“Take it back!”
“The hell I will. The ki-rin lied!”
Oops. I had been the one arguing against the ki-rin lying. Pietr had been the one saying it had. Oh, well. I didn’t think my pugilistic dance buddy cared who had been saying what, anyway. All us be-nosed humans probably looked alike to it, anyway.
It took another swing at me, and missed, the attempted roundhouse almost coming back and clocking it in the face. Long arms and poor depth perception did not a good brawler make. Also, I suspected it had been there drinking for a while before we arrived.
“You break it, you pay for it,” the bartender said, barely looking up from his papers. I ducked under another wild swing, and tried to see if anyone else was going to come join the dance. There were three fatae sitting at a nearby table, watching, but they didn’t seem inclined to do anything, and the human in the corner was carefully not seeing a thing. If I wanted to, I could just head for the door; Pietr would get out on his own. No part of the deal had involved getting a concussion; our medical plan sucked. I judged the dash I’d have to make past my dance buddy to get to the door, then abandoned the idea. The hook wasn’t set yet. It was more than just making sure the suggestion took, there was a “tag” on it, a sort of sticky-note made of current. A Talent might notice it, if they were the suspicious type, but only if they were looking. Nulls and fatae should be oblivious, heeding the urge to pass it on to whomever they mentioned the rumor to, passing it along like a cold virus.
“Stinkin’ lyin’ humans, tryin’ to drive us out of town…”
Sounded like our unfriendly neighborhood bigots had been priming the pump for us. Good. Or: not good, but useful. The fatae took another swing, and I ducked inside rather than away, getting right up in his face.
The smell of fish and stale beer almost knocked me over, but I leaned in anyway, and whispered, “The ki-rin lied.”
Tag.
The fatae snarled, even as I tried to duck back away, and those overlong arms clobbered me good. The room spun, and I swayed, just as a bottle came down on the back of squid-nose’s head. He fell forward onto the barstool and crumpled to the ground. Pietr stood there, blinking at me and grinning lopsidedly. “I think we’re done here.”
Two down, four to go.
thirteen
Ben had seen his partner exalted, exhausted, despondent and in the grips of a terrifying and dangerous euphoria. He had never seen Ian look quite the way he did right now. It wasn’t sadness, it wasn’t exhaustion, or resignation, but some terrible blend of them all, on a base of fury.
The moment the pups had left on their various missions, his partner had let his facade slip, making Ben leap to the only possible conclusion.
“Aden.”
His partner nodded curtly. Only his beloved little sister could so tangle Ian up that he didn’t know what to do.
“She really doesn’t learn, does she.” Ian wanted to remember the little girl she had been, once upon a time, who adored her big brother and would do anything for him. Ben knew better. That little girl had grown into a woman who still adored her brother—and would do anything to stop him.
Although Aden probably called it “bringing him back to his senses.”
“She was behind the most recent rumors, too? I’d have thought she could do better than that.”
“Oh, she did. She went several steps better.” A strand of Ian’s hair lifted, staticky with current, and he smoothed it down, focusing until his core settled again. “Our Pusher was there, in the meeting.”
“I assume you had him taken out and beaten.” Ben wasn’t joking.
“After he told me who hired him, yes. The meeting was adjourned rather quickly after that. Nobody wanted to admit that they had been manipulated by a Null. Oh, yes. Aden only gave the man his doorway into me. The rumors were the work of someone else—Aden’s partner. A Null.” His mouth twisted like he’d bitten into something rotten.
“She brought an outsider in?” The only thing Aden Stosser hated more than her brother’s pet project was mixing Nulls with what she saw as Council business.
“I suspect they brought her in,” Ian said. “Which means that her obsession has become a commonly known thing beyond the Council. She needs to be warned.”
Ben had his own opinions about that—namely, that it would do her a world of good to be taken down by a Null; teach her some humility—but this was his best friend’s sister they were talking about. So he merely nodded, and twenty minutes later, without permission of or warning to their target, Ian Translocated them directly into the house Aden had been renting, down on the Carolina shoreline.
