by Eileen Wilks
Massive charm and intellect and my goddamn sense of humor. Hurry.
“It’s Mullins.” She texted her reply—On my way. 20m.—then looked at Rule. “I have to go. If it’s a trap, I’ll just have to be smarter than they are. If it’s not . . . he says she’s alive.”
Rule was rigid. “All right. I go with you.” He started to turn. “José—”
She grabbed his arm. “No. Rule, you can’t go with me everywhere. You can’t. I need to do this. You need to lead your people. You’ve got a mix of Leidolf and Nokolai and they aren’t all—”
“They’ll do as they’re bloody well told!”
“José isn’t you! He doesn’t know enough to lead them into who-the-hell-knows-what with dopplegängers and elementals!”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
His phone sounded. It was “Dueling Banjos,” Isen’s ring tone.
He released her and spun around, grabbing the phone like he wanted to choke it. “Yes.” His expression darkened, but he said nothing for several moments. Then: “You’re sure? . . . I see. I . . .” His jaw clenched. “Give me a moment.”
He paced away, the phone gripped at his side. Turned and looked at Lily. “Ruben woke as a man. He had dreams—visions—and they seem to have propelled him back to his original form. He is not yet in full possession of language, but from what Isen pieced together, events will take place very soon in Albany, Albuquerque, San Diego . . . and here. At the National Mall. He’s already spoken to Benedict and Manuel. Benedict will take a troop of Nokolai into the city. Manuel agreed that Albuquerque was Ybirra’s to handle. Ruben . . . with Isen’s help, Ruben will lead Wythe to deal with events in Albany.” Bleakly he finished, “My Rho orders me to go immediately to the National Mall.”
Softly she said, “Then you have to go.”
He closed his eyes. Shuddered. “Yes.”
She went to him and put her arms around him. “I’ll live if you will.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Tough. I am anyway.”
1225 N. Hammond was a box. It had once had pretensions toward being a house, but the shape was all that was left; the roof lacked much in the way of shingles and the windows were gaping holes. The front door tilted drunkenly, a single hinge being insufficient to hold it upright.
It didn’t stand out all that much in this neighborhood. The Mercedes did, but that couldn’t be helped. “Okay,” Lily told Mike. “Chris and Scott should be in place by now. Let’s go.”
If Mullins did need backup, he’d be getting it. Lily hadn’t waited for Rule to tell her to take guards with her. She’d asked for Scott and three men of his choosing, one of whom was really good at sneaking. The sneak he picked was Shannon, a skinny young guy they’d dropped off a couple blocks up. The other two were a Nokolai she knew and liked named Chris . . . and Mike of the bad attitude and broken table.
She thought she knew what Scott was doing. Rule had taken Mike down hard and publically. This was his chance to redeem himself. But Mike must also be nearly as good as he thought he was, or Scott wouldn’t have taken the chance.
At least she hoped so.
The abandoned house didn’t offer much in the way of cover, so Lily hoped Scott and Chris were good at sneaking, too. She wanted them as close as possible. They couldn’t use phones to stay in touch; even texts were out, since the lit screen would give away their positions. But Scott had said five minutes, and she trusted him.
Unlike most lupi, Scott was good with a gun, plus he’d learned the basic hand signals Nokolai used. Chris, being Nokolai, knew them all, including ASL, which was more than Lily did. But she knew enough to direct them silently, if necessary ... and if they could keep a visual on her.
That was why Mike walked beside her down the dirty sidewalk instead of one of the others. He didn’t know the hand signals. He didn’t have a gun, either, but he made a fine display of strength—which wasn’t his main purpose, but it didn’t hurt.
Lily had her weapon out, though she kept it at her side. Even if someone in the houses they passed could see what she held, she didn’t think they’d call the cops. “You have any problems taking orders from a woman, Mike? You could take me in a fight. Maybe you think you should be in charge here.”
“You’re a Chosen. My Rho’s Chosen.”
“Which means you think I’m cool as cream cheese, but doesn’t answer the question.”
