the classroom, I know you’re right, Captain. I just don’t have the authority to do so . . . but what I don’t know, I can’t be responsible for.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sasha said and then looked at the speakerphone again.
“Bradley . . . you said your research into possession demons shows that they have a primary host, and will stay with that host body, causing it to do horrendous things until they use up the life force in it or the body is somehow destroyed.”
“Yes, that is how that particular entity functions,” Bradley said.
“That’s why you’re the man,” Sasha said. She gave the colonel a quick nod. “Dude is the best dark arts spec out there. He and Clarissa with second sight make one helluva team, sir.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Bradley said. “That’s why it probably tried you, Silver Hawk, and Hunter . . . If it could get into a strong wolf body versus some other ca
rrier—probably a local human—then why not. I’m sure that’s why it’s not jumping around from human body to human body, and since wolves have souls, unlike Vampires, you’re the strongest choice in the area. Hopefully the human who’s currently hosting it will see the colonel’s news conference tomorrow morning, which might piss the demon off.”
“That’s the very loosely constructed plan I had,” Sasha said, letting out another frustrated breath. “Looking for this thing is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We don’t even know what human it’s compromised.”
“I don’t mind going on a fishing expedition,” Colonel Madison said. “Not after what I’ve seen. It beats sitting around and waiting for more people to lose their lives. Don’t worry, at that news conference, I’ll make that thing we’re hunting mad as all get-out. I’ll say in no uncertain terms, we’re going back to the scene of the crime with a military camera crew, and some meat as bait, in an operation to prove to the public once and for all that there’s nothing out there.”
Sasha nodded. “Sounds like a plan, sir. The best we’ve got now, anyway . . . and maybe, just maybe, we can get it to show itself again. This time we’ll be ready for it.”
Back-to-back missions were not something she relished, but if they wanted to strike while the iron was hot, that’s what they had to do. They had to go after Lady Jung Suk first, because of the moon cycle of the Weres, as well as to have any chance of saving Amy Chen. The thing that worried her most was, if they couldn’t get Lady Jung Suk separated, they’d have to make an on-the-spot decision to kill the girl to get to the disembodied Were Leopard. No one wanted to talk about that, but it was implied in the eyes of everyone involved. She was just glad that the military wouldn’t be on this first mission. It was too complicated an extraction, too delicate a maneuver. One wrong move and a young girl could die, or soldiers could lose their throats in a Were Leopard’s jaws.
Secreted away in the stone wizard’s den beneath the palace, Sasha felt like she’d definitely tumbled into the Land of Oz. It was way freakier than the setup Sir Rodney had upstairs, where things were what they appeared to be, even if they had a little Fae topspin on them to make them more enjoyable. But sheesh, this was truly ridiculous.
His top magic advisors actually had apothecary jars labeled EYE OF NEWT with eyeballs of the tiny lizard that followed you around the room. Enchanted broomsticks perpetually kept the floors clean while cauldrons bubbled and sputtered in a walk-in fireplace.
Garth didn’t have to tell anybody twice to keep their hands in their pockets and their mouths shut. He and his fellow Gnomes had been busily concocting the vision miasma during the hours she’d been gone; it hovered over a wide circle drawn on the floor and covered with cryptic sigils at the back of the room.
“We have added all of the seeing elements.” Garth put a jar of chameleon eyes down on the table. “They blend in,” he said with a droll little smile as Sasha studied the eyeballs that blinked and curiously studied her back. “But this,” he added, holding up a small glass vial, “will ensure we get her attention.”
“It is a sample from the site of the Vampire messenger demon kill,” a shorter, squatter advisor said.
“A what?” Hunter cocked his head to the side.
“The plump human that the messenger demons killed.”
“The kid DeWitt?” Sasha said, stunned. “The Vampires sent a messenger demon after him?”
“Of course,” Garth said, seeming puzzled that she didn’t know.
“They wanted to send him a message to keep his mouth shut. Messenger demons are pretty effective for that,” Sir Rodney said. “They leave a cold, green slime.”
“Yuck . . . like algae,” Sasha said, wrinkling her nose.
Bear, Crow, and Silver Hawk just shook their heads.
“Well, we at least have evidence now that the Vampires tried to keep a witness from testifying,” Silver Hawk said.
“They’ll most likely claim that it had nothing to do with that,” Sir Rodney said. “They’ll say it was rightful retaliation for the daylight exposure of Ariel Beau-champ’s mausoleum.”
“Better stand back a moment,” Garth warned Shogun. “Sometimes the combination sputters a bit . . . the demon gook is such a nasty element to work with. We don’t want you splattered by the silver in the mirrored globe. We will call you over when it is your time to speak.”