It took a minute to recover, and by then Ian was already striding forward.
She was sitting in an oversize living room, a glass of tea resting on the table beside her, a book open on her lap, and soft music playing from speakers in another room. Behind her, the shoreline ebbed and flowed under overcast skies.
“You’re being used.” Ian’s voice was like molten lava, cutting through Aden’s protestations at their unannounced entrance, and practically making the air sizzle in reaction.
Aden didn’t even bother to deny his implicit accusation by asking what he meant. “Maybe I’m using them?”
Ben bit the inside of his lip, knowing any comment he made right now would only make things worse. Aden thought she was far more of a player than she was. She was formidable, yes—she was a Stosser, after all—but she still wasn’t as good as she thought she was.
Ian and Aden stared at each other, the family resemblance striking in both the physical and the feel of the current rising in both of them. They had been born of the same family, trained by the same mentor…they were so very similar, and yet completely opposed in this matter.
“Pick better tools,” Ian said, finally. “This one will cut you, too. And I’m tired of bandaging up your damned booboos, especially when you get them working against my people.”
His sister stood up and stalked forward to face him. She was a foot shorter, but carried herself with the same arrogance that made her seem taller. “Your people? Your puppies. Your little lapdogs, sniffing and peeing everywhere.” She pulled back her words, and tried again. “My Pusher was only supposed to make you both reconsider. But something went wrong with your partner. He—” her voice dripped venom; she had never liked Ben much “—was warded somehow, the Push kept getting misdirected.”
Ben checked himself slightly at that—misdi…oh. Damn. Bonnie, the connection between them, had she gotten hit with it? But there was no time to worry about it now.
“Ian, stop this.” Aden sounded sincerely worried. “Stop this before someone gets hurt.”
“And by someone you mean…what?” Ian had his temper on but good now. “A Council member who did something they shouldn’t have, and gets called on it? Or a Null teenager killed because current got out of control? Which is the greater sin, Aden?”
Her temper flared again to match his own. “Don’t you blame that on me! It was your fault for starting this. The Council has been taking care of their own for generations, and doing a good job of it, and lonejacks are lonejacks, they deal with their own people. That’s the way it’s always been, and it’s a good system.”
“It’s a crap system. You of all people should know that.”
Ben tensed. Any mention of Chicago was thin ice, even in the best of situations. This…wasn’t that.
“Is there a problem, Aden?”
Two men in the hallway, suddenly, and a large dog next to them. Ben felt his skin prickle. If they were Talent, they were holding back, hiding themselves. But Nulls could be just as deadly. And dogs…
For all that he joked about the puppies, Benjamin Venec was afraid of dogs. And Aden, that bitch, knew it.
“Is there a problem?” one of the men repeated.
“There’s no problem,” Ian said, his voice practically oozing the confidence and sincerity that got them out of—and into—trouble on a regular basis. But the speaker ha
d his eyes on Aden, and gave no sign of having heard him.
“Bill. This is my brother, Ian. He stopped by to see if we couldn’t work our little differences out.” Aden’s voice was high and brittle, filled with…anger, Ben decided. He didn’t know her well, not as well as he did her brother, but he could tell that much. She was angry, and a little bit afraid—but of Ian? Or this Bill? Was this their mysterious businessman?
“Ian Stosser. What an…unexpected pleasure.”
Ben, thus ignored, felt free to step back from the scene, even as the man with Bill did the same, taking the dog with him. They were not the players in this little playlet, just understudies.
Or stagehands.
“So. You’re the scum trying to use my sister’s delusions for your own purposes.”
Ben groaned. Ian had gone from Player to Big Brother. Damn it, this was no time to protect the crazy little bitch….
“Ian. Be polite to my partner.” Aden’s voice was sharp…the fear was rising. Why? Ben reconsidered Bill. Tall and well-dressed, with a face that could pass as comfortably handsome…but there was something about him that set Ben’s hackles on alert. This was a nasty bastard. A sadist, possibly. Mean, definitely.
