by Kira Brady
Hart looked thoughtfully at Corbette, whose blank expression said he was furiously plotting something within that thick skull. “You planning to attack the Drekar?”
“Not originally, but now—who knows? It’s the fifth day of the Babylonian New Year. I like to be prepared.” Corbette waved to a man wearing a red armband. The white feather in his hair signified a recent personal loss. Hart wondered if Norgard had lashed out against the Kivati after last night’s debacle.
“So?” Kayla asked. She looked warily at the weapon field as if she could already see the future carnage.
“Norgard has taken a special interest this year in celebrating his ancestral festival,” Corbette explained, “in addition to stepping up attacks. He set a new record in the past two months for civilian casualties. Indifference or arrangement?” He stopped to speak with the man he’d summoned. The eagle-shifter’s red-rimmed eyes and stony jaw reminded Hart of Kayla the first time he’d seen her.
He shook off the thought. He tried to remind himself that emotions made an operative sloppy. He needed to stay sharp.
If the Southern House warrior had lost someone, Kivati honor demanded that he drew first blood in retaliation. The guy certainly seemed motivated. He glared at Hart as if blaming him for the Drekar’s strike.
Kayla frowned. “Why would Norgard want to kill more people? Doesn’t he eat them? Or can he get their souls after they’re dead?”
“No, Drekar need living victims,” Hart told her.
Corbette dismissed his officer and turned back to Kayla. “Why does Norgard do what he does? I only knew the attacks had escalated, so gave the order to mobilize. Recent information”—he gave Hart a stern look—“shines new light on his actions. We all know the Drekar seek to return to power. They tell their children bedtime stories of Kingu’s glorious battle before Tiamat, goddess of chaos, fell. The Lady knows, many have tried to spring Kingu from the Gate. A few have come terrifyingly close.”
“Norgard is trying to weaken the Gate further by flooding it with the newly Dead,” Hart suggested.
Corbette nodded tightly.
“What about the Nisannu ceremony?” Kayla asked. “Desi was researching it. Can it stop Norgard from opening the Gate?”
Hart felt a little ill. He squeezed Kayla’s hand. Inside, the Wolf rose to its haunches, ready to defend her.
“It can be used to reinforce the Gate, or to open it,” Corbette said. “Nisannu occurs on the Spring Equinox, an auspicious time for any great work of magic to be performed. The festival consisted of the Descent, the Sacred Marriage, and, most importantly, the Determination of Destiny. Through the ceremony, the king was able to summon the gods to fix the destinies of the universe.”
“Could these gods return the Drekar to power?” Kayla asked.
“Yes,” Corbette said. “But the gods are capricious. Norgard must have some way of controlling Kingu once he frees him.”
The sun slipped behind a cloud and Kayla shivered. Hart brushed her arm with his, trying to give her some of his warmth. He wished he could hold her. “How would he do it?” he asked. “What’s he need for this ceremony?”
“The Descent involves atonement of sins,” Corbette said, “for which the king sacrifices a ram.”
“He needs livestock?” Kayla asked.
“A human would be better,” Hart said.
Corbette nodded his agreement. “Part one—a human sacrifice. Part two—the Sacred Marriage. The king reenacts a ‘wedding’ with Ishtar, the goddess of love and fertility.”
“Sex,” Hart said.
“With anyone?” Kayla asked.
Corbette’s fingers flexed around the silver handle of his cane. “A virgin sacrifice is the most powerful—”
Kayla’s eyes flickered to Hart, and she blushed. He was immediately glad Kayla no longer fit the bill for Norgard’s plans.
“—but not strictly necessary.”
Damn.
“Should Norgard carry out the first two ceremonies,” Corbette said quietly, staring out toward the distant Mount Rainier, “he may summon the gods to do his bidding. The Gate will fall, releasing Kingu and whatever army he possesses.”
Hart scratched the stubble on his jaw. Did the gods still listen to mortal requests? Perhaps the magic of the old covenants was strong enough to wake even the most recalcitrant deity.
