There were too many moving pieces. Because Suri knew too little, and was such a small player in the tides of magic, she was overwhelmed by possibilities. Were she Demon Hunter or part of some other prestigious guild, she might have known more. Had a hunch for where to find the next clue. A sniff of the next direction. Failing that, a guild master and crew of badasses to light the path.
That’s what the enforcers were supposed to be. Not so much, apparently. The less they know that I know, the better. Even Logan. How far was he willing to go in order to solve this case? After collecting a bunch of evidence, would he roll over to McNaulty’s side to try to get back into his chief’s good books? If there was one thing Suri had learnt in her short, two decades on Earth, it was that friends are in short supply. True friends. The sort you can trust on a dark and stormy night. Logan had her back. For now. She wasn’t counting on it for tomorrow, or whenever the winds of fortune pulled him in a different direction.
Another flash of lightning lit up the open page of the book. Suri glanced down.
The entry read: “Androsian contact. Brexly Hall. 7PM.” Dated one week ago.
“Androsian” jogged her memory. Suri had been a keener in history classes. Not her usual style, but for whatever reason the old myths and legends about Earth and Faerie had pulled her in. Thanks to that, she recalled that the Androsian’s were an old fae clan. They used to be important political players, about a thousand years ago. It was odd to see the name used outside of the Academy. A strange reference.
She flipped forward and found an identical entry dated one week later. Another meeting, scheduled for tomorrow. It was a solid lead. The question she had to ask herself was whether or not she should share it with Logan.
22
Downstairs, Logan was taking more pictures of living room. His leather jacket was slick from the rain. Bits of grass, the leftovers from a lawn mower, stuck to his shoes. Between the two of them and the suspect, mud had been tracked across the shag carpet. Not the sort of thing enforcers cared about. The realtor, or whoever took over the place, would deal with it.
Suri tossed the book at Logan. It bounced off his shoulder. He blinked at Suri.
“Badger reflexes not so good, huh?”
Logan snorted, stooped over and picked up the book. “Anything in here worth reading?” He asked, quickly thumbing through the pages.
“Nah,” Suri said, eyes briefly darting to the man they had caught. He was lying flat on his back on the carpet. Looked to be unconscious. “It has some killer erotic poetry, though.” Which was true. From what she had seen, besides the scheduled meetings, there was nothing worth looking into. “The entire book—diary, journal, whatever it is—is filled with doodles. Crude erotic drawings. Like the Kama Sutra, but drawn with stick figures. Oh, and some portraits of fae female faces.” Suri shrugged. “About what you’d expect.”
“You’ve read the Kama Sutra?” Logan asked, raising an eyebrow. He snapped the book shut, holding in the palm of one of his large, hairy hands.
I wonder what those would feel like on my—Stop it.
Suri banished the idle thought from her mind.
She coughed a little to clear her throat. “Yea, sure,” she replied. Amber and her used to giggle about it.
“Anyways,” said Logan, carrying on after Suri’s awkward reply, “take a look at dummy’s neck, over there.”
Suri crouched next to the unconscious suspect.
“Left side,” said Logan.
The man’s hair was long enough that she had to push it aside with a finger. Behind his black locks was a neck pale and slender. And right next to a vein, two holes. Puncture wounds. From fangs.
“Oh, shit.”
Logan nodded. “That’s about right.”
“Do you think Lee…”
“I’m gonna to talk to him first thing tomorrow,” Logan said. He was clearly agitated. Ran a hand through his beard, bushy black eyebrows making a v-shaped wedge as he stared out through a rain-spattered window. “You probably figured this out, but he’s my contact in the vampire world. Been a long time since I’ve had to use him as an informant. Lee and I…We thought the vampires were gone.”
“He looks an awful lot like the guys who did the drive by,” Suri said. The long hair, black military-style clothing, and laced up leather boots all matched. And the pale skin.
Logan nodded. “You know Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral?”
“Yea, I know it.” It was where Maggie worked. Suri used to go there for Sunday mass, back when she’d been more devout.
