“That messy, huh?”
“Yeah.” She shook her head. “Apparently, a couple of grudges dating back to this time last year and the mess around Tarvers’s death, plus the usual alpha-male bullshit over girls. Shifters were bad enough on that garbage before pop culture gave them an excuse!”
“And they say the fae are the ones with melodrama for blood,” I said with a chuckle.
“Hey, our guys at least just had a knock-down fistfight that everyone walked away from,” Mary told me. “You guys would have had a formal duel with seconds and swords!”
I made a vague handwavy gesture.
“Or a back-alley knife fight,” I replied. “Could go either way.”
Hanging onto my hot chocolate with one hand, I began massaging her neck with the other. “Everything got sorted, though?”
“Yeah. And then someone told me that someone tried to blow up my boyfriend. You okay?”
“Yeah,” I echoed. “The Masked Lords are finding a lot of ways to come at us sideways. We’ve got a hell of a trap laid out here for them, but if they don’t walk into it, we’re going to have to think of another plan.
“Almost wish my enemies would just…come at me head-on.”
I should have known better than to say anything like that.
The first explosion knocked my hot chocolate from my hand. It hit the floor and shattered, but that mess was irrelevant as a second and third explosion rocked the apartment building. Part of the ground around our living-room window, a relatively thin gap at the top of the wall, disintegrated through the wall as the explosives pulverized the concrete structure of our basement.
The screaming started even before the third explosion, and Mary and I were already running. I could smell the fire starting, too.
“At least one incendiary charge, multiple demolition charges,” she reeled off as we dodged our neighbors. Then she grabbed my shoulder before I could charge up the stairs. “Jason, the main entrance is on fire.”
I caught her meaning. The rest of the people here were headed for the stairs as well, but if the main entrance was on fire, that wasn’t an escape route.
“Everybody, stop!” I bellowed. “The fire’s in the main hall. We need to go out through the windows; the evac route is blocked.”
I managed to get enough of everyone’s attention that they slowed, then someone else shouted.
“Unit two’s wall collapsed under the window; we should be able to climb out there,” they told the crowd. “It isn’t perfect, but it’s safer than running through fire and faster than going through any of the windows down here.”
“Go, go, go!” I told everyone, standing aside to let the crowd rush past as I reached into my arsenal of superhuman and just plain weird senses.
“No cold iron,” I murmured to Mary. “Building is still standing, so…”
“They weren’t trying to bring the building down,” she concluded. “Set it on fire, wreck it in the long term, but without causing too much collateral damage… Someone’s trying to draw you out.”
I grimaced. The thought of my entire apartment building being attacked just to get at me rankled. But Mary was also probably right.
“Okay.”
The last of our neighbors disappeared into unit two and I grimaced.
“Through the fire?” I asked.
“Seems the last place they’ll be expecting us. What about your guards?”
“They’ll have retreated Between if their apartments were threatened,” I told her. “At least one should be outside watching everything, though. If there are attackers out there, we’ll have reinforcements pretty quickly.”
“Can’t you do the same?” she asked.
“I could,” I admitted as I drew my whip and sword from Between. “But I’m not going to. Whoever these bastards are, they just set an apartment building on fire to draw me out. I can’t let that pass.”
The asura might even be waiting Between, too.
“You know they’re counting on that, right?”
“I know,” I agreed. “And I’m going to go fight them anyway. You don’t have to come with—”
“Fuck that bullshit,” Mary snapped, producing an assault rifle I hadn’t realized was concealed in our apartment. “I’m with you. I just wanted to make sure you knew we were walking into a trap.”
I could conjure fire out of nothing, but that didn’t give me any great deal of control over existing fire. My Gift of Force, however, was easily turned to creating a shield that allowed us to walk through the burning front entrance of my apartment building without even feeling the warmth.
There were sirens in the distance, but somehow, I was certain they weren’t going to get here before the current situation was resolved. I wasn’t even sure, yet, who my attackers were, but I was sure they’d made arrangements to make sure they could kill me without, at least, uniformed witnesses.
I barely even registered the sniper shot. My shield stopped the bullet despite its cold iron tip—barely—and Mary returned fire almost on instinct.
It was harder to miss the sound of a 5.56mm assault rifle going off over your shoulder. Mary was a better shot than any human could reasonably manage, and the sniper fire stopped after the second round.
The people setting this up had almost certainly not expected a sniper to take me out, but some efforts had to be made.
I wasn’t surprised, however, when a familiar-looking cluster of broad-shouldered Indian men materialized out of the crowd.
“I don’t suppose they’re here for a Bollywood dance number, do you?” I asked Mary.
“No. Do you want to talk?”
Whether or not I wanted to talk was rapidly rendered irrelevant as a dozen or so asura mercenaries produced AK-47s and opened fire.
One heavy slug, even tipped with cold iron, wasn’t a threat to the shields I could muster now. A dozen assault rifles firing cold iron tipped rounds…that was an entirely different story, and I swept Mary forward with me as I used Force to lift us out of the line of fire.
