“Oh, that’s reassuring.” Lou leaned his head back against the wall.
“Like I said, it’s all theoretical right now.”
“What about the werewolves?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“We had three complaints last night about the wolves at Howlerz getting aggressive with non-wolves. I stationed a car out there since it was starting to become a recurring theme. So are they getting blowback from this dark magic too?”
“No,” I said, tiredly. “That’s the new management. His name is Robert and he’s Eric’s new second, and a species-supremacist asshole to boot. Eric hasn’t even been out of town for a week and already he’s turned Howlerz into a werewolf-only bar. My guess is that those calls were from people that got turned away at the door. I have a feeling Robert won’t be very gentle when it comes to kicking people off of his turf.”
“Yeah, the guys I sent out there said that a couple bruisers were waiting outside.” Grinning, he added, “They didn’t have much in the way of brains from what I hear, but they came up with some interesting interpretations of what STS could stand for.”
Shaking my head, I looked intently at the floor. At least it hadn’t been any worse. Robert was a type of wolf I knew all too well, and I was worried that this was just the beginning. Kicking some people out of the bar and harassing the local law enforcement, while not smart, wasn’t illegal. But wolves like him had been the ones that had sided with the vampires in the early days of the war. They figured that they were the pinnacle of the food chain, and as such had a right to hunt whatever or whoever they pleased. The vampires had used them and their ferocity against the humans with great success, allowing them to continue the war during the daytime when most vampires were hidden away, and in religious buildings where they couldn’t reach. How could Eric bring someone like him into our city?
And it wasn’t just the fact that Robert thought of all other species of beings as inferior that made me nervous. Eric and I had struck up a friendship even though we both had responsibilities that could force us into conflict. He had stuck his neck out for me a number of times, and I for him. On one of those occasions he had been injured badly. Dark magic that had been meant for me had hit him instead. For anyone else it would have been mortal, but Eric was a full-blood and was as tough as they came. He had been left with a permanently injured leg that required him to now use a cane whenever he walked for long distances. Even his amazing healing abilities that rivaled even the strongest vamps had been unable to fix the injury that had been inflicted with dark magic. How long would it be before Robert decided that he would make a more capable alpha than a wounded Eric? The only means of succession for alpha in a werewolf pack was a fight to the death. Would Eric be able to win against someone whose beast struggled just below the surface yearning to be free, to hunt by the light of the moon? Eric had long since learned to suppress his more primal urges. He still had them of course, the beast would always be with him, but his self-control and tremendous willpower tempered what lurked beneath his skin. Robert had no urge to repress his nature, no need to find a balance. I had seen what swam behind his eyes when he evicted us from Howlerz. The moon sang to him, and he saw no reason to deny it.
Officer Lewis found us in the hallway and walked over to Lou, eyeing me warily as he passed. It seemed that the moment of equality we had shared when destroying the two zombies the other day had passed, replaced by the usual distrust and apprehension that he showed me. He leaned over and whispered in Lou’s ear. Lewis had a deep baritone voice that was made for commanding attention, so it was quite a surprise to me that I couldn’t make out anything he was saying. I had never pictured Lewis speaking any quieter than that cold monotone that he reserved for me, and I never had any problem hearing every word.
“When did this happen?” Lou snapped, pulling away from the wall.
“Twenty minutes ago,” Lewis said, stepping back to avoid two men in uniform as they sprinted from the call center toward the front doors.
“What happened?” I asked.
The two men held open the doors as two stretchers were pushed through, one holding a woman who was talking animatedly through an oxygen mask, and the other an unconscious man whose eyes fluttered open and closed as the stretcher banged into the corner of a wall. Sheets were pulled up over their bodies and restraining straps covered their legs and torsos. The black uniforms and golden insignia of the STS peeked out from their coverings. The woman pulled her oxygen mask off and yelled, “Careful with him! Watch where you’re going.” One of the men pushing her stretcher placed the mask back over her and forced her arm down to her side. In another moment they had pushed past the gathered crowd of onlookers and made their way down to the elevators.
