The Sight

by Chloe Neill

  “You love this goddamn swamp,” I pointed out. “That’s why you’re sitting in the rain, swatting away mosquitoes big enough to wear pants.”

  “I think a mosquito just carried off Rogers!” came a woman’s voice from the darkness. The troops around her chuckled.

  Time passed as we waited, nerves and adrenaline battling against boredom and fatigue. I’d seen war, and I’d been dragged into it, but not as a soldier. Not someone stuck in the long wait before a battle, where tension and hyperawareness became just as monotonous as actually paying attention.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, and unaffiliated, I believe I have something to cure what ails you.”

  I smelled the coffee before I looked up, saw Gunnar and another agent carrying trays of foam cups.

  “Twice in a week,” I said, climbing to my feet as he held out the tray. “You are my personal hero.” I took the cup of caramel-colored coffee and milk, the warmth driving away some of the chill in my fingers.

  This was coffee with chicory, a New Orleans and wartime tradition. When coffee hadn’t been available, chicory root was boiled to make something coffeelike. And even when coffee was available, we used chicory to enhance the flavor.

  “So far,” I said, “the coffee served in the pouring rain before a battle with crazy cultists over the future of the Zone is the best kind of coffee.”

  “I don’t think that will fit on the mug,” Gunnar said. “And let’s hope this is the only time it needs to be served.”

  Truer words.

  “I wish I had a burger to go with this,” Burke said, and his stomach rumbled for emphasis. “Little tomato, little red onion, some mustard, some bright yellow American cheese.”

  “Heresy,” Liam said. “You need all that stuff on a burger, it’s not a very good burger.”

  “Burgers and chicory coffee is heresy,” I said. “This calls for croissants. Beignets.”

  “With mountains of powdered sugar,” Burke agreed.

  “There’s more slop in the pot,” Liam said. “You can help yourself to it.”

  “You’re ruining my fantasy, Quinn.”

  “Probably not the first time that’s happened,” Moses muttered, then let out an “oof” when Liam punched him in the arm.

  “When all is said and done,” I said, “when we’re all safe again and no one is marching toward us with an army, we’ll have a party. And we’ll have burgers—real, actual burgers.”

  “And fries,” Liam said. “Hand cuts.”

  “Crinkles!” someone called out to our right. “Crinkles are the only way to go.”

  “Crinkles are for babies, Rogers!” someone else called out. Rogers was having a rough go of it.

  “We’ll do both,” I promised, loudly enough for poor Rogers to hear. “We’ll throw a block party at Royal Mercantile. And the drinks will very much be on the house.”

  That got about as much applause as you’d expect.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Reveille played just before dawn to the collective groans of everyone who’d finally managed to drift off and grab a few minutes of sleep. I’d drifted off twice against Liam’s shoulder, his hand on my knee. Moses was on my other side; Burke was on Liam’s.

  At first, when the trumpet sounded, I’d thought it was just something that happened in Devil’s Isle in the morning. But then I saw the knot of officers—including Gunnar and the Commandant—talking in front of us, their expressions grave.

  I blinked myself awake, watched them for a moment, then glanced at Liam beside me. “Hi.”

  “Morning.” He gestured toward the market. “The soup has been replaced by what smells like something Londoners would serve nineteenth-century orphans.”

  “I’d rather watch that, I think.” I pulled up my knees, nodded to the cluster. “How long have they been talking?”

  “Long enough that it seems serious.”

  And that wasn’t the only serious thing to see. As sunlight began to shift through Devil’s Isle, Malachi walked toward the market.

  “Damn,” whispered a female agent somewhere down the line.

  “Why do women always stare at him?” Moses asked grumpily. “He’s just a guy with wings attached to his back.”

  “It’s not just the wings,” someone else said. “And it’s not just the women.”

  I bit back a snort. It was the wings—and the golden armor, shield, and staff, the brick red leather that he wore beneath it. He looked like the warrior he was.

  He left his wings unfolded, a reminder of who and what he was, and a demand that Containment acknowledge and deal with it. It was unspeakably brave, and terrifyingly dangerous.

  Tony walked out of the market, foam cup in hand, still dressed in his feathered finery. “I think my feathers just got upstaged,” he said, to the chuckle of the agents along the building.

  Liam, Moses, Burke, and I stood up, walked to Malachi. He nodded at each of us, let his gaze fall on Moses, where it went steely.

  “Tough crowd,” Moses said, shuffling his feet. I guessed Malachi hadn’t approved of Moses’s plan to come back to Devil’s Isle, or hadn’t known about it.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” Malachi said.

  “I guess I’ll do the introductions,” Gunnar said. “Commandant, this is Malachi, of the Consularis army.”

  “Malachi,” the Commandant said. “As I suspect you are not here to surrender yourself to Containment, what brings you into the District?”

  “War,” Malachi said. “We have a common enemy.”

  “Humans?” the Commandant asked, an obvious test.

  Malachi, of course, wasn’t flustered by the question or the insult. “Those who make war for the sake of making war. Those who kill to prove a point. Because they would destroy New Orleans and those within it. I’ve come to care for both. And they have no more right to kill than the Court did in the first instance.”