He was silent a moment. “Rule said we are to obey you as long as your orders do not contradict his. He also said you are a warrior. LeBron said that, too. I don’t know Rule well enough to know what he means by that word, but I knew LeBron. I can take orders from a warrior.”
Startled, she glanced up at him. Way up. “You knew LeBron?”
“We trained together. Fought together. He was a good man.”
“He was.” And she wished fiercely and futilely he was walking beside her now . . . but in a way, he was. In a way he was still watching out for her. It was his word that inclined Mike to trust her to lead.
Across the street a dog barked over and over—the endless repetitive barking of a bored and lonely animal. The wind was up, blowing Lily’s hair in her face. Should’ve grabbed an elastic to hold it back. It wasn’t doing much to dispel the cloud cover, though; Lily could see a glow behind those clouds where the full moon rode low in the west, but it was dark down here.
Mike could probably see pretty well. Lots better than she could, anyway. “You ever worked with a human?”
“Not this kind of work.”
“Compared to you, I’m scent-blind. I don’t hear half what you do, and to me it’s still too dark to see much. Don’t assume I see, smell, or hear what you do.”
“Maybe you don’t see the guy leaning against the wall of the house next to our target, then. He’s in the shadow.”
“Ah—no. Wait. Now I do.” He’d moved toward the front of the house. The houses were spaced closely, with only a narrow strip between; that strip was completely black to Lily’s eyes.
“Can’t see his face well, but what I see matches the description you gave me of Mullins.”
The man beckoned urgently at them. Lily broke into a quick jog. “If he draws, take him down.”
A whisper reached her as she drew near. “Jesus. Who’s the mountain?”
Lily stopped a couple paces away. It was Mullins, all right. She kept her voice low. “You said you wanted backup. He’s mine. This is 1223 Hammond, not 1225.”
“So sue me. I lied. I picked you to call because they wanted to take you out, so you’re probably not one of them, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Who’s they?”
“I wish to hell I knew. The house behind us”—he gave a quick jerk of his head to indicate the rear of the house—“I think that’s where they’ve been conducting their rites. That death magic shit. They’ve got Sjorensen and fourteen others stashed there, drugged and unconscious. There’s four thugs watching the place—three in the house, one out back.”
“How do you know all this?”
“How do you think? I got a tip, checked it out. We’ve got to move fast. Come on.” He turned, easing back into the deep shadow between the houses.
Lily didn’t really trust him. She followed anyway. It was so dark she trailed a hand along the side of the house to keep her bearings. A couple steps in, it occurred to her she was being stupid. One of them was able to see a lot better than the others. “Mike. Take point.”
She couldn’t see Mullins, but the sound of his footsteps stopped. She felt more than heard Mike move past—and keep going.
Maybe Mike had heard something. It wasn’t smell that tipped him off, not with the wind at their backs. Maybe he just decided to show initiative. He rushed to the back of the house, where he turned and leaped at someone or something out of sight.
“Shit,” Mullins whispered.
Lily took two quick steps forward and jammed her gun into Mullins’s back. “Keep moving.”
He sighe
d heavily, but obeyed. They rounded the corner, Mullins first. Lily’s heart pounded madly.
Mike had a man on the ground, pinned with an armlock. Lily couldn’t see the man’s face, but something about the build was familiar.
A low voice grated, “Get this son of a bitch off me.”
Drummond. It was Al Drummond.
“Look,” Mullins whispered, “I didn’t tell you about Drummond because you wouldn’t have come. But he’s the one who tipped me.”
She grimaced. “He’s with them. The death magic, the attack on Ruben—he’s part of all that.”
“Yeah.” The single syllable ached with sadness. “I know.”
EN route, Rule tried and failed to reach Deborah. He called his father and told him about the elementals—maybe D.C. wasn’t the only city where they’d been summoned. He called the guards who’d been stationed at Ruben’s house, and—because Lily had insisted—he called Abel Karonski. And he called Harry.
Parking was always a problem near the Mall, and it was impossible today. They ended up leaving the van in an illegal spot four blocks from Pennsylvania and running the rest of the way—across Constitution Avenue, which took some expert dodging, and between the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum. When they reached Madison Drive, they stopped.