“Magical crossfire,” Lou said to me, relating what Lewis had just told him. Lewis scowled at the captain, presumably for sharing information with me. “A couple of warlocks in the merge were getting hassled by some normal folks and decided to retaliate. Our people tried to break it up before it got completely out of hand.”
Turning his scowl on me, Lewis took up the story. “The woman on the stretcher back there was able to stun one of the warlocks with her Tazer and knock the other one out with her club. If it weren’t for her, her partner would probably be dead. Backup arrived, bound and gagged the warlocks, and trucked ‘em back here to sit in a cell until we can get them transferred to Alcatraz.” He looked back down the hall, as if replaying in his mind the stretchers being brought in. “Those two officers were just minor injuries. Snow and one of the civilians had to be taken to St. Vincent’s. There was some sort of fungus spreading across their bodies trying to suffocate them. The paramedics had no idea what to do.”
“How are the two casters being held?” I asked. If the spell caster was as powerful as he seemed, and used dark magic to boot, then no place outside of Alcatraz was entirely secure. With the vampires and the wolves the Committee relied on the local population and their leaders to maintain law and order, but the magic users didn’t have any form of local leadership. They worked and lived on their own or in small groups, not the large collectives like the other races. So it fell to us, the Inquisition, to make sure they stayed on the right side of the law. A death sentence for users of death magic that we didn’t feel had any hope of rehabilitation or couldn’t be bound was standard. It was an effective deterrent overall, but there would always be those who were tempted to try it and test the limits.
“They’re bound and gagged and dosed to the eyeballs with tranquilizers,” Lou answered. Lewis shot him a glare saying that he didn’t need to answer my question. “Don’t worry Frank, this isn’t my first rodeo,” he said with a smirk. “I’ll have an incident report on your desk…or what passes for your desk now, tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks Cap.” Another part of Lewis’s statement came to the front of my mind, clamoring for attention. “Did you say Snow?” I asked. The name was familiar but I couldn’t place it. My mind was racing with things that all vied for my undivided attention. Things still seemed to be getting worse out on the streets; the wolves had cordoned themselves off and were threatening people that got too close, humans were marching in protest in the First City and were turning increasingly violent in the merge, and magic users were starting to retaliate in the best way they knew how. But what Lewis had described—a fungus that spread across the flesh and tried to suffocate someone—that was dark. That was death magic. Well, I thought wryly, thank God most of the vampires are safely tucked away somewhere or who knew what would happen. That’s all we would need now is some rogue who decided that this is the perfect time to go get an illegal bite to eat. That would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. The bulk of humanity may have disliked paras in general, but they had a special place in their hearts for vampires. It had been the Vampire War after all, and it didn’t take much to imagine what would happen if some newbie vamp decided to take a couple of the locals as a midnight snack. There would be Shadowcasters and merce
naries crawling over this place for months.
“He was with us when we found Christian at the church,” Lou answered, snapping me out of my thoughts of impending doom.
“He’s got a wife and two kids,” Lewis said accusingly, as if I were the one who had put the curse on him.
Lou put a hand on Lewis’s massive shoulder. “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. Those healers at the hospital can work miracles, trust me. I watched when that one that came here worked on Terri. Just seemed to wave his hands over her a few times and she woke right up.” He looked over at me. “She is okay, right?”
“Yeah, she’s alright, but she needs her rest. If it’s okay with you I’d like you to keep her here overnight.”
“Christ, Frank, the way things are going I might need those beds.” He rubbed his face and pulled at the bottom of his shirt to straighten it. “And you want me to keep this one too?” He pointed down at Lily but didn’t look at her. “Your niece, wasn’t it? Which reminds me, when did you get brothers and sisters, Frank?”
“Um,” I stammered, regretting my choice of lies from before. “Well, okay, that wasn’t exactly true.”