  The Commandant nodded. “And when the battle is done?”

  Malachi’s eyes steeled. “I did not make war against you willingly, and I will not be punished for the crimes of others. I will help this fight, but I will not be held afterward. And I will do everything in my power to subvert the operation of this prison.”

  If the Commandant found the plan or the frankness surprising, he didn’t show it.

  “He’s right.”

  Eyebrows raised, the Commandant looked at Gunnar.

  “I’ll stand for the Zone,” Gunnar said. “For the rule of law. But I won’t stand for lies, not anymore. We can’t pretend the world is as simple as we want it to be, as black-and-white.”

  It seemed the entirety of Devil’s Isle went silent as the Commandant looked at his second-in-command. “And if I ask for your resignation?”

  Gunnar pulled out his badge, offered it. “Then it’s yours. I’m standing inside Devil’s Isle. Landreaus have stood for this city for a very long time, and we’ll do so again today. And when it’s all over, if you want to keep me here, I probably won’t be able to stop you. But that’s fine, because this is the right thing to do. The right course of action, and you will never tell me differently. Congress will never tell me differently.”

  Silence fell again as the Commandant and Gunnar stared at each other.

  “As it turns out,” the Commandant said after a moment, “I happen to think you’re right.” He looked at Malachi, offered a hand. “We’d appreciate your assistance, sir.”

  “We will help,” said another voice. Nedra walked toward us, a dozen Paras behind him. Men and women, pale skin and light. Horns and feathers. Pointed ears and hair flowing like water. Some tall as trees, others small as flitting birds, with wings that moved with gossamer speed. Those, I’d bet, were peskies. Liam had called them, I think, “irritating little assholes.” But as long as they were fighting for our side . . .

  “We won’t sit by while
our families are targeted,” said a slender woman nearly seven feet tall whose coal black skin sparkled like granite beneath the overhead lights.

  The other Paras murmured their agreement.

  “You know how to protect yourselves?” the Commandant asked. “How to fight?”

  “They do,” Malachi said. “I give you that assurance from one commander to another.”

  The Commandant nodded, then looked out over his people—human and Paranormal.

  “I will be frank,” he said. “There were more skirmishes overnight. Reveillon killed twenty more people. Some agents, some civilians. The power grid is down across the southern half of the Zone, possibly from sabotage by Reveillon. The feds can’t move in personnel except on foot until the grid’s up again, however long that may take.”

  “So what does that mean?” one of the uniformed agents asked.

  “It means we’re on our own,” the Commandant said. “It means this battle is ours to win or to lose. We expect they will begin their attack today, and it appears we will face it alone.”

  He let his gaze fall to Malachi and Moses, to the human soldiers assembled along the front, and to the dozens of Paranormal men and women who’d joined the line in the night, who were willing to fight.

  “It seems today that we—humans and Paranormals—have a common enemy, the humans who would destroy us all.” He looked at Malachi. “I won’t insult you with promises about what will happen when this is over and done. But I give my word that I will do what I can to seek rights and protections for any who fight with us, and fight honorably.”

  It wasn’t a promise of freedom. But it was, at least, a step in that direction.

  —

  “As a show of good faith,” Malachi said, “let me offer information.” He glanced at the Devil’s Isle map.

  “Please,” the Commandant said, and we walked inside.

  “I have seen their advance from the air,” Malachi explained, and began to point out the operations. “There are four groups, from what I’ve seen. One coming in from the river, one from the east in Chalmette, one north from the direction of Camp Couturie—or what remains of it—and one from the approximate west, near Metairie.”

  “How many?” Gunnar asked.

  “At least a thousand. Probably three hundred in each ground group, a hundred more on the river. I expect there are more on the perimeter waiting to be called up if necessary.”

  Liam put a reassuring hand at my back, and I instinctively leaned back into it, grateful for the comfort.

  “That’s better intel than we’ve gotten all week,” the Commandant muttered. “Artillery? Ordnance?”

  “They have several vehicles, which appear to be military. They’re in that green shade human militaries seem to prefer.” There was bafflement in his tone, which caused me to bite back a smile.

  “Several large vehicles with mounted guns,” he added. “Several more with covered beds.”

  “Those could be carrying people, weapons, or C-4,” Gunnar said.

  Malachi nodded. “He appears to be a very organized commander. Or there are enough ex-military members of his organization to teach him what he doesn’t know.”

  “There are rumors he’s growing erratic,” Gunnar said. “At least, that’s what the Reveillon members we’ve captured so far have reported.”

  “That will serve us,” Malachi said.

  “Do we target him?” the Commandant asked.

  “The center cannot hold,” Gunnar said.

  The Commandant slid his dark eyes to Gunnar. “Elaborate.”

  “If he falls, they fall apart. They’re committed, yes. But as much to Ezekiel as to the idea. If we can take him out, the rest will lose focus, separate.”

  “Or we create a martyr,” another adviser said, “and they fight even more fiercely. That’s the risk when dealing with a cult of personality.”

  “We have to take him out either way,” I said, and didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about it. “He’s a delusional serial killer with an army, and he’s coming with weapons to kill us.”

