by Faith Hunter
I slowed the movement of the sword and held it low, tip near the floor. Took a breath. Smelled Molly’s panic, stagnant on the air. I turned to the stairs and saw Angie Baby, peeking around the corner of the stairwell. She had slipped free of Molly’s warding. The little girl was watching, her eyes on me. I had stood still long enough for her to focus on me, even bubbled in time.
In this state, I could see the energies that once bound her magic. They were nothing more than a broken magical garment that she could put on and take off. Worse, as I watched, Angie reached out, her little hand moving faster than she should be able to. Her fingers threw tiny sparks of raw magic, and they raced away from her, as if searching. My breath caught. Holy crap.
Angie was seeking the Gray Between.
She must have seen me bubble time. And learned how by watching me.
If she figured that out, Angie would be more than dangerous. If she learned how to enter the Gray Between, she could be deadly to herself, or to me, by accident or in a fit of anger. She was a little girl. Little kids had no control or wisdom to know when to use, or not use, a gift or ability. Worse, if she figured out how to bubble time and alter it as the arcenciels could, there was no telling what that ability would do to her morality and ethics. She could abuse and alter timeline probabilities at a whim. Angie could easily become a weapon of mass destruction.
My choices were limited, and all of them were dangerous to Angie. She could see me kill the arcenciel. See me die at the jaws of the rainbow dragon. Then get eaten herself. See her mother die. Then get eaten herself.
“Crap on crackers,” I whispered as little sparkles of black light power flickered and a small tuft of the Gray Between opened in the cup of Angie’s fingers. I walked to her as the arcenciel went through the blue and green spectrum of light, throwing the kitchen into lovely colors of sky and water. Another foot of Opal’s energies had flowed into the kitchen. Her wing tips were still inside the drain but the upper portions had partially unfurled.
I stopped at Angie and watched as her fingertips spat tiny ribbons of black light, moving slightly faster than the arcenciel. I studied the tattered robe of magics she wore, the energies broken and frazzled but still active. If I weren’t in the Gray Between, in the no-time place where magic was visible as pathways of power and interactive energies, I couldn’t see where the breaks were. But since I could see it maybe I could also fix it? I had never been able to create magic, but I could sometimes disrupt the magic of others. And once, not long after I came to New Orleans, I had manipulated magic by accident. Molly had later told me I shouldn’t have been able to do that at all, and I had never been able to do it again, but maybe when I was in this state, I could do magic . . . mechanically.
I set my blades at Angie’s feet on the bottom stair and slipped my knobby fingers into the tattered energies. I began to tie them off, one by one, using the tiny spurts of black light, Angie’s own magic, to secure each of them. It wasn’t pretty, like the knitted energies of the Everhart and Trueblood workings. The knots I was making were downright ugly, the way a painting I had done would look when held up next to a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. Childish and inept. But it was working; the binding was coming together.
I didn’t know what the effect of my actions would have on Angelina Everhart Trueblood and her magics. Out of fear, I didn’t tie her as tightly as I might have, stopping when the garment of bindings was connected to her own magics but wasn’t constraining her in any way. When there were no more black light energies spurting from her fingertips, I tied off the last stray thread of bindings and stepped back. If she figured out that I had done it to her, would she hate me? Something to worry about later.
I returned to the kitchen trying to figure out what do, how to fight Opal away without killing her outright. I couldn’t kill a sentient child, not even the child of another species. But my body was spasming tightly, an electric charge of pain that shivered along my nerves and burned in my fingertips. Eli was at her side, so I positioned myself where her head was growing wider, back into its real shape and form. And because the pain was growing so fast, I reached for real time, knowing that if I made a mistake, Opal might kill me. But because Angie was watching, I had to get the fight back in real time.
I whirled my swords and forced the Gray Between to fracture and split around me. The fight slammed back into real time. The arcenciel slithered through the drainpipe and into the kitchen in scant seconds. Her wings billowed open. Knocked by a wing, the kitchen table and everything on it went flying or sliding across the house to crash into the back wall. The kitchen window blew out into the street as the other wing encountered it.
Eli cut the dragon in a half dozen places. Clear goop splattered. She roared, mouth open, long tongue lashing. I lunged with the long sword. Stabbed her in the mouth with the sword, the blade piercing her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She jolted back at the last instant. The steel missed her brain, if her brain was located in her skull.
The arcenciel screamed. In a single flash, she flew through the broken, unwarded window and into the street. Taking my sword with her. I grabbed a frill and leaped with her. Slamming my shoulder into the window jamb on the way through it. I heard and felt the crack of my collarbone. My right arm went numb. I lost my grip on the rainbow dragon.
That’s not good.
Jane bad hunter. Stupid kit to ride prey through small hole.
I landed in the street, tumbling. Rolling over the injured shoulder with a pain that screeched through me like a predator’s fangs. As I rolled, Beast sent a blast of pain-deadening adrenaline through me, and I caught a single breath that didn’t hurt. I made it to my feet fast, still holding the vamp-killer, left-handed.
