They attacked the ghouls, many of them falling, more being maimed. But they did not stop, not even to help their comrades. The crowd pushed forward, upward, through the curtains and to the surface. Suffering terrible loses and tearing apart the ghouls in their path.
Logan was nearly trampled to death. He suffered several bruises from the heavy feet of gifted in their shifted form. He was left panting and cradling one arm. His ribs hurt, and he thought his ankle might be broken. But he was alive…unlike so many of the others.
The necromancer’s power began to fade. Maggie pushed with her holy magic, driving the last of the black magic from the club. She gasped from the exertion, tilted where she floated in the air. Wavered for a moment before rebalancing.
It’s over. He’s gone.
The corpses, all over Club Noir, stopped twitching and struggling to come back to life. Maggie floated down to the dance floor. My real age must be showing, she realized, as the bouncers looked at her the way all men do when she appears elderly. It had taken all of her magic to battle the necromancer, stripping away the glamour enchantment that she put on every morning.
There are worse vices than vanity.
She sighed, taking in the bloody dance floor, the moaning injured, and feeling every bit as old as she looked. She coaxed a bit more holy magic into her bloodstream and started healing the wounded. Rationing the last bits of her magic so that she could help as many people as possible.
By the time she found Logan, there was nothing left. He was slumped against a brick wall, wheezing and looking miserable. Maggie slid down next to him. It was amusing to see his reaction. First, Logan didn’t know who she was. Then realization dawned on his face. Then he tried to play it cool. All through a puffy, bruised, and scratched up face.
“Fuck,” said Logan. It came out slurred, result of a fat lip.
“Fuck,” Maggie agreed. She started to cry. Silently, until her nose clogged up and she had to sniff. She looked over and saw that Logan was crying too. Big, oily tears rolling down his cheeks to his beard. And she knew that it wasn’t because of his injuries, or how close he’d come to death. He was a good man, Logan. Maggie had known that for a long time. The city needed people like him, now more than ever.
In time, as the survivors organized and began to move the injured and dead, asking each other, “how did this happen? Where is the councillor?” Maggie rose to her feet, and gave Logan a hand. “I found him,” she said, helping Logan limp along.
He didn’t question it, didn’t ask her how she knew. For a long while he didn’t say anything at all.
“We’re going to get him, Maggie,” he said, at last. “But I’ve got a feeling more evil is on its way. I don’t like the way things have been going. We’re in deep trouble. This city is in deep trouble, and I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”
8
“It’s not safe here anymore,” said Amber.
“What do you mean? What happened?” Suri lay in bed, eyes closed, after a long ice bath. She had been about to fall asleep when Amber called through their matching tattoos.
As Amber began to tell the story of what happened at Club Noir, Suri snapped awake. She sat up in her bed and clenched a handful of her long, red hair. Both of them were crying by the end of it.
“I’m coming. I’ll tell Vestrix to open a rift.”
“You can’t. What’s going on in Lodum is too important. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to do anything. The priest, Maggie I think her name is. She’s getting all the gifted together.”
“No,” said Suri, shaking her head. “I have to come. I can’t leave you there.”
“Listen to me,” said Amber, calming her voice. “I’m going to stay.”
“No!”
“Just listen! I’m going to stay in the city. I can help.”
It was one of the few times that Suri wished her best friend wasn’t such an amazing seer. Of course she was needed by the other gifted. It was selfish for Suri to want to keep her best friend for herself. She didn’t care.
“I don’t want you to die.” Suri tried to say it normally, but she got choked up halfway through the sentence. Just imagining if Amber had been in Club Noir when it happened…She took a deep breath. Reminded herself that Amber was a grown adult, and she couldn’t order her around. “What are you going to do?”
“Maggie needs my help to fight the necromancer. And I’m going to set up webs around the city that will detect when black magic is being used. All sorts of things. The Masters are all at the Academy, and who knows about the councillors. We’ve got to do everything we can.”
Great. Right into the middle of danger. Suri bit her lip, taking a long moment before replying. “If you don’t call me every single night I’m quitting this place and coming back.”