Madison had been closed to traffic for the occasion. Just past it lay a stretch of grass, then the broad pedestrian path that outlined the central area; imitation gas streetlights provided plenty of light for lupus eyes.
The dawn prayer service that would kick off the daylong rally would start in forty minutes or so, and the Humans Firsters were gathering. At the east end of the Mall, a tall stage had been erected. Unlike most, it was closed on the front and sides, giving it a very finished appearance. The stage was backed by the Capitol Building—which was partly obscured by an enormous Jumbotron screen so distant ralliers wouldn’t miss a single twitch of their leaders’ faces.
It all looked very peaceful at the moment . . . and crowded. Rule didn’t know how to estimate crowd size the way Lily could have, if she’d been here. If only—
Enough. She was doing what she had to do. So was he. She’d promised to live. And by all that was holy, he would hold her to that promise.
So he’d take his best guess. The crowd was certainly not the quarter of a million that Humans First claimed had signed up for their rally, but it was large. Perhaps ten thousand people had gotten up well before dawn to get a good spot, eager to show their hatred for lupi.
“What do you see?” he asked Cullen softly.
“Too damn many people,” he muttered, giving the area a slow scan. “I can’t see through them, you know. Wait. Down by the Washington Monument. That’s an earth elemental. Not a big one, nowhere near the size of Fagin’s, but . . . shit. There’s another one under the Smithsonian. It’s deep, but I can see a glow.”
“Can you tell who’s summoning them?”
Cullen crouched and put one hand on the ground. “I suck at Earth magic, but here goes.” His lips moved, but all Rule caught was a cadenced sort of murmur. An incantation, he supposed. Cullen straightened. “No clue who’s doing it, but I think it’s a call, not a summons. That’s good news.”
“The difference being—?”
“A call is just that—‘hey there, how ya doing, want to come have some blood?’ A summons is a compulsion and takes beaucoup power, especially with earth elementals. I’d rather not go up against anyone who could summon multiple earth elementals, then keep them from trying to kill each other. Highly territorial, earth elementals. Or, hell, anyone who could summon a single elemental the size of the one Deborah’s hanging out with. If . . .” His voice trailed off. He squinted, then started walking toward the stage at the far end of the Mall.
Rule kept pace. “Manny, Tom—your job is to keep Cullen alive. Stay with us. The rest of you, fan out, centered on me. Fifteen-foot perimeter.” He lowered his voice. “What is it?”
“I just caught a glimpse. Something leaked, but only for a second. Maybe someone broke the circle, then closed it up again. But I could swear someone’s working a spell under that damn stage.”
“ . . . EXCEPT for the death magic,” Mullins finished. “Al didn’t know about that, didn’t believe you when you said it. But he’s been a cop too long. He got itchy, checked something out. Found that setup on Webster. You were right. They’ve been collecting homeless people, killing them to make death magic. Al couldn’t stomach what they were doing, what they planned to do, so he called me. Two of us couldn’t do it alone, though. We’d just get killed, then they’d go ahead and kill everyone. So I called you.”
They’d moved inside—all of them, or almost. Maybe 1223 Hammond wasn’t as completely derelict as 1225, but it was equally abandoned. Lily had summoned Scott and Chris, and the five of them sat or squatted on a kitchen floor every bit as dirty as the ground outside. In here, though, they didn’t have to worry as much about being heard.
Lily looked at Drummond—who was technically under arrest. Mullins had informed him of that before calling Lily. Mike had disarmed him and sat next to him now, ready to stop him if he tried anything. He hadn’t said a word since his demand to “get this son of a bitch off me.”
He didn’t look like a man undergoing a crisis of conscience. More like a balked fanatic. “You’re okay with violating your oath,” she said. “Okay with killing Ruben Brooks—”
“He’s not dead.”
