by R. L. Naquin
“Just doing my job, sir.”
The aw shucks of it all made me want to vomit.
Riley led Lionel away, and I took the hint to head back to the house. On the way, I ran into Maurice.
“He wants us to reset the fairy ring.” His voice was deadpan.
“He thinks that way the fairies can reinforce it. Make it stronger.” I said it without judgment, hoping to get Maurice’s gut reaction without influencing him.
He rubbed his forehead. “You know that doesn’t make any damn sense, right?”
I should have known Maurice wouldn’t trust the guy either. He was a better judge of character than anyone I knew—other than his choice of wife. “So, what do you think?”
He gave me a long, serious look, yellow eyes blinking in the porch light. “I think we should do what he wants.”
My eyebrows rose. “You do?”
He nodded. “If we’re right about him, we can catch him.”
“Dropping the fairy ring, even for a few minutes is dangerous. But it’s kind of what I was thinking too. I don’t like it though.” I rubbed my arms with my palms to ward off the shivers his words gave me. “You know I’m an idiot and will throw myself in front of speeding cars and hungry lions if that’s what it takes. But I won’t risk Mom or Julia and Annika.”
He put his long skinny arm over my shoulders. “We don’t have to. I have a plan.”
As we walked into the house, I rolled my eyes. “Why does that scare me more than the idea of zombies?”
* * *
I managed a few hours of sleep before the sun came up. The last thing I remember thinking about as I drifted away was how utterly devoid of awkwardness my exchange with Riley had been.
Were we finally growing past the sad breakup stage? Or were we drifting back to the way things used to be? And if that were the case, was it because there was so much danger?
Would we have come together in the first place if I’d never been in danger?
I knew the answer to that one. We were attracted to each other the moment our eyes locked across a busy street. Right before some guy walked in front of a bus and got killed.
But there had been those first weightless seconds when everything around us was ordinary and we wanted to know each other. So, yes. We still would have come together, even if we were both average and normal.
At dawn, the activity outside my window would have woken me, even if I hadn’t set my alarm. People shouted instructions to each other like construction workers at a work site.
I’d slept in my clothes, so I pulled on a sweater and a pair of boots, then wandered outside.
Sara waited on the porch, leaning on the railing. She shoved a cup of coffee in my hands. “I heard you moving around. Figured you’d need it.”
I blinked. “Didn’t you go home last night?”
“What, and miss all this?” She waved her hand at the yard.
I frowned. “What are they doing?”
The fairies had made a protective ring around my house twice in the past. The first time was to protect me from Sebastian the incubus. The second was to widen the circle and include more of my land, plus some of the woods and Aggie’s house.
Neither of those times had looked anything like this.
The guys had recruited Aggie to lead their show. Fairies flitted around her as she walked the circle, jingling her bracelets over the ground every few steps. After four stops for theatrical jingling, she turned three times, arms to the sky, hopped, then continued the pattern. The fairies followed her every move, spinning and twirling in the air, a high-pitched singing coming from their tiny throats.
I sipped my coffee, trying to keep my face serious. Every time she stopped to do her little spinning hop, I nearly choked. “Surely she’ll break a hip doing that. You know she’s over a hundred years old.”
“The old gal has some swanky moves in her.” Sara pulled me to a rocking chair and we each took a seat. “Relax. Give yourself a minute to wake up. Nothing’s going to happen for awhile, I’m guessing.”
I rocked. I sipped. I fretted. “Where is everybody?”
Sara’s face was serious. “They’re all helping. Riley has Lionel’s men guarding the outside while Aggie helps the fairies. Because, as you know, this is our most vulnerable time, now that the ring is down.”
I stared at her, not understanding. “They took the ring down? And Lionel’s men are guarding us?” I struggled to climb out of my rocking chair.
Sara pulled me back into the chair. “No, you idiot. The ring is fine. We’re just waiting to see who tries to break in while they think we’re vulnerable.”
Ah, well. I never was very smart first thing in the morning. “So where’s Riley?”
“He’s with Lionel, but he’s going to make an excuse at one point to leave Lionel alone for a few minutes.”
“Has anyone heard from Darius?”
Sara smiled. “Not as far as Lionel knows.”
“Where is he?”
Sara flicked her gaze upward as a pebble rolled from the roof and bounced off the railing. “He’s got a bird’s-eye view of everything.”
Well, hell. While I’d slept, my family had pulled it all together. “So, now we wait for one or more of them to try something.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Eighteen
We’d thought we were so smart. We’d thought the entire thing could be scripted, and the bad guys would do exactly what we expected.
By the time we figured out what was happening, Julia and Annika were both dead.
I’d barely said three sentences to them in the entire sixteen hours they’d been entrusted to my care.
For some immensely stupid reason, most of our attention was on the front of the house. All of the portals had appeared there so far, and the back of my property ended at a cliff. Nothing could approach from that side without setting off the fairy alarm system. Plus, from outside that area, nobody could see inside.