“No deal,” said Amber. “What if I’m working all through the night? I’ll call you when I can. I wanted to let you know. You can tell the others.”
“And make Paulie a nervous wreck?”
“Ok, bad idea. Don’t tell them. But if you don’t here from me for a while…Forget it. It’s going to be fine. Maggie is really powerful.”
“Where will you be living? Are you staying at the apartment? Alone?”
“I don’t know yet. I think we’re all going to get together at the cathedral. I’ve got to go, there’s a meeting tonight. Call you later, ok?”
Suri kept Amber talking for another five minutes. When the call ended, she stopped pacing around her room and fell onto her bed. She curled up with a body pillow between her legs and hugged it, thinking of all the people back home.
Suri woke to the sound of a howling rooster. Startled, she rolled over onto her back and looked up at the canopy above her bed. It was green and blue, not dissimilar from the magical aurora she last saw aboard Brexly Hall.
Again, the rooster howled. Suri groaned, muscles stiff from yesterday’s practice. It would have been much worse if Raja hadn’t insisted on her ice bath.
Slowly, she pulled off her three layers of sheets and stepped down from her bed. It was more luxurious than anything she had slept in, or even seen in a store. King sized with four polished brass bedposts and an embroidered canopy, it looked like it belonged in a Vanity Fair photo shoot. Vestrix had assured Suri that it was among Black Gauntlet’s most modest accommodations. It made Suri wonder about the Lady of Arrows’ bedroom. Or Raja’s, for that matter.
Heck, they probably had an entire floor to themselves. A penthouse. Vestrix, that is. I still don’t know what Raja’s role is in all of this.
From what she had been able to tell, her one-time Prince Charming was more of a servant than an esteemed guild member. She had caught him, many times as she traveled through the guild headquarters on her daily duties, sweeping the stone floors, hanging up laundry on a clothes line, clearing tables in the mess hall, repairing a fraying carpet, replacing stones in the wall of the courtyard, and going about all manner of odd jobs. A fae handy man, it seemed. But Suri had learned that, in Faerie, things were rarely what they seemed.
Other times, Raja would lounge with the rest of the guild members. Palavering with the Vestrix’s lieutenant, the tiger shifter. Or laughing, drinking. Wrestling with other fae in the indoor training arena.
He could be a friend to the guild, someone’s nephew, a trainee, a servant. Suri did not know, and she was too stubborn to ask. Not with the way things were between them. She didn’t want to show that she cared about him at all.
Suri was wriggling her toes, rubbing her eyes when her door opened. A rooster came inside, clucking, scratching the floor and walking in a bobble-headed zig-zag over her carpet.
“Ca-CAW!”
Dedric’s laugh echoed down the hallway outside. It was his charge to wake everyone up in the morning, and he could do it in any way he wanted. Yesterday it was smashing a gong with one of his blacksmithing hammers. The day before that, pounding on doors as he ran down the hallway, yelling “Fire! There’s a fire!” Suri suspected that the foul-mouthed
master blacksmith had volunteered for the job.
Suri rolled out of bed, landed on the soft carpet four feet above where her mattress was raised. She hit the ground in a crouch, noted how her leg muscles had strengthened. Her thighs and calves were thicker now, thanks to all-day body exercises. She was squatting close to 300lbs, and it showed. But isn’t it weird to put on muscle this quickly? It must be the fae blood. I’ll have to ask Vestrix.
The Lady of Arrows had been so busy that Suri still hadn’t talked to her about the full effects of her fae blood. And the Blackwater family…her dead parents…
Suri’s ignored the rooster, turning her attention to the massive black book on her nightside table. She’d only gotten past the second page. Normally a voracious reader, the training tired her out so much that, by the end of the day, she found herself reading the same lines over and over again. Falling asleep, snapping awake, then going deep into slumber with the book open across her stomach.