“Not your fault he lived, though, is it? You didn’t object to your buddies killing a senator, either—one who was as anti-magic as you are. Did he find out too much about Dennis Parrott, or was he just a convenient way to frame Ruben? I’m not even going to ask you what part you had in bombing Fagin’s library and nearly killing him and Cullen. You probably don’t think they’re real people, seeing as how one’s lupus and the other’s Gifted. You’re cool with massacring lupi and Gifted, but I’m supposed to believe you draw the line at killing homeless people.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe.”
“Al,” Mullins muttered, “you’re not helping.”
Drummond shot him a look Lily couldn’t read. “Look,” he said impatiently, “she’s not going to buy it if I play the repentant sinner. She and all her magical crowd are an imminent and ongoing danger to the people of this country. That’s fact, and if you can’t see it now, you will. But yeah, I do draw the line at killing innocent people. Especially killing them in such a foul way. It . . .” His lips tightened to a thin line. After a moment he went on, eyes blazing. “And if you don’t quit talking this all out and give me back my weapon so we can do something about it, they’ll all die.”
“Who’s in this with you?”
He shook his head, a small, bitter smile on his thin lips.
“You want my help, you’re going to have to—” Her phone vibrated. She pulled it out of her pocket, saw who the text was from, and smiled tightly. At last. She read it, sent a quick reply—I’m clear to talk—you? Call if u can—and gave Scott a nod so he’d know she’d heard from Shannon. Then she spoke to Mullins. “Some of your story’s been confirmed. There were four thugs at the Webster house—three inside, one out back. The place reeks of blood and death magic. But those four have just been joined by two more in a catering truck.”
“Fuck!” That was Drummond. “If we’d acted right away—”
“We’d have been shot by the two who showed up late for the party.” Her phone vibrated again. This time it was a call, not a text. Shannon again. “Go ahead.” She listened, asked a couple questions, and told him to stand by for instructions. “They’ve begun loading their victims into the truck. Not bodies—victims. Out cold, but still alive.” She looked at Drummond. “They’re taking them somewhere else to be sacrificed, aren’t they?”
He was silent.
“To your friends at the Humans First Rally.” When he still didn’t speak she leaned forward. “Goddammit. Don’t you get it? Your buddies are perfectly wi
lling to sacrifice their own people along with the ones you consider innocent. What do you think they’re going to do with the death magic they conjure by killing twenty-two people? I know about the dopplegängers. They must plan to make a lot of them, not just duplicate me and Ruben. Or maybe they’re planning to feed the earth elementals they’ve called. Those elementals can do a lot of damage if they’re fed well.”
“They wouldn’t—” He shut himself up quickly.
“They killed a United States senator who was on their side. Hell yes, they would. They’d do anything. There are children at that damn rally. Are you going to let kids be killed to protect your righteous cause?”
“I’m not the one who insists on talking and talking and talking. You going to shut up and do something? Or are you planning to sit this out while they carry off and kill twenty-two people—including someone who’s supposed to be a friend of yours?”
“You’re right. I’m not going to let them do that.”
His mouth twisted. “There’s six of them now. Armed. You’d better give me back my weapon.”
“You want in? I don’t need you. There’s me and Mullins and four lupi. Hell, the lupi probably don’t need me and Mullins, but we’ll tag along. What about you? If you want in, you’re going to have to prove to me that you mean it.”
Scott’s head swiveled toward her. He opened his mouth—and shut it again without telling her not to be an idiot.
Good man. “Who are you working with?” she repeated. “And what are they planning?”
“Al,” Mullins said slowly, “you’re so far wrong, and you can’t see it, and it breaks my heart. But if you’ve ever trusted me—not just to take your back, hell, you know I’ll do that—but really trusted me, listen to me now. These people you’re in with, they’re bad. They’re going to kill people. Not just collateral damage in this unholy war you think you’re fighting—they’ll out-and-out murder people because they don’t give a shit. If it’s easier to kill, if they think it works, they’ll do it. You think you’re doing this because of Pat, to keep others from dying like she did. But it’s revenge you’re really after, and you’re taking it on people who never hurt you or her. If she could see you now, see what you’ve done, she’d be sick. You know she would.”