“Lord Kai,” Corbette called to his general, who had been conversing with various warriors off to the side. “Summon the four Houses. Every able-bodied Kivati needs to soldier up. Get the vulnerable to the safe houses.”
“What about the humans?” Kayla asked.
Hart snorted. “The humans will never believe this.”
“But we have to try. You could tell them it’s a terrorist attack or something. Call the military—”
“Miss Friday.” Corbette laid a hand on her shoulder, but removed it when Hart growled. “It would be a massacre if the humans got involved. There’s nothing we can do—”
“Bullshit! We have to warn them—”
Kai wrapped an arm around Kayla and yanked her off her feet. “Remember your place, human.”
Hart lunged forward, canines extended, teeth snapping, but Corbette caught him before he reached them. Hart was no lightweight, but Corbette had the power of the Raven Lord on his side. It packed quite a punch. His skin burned with the need to shift. Corbette’s magic held him back, fire against fire. The hair on his arms started to smoke. His eyes rolled back in his head.
Dimly, he heard Kayla yelling, “Stop it! Don’t hurt him.”
“Calm down,” Corbette said in his ear. “I need you alive and lucid.” He ordered Kai to release Kayla. Once Kai stepped away from her, Hart backed down, breathing heavily.
Kayla rushed to his side. “Did he hurt you? Let me see—”
“I’m fine.”
She insisted on checking his skin for wounds before she believed him.
“As endearing as you two lovebirds are, time is of the essence.” Corbette started up the front steps to the mansion, silver-tipped boots clicking on the wide cedar planks.
“You don’t need us.” Hart’s voice was raspy, still close to the Change. His Wolf paced the edges of his skin, growling.
Corbette turned and thumped his cane on the steps. Aether shot through the yard like a ghostly wind. “Don’t you care for anything in your miserable life? All able-bodied warriors. This means you.”
“I’m not Kivati, damn it.”
“You can’t escape the apocalypse any more than you can escape your blood. Hate it, rage against it all you want. You will always be one of us. Nothing can change that.” He let out an exasperated breath. “Forget us—what about her?” He pointed his cane at Kayla, who stood uncertainly at the bottom of the stairs. “Isn’t her life worth fighting for? When that Gate falls, Seattle won’t be the only city overrun with the dead. Gates are like dominos: one goes down, they all do. Volcanic explosions, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes. Get it through your thick skull: this is not something you can run from.”
Kayla’s face was pale. The cold wind blew wisps of her pretty brown hair across her eyes and bit color into her cheeks. She deserved to be cherished and protected, but he’d only brought her violence. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
How could she still look at him with hope in her eyes? He had to man up and do something to deserve that look. “Fine. What do you want?”
Corbette shook his head. “Come inside and we’ll talk. You’ve been in Norgard’s lair. My spies have not. We need the layout. How many guards are there? What security systems? What—”
“Hold up there, cowboy,” Hart said. He finally had a bargaining chip with this bastard, which he could use to secure Kayla’s safety. She didn’t need to be involved. She should be in a safe house with the other vulnerable ones. Some of the tightness lifted in his chest. This was a whole new ball game.
Chapter 17
Preparation for storming the Drekar lair took considerably longer this time,
according to Hart. It made Kayla nervous to hear his tale of sneaking in to get her with only three operatives and a brick of C-4. It wouldn’t be so easy a second time. The Drekar were most likely still on high alert. Blowing up the Ballard Locks to pull their warriors away from the factory had been genius, but couldn’t be repeated.
“We’re going to have to overwhelm the place with troops,” Kai said.
“The Lady will aid us.” The Raven Lord sat in a throne-like chair in a plush study. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases covered the walls. Red velvet drapes fell from wide French doors that opened onto a balcony. A large wooden table, covered in maps, stood in the center of the room. Aerial photographs marked with red X’s showed the best places to access the Gate. All were volcanic sites.