Busily working on the shimmering miasma, the Gnome opened the vial and shook a few globs into the sigil on the floor. Immediately green tendrils snaked out from the small glob, bullwhipping the area inside the circle and releasing a putrid sulfur stench. Searching for something to grasp on to, it quickly encircled the miasma, turning the shimmering metallic surface a cloudy green and causing it to wildly spark before absorbing into it.
“Damn, that’s wicked,” Crow Shadow murmured.
Garth cut him a scowl. “Once we begin communication and Shogun begins to speak, you will have to control yourselves. No matter what she says, you must allow her to think that he’s in the room only with a witch from her coven or she will sense an ambush. Understood?”
“Understood,” Hunter said, giving Crow Shadow a look.
Crow Shadow held his hands up in front of his chest. “No problem.”
“Are you ready?” Garth asked, looking at Shogun.
Shogun nodded.
“And you’ve rehearsed what you’ll say?” Sir Rodney landed a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m ready.”
Shogun stepped forward and the Gnomes began a low, unintelligible chant while pointing and moving their wands as though conducting an invisible orchestra. Slowly but surely, Lady Jung Suk’s face filled the center of the shimmering globe. She’d been sleeping peacefully and then suddenly her eyes snapped open, glowing green. Her cat-eye pupils elongated and a large leopard face quickly filled her once lovely mouth.
“You have not learned your lesson, little squirrels. One blinding was not enough?” She hissed and stood, sweeping off her exquisitely embroidered chaise lounge and heading down a long corridor.
Sasha studied the house as Lady Jung Suk’s silk robes billowed out behind her. Just pass something recognizable, Sasha’s mind begged. Anything, so that if the night plan didn’t work, she could hunt that arrogant bitch down and kill her.
They all watched silently as Lady Jung Suk flung a heavy oak door open and entered what had to be her conjuring room. She angrily yanked a knife off a small, black lacquered table and hurried to a place on the floor where a black cat was feeding from a dead fish. She shooed the feline away with a hiss, causing it to scamper into hiding with a protesting growl. The fish was in the center of a blood-created pentagram, its eyes already caved out.
Flinging the fish to the cat, she reached out her hand, and a frightened squirrel immediately filled it. Poised in the center of the pentagram, she held the struggling animal in one hand and the point of the knife in the other, lifting them above her head as her lips moved in a silent, deadly chant.
Garth motioned to Shogun. He nodded and began the game.
“You’ll only blind yourself this time,” Shogun said. “I am behind a mirror—warm blood won’t help you, nor will squirrel eyes!”
His aunt flung the clawing animal away. It immediately escaped her and the cat out an open window.
“So . . . you have learned. You have a stronger witch helping you this time. How interesting. But that still will not help you—you’ve ruined your chances to rule the United Council of Entities.”
“But you will never rule any Were Federation or council,” Shogun shouted. “You are a slave . . . a weak slave to the Vampires and the Unseelie queen who gave you your new body. Even that doesn’t belong to you.” He laughed. “You picked a weak little girl. You should have at least picked a true warrior. Your vanity, Aunt, has always been your downfall.”
“I’ll show you how weak this young woman’s body is one night, trust me, nephew!”
“Then why not tonight, when we can both be
our true selves. One on one, you call your leopard and I will call my wolf . . . and we will see if you made the wise choice.”
“I would be honored to be your master,” she said in a low, cat growl.
“Teach me, old, old one . . . show me what you could not show my father or his people.” Shogun laughed again. “No matter how many bodies you steal, you are an old hag. Why would I even waste my time fighting you?”
“Afraid, nephew—a coward like your father?”
Silver Hawk put his hand on Hunter’s shoulder when he tensed.
“I’ve never been afraid of you, Aunt. The worst that I’ve ever done to you was pity you. But now I see why you were banished. It had less to do with the family scandal than with what you chose to be.”
“And what I chose to be,” she shrieked, now turning in circles clutching the small dagger, “was victorious! I chose to be more than second—unlike you, who sit whimpering in your den over a shadow bitch you cannot have! Second to your brother in all things, and you have the nerve to challenge me?”
Shogun lunged at the miasma, but Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow silently caught him before the silver could touch him. He angrily shrugged out of their hold and pointed at the shimmering globe.
“Tonight we finish this, Aunt! In the bayou—where it all began—on the grounds of the UCE courthouse in the swamp under the full moon!”
Lady Jung Suk pressed her hands together with the dagger between them and bowed with an evil smile. “Tonight, nephew. Zai jian.”
CHAPTER 21
Leaving Shogun exposed in the moonlight left her unsettled. Even with Sir Rodney and his expert archers downwind in a treetop position, and she and Hunter and the other clan members just inside the shadows, there was still so much that could go so wrong.
“Aunt! Are you afraid of battle?” Shogun shouted. “Have you changed your twisted mind?”
A hurdling silver crossbow arrow whizzed past Shogun’s arm, tearing the fabric of his shirt as he did a quick sideways move and allowed it to pass his chest.