Molly rushed through the front door, throwing jagged bars of blue and green power-bolt bombs at the dragon. They quickly went from sharp-edged energies to crumpled slags of dying power. The bombs that didn’t bounce off her, the rainbow dragon seemed to simply absorb, taking in all the magical attacks.
Eli joined the fight with a steel sword, but the arcenciel hit him with her tail, sending him flying. My sword was still pinned in her mouth. Steel keeping it in the present flow of time, which was what I had hoped. Guessed. Whatever.
And up until now, excluding the broken collarbone, the fight was going the way I had hoped. From the uptown side of the street, lights glided into long streamers. Soul. The cavalry to the rescue.
She whipped faster than my eyes could follow, wrapping Opal up in her much greater energies. Molly saw what she was doing and turned in a circle, her arms wide, both hands open, sketching a circle in the air around her, and then around Opal. Together the witch and the mature arcenciel wrapped the juvie arcenciel up in magic. When the writhing, angry rainbow dragon was secured, a light flashed and Soul appeared in the street in human form, her long skirts flowing in a breeze I could see but not feel. Deftly she pulled the sword from the creature’s mouth and tongue and tossed it toward me. The captured arcenciel made a keening sound of anguish and woe.
I stepped back, hitting solidly against Eli’s chest as he caught the sword out of the air. My partner secured my arm at my waist with his, wrapping himself around me, holding my sword upright at an angle near us in his free hand. “Broken collarbone,” he said into my ear as Molly and Soul stood together in the street, studying the tangle of energy that was Opal. The two magic workers walked back and forth, speaking in low voices. I didn’t particularly like the way Soul’s eyes kept dropping to Molly’s baby bump, clearly outlined in the pajamas, but there was nothing I could do now. The water droplets of time would have to figure it all out themselves.
Opal stretched and bit at the energies. Acid rose in my throat at the thought of having to fight again right now. “Yeah,” I said, struggling against the nausea of the broken bone, time bending, the fight, and now, the fear. “Kinda figured that.” My words were slurred by the tusks. Shivers wracked through me, making the pain m
uch worse for a moment. When I got a second breath I smelled Eli’s blood.
“You’re hurt.”
“Just a scratch.”
I pushed him away with my good hand and caught a spurt of blood into my face. “I don’t think so,” I said, blinking fast. I followed the blood to his upper arm and wrapped my knobby, über-strong fingers around his biceps and tightened them into a pressure bandage. Then I chuckled, though it wasn’t anywhere near my usual laugh. He was holding my injured arm in place. And I was holding his.
Soul walked over, her arms crossed over her ample bosom, her gauzy, flowing gowns no longer fluttering in a breeze I couldn’t feel. She looked me over, and I realized it was the first time that the PsyLED agent had ever seen me in my half-Beast form. Some people might have been taken aback, but Soul seemed composed in the face of pelt and big-cat fang tusks. She said, “Thank you for making the right choice.”
I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but I had never been very good at that. “So . . . ,” I said. “You had been sitting around watching the fight between Opal and me for . . . a while.” Though bubbled time makes that term insubstantial at best, I thought. “Watching and probably judging.” I frowned at her, wondering what Soul would have done had I taken another road. As part of PsyLED and also as an arcenciel, she had a wide scope of power. If I had killed the arcenciel, would she have had the rule of some arcane, possibly prehistoric law to kill me? Or go back in time and kill me before I killed Opal?
Soul pulled a scarf from a pocket and pushed my bloodied good hand away from Eli. She tied the scarf around my partner’s wound and immediately the pulsing arterial blood stopped. Eli’s face, which had held a hint of pain, eased back to its neutral, natural mask of nothingness. “This scarf has a healing working in it,” she said, adjusting the knotted scarf. “It’s self-renewable and powered by the sun, so when you finish with it today, simply wash it out and hang it in a window.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“I haven’t a thing for broken bones or timesickness. Your skinwalker energies will have to help you there.”
The fact that she knew I was sick from bending time reaffirmed that Soul had been watching the whole fight. I pressed against Eli’s helping hand and wrapped my bloody good hand around my own elbow, keeping it close to my side. I could take care of myself. Eli was holding my unsheathed sword. Not the smartest thing to do while in close proximity to another person. That thing was sharp.
Soul walked to Molly, who was now sitting on the low steps of the front porch, her sock-clad feet on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry Opal attacked you,” Soul said. “Free will is something my kind believe in, and I will make certain that she doesn’t repeat her actions against you and yours. But you should know that the child you carry has the potential to change the timelines for Opal and her progeny, and the closer that timeline gets, the harder it will be for her to restrain her survival instincts.”
Molly raised her head to Soul, emotions I couldn’t begin to name moving beneath her skin. Her face was pale and wan in the dulled streetlights, but her expression firmed when she said, “Do you have some kind of evidence for that speculation, or are you just trying to make me mad?”
“I would never attempt to anger an Everhart.”
“Damn skippy,” Molly said.
I smiled slightly.
“So how did you know about my baby?”
