by Amy Lane
Iris’s eyes narrowed. “If you have any knowledge of the events at the county jail this summer, you may face federal prosecution if you don’t report what you know to us as soon as possible—”
Cory giggled like a drunken child. “Report? To you? You want my report? I’ll tell you my report. If you assholes don’t stop throwing werewolves at us, I’ll pitch the next batch of them over the fucking canyon, that’s what I’ll report. And if you’re real fuckin’ lucky, we won’t set them on fire! Now, you two are going to sit right there in the only two chairs that weren’t booby-trapped, and you’re going to tell me who in the fuck you’re working for. Man, I’m tired of calling this chick ‘funky elf bitch’—I need a goddamned name!”
I’m not sure what kind of fiber the judge had been made of before he’d been bitten and bespelled, but at this moment, he wasn’t particularly impressive.
He started to cry. “She’ll kill us. Iris, she’ll kill us. They know, and you thought a little trap would do it and we’d have them, but they know, and she’s going to kill us—”
“Which ‘she’?” Cory asked sharply. “Me or—”
“Don’t say her name!” Iris hissed. “This bitch doesn’t need to know shit!”
Cory laughed some more. “Wow. Didn’t take much for the city polish to fade, did it, guys?”
“Nope,” Teague said, assessing our opponent. “Get her a dress three sizes too small and forget the underwear, and I think I picked this one up in a bar five years ago.”
Cory and I grimaced. “Ugh,” Cory said. “Has your taste improved.”
I nodded soberly. “It really has.” I might never completely love Jacky, but I’d never known how bad it could be.
“Thanks,” Teague said. Then, careful even in banter, “I’ll mention that you said so.”
And none of us took our eyes off the two people stuck in their chairs by Cory’s magic and the strategic use of their names.
“You have no idea who you’re messing with!” Iris leaned forward, clawing at the table with nails painted carefully in clear polish with little white tips.
“Well, not entirely true,” Cory said. Her voice was sharp and low, as though she was thinking it through. “We’ve been fighting this one off and on for the last year—and we’ve had more than one casualty. Can your leader say the same?”
Iris flinched. So throwing numbers at a problem didn’t sit well with her—that was promising. “It’s what soldiers are made for,” she said staunchly, and Cory sucked in a happy, surprised breath.
It took me a minute to realize that it was the first time Iris Masterson had admitted to being a part of our larger enemy, and yes, it was something of a triumph.
“No,” Cory said quietly. “Soldiers are made to protect—not to throw away. I’ve lost enough—”
“You said barely more than one!” taunted Iris. George had apparently bailed on the conversation, and we ignored him for the duration.
“I said in this war,” Cory replied, sounding old and sad. “Honestly, who does your leader think she’s fighting?”
“The leader of the Northern California paranormal creatures?” Iris asked, and I realized she’d been thrown off. She was suddenly uncertain of who their target was.
“That’s us,” Cory said.
Iris’s eyes sharpened. “You’re the leader of the NorCal group?” She snorted. “You’re a child!”
“I’m not the leader,” Cory said, amused and not offended. “The leader couldn’t be bothered with you people. I’m the weapon.”
Iris’s mouth snapped shut. “That’s not likely.” She had truly lovely brown eyes, and I looked deep into them while she was studying Cory with disdain. Sometimes, especially as she took in Cory’s pregnancy-rounded chin and the way she worried her full lower lip as she thought, it appeared as though the real Iris rose to the surface of her soul.
She seemed confused and in pain—there was something in her that did not relish sparring with someone she viewed as helpless.
Then Cory tilted her head, and there could be no mistaking the glow that surrounded Iris and George, enveloping them both and raising them off their seats for a few breathless moments.
“Do I look like I’m breaking a sweat?” Cory asked, her face hard. “Because this is not my best trick, by any means. Now, we don’t even want you, you understand? We just want to know who we’re dealing with so we can take her out.”
Iris’s jaw was clenched. She moved cautiously, testing the boundaries of her invisible prison with her hands and feet and finding them impenetrable.
