Air continued to circulate around us, driven by the various supernaturals in the truck, as Mary and I leaned against one wall.
“The meeting with Theia was weird,” Mary admitted after several minutes of silence. “Was that what we were expecting?”
“It went better than I was expecting,” I confessed. “I wasn’t expecting her to be so…old, I guess.”
“She’s probably one of the oldest living sentient beings in the world,” Coleman told me. “Best guess is that she predates the ruins at Ġgantija…which are dated to about four thousand BCE.”
“So, somewhere over six thousand years old,” Mary calculated. “I didn’t think even Powers lived that long.”
“Powers don’t die of old age,” I pointed out. “I didn’t think they actually aged at all. They just tend to die before they get past about two thousand.”
“Politics,” Coleman concluded. “We know the Puck is the oldest living fae, but they’re not telling anyone how old they are.” He snorted. “Or anything else about themselves, for that matter.”
“I think Theia just…gave up,” I said slowly. “She has the power to change her form if she wants. If she looks like that, she no longer cares.” I shivered. “That complex feels like a tomb, not a home.”
“So, she’s what, sitting there waiting to die?” Mary asked. “But…she won’t?”
“That’s about what I read off her,” I agreed. “Someday, I think she’ll wake up again. Someone will push her limits or hurt one of her descendants.” I shook my head. “I wouldn’t want to be that someone. She needs a wakeup call, but her waking up will shake the pillars of the earth.”
“And until then?” my lover said softly, squeezing my hand.
“She will sit in her tomb and wait to see whether or not she can die—and the rest of the world will leave her alone, because she’s old and powerful and we aren’t going to dare to judge her!”
For all that it felt like we spent forever in the back of the trucks, Malta wasn’t a very big island, and we reached the private estate that housed the Masked Lords’ base less than three hours after Theia teleported our delegation to meet the trucks.
The hired drivers off-loaded us in silence and disappeared without a word, carefully not noticing what direction we headed off in ourselves. A few minutes after we were alone, we were settled on our stomachs on top of a hill, surveying the property.
A tall fence surrounded the entire area, with a gate and guardhouse on the driveway leading to the highway. The same fence continued down across the beach into the water, providing a secured private beach.
I didn’t know if Malta’s laws allowed that, but the estate looked like it belonged to the kind of people who could buy exceptions.
There was a twentieth-century mansion roughly in the middle of the site, a sprawling post-modernist extravaganza in glass, steel and concrete. I could see motion inside the building, so it was definitely occupied, but I doubted it was the center of the Lords’ operation there.
“The mansion is too obvious,” Coleman said aloud, echoing my thoughts.
“MacDonald’s vision said it was in a vault under a ruined fortress,” I reminded him, and pointed at the ruins. “Something like that.”
The ruins were at the north end of the beach but still well within the fenced perimeter. Ruins was doing the structure a disservice, in truth. It was a surprisingly intact late–Middle Ages fort. Someone had renovated it to host cannon at one point, and someone else had bombarded the upper levels to rubble to get rid of said cannon.
The original occupiers had clearly written it off, as most of that debris was still there and the fortress looked wrecked. Except…
“Looks like the ground floor and probably the second floor are basically intact,” I pointed out. “If you were being careful, you could easily keep it looking like a ruin to anyone passing by, even to visitors to the house, while renovating the interior to be a working building.”
“Layer in the Gift of Force, and excavating an underground structure linked to it would be easy,” Coleman agreed. “And without the Wizard’s vision, I would have ignored it…even if I was moving against the house.”
“We need more information,” Asi pointed out, the big Indian supernatural dropping to the ground next to us and looking out toward the sea. “I’d rather not have a squad of Nobles from the house hit us from behind while we’re attacking the bunker.”
“We’ll get more information,” I promised. “I brought the best scouts in the world, Raja Asi.” I waved Mary over to me. “I didn’t bring the shifters to keep my girlfriend involved and safe, gentlemen. I brought the shifters because nobody scouts like they do.”
“Jason?” Mary asked as she arrived, gripping my shoulder as she squatted next to us.
“I need you and your people to scout the target,” I told her. “We need to know how many bad guys are in the house. If you can locate an access to the fortress—or better yet, straight to the bunker or even the vault—that would be great.
“What I’d love, though I trust MacDonald enough not to need it, is confirmation of just who is here,” I concluded. “We’re about to commit an act of terror by mortal standards, which is going to attract attention. The more certain we are that this is the right place, the better.”
“We’ll see what we can find,” my lover replied. “Trust me, no one gets too concerned about random wildlife.”
Coyotes, wolves and lynxes might not be native to Malta, but feral dogs and cats were. You had to be looking closely to realize that the canine shifters weren’t dogs, and Mary’s ability to simply disappear when she chose still astonished me.
Ten minutes after I’d asked them to scout the property, all of our shifters had vanished and the rest of us settled in to wait.
There wasn’t much in terms of visible activity. A few people in the glass sections of the house. A pair of guards at the gate. A two-guard patrol wandering the property.
The guards were all fae. Gentry to a one, in fact, which made them a significant threat.