I threw off her aim and only one of the mercenaries went down to her fire. They’d probably live—the Indian supernaturals apparently had super-tough skin and regenerative capabilities—but the man was down.
The one I caught with my whip was less lucky. I sent fire twisting around at waist height, cutting through his weapon, his hands and his torso in a single strike.
More gunfire answered and I left Mary behind cover as I bounced off the ground and charged the asura.
She shot down two more of them before I reached them, but they were fast. By the time I was into close range with them, the AKs were gone. Curved long swords replaced them and I charged into a blurring labyrinth of steel.
A golden glow lit up around their swords and hands as I met them. A shield of Force knocked away the first asura to charge me, and the silver-hilted Hunter’s sword impaled the second one. Fire flashed around to knock the second pair who came at me to the ground, and Force augmented my backward dodge as more tulwars came slicing at me.
There were more asura here than when I’d started my charge, and I was starting to realize this might have been a bad idea. I skipped Between, dodging around a trio of stabbing blades and reappearing behind the attackers.
Whip and flame smashed across their legs and that trio went down.
Then Raja Venkat Asi was there himself, a glittering shield of golden light suddenly separating me from his men.
“You’re better than I was told,” he said calmly to me. “I should have asked for more money.”
“You shouldn’t have taken the damn job,” I replied. “I don’t like people trying to kill me.”
“I am a weapon in the hands of those who call upon me,” Asi said. “I am not responsible for the choices and actions of those who purchase my services.”
That was…fucked up.
“So, who’s responsible if I cut you in half?” I asked sweetly as I drew power around myself. Asi’s golden bubble had separated us from everyo
ne—almost certainly buying time for his people to retreat.
“That won’t happen,” he noted. “But if it were to, responsibility would fall on those who hired me. I am but a tool. Theirs are the hands that wield me.”
“Right. So, that philosophy is fucked,” I told him. “You just blew up a building. I’m pretty sure I’m going to hold you responsible for that.”
“You are not required to agree with me,” Asi replied. “All I ask is that you die in an orderly fashion.”
“Not going to happen.”
He smiled.
“I didn’t think so.”
We both moved. Even my senses had a problem keeping up with him, but I managed it. I parried his first strike, then his second.
By the fourth parry, I started to realize I was probably outmatched. I was managing to keep Asi away from me, but that was all I was managing.
By the time we’d been going back and forth for about ten seconds, I realized he was toying with me. Both of us were capable of nonphysical attacks, but I was simply too busy fending him off to try anything else.
He…wasn’t.
I dove sideways, letting him thrust through where I had been standing, and brought the whipstock around in a vicious blow. White-green fire flashed across the golden bubble he’d conjured and hammered into a shield of shimmering light gathering around Asi’s free hand.
He smiled.
“Not bad. I am, however, running out of ti—”
The golden bubble disintegrated under a hail of gunfire, and Asi dodged backward as half a dozen Hunters stepped out of the shadows. The asura were either down or fleeing, and fire and fury surrounded Coleman’s people.
A new golden shield deflected the rounds that came near him, and Raja Venkat Asi bowed to me.
“It seems I underestimated your preparations. We are hardly done, Sir Kilkenny.”
Before I could say more, the golden shield flashed inward on him and he was gone.
I stepped forward and poked at the ground where he had been standing and shook my head.
“Damh?”
“Sir?”
“Take any of them that are still alive prisoner,” I ordered. “Then we all need to get the hell out of here.” I pointed to the oncoming sirens. “I’m guessing Asi’s people held up the fire trucks, but we need to be gone before they arrive.”
And that meant, sadly, that I wasn’t going back to my stuff.
Fortunately, I kept my arms and armor Between. Everything else, though…
Yeah. Mary was going to be pissed.
8
“Are you okay?” were the first words out of Mary’s mouth as she passed through the rough cordon of Hunters.
“I’m fine. Unfortunately, so’s Asi,” I said bitterly. I turned around to look at the ruined building behind us. “Someone’s going to pay for this.”
“Later,” Coleman replied. “Riley’s bringing your car around. You need to get going yourself.”
“I do,” I agreed, watching as my big Cadillac whipped out of the parking lot, the driver cavalierly ignoring the still-burning building. He brought the SUV the Queen had bought for me to a halt in front of us.
“Mary, Damh, in the car,” I told them. “Everyone else, go Between to the warehouse. We’ll meet you there.”
There were a series of nods and then the Hunters began to blink out. None of the Companions or other Vassals were there tonight, but I was going to need my car—and I needed to talk to Damh Coleman.
And it wasn’t like there’d actually been any prisoners. The asura had taken anyone alive with them when they’d retreated.
The three of us piled into the back of the SUV and Riley took off, barely exiting one end of the street as the fire engines finally arrived on the other.
“Police are still about a minute out,” the Hunter driving told us, the earpiece he was wearing obviously linked to a police scanner. “I’m guessing the half-dozen accidents holding everybody up were anything but.”