“What a shock,” Lewis muttered.
“She’s an ambassador for the tribes.” Thinking quickly, I decided exactly how much of the truth Lou could handle. There was no way he would let a full-fledged Demon stay here, no matter what the political implications. “Her name is Lily and she’s a Simlon shape shifter. The Committee thought that it would be easier to hide her in plain sight with me.”
“That didn’t work out too well,” Lou accused.
“No. No it didn’t. But now that the assassin is out of the way she doesn’t need a constant guard, and I don’t want to bring a diplomat into something that’s probably going to be messy, so can you keep her here, Lou?”
Looking down at Lily and then back to me, Lou heaved a sigh. “Where am I going to put her? She can’t just wander around wherever she wants, and I can’t spare someone to keep an eye on her. Plus, if anyone else finds out what she is it’s going to be a problem. I don’t know about this.”
“Stick her in a cell,” I blurted out. Three sets of eyes turned to me at once. Lewis suppressed a smile with some effort.
“Is this how you treat all diplomats?” Lily asked, her eyes burning with barely subdued anger.
“It’ll just be for today, twenty-four hours at most.”
Looking at his watch, Lou nodded. To Lewis he said, “Take her down to a cell and get her comfortable. You take care of it personally, Don,” he said, calling Officer Lewis by the first name I often forgot he had. He was always just Lewis or officer to me. “I don’t want anyone else here to know who or what she is. And you,” he said, pointing to me. “You owe me big for this. Get my city back to normal and maybe I’ll call us even. I’ve got to go call St. Vincent’s and see how Snow and the civilian are doing.” With that, Lou turned and marched towards the elevators.
“Great,” Lewis mumbled. The mountain of a man looked down at the tiny form of Lily and said, “Well, come on then, let’s get this over with.” She moved forward and went to take his hand the same way she had done to me before, playing the little kid role to perfection. Lewis jerked his hand away before she could touch him as if she were brandishing a soldering iron. “Don’t even think about it. I don’t know if you shape shifters have bones like us normal people, but if you try that again I’ll brake whatever holds you together.” Perhaps not telling them the truth about Lily being an actual living girl was a mistake, though I was fairly certain Lewis wouldn’t actually try to hurt her.
Lily tossed her head back and laughed, this time a more adult sound than her normal giggling. She looked back at me. “Oh, I like this one. Bye Uncle Frank.” She waved diminutive fingers at me and followed him down the hall to the stairs that led to the cells in the basement level.
* * *
“Why did she agree so quickly?” I asked myself aloud as I stood behind Simon’s car stuffing my pockets with clips of ammo from his trunk. Five should be enough, I decided, and began to close the trunk. Maybe six just to be sure.
Lily had, despite her angry glare when I suggested it, gone right along with being shut away in a jail cell. Her quip about how we treated diplomats seemed, now that I thought more about it, more perfunctory than any sort of real outrage. Shouldn’t I be glad that she had decided to go along with my decision? Maybe she was just tired. She hadn’t slept since she had arrived here. The Demon had said that while she inhabited the body she wouldn’t need any regular sustenance, but did that mean she didn’t need to rest either? Surely the Demon didn’t, but perhaps Lily herself couldn’t take the constant strain. I mentally kicked myself for not thinking of that earlier. If Lily was permanently damaged from this I would never forgive myself. To go through so much to save your life and then having something else go wrong because I didn’t think about her possible overexertion…
A cat meowed from behind me. It was the same white cat from upstairs in the hospital wing. Padding cautiously closer, it looked up at me with eyes the same color as the storm clouds overhead. “You’re gonna get soaked out here, cat,” I said with a grin as I closed the trunk and stowed the last clip in my pants’ pocket. The weight of my gun and all of the ammunition I was carrying felt unexpectedly heavy. The rain picked up speed suddenly, turning from a light drizzle to a pelting storm in seconds. I pulled the collar of my jacket up around my head as the storm tried to batter me into the ground. The cat’s fur was matted tight to its skin, but it didn’t seem to be bothered by this overly much. “C’mon,” I said to it, and ran back to the building, the cat following on my heels.
