by P. N. Elrod
Brax shouted. “Run!” He picked up the fallen girl and shoved her down the tunnel. The last vamp landed on his back. Brax went down. Rolling. Blood spurting. Shadows like monsters on the far wall.
In the wavering light, Jane’s throat gushed blood. Pumping bright.
Carmen and I backed against the mine wall. I was frozen, indecisive. Whom to save? I didn’t know for sure who was winning or losing. I didn’t know what would happen if I activated the empowerment charm. I pulled the extra flashlight and switched it on.
Brax rolled. Into the light. Eyes wild. The vampire rolled with him. Eating his throat. Brax was dying. I activated the empowerment charm. Tossed it.
It landed. Brax’s breath gargled. The vampire fell. Brax rose over him, stake in hand. Brought the stake down. Missed his heart.
I pointed. “Run. That way.” Carmen ran, her flashlight bouncing. I set down the last light, pulled stakes from my pockets. Rushed the vampire. Stabbed down with all my might. One sharpened stake ripped through his clothes. Into his flesh. I stabbed again. Blood splashed up, crimson and slick. I fumbled two more stakes.
Brax, beside me, took them. Rolled the vampire into the light. Raised his arms high. Rammed them into the rogue’s chest.
Blood gushed. Brax fell over it. Silent. So silent. Neither moved.
I activated the healing amulet. Looked over my shoulder. At Jane.
The vampire was behind her. Her throat was mostly gone. Blood was everywhere. Spine bones were visible in the raw meat of her throat.
Yet, even without a trachea, she was growling. Face shifting. Gray light danced. Her hands, clawed and tawny, reached back. Dug into the skull of the vampire. Whipped him forward. Over her. He slammed into the rock floor. Bounced limply.
Sobbing, I grabbed Brax’s shoulder. Pulled him over. Dropped the charm on his chest.
Jane leaped onto the vampire. Ripped out his throat. Tore into his stomach. Slashed clothes and flesh. Blood spurted. She shifted. Gray light. Black motes. And her cat screamed.
I watched as her beast tore the vampire apart. Screaming with rage.
WE MADE IT to the mine entrance, Carmen and the girls running ahead, into the arms of my sisters. Evangelina raised a hand to me, framed by pale light, and pulled the girls outside, leaving the entrance empty, dawn pouring in. I didn’t know how the night had passed, where the time had disappeared. But I stopped there, inside the mine with Jane, looking out, into the day. In the urgency of finding the girls and getting them all back to safety, we hadn’t spoken about the fight.
Now, she touched her throat. Hitched Brax higher. He hadn’t made it. Jane had carried him out, his blood seeping all over her, through the rents in her clothes made by fighting vampires and by Jane herself, as she shifted inside them. “Is he,” she asked, her damaged voice raspy as stone, “dead because you used the last healing charm on me?” She swallowed, the movement of poorly healed muscles audible. “Is that why you’re crying?”
Guilt lanced through me. Tears, falling for the last hour, burned my face. “No,” I whispered. “I used it on Brax. But he was too far gone for a healing charm.”
“And me?” The sound was pained, the words hurting her throat.
“I trusted in your beast to heal you.”
She nodded, staring into the dawn. “You did the right thing.” Again she hitched Brax higher. Whispery-voiced, she continued. “I got seven heads to pick up and turn in” — she slanted her eyes at me—“and we got a cool quarter mil waiting. Come on. Day’s wasting.” Jane Yellowrock walked into the sunlight, her tawny eyes still glowing.
And I walked beside her.
Faith Hunter has written three urban fantasy novels in the Rogue Mage series, about stone-mage Thorn St. Croix, and collaborated on a role-playing game by the same name. Skinwalker, based on the character Jane Yellowrock, introduced in this story, will be released in July 2009 from ROC. Being totally schizoid, she has also written numerous mysteries and thrillers under her pen name, Gwen Hunter. She lives with her husband and two long-haired yappy dogs, works full-time in a hospital lab, and writes two books a year. She would write faster but discovered that occasionally she needs sleep. You can find out more about her at www.faithhunter.net or www.gwenhunter.com
GINGER
CAITLIN KITTREDGE
A NOCTURNE CITY STORY
I’M NOT BRAVE. Ask anyone. Sunny Swann? Oh yeah, she’s a complete wuss. Scared of her own shadow.