“Are you Catholic?” Suri must have given it away in the tone of her voice.
Suri shrugged. “Christian. I know Maggie.”
“Good. That’s where the bodies of those goons will be. Fuck!”
Logan leapt past Suri. She spun, saw the suspect convulsing on the ground.
Logan straddled him, pinched the man’s jaw with his hand and tried to force it open. But it was too late.
The man smiled. Blood dripped down his chin like juice from a fresh plum. He’d bitten off his tongue, and was drowning in his own blood.
Suri shuddered. Rubbed her left arm with her right. Suddenly, it was very cold in the mansion.
“Do something!” Logan bellowed. “Heal him!”
“I can’t.”
Suri realized her voice was barely above a whisper. She cleared her throat. “I can’t,” she repeated. “I don’t—I don’t know how.”
All she knew was how to destroy. To hurt, and kill. I guess it says something about me that I never wanted to learn any other kind of magic. Selfish, that’s what I am. I don’t actually know how to help anyone. Only myself.
Logan was furious. The suspect had been their one, solid lead. Suri had no doubt there were methods enforcers could employ, special types of spells, that would have had him talking in no time. If only they had been able to get him back to HQ.
An idea struck Suri. “Help me get him up,” she said.
She moved quickly, and Logan fell into her pace. Together, they hoisted the man off the ground and Suri lead the way, carrying him to the front door. “Maggie,” she explained. “She can talk to the souls of the recently deceased. If we can get him to the cathedral fast enough, we might be able to get some answers.”
Logan kicked open the front door. They walked out into the rain at a lurching pace. He opened the gate and set the man on the back of Blackbird. There was only room for two. “Go,” he said, as Suri swung herself onto the front seat. She gripped the handlebars with tired hands. “Call me if you find anything.”
Suri nodded, revved the engine. Logan stepped away from the bike and she shot off into the rainy, stormy night.
For the second time that night, Suri felt the stinging kiss of rain blowing on her face. Again she sped through the streets. A wave of sadness and disgust washed over her. Maybe it was because there was a still-warm dead body slumped on her back. But it was more than that.
Suri was getting tired of the whole ordeal. Getting shot at, chased, almost blown up by a trap. And now mixed up in the schemes of vampires, and lugging a dead body around to boot. Couldn’t a girl get a day off? It had been non-stop since Suri tried to deliver that blasted package—which was still in her jacket pocket. The client had been an odd fellow. A tall mage with long, grey hair and a beard to match. Kept his eyes on Suri the whole time.
I’m going to deliver this thing if it’s the last thing I do, Suri told herself. After all, it was this client’s bad timing that got her involved in the first place. If he hadn’t stopped by with the package, Suri would be lounging in her apartment right now. Probably watching Netflix, or browsing Reddit. Chilling, relaxing. Planning to go to a cafe later on in the day just to get out of the apartment, fresh air and social interaction. All that good stuff, that comes naturally to naturally social people but hard to misanthropes like Suri, who, without Amber, would be content to sit inside all day, wallowing in lazy self-indulgence, playing video games, browsing the internet, eating bits and bites of sn
acks throughout the day. Maybe playing with a cat, if they had one. But no. Despite Suri’s petitioning, Amber had firmly put her foot down on the No Pets rule. And it had been decided, after leaving the Academy when they moved in together and became roommates, that big decisions like that must be joint decisions. It was only fair. Rational.
Suri turned down a dimly lit street. San Francisco was dead at this hour. It was that eerie time of night, too late for partiers and trouble-makers and too early for early morning deliveries and workaholics. Dead Zone. Dead Hour. Almost silent, but for the other people, like her, who were up to goodness what at this unseemly hour. Suri heard them, their engines purring and coughing, blocks away in the clear night air. It was a late-night brotherhood of sorts. The infamous Shadow had caught rifts many times in the stillness. She likes to imagine that the others out and about, who she heard now, were the same people she always heard. The sounds of their activity were soothing, in a way. It was certainly better than thinking she was completely alone with a dead body. These late night, early morning derelicts would help her. Somehow she was sure of that, in her tired, addled mind. They were like her, after all. Awake when they should be sleeping, sleeping when they should be awake. Or not sleeping at all, keeping an artificial wakefulness through the magical aid of caffeine and…whatever else they could get their hands on.