“Looks like you’ve got a new friend,” the guard named Santos said as I hustled past them out of the rain.
“I get more popular every day,” I called back.
Once inside I shook off my coat and watched a small puddle form at my feet. The cat stopped a few feet in front of me and shook itself clean with fervor, even managing to land a couple of muddy droplets on my face which I wiped off with the back of my sleeve. Looking at the clock on the wall I realized that I still had at least ten minutes before Ben was ready to leave. What he needed thirty minutes for I had no idea, but at least it would give Simon a chance to recoup some of his strength if nothing else.
Down the right-hand hallway that led to my office, or what remained of my office anyway, was a bench, and I decided I could use a sit. The cat darted in front of me, entwining itself with my legs and making it impossible to walk without kicking her. Leaning down, I asked the cat, “What, am I the only one that’s been nice to you?” She stretched her neck so that I could pet her and scratch behind her ears. Purring in kitty contentment, she sniffed at my hand and looked up at me with those blue eyes.
Blue eyes, I thought suddenly, hadn’t they been gray just a minute ago? Get a grip, I reprimanded myself. It’s bad enough that all this crap is happening to my city, but to add hallucinations and paranoia to the mix would just be a disaster of magnificent proportions. But still…
I reached out with my senses towards the feline and received a jolt of power that nearly knocked me flat on my backside. It wasn’t a familiar; that I was sure of, the energy had felt far different from those energy receptacles of magic users. This was something more powerful and, I was almost certain, completely self-aware. And what was worse was that I thought I recognized it. The cat bolted as I recovered and stood up. Running down the hall, it turned right into a room that I knew was the broom closet next to my office. I ran down the hall after it.
The door was still slightly ajar, just enough to let the slim cat through. Bumping the door open cautiously with my shoulder, I reached around for the light switch that I thought was on the right side of the entrance. After a second I gave it up for a lost cause. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I murmured while reaching for my gun.
I had just unclasped the safety restraint on the holster when a hand grabbed me around my other wrist and hauled me into the room with
unnatural ease. I forgot about the gun and grasped at the slim fingers that trapped me. The door closed behind me encasing me in utter darkness. There was no use in trying to pry the fingers off of me, whoever it was was just too strong. It was like trying to bend steel. My attacker’s other hand darted down, seized my other wrist, and, pulling both of my arms over my head, shoved me back. Shelves and the items upon them clattered from the vibration of my body slamming into the wall.
Before I could even think of kicking out at my assailant, an unbelievably lithe female body pressed tight against me, pinning me in place. One hand still holding the both of mine over my head, she reached down with the other and traced the line of my jaw. The smells of spring filled the room, which was odd because it was fall. Oh, and we were in a musty freaking closet with cleaning supplies. I turned my face away wondering what the hell was happening. My training, confused as to whether I was being attacked or molested stayed dormant, watching, waiting. It wasn’t the only one confused as the fingers slid past my face, trailed long nails down the side of my neck, and began working their way back up.
“You scratched behind my ears,” a voice whispered from the darkness, “should I do the same for you?”
My eyes flew wide. “Clara?” I had known that some vampires could shift into different animal shapes, but I hadn’t known she had that ability. Instinctively I tried to open my Second Sight to confirm my suspicion. It wouldn’t actually allow me to see in the pitch black of the room, but I could identify her by her aura, her power.
“Don’t,” she said firmly, and my Sight immediately shut down. The tattooed snakes on my stomach roiled in discontent at her manipulating my powers. “What you see with your power isn’t important. It is insubstantial, whereas I,” she moved a leg between mine and forced herself flat against me, breasts pressed tight against my pounding heart, her lips right beside my ear, “am entirely real.”
Demon's Play Page 28