When I was ten, my cousin Luna convinced me that if I fell asleep, Freddy Krueger was going to come into my room and behead all my dolls. When I inevitably did sleep, she sneaked around taking all their heads and putting them into bed with me.
At least the two of us get along better now. Hell hath no fury like a ten-year-old with headless dolls.
Luna’s always been the brave one. Older. Taller. Tougher. She ran away to Nocturne City from our going-nowhere hometown, and I followed. She got tangled up with some bad blood witches, and I helped her. She’s the troublemaker. I’m dependable.
And a wuss. It was why I sat in the very back of the courtroom while Luna was on the stand. I didn’t really want to be noticed. If our grandmother saw me here, she’d go ballistic, and I had to live with the woman. I’m a peacekeeper. Grandma and Luna don’t get along, to the extreme. You do the math.
The defense attorney had a hundred-dollar haircut and a suit that hid the fact that he was fat, except from the back. His pants were straining their seams as he strode to and fro in front of the stand.
“You admit that you broke into Seamus O’Halloran’s office, Detective?”
Luna gave him that look, the one that says, You’d be tasty. I think I’ll eat you. She’s a werewolf. It happens. “No, sir.”
“No?” He looked shocked, eyes bugging out, round upper body shooting forward. “How is that possible, Detective?”
“I had a key.”
“And you obtained this key how?”
“I found it in my Lucky Charms.”
Snickers erupted from the first two rows of benches. Luna had some friends in the Nocturne City PD, even now, with the whole werewolf scandal.
The judged banged her gavel. “Settle down. I will clear this courtroom.”
“Your Honor, would you please instruct the witness to answer truthfully, and remind her what the penalty is for perjury?”
“Quit grandstanding, Mr. Fisk, and move your questioning along. Detective Wilder isn’t here to help you make your case.”
Fisk blushed, and the judge folded her arms and dared him to contradict her. Luna smirked at the defense before she leaned into the mic and said, oh so sweetly, “Shall I elaborate, sir?”
Fisk went from a schoolgirl blush to tomato. “I’m done with this witness,” he said tightly.
“Detective Wilder, you can step down,” said the judge. The prosecutor stood up. He was younger and slimmer than Fisk, his suit didn’t fit, and he was cute. That, at least, was some small reward for sitting on this rock-hard bench all afternoon while Luna waited to testify.
“Your Honor, could we request a recess before the next witness? My cocounsel and I need to go over our questions one last time.”
“Lack of planning on your part is not my problem, Mr. Procter,” said the judge. She looked like a less cuddly version of Kathy Bates. “But fortunately for you, I could use a cup of coffee. Thirty-minute recess.” The gavel came down, and chatter erupted.
Luna slumped into the seat next to mine. “I swear to the gods, I was about one step from vaulting the rail and nailing that smarmy bastard right in the gonads.” This was a standard greeting from Luna, so I nodded.
“Think he’ll get Trotter off?” Gordon Trotter was the CFO of the O’Halloran Group, and he was on the hook for securities fraud and a bunch of other shenanigans that made my eyes glaze over. Seamus O’Halloran, the CEO, wasn’t next to him. Seamus O’Halloran was dead.
Luna snorted. “Oh, yeah. O’Halloran was one smart bastard, and what he couldn’t do with dum
my corporations and stock fraud, he magicked into being. There isn’t one shred of evidence to tie any of them to the shit the O’Halloran Group was pulling. Flunkies will go down and Trotter will get a deal.”
“You make it sound so certain.” I looked at the back of Trotter’s head, at the defense table. His bald spot was sweating under the TV lights that sprang to life as soon as the judge called a recess.
“Cuz, when you’ve seen as many scumbags as I have make deals and go on their merry way, you get a certain amount of cynicism.”
I was going to answer and tell her if cynicism was booze, she’d be a third-stage alcoholic, but the sense of someone else’s magick slammed into me like a truck and stole my words.