Soul tilted her head and her long silver hair slid forward, the waves catching the meager moonlight. “I see your child in the timelines. There is significant data to suggest that the baby will be a witch and will ride Opal, trapping her in a crystal at a time when she is carrying an egg. And the egg will die. And so will Opal’s line. There is less evidence to suggest that your child will partner with Opal to some end. That is the way you should bring up your child if you wish it to live long and prosper. Agreement and harmony, compromise, understanding, a mutually beneficial bargain.”
“That’s the plan,” Molly said sharply, obviously stung that her parenting and witch-teaching skills were being called into question over her unborn baby.
Soul nodded once and made her way to the arcenciel, tapping it on the snout and leading it back up the street, changing as she moved into her own arcenciel form. No one looked out the windows, no cars attempted to drive down the street, nothing disturbed them or us. It had to be arcenciel magic, something put in place by Soul while she watched us fight. Nothing else made sense.
The glowing lights of the rainbow dragons faded and died, but not before Opal swung her head back and looked at Molly and Eli and me. Her glowing eyes were baleful and full of promise, half-hidden by streamers of reflective frill and horns bright as crystal. I had a feeling that Soul wouldn’t be able to keep the young dragon in check for long.
• • •
Back inside the house, I stood in the foyer watching as Eli and Alex made sure the house was habitable, plugged in the fridge, got the coms and cameras back up on the city’s grid, put the skull that had caused all the trouble back into my closet on the high shelf, and started an early breakfast. The smell of bacon quickly filled the lower story. Molly was curled on the couch talking with Big Evan on her cell, discussing magic and ways to fight light. I heard her tell him that Angie had been a perfect angel and hadn’t even gotten out of bed. “She’s still asleep, the little darling. I think the binding is going to stick this time. . . . Yes. We done good.” She laughed, her happiness like crystal tones on the air.
I pursed my lips, tracking my goddaughter to my room by scent. Angie had done something magical to her mother, to keep her from knowing that Angie was up and around. And then I had . . . interfered. Now Angie’s scent was angry. Maybe tantrum angry.
Eli had put my weapons on the floor. I took both by the hilts and strode into my room, totally ignoring the little girl sitting in the middle of my bed, looking mutinous. I sheathed the weapons, double-checked that the skull was back where it belonged, and finally turned to Angie.
If I hadn’t been hurting, I might have crossed my arms, spread my feet, and stared her down, but I was feeling more pain than I had expected, now that the fighting was over and the effect of adrenaline was wearing off. Every breath ached like lightning, and I knew exactly how that felt. So instead of trying to look stern, I leaned my weight against the wall by the closet and slid to the floor, to sit with my back against the wall and my knees bent up. I reached out to Beast and sought my human form, what little of me was left in the tangled mess of our coiled and twisted genetic structures. I teased the human strands out and let myself fall into my human form, hearing my collarbone scrape and snap back into place. The pain of the healing was stabbing, grinding, and electric, and for a moment, it seemed to fill all of who I was and all of who I might ever be.
And then the pain drenched away, fast as storm water sliding down a gutter. I held up my hands and made sure I was human. Eight fingers, two thumbs. Thin shavings of Eli’s crusted blood dusted into my lap. I touched my face—skin—and touched my teeth—human—and pulled out my T-shirt to peek down at my chest. I was always afraid I would come back only partway and have furry boobs, but I had skin. Good.
Angie was watching, silent, her face red, but her scent was less angry than before I shifted. This was the first time I had shifted in front of her, and she understood that it was a measure of trust. My shifting in front of her was a proclamation of her maturity and of our friendship.
“So. What’s up?” I asked her. How lame? Stupid!
“You can do . . .” Her hands made little circles in the air. “You can speed up. You can move faster than I can see.”
“Yeah.”
“I tried to do it too.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you stop me?” Her face started to flush again, and I smelled her beginning anger.
“Yeah. You want to know why?”
Angie narrowed her eyes at
me. I placed one hand on the floor at my hip and propped my weight on it. With the other hand, I kneaded my belly. It growled loudly. The two half shifts and the fighting had left me weak and starving, but sometimes there were more important things than food. I watched Angie, reading the emotions that flashed across her face as she considered my question.
“I guess,” she said, as if the words were dragged out of her.
“Because I get really sick when I move fast. The last few times, I threw up blood.”
Angie sat up straight. “You puked blood? Ewwwww.”
“I know, right?”
“Did it stink?”
“Yeah. It did. And I was so sick afterward that I had to shift back to human to not end up dead.”
“You think I would puke blood and end up dead if I moved fast?”
“I think it’s possible. And because you’re my godchild I had to stop you from doing something that would hurt you. The same way I’d have to stop you if you wanted to jump off a cliff to see if you could fly.” I cocked my head at her and my hair, still trapped under my shirt, but no longer bound in the scrunchies, slid forward on my shoulder. The scrunchies dropped to my waist in a little nest of knitted material that itched, but I’d have to wait to scratch that one until Angie was pacified. “You know what being a godmother means? Not a fairy godmother like in fairy tales, but a real godmother?”