“Why?” Ian stalked forward, circling the man. “I know you,” he said flatly. “Bill West. You were involved in the Sagara incident, back last autumn. Eight people died.”
“Hardly involved. We employed one of the consultants who worked for the company in question. The Sagara field was completely out of—”
“Eight people died because your consultant said it was all right to drill. Right into an unquiet ley line.”
Venec hadn’t heard about that. The Council must have hushed it up. That meant this man had his hooks into at least one Council member, somewhere.
West made an elegant gesture with his hands. “Sometimes, people die. That is the price of risk. You know that, certainly, of all people. Or have I heard the story of the Chicago incident incorrectly?”
Ian turned on his sister, his teeth bared in a snarl. Ben stepped forward, realizing as he did so that he was intending to protect Aden, not Ian. Both Stossers had tempers that could combust in an instant, and regrets would only come later. The dog snarled, and Ben stopped cold.
“You told him?” Ian’s hair lifted with static. “Private Council matters—that Council matter—you told to an outsider? Have you totally taken leave of your senses, Aden? And they say that I’m a loose cannon? You are the one who endangers us!”
Infuriated, she raised her hand, wreathed in dark blue current like a neon torch. Ben swore, pulling current from his own core to form a shield. Ian would do anything for a cause…but he would not believe his sister could willingly kill.
The current in her hand said differently.
“I told him nothing.” Her voice was tight: she was afraid of her partner. That made him the priority.
Getting between two Stossers was not something he would recommend, but he would have done it if the first man, Bill, hadn’t raised his hand as well, summoning not current, but his companion. Ben hesitated, feeling the current rising in him, waiting for direction.
“If they die now,” West said, almost conversationally, “our problems are solved. Such a shame, the siblings driven to this…”
Even as Ian and Aden turned at that comment, the second man moved forward, and Ben saw that he was holding a nasty-looking handgun.
“Idiot Null,” Ben muttered, and shifted his aim, the lash of current he had planned for Aden instead flickering out and wrapping itself around the gunman’s hand. The man yelped as it burned the skin, jerking his hand upward even as he pulled the trigger.
The bullet escaped the muzzle, smashing into something that broke with a hard crash. The current wove around the metal, fusing the internal workings. If that bastard tried to fire again, it would explode in his hand.
“Don’t bring a goddamn gun to a goddamn current fight,” he snarled. Guns worked against Talent if they were unprepared, not expecting the blow, but Venec was never unprepared.
“You dare?” Aden asked West, her voice a perfect match for Ian’s: hard and hot and outraged. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Ben felt the urge to roll his eyes. There were days he sympathized with people who wanted to kill this family.
“I dare whatever I please,” West said, somehow refraining from showing the sneer that was in his voice, as though his gunman hadn’t just been unarmed and rendered useless. “I told you I wanted to stop him…. And you’ve just given me the perfect scenario. Nobody will doubt that you two let your tempers get the better of you, his loyal partner tried to intervene, and tragedy ensued….”
He let his other hand dip into his pocket, and came out with a long black tube. “One of my associates came up with this,” he said, lifting it so that they could see it clearly. “It’s a prototype, but I am assured that it works quite well. Try to use current against me, and you will regret it, I assure you.”
“There are many things in life I regret,” Aden said flatly. “Killing you won’t be one of them.”
Current flashed, a hot orange neon that filled the room and made Ben blink, but before he could recover there was a backlash like he’d never seen before, the current somehow twisted on itself and sent back toward the caster. Aden absorbed most of it, the shock dancing across her skin like the static globes they sold in novelty stores that mimicked lightning storms. Ian recovered first, slapping a dark blue bolt at their attacker’s torso, aimed directly at the heart. This time, Ben saw the wand lift, and the current redirect itself to the mouth of the tube, regurgitating at only slightly less power, heading directly back at Ian.
In the afterflash, Ben also saw the second man pulling a long, narrow knife from somewhere and lunging at Aden.