Witches aren’t rare, especially in Nocturne City, but I’m used to being the only one in a given room. Whipping my head around, I saw a court clerk lugging an attaché case, winding through the milling spectators toward the defense table. His magick flowed behind him, bright and hot as a forest fire. Somehow, I got the feeling he wasn’t delivering a brief.
“Luna,” I said, standing up. She followed my eyes.
“What?”
“You have your gun?”
She patted her hip under her vintage Valentino jacket. “Glock. Don’t leave home without it.”
“Good. You may have to use it in a second.”
Leaving her sputtering, I shoved past the people at the end of my row and into the aisle.
I felt the working rise as the clerk — overweight, white, glasses, no one you’d expect to be anything special — closed in on Fisk and Trotter. He was muttering something over and over. “Vengeance est mei.”
He dropped the case, papers scattering like doves. His hand came up, the black glass caster in it catching the light as he raised it over his head. Trotter stared at the clerk, wide-eyed as the man screamed, “Vengeance est mei!”
His working struck. I felt the ambient magick in the room rush toward his caster, and felt myself stick to the spot like I was Superglue Girl. I’d seen the result of offensive magick before — burning cars, twisted bodies, the black aftershocks in the aether that happen only when someone uses their craft to cause someone else a messy death.
Luna gave a shout, a few steps behind me. She was moving. She had her gun out.
She wouldn’t be fast enough, even with were-speed.
My hand twitched down to my coat pocket, where I kept my own caster. Wood, for purity. Silver-edged, for strength. Before I really knew what had happened, it was out, thrust in front of me, at the second witch.
“Bright lady bind the circle and protect all those within,” I whispered, yanking magick into the caster and funneling it into a circle around Fisk and Trotter.
The witch turned, blinking at me from behind thick glasses. “Bitch,” he said in disbelief. “You can’t stop me!”
“Put it down or you get two between your beady little eyes!” Luna bellowed next to my ear. Her gun looked big as a house.
He started to laugh. “I will be the exalted one. I’ll be the master!” His working rose, strengthened. I could feel the spectral flames licking my face, begging to be called into this world.
“Bright lady bind the circle, and protect all those within!” I said, frantic. It came out jumbled through my panic-numbed lips. Brightladybindthecircle . . .
I pushed. He shoved. I felt my circle snap into place, a bubble of light magick over the defense table, barely holding under the onslaught of the second witch. He went red in the face, sweat dripping off him.
“In Persephone’s . . . name . . . ,” he ground out. He was strong. Not trained, but strong as an ox. I was trained, terrified, and losing ground with my protection circle. I wondered which one of us would explode first.
The two magicks manifested as we put more and more power into them, my circle wavering gently, like a soap bubble, and his explosive spell charring the floor of the courtroom. Blood leaked from my nose, spattering my shoe and the wood in front of me.
The witch grinned into my bloody face. “I win.”
Pop. Pop pop. The clerk screamed as his leg and shoulder erupted in three red fountains. His caster fell and went skittering under the prosecution’s table.
His working snapped, all the power running out like a drain as his concentration broke.
I held my circle. Held it with every ounce of me. Feedback screamed in my head, the warning that I was pulling down too much power, burning out my circuits . . .
“Sunny.”
I gasped, and looked to Luna, who was holding her Glock down at her side. She put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. You can stop now.”
She peeled the caster out of my hands. The silver had burned my palms. Luna winced at the injury, and holstered her weapon, putting her hands over mine. “You did good, kid.”
Trotter and Fisk were looking at me like I had three heads. As I came back to myself, I saw the entire courtroom was gawking with them. Luna laughed, low down in her stomach.
“Hey. For once, they’re not all staring at me.”
______
THE CLERK, WHOSE name turned out to be Joe Abrams, got taken away to Nocturne Memorial, and Trotter and Fisk went to Luna’s precinct, the Twenty-fourth. She let me ride with her without comment.
I couldn’t stop shaking. “If my circle hadn’t held, everyone in that room would have died,” I said out loud as we mounted the steps.
“But it did,” Luna said. “I gotta take statements. You can wait at my desk, okay?”