She doubted the old tome held many answers. A brief flip through had shown a lot of family trees, records of marriages and business contracts, appointments, and more dry record keeping. I need Amber to read it and give me a Cliff’s Notes. Suri was more into Michael Bay action-adventures.
The only thing she knew was that her fae features, and abilities, had been hidden away. A curse, that her aunts guessed was placed on Suri by her mother, before she passed away. Touching the Blackwater stone had broken the curse.
Suri stepped in front of the full-body mirror.
A stranger stared back.
The tips of pointed ears stuck out through the curls of Suri’s thick red hair. She rubbed them, feeling as if they itched, and turned away.
It’s like I’m wearing a mask.
Left on her own, Suri might have had a meltdown. An identity crisis of epic proportions. Vestrix had not given her time to contemplate the philosophical questions of her existence. Once Suri stepped out of her room and the day’s activities began, there was no stopping until she was dead tired and struggling to tuck herself into bed. Never mind pondering who she had turned into.
Amber still didn’t know. The day after, when they talked, Suri had meant to lay it all out. But, for whatever reason, the words hadn’t come. She didn’t know what to say. Maybe because I don’t know half of what the heck is going on.
Suri worried that she was changing too quickly. Tanned from hours outdoors every day, when one week ago she had been pale. Muscled in places she never knew muscles could grow. Hands scraped and battered from being whacked with swords. There was no time to sit and think.
Suri opened her wardrobe and chose at random from the set of identical training clothes. She brushed her teeth, splashed water on her face, scooped up the rooster, and left her room. It’s nice living somewhere where I don’t have to worry about locking the door.
The Black Gauntlet members with rooms on her floor were leaving their rooms at the same time, making their way down to the mess hall on the second floor. They were in the center of the building. To Suri’s left was a metal railing with spindles. Beyond the railing, open air. The middle of the building was an empty space, allowing everyone on the hallways ringing it, on all ten floors, to look across at the hallways on the other side, and down on the main floor below. It reminded Suri of an open concept library.
She paused, leaned over the railing as one of the other residents, a woman with python arms and hair so short it was almost a buzz cut, gripped the railing and vaulted herself over the side. They were five floors up.
Suri gaped, nearly called for help before remembering what kind of people lived at Black Gauntlet’s headquarters.
The woman dropped like a stone, then put out an arm and caught the railing of the second floor. She smoothly pulled herself over the side, into the hallway and out of sight.
“Yuri hates waiting for food.” The explanation came from a female fae, who was watching Suri from a few paces away. “Name’s Lorace,” she said. She stuck out her hand, and not in the awkward way that Raja had shown. Lorace had shaken hands before. Actually communicated with people from Earth. A rarity in Lodum, let alone Black Gauntlet.
Suri smiled and introduced herself. They walked as a pair down the stairs to the mess hall, where they each grabbed a fork, knife, and wooden plate. The mess hall was split by a long feast table. It was covered with food that Suri recognized from Earth. The human refugees were hard at work in their giant kitchen, producing more food than even the hungry mouths at Black Gauntlet could eat.
“It’s our luck that you came here,” said Lorace, putting a mountain of food on her plate. As the mountain grew heavier, the plate widened, until it was basically a platter. Nice enchantment. One of the many little perks that comes from living in Faerie, where magic is plentiful and you don’t need to hide it.
“I haven’t eat this good in—Hey!” Lorace called, catching sight of another fae. “Meet me in the fire room, at nine.” The other fae grinned and went back to filling his plate.
Everyone was still waking up, yawning and rubbing their eyes. About a hundred of them, all swarming around the feast table, plucking different morsels of food before moving on. As quickly as the food was taken, chefs from the kitchen came down carrying more, setting big bowls and trays on the table to replace what had gone.
No butterflies, Suri thought. The chefs must not have learned that one yet.
Some of Black Gauntlet’s residents clearly had favorite dishes. A roar came from down the line. Two shifters transformed, fur popping out from the edges of their clothes. The people around them backed away, careful not to drop their plates as the shifters wrestled over a bowl of pea soup.