On the other hand, all of the guns my people were carrying were loaded with cold iron. We’d come loaded for fae, which meant Gentry were less of a challenge than they otherwise would be.
Without cold iron rounds, after all, Gentry were slightly tougher to kill than modern tanks.
Through the scope of my rifle, I watched the fortress. There was no activity for a while, but eventually I spotted two women stepping through what looked like a solid wall of rubble.
“Coleman, flag the rubble on the northwest corner,” I murmured. “Two people just walked right through it.”
I turned my scope to look over the women and inhaled sharply. The one on the right was a Noble I didn’t know, a gray-haired middle-aged fae radiating calm power. The one on the left, however, I knew.
Maria Chernenkov was a Pouka noble, a shapeshifting fae with a need to eat human flesh. She didn’t, however, need to be a sadistic murderer. That she did for fun.
She’d also been the wife of the Fae Lord Andrell, who had been a Masked Lord. She’d been part of the sequence of events that had led to my learning what the Masked Lords were—and she was definitely one of their operatives.
“Chernenkov is here,” I said aloud. “I guess we know we’re in the right place.”
“Huh. I figured she’d been trying to work out how to get into Calgary and kill you,” Coleman muttered back. “You did stick a cold iron spike through her shadow.”
As a Pouka noble, Chernenkov was the closest thing to truly invulnerable I’d ever encountered. Her essence lived in her shadow and could only be injured by cold iron.
I’d rammed a cold iron railroad spike through her shadow when we’d last met. From what I understood of the Pouka nobles, it was almost certainly still there. And she was one-third less immortal than she’d been before she met me.
“Yeah,” I agreed, hesitating as I studied the woman who’d repeatedly tried to kill me. “I don’t think that’s a coincide
nce.”
“You think it’s a trap?” my Hunter troop captain asked.
“I think it may as well be,” I admitted. “They had to know that, sooner or later, we’d send me or Ankaris for the spear. They had to be expecting an attack.
“Whether they’re ready for us to be here today is a different story, but they’ll have this place as secure as they can with whatever resources aren’t tied up using Asi to murder gods.”
Raja Asi hissed on the other side of me.
“Someday, Lord Kilkenny, I will have my revenge for that,” he said grimly.
“Right now, I’m counting on the fact that they won’t have allowed for you,” I told the asura. “Let’s wait for Mary to get back. I think no matter how ready we or they are, this is going to get messy.”
The shifters got back just before nightfall. Nearly four hours of scouting left them looking exhausted and hungry, but we’d carefully established a camp in the lee of the hill, hidden from both the road and the estate.
I’m not going to pretend the food we had waiting for Mary and the others was good, but it was there and waiting when they rejoined us.
We let them tear into it, then once Mary and Barry were leaning back in folding chairs with steaming cups of coffee, I arched an eyebrow at them.
“Well?”
“The place is a fortress,” Barry said bluntly. “And not just the old Hospitaller fort, either. The building might have been built with regular glass, but its been replaced since. Bulletproof and then reinforced with magic.”
“I figured. What about the bunker?” I asked.
“Looks like the main access is through the old fortress, which has at least some intact structure inside,” Mary told me. “There’s power and heat in there at least. I’d guess a modern guard barracks.”
“There doesn’t appear to be a direct access from the house,” Barry pointed out. “Smell suggests there’s an access by the garage; I’m guessing there’s actually an elevator inside there, since the garage doesn’t look big enough for more than half a dozen cars.”
I nodded. Turning the garage into an access for an underground parking garage would make sense if you were trying to hide your vehicles.
“There’s a helipad out near the beach,” the werewolf continued. “Well hidden from anywhere people might be, but it looks like they bring in supplies and people by air. Helicopters, probably floatplanes as well.”
“There certainly aren’t any boats at the pier,” Mary agreed. “About a dozen people, all fae, in the above section of the fortress.”
“Roughly the same in the house,” Barry told us. “But who can say what’s in the bunker?”
“I also picked up a familiar scent near the fortress,” my girlfriend said. “Chernenkov.”
“I saw her,” I said quietly. “Her and a noble I didn’t know. Damh—do we have cold iron spikes of any kind?”
The Hunter nodded slowly.
“We do. Not many, though. I think we’ve got half a dozen or so stored Between.”
“It’ll have to do,” I told him. “Bullets only disable her. Even if we manage to destroy the body, she’ll just find a nearby horse and resurrect herself through it.”
“Right,” Barry said. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“I was wondering why what looked like a fae court fortress had a stable. Half a dozen horses were being taken out for a ride by a grouchy-looking hag. If Chernenkov is here, then…”
“Then they’ve made sure she’d got an easy route back if things go sideways.” I shook my head. Those poor horses. A Pouka Noble’s emergency resurrection involved basically tearing their way out of the unlucky equine.
“So, what do we do?” Coleman asked.
“If we hit the bunker, people are going to swarm from the house and the fortress,” I said. “We could try and sneak in through the garage, but I’m not expecting this to go quietly.”