“You can’t take her out,” she said, rubbing her hand against the inside of her bubble. “Can you kill with this?”
“Yes,” Cory said. “And if you’d been with this woman for more than five minutes, you’d know how many I’ve had to kill with it. All we want is her name.”
“That’s not all you want.”
It was clear as a bell in all of our heads, and Cory let out a groan.
“Fuck,” she muttered. “Okay. New plan.”
“What?” Iris asked, and even the judge looked up, tears and snot running down his blotchy face in a glistening track. “What do you mean, new plan! You can’t just kill us here—people will notice! Stephanie! Steph—”
Cory grunted and shoved power in her mouth. Iris made a gurgling sound and turned purple, and Cory got one of those intense looks of someone tinkering with something. A breath burst through the gag of power, and Iris glared at us through streaming eyes.
“Br…. Mr. Kirkpatrick?” she asked, still frowning. She and Green must have been having one hell of a conversation, because it had been a near miss with my name.
I stood up and opened the door even as Iris’s little secretary tried to burst in. She was a sweet woman, but only average in intelligence. Convincing her that Ms. Masterson had merely been asking for a bottle of water was easily done.
I took the bottle of contaminated water back to my seat and reached into Cory’s magic bag for a Sharpie.
“What’re you doing?” Teague asked quietly.
“Taking back a sample,” I said. “If we can figure out what she’s done to her blood, maybe we can undo it.”
“Clever.” Teague nodded and looked over to where Cory was having a strenuous mental conversation while she balanced her two captives in the ball.
After a moment she burst out, “Seriously, do you want me to throw them through the ceiling? I’ll do it, but I’m saying….”
She grunted, and I was gratified to see Iris pale.
“You seem pretty smart,” I said, since Cory was otherwise engaged. “What are you doing here?”
And that moment I’d seen in her eyes, the moment when the real Iris crested near the surface, returned.
“What did you give up to be here?” I asked, taking stabs in the dark. “Do you have children you left with relatives? A boyfriend you broke it off with, even though he seemed perfect?”
Iris scowled, and then tears—despised, if her expression was true—snuck down her cheeks, sooty with all the eye makeup. She didn’t try to speak, but it was important to what I thought was coming.
“Fine,” Cory snarled. “Yes, you’re right. Dammit. You’re right a lot!”
Green must have said something to make her smile, because suddenly she was right here in the room with us.
“Okay,” she said thoughtfully, “we’ve got two options here. The first one is that you two can give us her name and we can leave you here knowing that you failed and she’s going to be gunning to kill you, probably spectacularly.”
Iris gasped through her gag and George moaned a little, so that guess was probably right on target.
Cory nodded. “Yup. Or you can come with us peacefully—”
Iris fought furiously, and Cory gave a little jerking motion with her second finger.
“Why would we do that?” she demanded. “Come with you? What in the world could compel—”
“Well,” Cory said quietly, “for starters, the alterna
tive really would be me throwing you both through the ceiling.”
“The roof is made of copper,” George opined. “We’d be torn to shreds.”
“Not through my shields!” Cory replied, but then she shrugged. “But still—from experience, not a lot of fun.”
“That’s all you’ve got?” Iris mocked, and Cory dropped them both abruptly in their chairs.
“I could float you both out like hostages, in front of the people who follow your orders,” Cory said, surprising me too.
“Really?” I asked, because I had to.
Cory nodded grimly. “Oh yeah. I mean, there’s a fourth option, which is that you roll their minds and force them to sleep, and I try an invisible shield.”
I grunted. “That’s my favorite option,” I admitted. “Either that or float them out the window.”
Cory paused for a moment and looked to the big windows, the old-fashioned kind that looked like they might have slid open just a little.
“How many people are out there?” she asked.
Teague ventured near and looked. “It’s the back of the courthouse—there’s nobody out there,” he said. “And there’s a small utility-worker parking lot out here too.”