The two Thunderbirds from Rudrick’s basement, Lords Kai and Jace, were in attendance, as well as the Cougar Elinor. Elinor was tall and built to run. Her long black hair was plaited in two complex braids, from which hung a feather, tip down. A symbol of mourning. Kayla had seen quite a few Kivati warriors wearing them around the Hall. Elinor seemed hostile, but mostly toward Hart. Kayla didn’t know if it was because he was Wolf, or because he had worked for the Drekar. Probably a little of both.
“These are the best aerials you got?” Hart asked. He bent over the table on the opposite side from Corbette. The two men were more alike than either would want to admit. Both large. Both imposing. Both more stubborn than a pair of rocks.
The Raven Lord was a control freak facing absolute chaos. A casual observer might mistake his even, low voice for calm. He emulated confidence and absolute authority, but Kayla could see—on that other plane when she closed her eyes—the vibrating nervousness of his inner light. A black weight pushed down on him, like the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. Colors swirled within him. Red and purple, a bit of blue, greenish yellow. Were they emotions? Anger at Norgard, fear for his people, annoyance at Hart’s grudgingly given help perhaps? She could only guess.
The tightening of his jaw and occasional bursts of power betrayed his resentment at asking Hart for help. “The werewolf” was unstable, unreliable and a traitor—or so the Thunderbirds repeatedly pointed out. They distrusted anything Hart had to say on principle. Corbette was cautious, but he seemed to value Hart’s opinion.
Kayla wondered if his power was similar to hers. Was he able to see beyond Hart’s tough-guy exterior and tarnished past to the soul that glowed within?
Hart held the chips, seemingly for the first time in his life, and he milked them for all they were worth. He lounged in the wingback armchair, legs stretched out, as if they were planning a picnic in the park. He even rested his feet on the table at one point, but there Corbette drew the line. She noticed Hart’s grammar had deteriorated. He was doing it just to piss off the eloquent Corbette.
Kayla didn’t have much to add besides her description of the main hall, tunnel, and private quarters where Norgard had planned her seduction. She felt a strange sense of purpose in the coming battle. Somehow the loose threads of her life were coming together—her mother’s death, her nurse training, her sister’s sacrifice. The future was still foggy as all get-out, but it seemed right.
Hart wouldn’t let her leave his sight.
“Lord Jace,” Corbette ordered, pointing to a spot on the map just west of the Ballard bluff where the lair was located, “lead your men through the cliff face windows. They are usually opened only at night, but Theo will take care of that. How long will it take to get his warship and rockets into position?”
“Thirty minutes,” Elinor said, “forty, tops. Theo’s already onboard with his wet crew.”
“I’ve got point on the eastern front,” Kai said. “We’ll need a team of cats in first to sniff out where Norgard is hiding.”
“Cats?” Kayla asked. “Wouldn’t dogs—or wolves—be better? I thought they had a stronger sense of smell.”
Elinor gave her a contemptuous glare. “Do you know anything? Why are you here again?”
Hart growled.
Corbette answered, “Only a few left in the Seattle area. Too little hunting ground in the city.”
“What about foxes?” she asked, not that she wanted to see Rudrick after he tried to kill her.
“Where is that fucker?” Hart asked. “I’ve got something for him.” He flexed his hand and claws shot out of his fingertips.
“None of your business,” Jace said.
“Gentlemen. Ladies.” Corbette stood, and the Kivati stood with him. All except Hart, who sat back and put his hands behind his head, just to be ornery. “You are dismissed.” Hart jumped up like his tail was on fire. “Prepare the troops. Be ready to depart at eighteen-hundred hours. Not you, Hart.”
Hart stayed standing. “What do you need me for? I told you everything.”
“And yet, your woman is correct, having a Wolf—especially one familiar with the target site—on the ground will be priceless.”
Hart glanced at Kayla when Corbette said “your woman,” but quickly looked away. Did he not want her to be “his”? A week ago she would have scoffed at the notion of belonging to someone else. She was her own woman. Independent. Self-sufficient. But after last night she felt stronger than she’d ever been. The pieces of her soul had clicked into place, and she needed Hart as part of that puzzle. It had all happened so fast. It wasn’t rational.