“We can probably hit everything,” Asi suggested. “Send my asura at the fortress, the Hunters at the house, and use the shifters to clean up anyone who runs.
“Then, while Chernenkov and her friends are distracted, you and a few of our best go in through the garage. We’re here for the spear, aren’t we? Do we really need to wipe them all out, my lord?”
“No. But we do need to break this base,” I told Asi. “When this is over, the Masked Lords need to know they have no sanctuaries, no hidden bases. I like your idea, but we need to make sure no one gets away.
“I prefer prisoners to corpses, but we can’t let the Masked Lords keep a secret base here.”
And, well, much as I should have been able to rely on Asi’s fealty, I wasn’t leaving any part of the mission entirely up to his asura.
26
We waited until nearly midnight before we kicked off the operation. None of us were particularly impeded by darkness. Our opponents weren’t impaired by darkness either, but they were used to Malta’s clock.
For us, adjusted to Calgary’s, it was early afternoon and we were all perfectly awake.
The first act was up to the Hunters. As everyone else snuck toward the fence, they moved into the guardhouse. By the time we reached the gate, it was wide open and Coleman was busy turning off what lights the property did have.
Two unconscious Gentry were restrained in cold iron manacles in the small building. They weren’t going to be a threat.
“There’s a second security room in the house,” the troop captain told me. “I can kill all of their feeds, but as soon as I do that, they’ll know there’s a problem.”
“They’ll know there’s a problem if they see us, too,” I reminded him. I turned to the others. “Ready?”
Riley would lead the assault on the house. Asi would lead the assault on the fortress himself, with a Hunter and two Companions replacing three of his asura to spread the forces out. Mary and Barry would lead the sweep teams.
I, Coleman, Orman and two asura Asi had handpicked would make the attack on the garage. Riley and Coleman were the only ones with the spikes to take down the Pouka if she got involved.
Most likely, she was going to come for me as soon as she knew I was there—and that would be fast once the rocket went up.
“We can’t sneak past cameras and motion sensors, Jason,” Mary told me. “We’ll take down the roaming patrol and be ready for runners, but we will be seen.”
“I know. Riley, Asi?”
Both nodded and Asi removed his suit jacket. He tossed the formal garment into the guardhouse and stretched, rippling golden muscles in a way that made every male in his vicinity either wince in envy or struggle not to drool. I carefully did not pay attention to the women’s reactions.
It was more than a little unfair that the cold-blooded assassin was probably the single most attractive male for at least a few hundred kilometers in any given direction.
“It’s time for a down payment to be taken in blood,” he told us. “I will not fail you, my lord.”
“We know the drill,” Riley added drily. “The Hunt has done this before. Give us five to convince them to get stuck in, then the garage should be clear.”
“Remember, we know there are two Masked Nobles here,” I reminded them all. “Only a handful of us can face one of those. If there’s a Lord here…” I shivered. “Ping me, Asi and Coleman, and run. The three of us can take a Masked Lord together.”
I saw Coleman’s concealed wince at that. Raja Asi, Coleman and I would all qualify as Nobles as the Wild Hunt classed these things. Together…we could probably take a Fae Lord.
Probably.
I’d done it on my own once, after all.
Everyone else went first, leaving my small strike team standing by the guardhouse, waiting.
Gunfire started at the house first, almost certainly a team ordered out when the security room reported their cameras going down. The ruckus at the fort didn’t even start with gunfire. I wasn’t sure who had brought the grenade launcher, but the staccato explosion
s of multiple grenades made for a noticeable opening salvo.
Given that the only people with access to invisible storage spaces were the Hunters, I was pretty sure the grenade launches were from one of my people.
I couldn’t tell the difference between the various rifles being fired, though the rapid sequence of gunshots told me that the defenders were also carrying assault rifles of some kind or another. Different sounds underlay the gunfire and grenade explosions after a moment, as the defenders realized they were facing supernaturals and started unleashing the full extent of their abilities.
“Now, I think,” I said conversationally as the distinctive screech of a banshee’s war cry cut through the gunfire. “If Jessica has started screaming, she’s going to have everyone’s attention.”
Jessica Colombia was one of my Hunters’ Companions, basically a living support weapon in this context. She could calibrate her voice from “normal conversation” to “sonic weapon that could shred a tank.”
The scream I could hear was probably closer to the latter. Someone had almost certainly just died in a very noticeable fashion.
“After you, Kilkenny,” Coleman told me as he drew his arms from Between. The silver-hilted sword went at his waist, the Steyr in his hands with a sling over his shoulder.
I drew my own weapons. I’d left the sword Between, but I had my own rifle and the whipstock MacDonald had forged for me.
A leather pouch at Coleman’s waist held the three cold iron spikes we were carrying for Chernenkov. This would have been a rough enough night without the Pouka noble being there.
Finding the garage was easy, at least. The driveway went in a straight line there from the guardhouse, passing within a few meters of the house at one point.
Even the bulletproof glass of the structure had been shattered at this point, but my people weren’t even trying to push into the building. They were keeping up a barrage of fire to pin down anyone in the building and neutralize anyone who came out.
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 14