Personally, he’d let her take a blade, if he thought it would get her out of their hair. But explaining that to Ian could get dicey. So he lunged in turn, going low under the current streams, and knocked the guy’s feet out from under him, bringing them both onto the hardwood flooring. He was tired, and annoyed, and worried about that tube-thing, so he didn’t use any finesse, shoving his hand down on the man’s chest and stopping his heart with one swift blow of current.
The body ran on electricity. Current ran alongside electricity. Killing someone with current was easy, if you had the stomach for it.
He rolled, as soon as the job was done, and came up behind West, crouching. The tube, he assessed quickly, was enough to hold off one Talent, but not two: the combined brother-and-sister attack was making West stagger. All it would take to finish him off would be one distraction.
Ben shoved forward, grabbing West’s arm and tearing it downward, so the current he was redirecting went down into the floor. He felt a sharp tingle run through him, but a Talent was grounded to prevent that sort of thing from doing damage.
Bill West wasn’t that fortunate. He let out a scream, even as the current surged through him like ground-to-cloud lightning, frying his entire system.
He fell to his knees, his nice suit barely mussed, and dropped forward.
Silence, and the scent of burnt flesh, filled the room.
“I hope you didn’t put too much of a security deposit down on this place,” Ian said, stepping forward to pick up the tube. It had melted under the current rush; the plastic was fused into a solid, misshapen rod. There was no way to determine what it had been or how it had worked.
“Damn you, Ian.” Aden sounded more tired than angry, however. “West was…out of line. I want to stop you, not kill you. I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“And yet,” Ben said, unable to stop himself, “people keep dying every time you get involved. Maybe that should be something that you consider?”
“Ben,” Ian said, cautioning him. Then he turned to face his sister. “We did good work together here. Teamwork, even.”
She almost smiled, and for an instant Ben could see the little girl she had been, the one his partner still saw when he loo
ked at her. Then it was gone. “Don’t get used to it.”
“You have to stop this. Ben is right. If you’re going to ally yourself with people who don’t have the same scruples you maintain…either yours will get bent, or they will get you dead. Is that what you want?”
“I can’t stop, Ian.”
Ian sighed, the sound of an old man, too tired to go on fighting. “And neither can I.”
Ben really, really wanted to tell them both off, but Ian’s expression stopped him. Of all the things he had gone through with Ian, this one thing he could not follow. Ben didn’t have family. He didn’t understand, he could not share the pain…or whatever odd joy his friend got from having her around, even when they were fighting. He could only be there when the pieces fell apart. And with Aden, inevitably, they would. But it could not be tonight.
They still had a job to finish.
It was nearly midnight when Pietr and I ended up back at my apartment, our last target tagged and bagged. It wasn’t anything planned…we just ended up there, without discussion. Without expectation, either; the entire evening had been companionable but totally…packlike, I guess. No vibes, uncomfortable or otherwise. Part of my ego, I think, was a little bruised—what, I wasn’t so irresistible that he was dying for another taste?—but mostly it was just…comfortable.
Thinking of sex made me think of Venec, and even in my exhaustion I knew with him it would never be comfortable. Comforting, maybe. But never comfortable.
Pietr went facedown on the sofa when we staggered in, not even bothering to take off his shoes, and didn’t move. Poor thing. I thought about getting a blanket and draping it over him, but it was too much energy to move. I slumped in the chair, and stared at the mosaic.
We had figured that it would take about twenty-four hours for the seeds we’d planted to grow into anything useful. That meant we were in waiting mode until tomorrow, maybe even longer. In the meanwhile, I decided, it was time to deal with other things.
Current could purge booze from your system, but it wasn’t fun or pretty. After I’d rinsed my mouth out a couple of times, I took a long hot shower and took a long, slow and steady hit off the building next door’s electrical system. I wasn’t taking enough to raise their costs, but it was starting to become a regular habit, and that was rude. Maybe I should send their super a bouquet of flowers? I really was going to have to find some kind of regular refueling station, something that wouldn’t impact other people. I’d have to ask the pack, see what they were doing. It wasn’t the kind of thing you discussed casually, usually, but I figured we’d pretty much gone beyond normal Cosa manners our first case, and not looked back.
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