  A boom echoed across Devil’s Isle, the ground quaking with it. Orders were shouted, and men and women began running to their positions. Adrenaline stalled by so many hours of waiting began to course through me.

  “Report!” the Commandant shouted, and a man ran to him.

  “Explosion at the Marriott,” the agent yelled. “Grenade, by preliminary reports. The building was empty.”

  The store was between the Marriott and Devil’s Isle. And from the look on Burke’s face, he knew it, too.

  “They want to draw us off our positions,” Gunnar said. “We are not going to do that. All positions hold or advance as assigned.” He looked at me, and his expression had turned to stone. This was a soldier’s face, a battle mask. “Can you take him out?”

  Could I kill in cold blood? he meant.

  I looked at Liam, thinking of the confession I’d once made, of the Valkyrie I’d killed in the home I’d shared with my father, of the two Paras I’d killed after that. I didn’t want to kill. I didn’t want to have to kill. But these people were determined to bring war to our doorsteps, to kill innocents to satisfy one man’s ego. I’d do what was necessary to protect them.

  “I can do what needs to be done,” I said.

  Gunnar looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Get back to the shelters.”

  We nodded. “We’ll do our best,” I said, and the company split apart to take their posts.

  “A minute,” Liam said, and took my hand, led me to the end of the market. “If this goes sideways . . .”

  “It will go sideways,” I said. “It’s pretty much destined to go sideways. Our job is to keep it from going too much sideways.”

  “Then, just in case that happens . . .” Liam took my face in his hands, kissed me until my body had melted against his. When my breath was heaving, he pulled back but kept his hands on my cheeks. His lips were swollen, his eyes dark with desire, with possessiveness, with grief.

  When I nodded my understanding, Liam dropped his forehead to mine, and we stood there in silence for a moment.

  When I lifted my face to his, he took my hand, pressed it to his heart. “This is yours,” he said. “Whatever else is between us, whatever else happens today, it’s yours.”

  Hand in hand again, we walked to our positions, to protect those who’d once waged war against us, because enemies made strange allies.

  —

  When Liam and I reached the low, rectangular building, another boom shook the Marigny. This time the quake was strong enough to put us both on the ground. Air raid sirens began to wail, the sound nearly deafening.

  Paranormals began to scream inside, and the nurses and civilian staff did their best to keep them calm.

  “The gate’s been breached!” shouted the radioman over the cacophony of noise. “They’re coming in!”

  We waited for what felt like an eternity as the fight raged in front of us, and Containment fought back the Reveillon onslaught. We tried to stay alert, our gazes scanning the streets, looking for Reveillon members who made it through the perimeter. Wondering if they would come in a swelling wave, a tsunami of violence, or one or two at a time as they pierced Containment’s resistance.

  The sound of battle gradually grew louder, closer.

  I glanced at Liam, found his gaze on me. He nodded. “You find him, he tries to hurt you, take the shot.”

  No need to ask who “he” was.

  Two Reveillon members emerged from an alley across the street; at the same time, a woman’s scream erupted to my right, her language unfamiliar.

  “I’ve got her,” I said, and Liam nodded.

  “Go!” he said as he moved to meet the Reveillon members, eagerness in his eyes.

  I moved to the corner, then looked around the edge of the buil
ding. Three Reveillon women who’d pinned a Para woman—curvy and lavender-skinned—against a brick wall. All three had handguns, and a stripe of blood stained the Para’s cheek.

  I stepped forward, lifted the pistol. “Back away!” I ordered, and waited until they looked back at me.

  “Move along, traitor,” said one of them, before immediately turning back to her imagined prey.

  “I’m not the traitor here, but I am one helluva shot. You head back to the gate, or I can put holes in your very nice linen clothes.” My hands were shaking, but I sounded like Eastwood, so I was fine with that.

  She turned back to me again. “And we shall cleanse the earth with blood,” she said, and lifted her gun.

  I gave her a quick look. She had nice nails and shoes without a single scuff. She wore the same pale pants and clothes as the other Reveillon members, but hers were clean and pressed. Five bucks said she’d never fired a weapon before, had probably never even seen combat until she signed on with Ezekiel.

  “There’s always one,” I muttered, and aimed at her right arm, fired.

  She jerked back when the bullet hit, dropped the gun, grabbed her arm, and hit the ground screaming, “You bitch! You shot me.”

  “Yeah, that’s what war does to you,” I said, and kicked away the gun she’d dropped, keeping my weapon trained on her while I crouched to grab it. “All three of you move back, and step away from the woman.”

  Ignoring my orders, one woman ran forward to the one I’d shot. The other ran at me, gun in front of her and screaming like a banshee.

  My instinct was to run, so I had to force myself to stand and face her, to raise my gun again. I fired, hit her in the thigh. And when she went down, she went down hard.

  “You fucking bitch!” she screamed, wailing and clutching at her leg. “You shot me. You fucking traitor.”

  “Not a traitor,” I said. “And unlike you, not an asshole.” I looked up at the third woman, the one who hadn’t yet advanced.

  I’d expected her hand to shake, or to see some hesitation in her eyes. But the hand that lifted the gun was steady, and her eyes were flat with anger.