It didn’t seem fair. Amber had her plants. Pots of them, all over the two-bedroom apartment. They were basically her pets. She cared for them like they were her babies. When one was going to die, she would cut off a piece of it and replant it. So that way it never really died, and would grow anew. The pet that lives forever.
Suri could see the logic in plant-keeping. But nothing beats the slurpy furball happiness of a dog who bounds at you every time you come home. That was a real pet.
Second resolution: tell Amber you will get a dog. For a trial period. Get a cute one. Amber will fall in love, then it’s a lock.
Suri’s mind was all over the place. Rambling from tiredness, lingering drunkenness, and trying to distract from the dead weight pressing between her shoulder blades.
Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Raja. Wondering, as she shivered from cold and wet, long red hair stuck to her forehead from a combination of sweat and rain, what he was doing. If he was happy or sad, whether or not he had another girl on her mind.
Probably was the cynical, rational answer. And the one Suri chose to ignore. Their connection was real. She believed that. Raja hadn’t tried and succeeded in seducing her…Not for nefarious means, at least.
Could it really happen? A human girl, a fae male?
It would be the first time that Suri had heard of it. Remembering Amber’s reaction brought a grin to her face. Fae are a weird bunch. Their customs when it comes to dating and social interaction are spontaneous, erratic in the eyes of a normal human. Suri had gotten used to it from her time passing through Faerie as a courier. Raja was, by default, an odd ball. And Suri had a feeling he was odd even by fae standards. A rebel, if nothing else, to help her and the refugees from the labyrinth when the rest of Lodum wanted them dead. Or so it seemed. Vestrix and Raja told a story that Faerie was not, perhaps, as united on the destruction of humans as they seemed. The burning of the human district had been quite the spectacle. The cheering mob even more so. But, analytically, that was only a small percentage of Lodum’s population. If the Faerie Capital truly wanted to wipe humans from their realm…Well, Suri wouldn’t be around to think about it. Shadow factions were on the move. Machinations. Whispers in the dark, seeking chaos and rebellion. Fire and blood. An overthrowing of the status quo. And if the Faerie King was dead, that meant war. Centuries of war, almost for certain. The terrible kind of which even Earth could not avoid. The ungifted were in for an awakening.
If…If the Faerie King was truly missing. If he had been killed or kidnapped or was otherwise absent.
It opened the way for all kinds of disaster. Democracy was the flavor of politics most preferred by humans. Not so in Faerie. They scoffed at it. Called it a fool’s wish. All in all, they were too diverse a bunch, spanning too many species brimming with ancient magic and still older grudges for any functioning democracy to exist. Not without one group or another being sent to the guillotines. Monarchy had been the system at the time of Lodum’s founding, and so it would remain. It was as sure a thing as the fact that Fae were crazy bastards. A truth of nature.
All that crazy would be released, without direction, without cause, across Lodum and all of Faerie. Even Earth would not escape the bloodshed. Suri didn’t have to remember her history class to know that much. It was common sense to any mage with the slightest connection to Faerie. Somehow, remarkably, the magi council had fucked it all up.
A salty, seaside breeze washed through the air and over Blackbird. Suri was nearly at sea level now, and the rain had lessened to a dull drizzle. She was wet all over. Her skin, her flesh felt soaked through. Bloated, like one of those washed up whales.
It was in this state that she rolled up and parked next to Maggie’s Catholic church. Suri stepped off Blackbird, quickly put the dead suspect in a fireman’s carry over her shoulder. She was in that focused zombie-exhausted mode where the quicker everything is done, the quicker she can get to bed. If she paused for just a moment, waves of fatigue would come crashing down. Make her take a short nap, that could ruin her best lead in solving the case of the missing councillor.