“Raja Asi told me they’d made sure no one interfered,” I agreed. “I’m guessing they were about as careful to make sure no one died in those as they were with the fire.”
Mary winced.
“I can’t tell if everyone made it out,” she whispered.
“Neither can I. And there was enough gunfire going around that I’m not sure there weren’t casualties from that,” I admitted. I was trying to stay calm, but I wanted Asi’s head. On a platter. Potentially in pieces.
“We didn’t lose any of our own, but a couple of the Hunters and Companions got burnt pretty badly,” Coleman told me. “Your brother’s treating them right now, Mary. Thank you for putting us in touch.”
“Not many doctors who can treat supernaturals,” Mary said. Her brother, another wildcat shifter, was the main doctor working for the shifters in Calgary. Oberis had his own doctor, but the Hunters would go with whichever of the pair could get there first.
“No. And your brother may be the only reason one of them lives,” the Hunter captain replied. “We’ll thank him appropriately, too, but you put us in touch.”
She nodded, leaning her head heavily against my shoulder.
“What now, Jason?” she asked.
“Damh, we need to stop playing defense,” I told the Hunter. “Can you pull together a meeting of our main contacts at the warehouse in the morning? Asi and his people are somewhere in the city. If MacDonald can’t find them…”
“If he could find them, he’d have already told us,” Coleman pointed out. “You can shield from a Wizard’s Sight, and the asura clearly are doing so. I’ll make the arrangements, Jason, but I don’t know what else we can do to find them.”
“We’ll find something,” I insisted. “One apartment building fire is enough for this mess.”
“The warehouse” was the same facility we’d jumped Between to at the first asura attack, a facility in one of Calgary’s smaller and quieter industrial districts. Officially, it was owned by a company in Ireland that was looking into toy distribution in Canada.
A different toy distributor in Ireland paid my salary as their “Vice President of Sales, Western Canada.” I’m not certain that there are any toy companies in Ireland or the United Kingdom that Mabona doesn’t own.
There were half a dozen or so racks of shelving filled with boxes claiming to be toys. Only the first rack actually held toys—Fisher-Price would have been quite upset to find out what we’d replaced the contents of their boxes with.
Toy makers generally didn’t sell custom-machined cold iron bullets, after all.
Two Companions were waiting at the front door, non-Hunter Gentry with the Steyr AUGs acquired via the Defence Forces of Ireland. They opened the doors to allow us to park the Cadillac inside, then closed them behind us.
“Corpses and gear are being moved to Sector D,” the guards told us as we got out of the car. “Dr. Tenerim is in Sector B.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Riley, get the car into the lot, then find somewhere to crash. We’ll need a plan soon enough.”
Coleman and Mary trailed behind me as I headed into the southwest corner of the warehouse—Sector B.
Clementine Tenerim was stripping off a pair of operating gloves and washing his hands outside a clear plastic tent in that corner. Through the plastic I could see a Wild Hunt medic checking in on our two burn victims.
“They’re going to be fine,” he told me, then shook his head. “The asura didn’t need my help, thankfully. Connor wouldn’t have made it without assistance.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Coleman told him. “We’ll see that you’re well compensated for your service.”
“I came because you asked, not because of money,” Clementine replied, but he nodded his acceptance as he said it.
“I know,” I said. “But the Wild Hunt pays our debts, my friend. Thank you.”
He hugged Mary and then me. He wasn’t normally physically affectionate, but I returned the hug regardless. It had been a scary evening.
“Do try not to die, Jason,” he ordered. “I don’t want to have to deal with Mary grieving. It would just all around suck.”
I chuckled, shaking my head at him.
“Staying alive is high on my to-do list,” I replied. I turned to Coleman. “You have somewhere Mary and I can crash?”
“We do,” he confirmed. “We’re a little strained since we just lost the three apartments we were using to keep an eye on you, but we always figured we’d need the space to pull everyone inside the defense in an emergency.”
“Good call. Get that meeting set up, Damh. We need a plan.”
“Not least, boss, we need to find you a new place to rest your head.” he told me.
Mary sighed.
“And, apparently, we’re going to have to send someone shopping once we’ve got a home.”
I squeezed her hand. I didn’t have much of real sentimental value. Not even a picture of my mom, even before the fire. Most of the real loss in the fire for us would be hers.
And there was nothing I could do to make that right.
9
The news in the morning was hard to watch.
Four people had died in the car accidents to keep the fire department away from the apartment building. Seventeen had died in the fire itself, and another twenty had needed to be rushed to the hospital to save their lives.
Two more had been wounded by gunfire, and the police were giving grim speeches about gang violence. Twenty-one dead and over twenty people in the hospital…all in an attempt to murder me.
“This cannot be allowed to recur,” I said grimly.
This time, the entire conference was taking place via video. I was alone in an office in the warehouse with several screens set up around me, with Oberis, Mabona and MacDonald on the screens.
“About the only value I saw in your hole in the ground was that it seemed securable and unlikely to be traced,” Mabona told me. “Surrounding yourself with mortals was never a good idea.”
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