I sank into her creaky swivel chair and pressed my hands over my face. Everyone could have died, and it’d be all my fault. This is why I’m not heroic. It’s too damn taxing.
Luna’s phone rang, and kept ringing, and eventually a detective at the next desk glared at me. “You gonna answer that or serenade us all day?”
I sighed and picked it up. “Luna Wilder’s desk.”
“That was quite a display today, Miss Swann.” The voice was high, cultured, like a dapper butler from an old movie.
I blinked at the phone. “Excuse me?”
“This is Rhoda Sunflower Swann, of 213 Battery Cliff Road, yes?”
Damn it, I really hated when people figured out my full name. It was embarrassing. “Who is this?”
“A party most overcome by your skills, Miss Swann.”
“Uh . . . you can just call me Sunny.”
“As you wish. Sunny, you are wasting your talents. If you wish to remedy that, I am authorized to extend an invitation to meet with our little group and see if you find it more to your liking.”
“That’s really nice of you, but I don’t—”
The prissy voice cut me off. “Eighty-nine Old Nocturne Way, at seven P.M. this evening. Be there, or we will consider you an uninterested party and have no further contact.” A pause. “But I do hope you come, Miss Swann.”
The connection cut off. I put the phone back slowly and looked all around Luna’s squad room. She’d warned me about police pranks, but no one was looking at me with any amount of curiosity.
“Sunny. You okay?”
I jumped, rolling my chair over Troy McAllister’s foot. He yelped and started hopping around.
“Oh, gods,” I cried, jumping up. “I’m so sorry, Lieutenant.”
“I told you,” he gritted, clutching his mangled loafer. “Call me Troy.”
“Right. Yes. Dear gods. I’m so clumsy. . . .”
Troy slumped into the seat I’d just vacated, and took off his shoe and sock. His big toe was turning purple. I clapped a hand over my mouth, hoping it would hide the mortified shade of red on my face. “I’ll get ice.”
“Forget it.” Troy waved a hand. “It beats a poke in the eye with a stick. Now. What’s the matter with you? Usually it’s your cousin who’s causing me bodily harm.”
“I got a weird phone call,” I said, hoping that I didn’t sound insane to Troy’s ears. “Someone who heard what happened in court.”
Troy narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah? Tell me
details.”
Having him turn the full force of his gaze on me was like being trapped in oncoming headlights. Luna had told me stories about Mac, but this was different. I’d always thought of him as nice, slightly scattered, overworked. Right now, he was glaring at me with his ocean-colored eyes like he could look into my soul.
“It was just . . . It was silly,” I murmured, looking at my feet. “They said they saw what happened in court today, and, um. Wanted me to meet them.”
Troy stood up and put his shoe back on, then grabbed me by the elbow. “Come with me.” We walked—well, he walked and I got dragged—into one of the interrogation rooms.
LUNA WAS IN there, filling out paperwork along with a woman I didn’t recognize. She was very polished. If I were catty, I might even go to plastic, but I’m not. Red hair with perfect highlights, even under fluorescents. Green eyes, suit to match, an emerald set in silver at her throat and black high heels that could kill somebody, like Oddjob’s bowler could lop off heads.
“Sunny, this is ASA Nielsen,” Mac said. “She’s the state’s attorney working the federal case against the O’Halloran group. Nielsen, I think you should hear what just happened to Sunny.”
She turned those high-powered cat eyes on me. I looked at my feet and murmured out the story of the strange call. Nielsen tapped a finger against her chin, a studied gesture.
“And after the state’s trial, Trotter belongs to us,” she said. “We want to thank you for your timely action today, Ms. Swann. Trotter can’t fulfill his deal with us if he’s dead.”
Luna mouthed Told you at her paperwork.
“Unfortunately,” Nielsen went on, “this isn’t an isolated incident. Trotter has been moved to ad-sec at Los Altos after two attempts on his life.”
“Advanced security,” Mac whispered. “Where the snitches live.”
“And there’s this.” Nielsen produced a digital recorder and hit playback.
“This is a warning,” a solemn voice ground out. “If Mr. Trotter continues to divulge secrets of the craft to those not of the blood, there will be consequences. Grave ones. Deliver my message. We want him to know death is coming.”