Weathers. That erotic asshole. Suri slowly made her way up the steep, concrete steps leading to the large, brown wood double-doors of the cathedral. The doors were surrounded by old stone, made in a time before the internet, before electricity, when ungifted knew that ghosts and demons walks among us.
Rain dripped of the pair of stone gargoyles waiting guard at either side of the doors. Feeling every bit like a monk at the end of a pilgrimage, Suri eyed the gargoyles suspiciously and knocked on the doors. Hammer-fist. None of that weak, front knuckle shit.
Bam, bam, bam, Suri’s muscled hand, balled into a fist, crashed against the old wood. Open up Maggie. My knees are buckling. I need you to summon the ghost of this dead son-of-a-bitch, then let me pass out in your cathedral.
23
Master Lydia gave Mona an appraising look and sat down on a wooden rocking chair marked with many carvings. “Doria told me about you,” she said.
One of the students came around with a tea tray. All the shifters took a cup, including Lydia. Clint grabbed a cup and passed it to Mona. It was a warmth most welcome in her freezing hands.
None of the shifters seemed cold at all. They lay stretched out on comfy old couches and chairs, sitting on the edge of the second floor balcony and chatting in the open concept kitchen. Shifters had high metabolisms and a higher core temperature than other humans. It had something to do with the spell they used to shift into their chosen animal form.
“Who’s Doria?” Mona asked.
Lydia took a sip of tea, holding her cup in a two-handed ladylike fashion. “That would be the councilwoman rather fond of furs,” she said. Her cool gaze made Mona nervous. She felt like an animal caught in the sight of its predator. The back of her neck tingled, telling her to run.
It’s just your imagination. Calm down. Yet she couldn’t help but feel the shifters had taken on a predatory aura. She pictured Lydia casting the root spell, and the shifters swiftly coming in for the kill.
Mona faked a carefree smile. “Thanks for saving us. If you hadn’t been there, well, I don’t know what would have happened.”
Lydia waved away the words. “Never mind that,” she said, a scowl crossing her face. “What are you doing here?” Mona tensed up. Depending on when Lydia talked to Doria, she may or may not know about her role in the parley.
And there Mona was, in the middle of Lydia’s lair and surrounded by about thirty shifters.
Laura, Clint and Felix would have her back, but the rest of them? The word of their master was everything. The four of them would be tied up and delivered to the ma
gi council if that’s what Lydia wanted.
The only explanation Mona could think of was that Lydia was out of the loop. With everything going on, her talk with Doria may have been more like a briefing. New information had not yet come her way. It was a constantly changing situation, and not outside the realm of possibility that Mona was on a mission—in other words, exactly where she was supposed to be.
How much does she know?
“Kelendril sent me to collect tomes from the library,” Mona said. She blew on her cup of tea, which may have been fine for a shifter but was way too hot for Mona. “First I ran into the group of juniors, then the shadow demon attacked. Is it ok if I leave the juniors with you?”
Lydia nodded. “We’re not going anywhere. Did you see anything else in the storm?”
Mona contemplated telling her about the fae and decided against it. “Just the demon and his ghouls.”
“And the bodies.”
Everyone turned to look at Curly, who had entered the lounge sometime during the conversation.
“There were three dead magi at the Flavius admin building,” he said, stepping into the couch-and-chair circle around which Mona, Lydia and a few other shifters sat. “There are more demons out there.”
“Lord Korka,” Mona said.
“He’s almost here,” said Curly. “I can sense him.”
Lydia was watching him closely. “What are you, boy?”
Curly replied with a sweeping bow. “Augustus Maximilian Hyde,” he said. “This girl saved my life.”
Lydia recognized the name. “Humph,” she snorted. “You should have called your parents.”
“Who?” Mona whispered to Fenix.
He shrugged in reply.
“Oh! I heard about him,” Laura whispered back. “Vasarian nobility, fourteenth in line to the faerie throne, or something. I remember because Master Cedric said there’s a bit of demon blood in their family.”
“On my mother’s side,” said Curly, overhearing. “I wouldn’t want to bother them,” he added, answering Lydia’s question.
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