She couldn’t tell if he felt the same way. Corbette wanted to send him into battle. She’d seen those dragons. There was no way a Wolf, even a large, magic one, could win against one of those monsters. The thought of losing him so soon made her break out in a cold sweat.
“Calm yourself, child.” Corbette motioned her to sit again. He rang the bell for fresh tea service to be brought and waited for the Kivati to leave. “Wolf, sit your ass down.” A wave of power barreled through the room, and Hart sat. He didn’t look happy about it. “We have a few matters to discuss privately.”
“I’m getting a little tired of everyone talking over me,” Kayla said. “I may be ‘just a dumb human,’ but I think I’ve earned the right to an explanation. Or to be let go.”
“No,” Corbette said.
“She isn’t one of yours,” Hart snapped.
“No?”
“No!”
The tea arrived. Kayla accepted a fresh cup with a little milk, wishing it were coffee. Corbette took his black. Hart, after watching the Raven Lord, dumped half the milk and a bowl of sugar in his cup. Corbette didn’t comment. Once the serving girls left, he took a photograph out of the drawer of his desk and passed it to Kayla. “Cheveyo’s blood has returned.”
Kayla set down her cup and accepted the tintype photograph. It was her great-grandfather. He wore a handlebar mustache and a cowboy-type shirt. His thick black hair was in two plaits. A medicine bag sat at his side. “Where did you get this?”
“He was one of ours, in my father’s time,” Corbette said. “Let me start at the beginning. The Kivati were once a great race. The giant animal people of legend. The Lady granted each two gifts—the ability to Change into a totem animal, and guardianship over one of Her five sacred powers: air, fire, water, earth, and heart.”
“Does that make you Captain Planet?” Kayla asked.
He ignored her. “Each must be in balance to sustain life. If they fail, so do the walls that protect the Living World from the Land of the Dead. Cheveyo was the last guardian of heart, and he died protecting the Gate in the Great Fire.”
“If there hasn’t been a guardian for over a hundred years,” Kayla asked, “how has the Gate survived?”
“His sacrifice strengthened it. You know something about blood magic, I think. It runs strongly in his family. We thought his blood lost, but it became known he had a half-blood child, who had a half-blood child.”
“My mother?”
Corbette took a sip of tea. “I found her at the same time the Drekar did. We were too late.”
The old anger rose in her chest. The old nightmare flashed in her mind. Her
parents’ voices raised in the night. Strange cars pulling in front of their little house. Pushing a chair to the upstairs window so that she could see out. Mama on the lawn below, illuminated in the moonlight, hands raised. A shadow, then fire catching the maple tree and turning the grass to ash. Mama. Fire. And then Daddy’s firm hand pulling her away, sweeping up her sleeping sister, urging her not to make a sound as he led them out the back door and into the night.
Corbette’s “too late” had shattered a family. How many others had suffered similarly while the Kivati and Drekar played power games, letting violence corrode a city?
“I see.” She didn’t see. “What did the Drekar want her for?”
“Norgard knew Cheveyo’s blood sacrifice secured the Gate for a hundred years, and only Cheveyo’s blood could break it. He needed one of Cheveyo’s descendants to open it for him.”
“So he went after my mother. But he’s got the key. Does he still need my family’s blood?”
“When he attacked your mother, yes. But now that the hundred years are up, no. Cheveyo’s magic still holds, but it is weakened. Any Kivati’s blood would do.”
“Norgard is big on symbolism,” Hart said. He scratched the stubble on his jaw. “He’d get off on using this guy’s descendants to open the Gate, especially after fixating on it so long.”
Corbette tipped his head in agreement.
“But Desi, did he plan to sacrifice her too?” Kayla’s opinion of Norgard was so low there wasn’t much room to drop. But she didn’t want to believe her sister had been completely duped. She’d seen a blend of grief and affection in Norgard’s eyes, however briefly, when he spoke of Desi. She wanted to imagine there was a kernel of truth there.