Cory grunted. “Okay,” she breathed. “Five options. Br… dammit, Mr. Kirkpatrick, could you talk to… you know. Guys in the car?”
A part of me smiled. Oh, yes—she’d taken this meeting like a pro, but she was still the girl who’d set the bad guy’s hair on fire.
Very carefully—because when I wasn’t being careful, I left a big headache in my wake—I tapped Nicky’s mind.
He was used to this after two years with Green. He opened his mind to me beautifully, and I was suddenly surrounded by bird thoughts—mostly bird thoughts of lust, with me as the center. I told him to knock that off.
“We need you to drive around the building, to the utility parking lot at the rear. We’ve got something in mind.”
Cory had stood up by now and was pacing back and forth, eyeballing our two captives and the window.
“Yeah,” she conceded. “You guys figure out how to open the window wide enough for us to get through, and I’ll float them down into the SUV first, then get us down.”
“Can L… our guys down there take over the shield?” Teague asked. It was good to know the whole name thing had us all scrambling.
“Green says he’s champing at the bit,” Cory confirmed. Then she glared at our captives. “The guy waiting at the bottom wants to set you both on fire, so you’d better not try any bullshit with him,” she cautioned.
“What are you going to do with us?” Iris moaned, finally as frightened as her boss.
“Don’t get your panties in a knot,” Cory muttered, still obviously dealing with logistics. “We’re going to cure you. You want to follow the funky elf bitch, that’s your business. But let’s see if you still want to after you’ve lost the taint of her blood in your body.”
I’d been watching self-awareness rise and fall in Iris Masterson’s eyes since Cory had first swathed her in supernatural shielding. For just a second, a hiccup in time, she looked hopeful.
Good. Our supposition had been that the soldiers in this army had been rendered suggestible, easily manipulated, and that they weren’t inherently evil.
Iris Masterson might be a good place to start.
At that moment, Teague gave a grunt and the window gave way. It wasn’t quite wide enough for two people abreast, so we ended up lifting them one at a time. Watching Cory split her focus was terrifying.
Teague and I tried not to speak. We stood back-to-back—me facing the open window since I could actually fly, and Teague facing the judge since he could change into a wolf, growl, and bite things.
Iris went first. She was frightened enough that although she should have simply sat still and allowed herself to be lifted and maneuvered out the window and down onto the lawn, she didn’t. I heard Cory’s grunts of frustration and watched as Iris struggled against common sense, her trajectory jerking more than once before she landed in front of the SUV. Then another glow, presumably Lambent’s, took over, and she was forced into the SUV.
“Done,” I said, wishing I had the power of the force field too, just so I could help. However, my blood power had done us a good service today. I needed to remember my strengths.
The judge was easier—or so we thought.
Once he cleared the window ledge, he started to struggle and apparently called his master the same way we called ours.
We all saw the flicker of ruby hair at the corner of the building, and the sidhe-tall form disappearing from sight. She might not have heard him, but somebody had.
We watched as he struggled, cried, and then went stiff, his entire body writhing in a horrible convulsion inside his judge’s robes. For a terrible moment, he wafted through the air, surrounded by Cory’s power and straight as a plank, a manic, terrified smile on his face.
Then his neck snapped to the left abruptly, and his entire body went limp. Cory gasped, and we all watched as the body finished its death twitches inside the protective shield.
“Fuck,” Cory snarled. Like a popped balloon, the shield collapsed, and the judge plummeted to earth. We all shuddered as we heard the body hit bottom, and then Cory and I grabbed Teague’s hands. “One, two, three, whee!” she snapped, and we catapulted to the SUV.
We touched down and scrambled inside to where Iris was being held, a power gag still in her mouth and her large, expressive eyes fixed in horror on the still form on the ground.
“Step on it,” Cory ordered. “Someone’s going to see him in a minute or two.”
Nicky didn’t peel out, because he was smarter than that. The SUV pulled smoothly away from the curb and made its way away from the courthouse in that nice pace that said he had somewhere to go but he wasn’t breaking any laws to get there.