Suri glanced around, worriedly. Stabbed a hunk of back bacon with the serving fork and shuffled on, before someone could call dibs.
She filled her plate in short order. It was really a king’s feast, the kind of food you would get at one of the most expensive restaurants in Lodum. Before the human district had been set on fire, that is.
At first, Suri had thought the fae ate a crazy amount of food. The night after her first day of training, after stuffing herself at dinner, she realized it was required for the kind of work they were putting in. The Black Gauntlet mercenaries were all fit, and muscled. Mostly lean, with the exception of some shifters and heavily muscled fighters who wanted to bulk up.
“Yo, half-breed!”
Lorace, calling Suri from where she sat at one of the tables.
Suri had thus far kept to herself. She didn’t know any of the other residents, and they didn’t know anything about her. Besides her blood. That was obvious from Suri’s human eyes and fae ears.
She slid in next to Lorace on the bench. Yuri sat across from them, plate almost empty. Next to her was the tiger shifter, one of Vestrix’s lieutenants.
“You’re quiet,” said Lorace. “We don’t bite.”
“She’s a pup,” said the tiger shifter. “What do you expect?” He threw a pair of shoes at Suri, across the table. Suri stiffened, caught them before they hit the floor. “From Vestrix,” he explained. “Your battle socks.”
“My…battle socks?”
“Don’t be slow. They’re for fighting. There’s a rune on the bottom that enhances your movement speed. Makes your footsteps quiet, too.”
“Thanks,” said Suri, setting them on her lap. She took a bite of garlic mashed potatoes.
“Did Dedric finish your armor?”
Suri shook her head. “Tomorrow.” She picked at her food some more, then turned to the tiger shifter. He was eating with his fingers, two stains already on his light green vest. His chin was covered in maple syrup. “Do you…Do you really think I could die? Vestrix said that Lord Korka wants me dead.”
The three of them shared a glance. Lorace patted Suri on the back. “Eat each meal like it’s your last,” she said, and went back to her plate.
Suri gulped, eyes darting to the others. They didn’t say anything. She sipped her grapefruit juice.
She was abou
t to launch into a series of questions when a call rang out from the open doorway.
“Waylan’s back! He’s downstairs!”
Yuri was up in a flash, running for the exit. Lorace and the lieutenant were quick to follow, along with everyone else in the mess hall. They left their food forgotten on the table. Rushed out to the hallway, to the railing, where some jumped down to the main floor.
Suri grabbed piece of toast and a slice of bacon with one hand, her new shoes with the other, and went after them. Last to find an empty spot on the railing, but still in time to hear the announcement.
“2PM!” came the sharp, crisp voice, of who could only be Waylan. He was tall, lean, dressed in a suit of black leather that covered his arms, feet, and neck. His clean-shaven face was ghostly pale, the only skin showing on his whole body. “Polish your weapons, get into your squads and meet me in the yard. We’re going to rescue the councillor.”
Boyde Weathers! He found where they’re keeping him. ‘Two steps from fountain blue.’
Suri was under strict orders to stay in HQ. It’s like I’m grounded. Well to heck with that. This thing involved Earth and the refugees. Suri had to be involved. Besides, she was the only one around who had investigated the councillor’s disappearance. She knew more about it than the others. Of course I have to go.
She slid in next to Lorace and Yuri. Yuri smirked, but didn’t say anything. Lorace raised an eyebrow. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Rescue mission,” said Suri, chewing on the last of her bacon.
Lorace laughed. “Going against Vestrix’s orders. Naughty. I like it. What do you think, Yuri? Shall we bring her along?”
“Yea, sure. Gonna be a cakewalk.” She stretched her huge arms over her head. “Good for the noob to get field experience.”
Lorace winked at Suri. “Yuri’s our squad captain. Looks like your with us.” She pulled up the hood on the back of Suri’s training outfit. “Keep your hair hidden. Do you have a weapon?” Suri nodded. “Good. Go get it, and meet us in the yard.” She clapped Suri on the arm, and they smiled at each other.
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