As the courthouse disappeared from our rearview, Cory gave a sigh and sank back against the seat.
“Br… fuck. Mr. Kirkpatrick, could you put her under? Don’t use finesse—she fought me like a dancing snake on the way down.”
Iris made a sound of protest, and any pity I might have felt for her vanished at the look of hatred she sent my beloved.
A dancing snake, indeed.
She collapsed against the upholstery, slouching with closed eyes and splayed legs, her arms still bound by Lambent’s shield and stiff at her sides.
“What in the fuck happened to the other one?” Lambent asked as soon as she slumped down.
“He contacted her—not Iris, but the leader.” Cory tapped her head. “He was useless, mostly. Terrified. I guess he asked her to let him out of his misery, and she replied.”
We all grimaced. The angle of that broken neck had been both grisly and disturbing.
“Fucking spiffy,” Lambent spat. “Well, not that I’m not glad to be rid of one of them, but what in the seven hells are we doing with her?”
Cory looked to the backseat again, where our unconscious captive sat.
“We’re going to cure her,” she said, some of the optimism that had run this mad mission into the heart of the enemy’s territory fueling her voice.
“If you say so,” Lambent conceded. “But where are we going to keep her in the meantime?”
Cory just shrugged, because we all knew the answer to that.
The vault in the vampire darkling, where we kept the newest and most dangerous of Green’s children. It was the closest thing to a prison that we had.
Cory: Woman to Woman
TWO WEEKS later, Iris Masterson was not nearly as self-possessed as she’d been that day we wrapped her in power and floated her down to the SUV. She’d fought me then—and yes, she’d been enhanced with someone else’s muscle. I’d almost dropped her scrawny ass more than once on the way down.
As I told Bracken when we drove home in the tense silence that followed, I should have done the judge first. Seeing his neck snap and his body plunk to the pavement would have been an object
lesson to anyone sane.
But Iris wasn’t sane. Not now. Right now, she was in the throes of what could only be termed paranormal addiction withdrawal.
We’d brought her to the hill via the garage, which ran under the hill, and I wasn’t ashamed—I’d asked Lambent to reinforce my shield as we brought her up to the vault. She stayed asleep, and I figured Bracken might have been a little heavy-handed with the sleep spell, but I was so not feeling bad about that. All of that mean-girl bullshit about my age, about my “company,” about my name and my manners—and she might have thought she was good at it, but the kids at my high school who used to bump into my back to make me drop my books or make fun of my hair or my piercings were way worse. Ooh, that’s a fancy book, Cory—you think you’re going to college or something?
Iris Masterson was small-time.
And as the weeks had progressed, I started to think she might know that too. I’d studied her public information—she’d grown up in western Idaho, gotten a scholarship to UC Santa Cruz, and then worked her way through law school at UC Davis. It was a dream résumé of sorts, but working and going to school can knock you from valedictorian right to runner-up. All being runner-up got you was a public defender position in Sacramento for five years and then, finally—oh holy Jesus thank you!—a job at the DA’s office in South Placer County.
Uhm….
All that ambition, those long nights studying, the putting off of any personal life whatsoever. She brought an old law-school friend to social occasions—most of the werecreatures from the area knew him. He was (a) very gay and (b) worked as a surrogacy placement specialist in Northern California, which meant he was also (c) very poor. Teague and Charlie wanted to recruit him. After reading her jacket, I was worried for him, so I told them to go for it.
But in spite of the fact that knowing Iris now put him in danger, he was the only thing in her life that did not seem geared to her career.
I could actually imagine her—poor, dedicated, professional—she’d worked for the good guys. (Okay, from the hill’s standpoint, defense attorneys were the good guys. The rest of the world might not see it that way.) I had a picture of her from two years ago. Professional, yes—but she was standing next to a nineteen-year-old who was going in for twenty-five years because of a pocketful of X, and she looked exhausted and grief-stricken and sad.