Not all of the woods were included in the fairy ring. The strip of forest didn’t actually belong to me in the first place, but since several Hidden I cared about—Tashi, and a family made up of a satyr, a dryad and their baby, for instance—lived in it, I’d wanted to be sure they were safe as well. Farther back, in the direction of the ocean, the woods were unprotected.
Since we had not, in fact, reset the fairy ring as we had pretended, Lionel still had access to the property, as if he were a vampire we’d invited inside and hadn’t bothered to retract the welcome. But we were watching for him, so that wasn’t an issue. We’d expected him to be the problem.
And then he wasn’t the problem. Or rather, he was, but not in the way we’d anticipated.
First came the singing drifting up the driveway from down the street. But there shouldn’t have been any singing, because all the cult members were locked up.
By Lionel.
They strode straight toward us, faces solemn and voices and hands lifted to the sky. On the bright side, Pansy wasn’t there with them, so she really had run off with her boyfriend. Also on the bright side was a complete absence of portal in my driveway. As irritating as the cult members were, they were harmless without an aswang to call.
Riley and Maurice stepped in front of the group, blocking their progress, and three of Lionel’s people joined them.
“Where’s your boss?” Riley shouted at the dwarf beside him. I barely made out the words over the singing cultists. “I thought you people had these guys locked up.”
The dwarf shrugged and his mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear anything.
Before I could follow what happened, one of the cult members, a harpy, squawked and took a swing at Riley. Maurice jumped in and took the punch, then rammed her stomach with his head, plowing her over backwards. Half the group jumped on him, and Riley dove in after to pull them off. Fists, feet, hooves and wings flew in a jumble, then a great dark mass dropped from my roof and ran into the fray.
Sara and I exchanged alarmed expressions.
“Should we go in and help?” She leaned forward in her chair, as if to run out there. I didn’t doubt that Sara could hold her own.
I shook my head. “No, wait. This isn’t right. Nothing about this is right.” I twisted in my seat, searching frantically. “Where the hell is Lionel?”
A scream came from the backyard. Sara and I bolted, running through the house and out the kitchen door. Mom stood in the middle of the yard, frozen, staring into the distance.
We caught up with her and grabbed her as her knees buckled. “I told them not to go.” Her face was pale and her voice weak. “I told them to wait.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and walked in the direction she was staring. Dread coursed through me, and my steps dragged in the grass. At the northeast edge of my property, two lumps lay in the pine needles on the outside of where the fairy ring protected my home. A portal shimmered beyond them, and four figures stood nearby.
I continued forward, unafraid for myself. I wouldn’t set foot outside the ring. I wouldn’t be fooled. But I wanted Lionel to look me in the eye and tell me why he’d done it.
To my surprise, when I drew closer, I didn’t find Lionel surrounded by his people. I found Lionel in the custody of Breezy, the werefox. Her mate, Mac, stood beside her with a now-calmed aswang who was covered in blood.
Annika’s blood.
Julia’s blood.
I wanted it to be Lionel’s blood.
There was about a foot of safe space between where the invisibility bubble ended and the fairy ring began. I had a safe zone where they could still see me, and I stepped into it.
I narrowed my eyes at the skinwalker. “Why?”
Lionel twitched and Breezy’s claws dug into his shoulder. “He who is Last shall be First, and he shall lead us into a new world all our own.”
I took a step back, feeling as if I’d been slapped. “You’re part of the cult.” I’d suspected he was behind the cult, but for some reason, it had never occurred to me that he’d be a religious nutjob. He hadn’t hidden his duplicity very well, but he’d done a damn fine job of pretending not to be whacko.
Pansy hadn’t joined for religious reasons—her purposes had been personal and escapist. Without realizing it, I’d assumed they all felt that way.
He grinned and something moved beneath the skin of his cheek. “He will come, and great rewards he shall give to those who were faithful. And his priests shall be rewarded tenfold!”
So, Lionel was a priest. The cult members singing the aswangs into our world had been acting under his anonymous orders. Then we’d handed them over to him to lock up so he could let them back out again. Brilliant. Go us.
And despite our grand plan to out him, we’d forgotten to tell any of the other three Aegises what we had in mind. Only my mother had recognized the danger.
“We are so sorry, Aegis.” Breezy’s eyes were dewy and sad. “We tried to get here in time.”
I nodded. “I know. Thank you for stopping him here.” I glanced at the lifeless forms at my feet and tried not to cry. “I can’t save these women, but he has information I need.”
Breezy squeezed and brought Lionel to his knees. Blood soaked his shirt where she’d cut into him. “I think you’d better start telling her what she wants to know, friend.” Her tongue ran across her sharp teeth.
“Where’s Kam?” I kept my voice steady and low.
He smiled up at me, as if he weren’t bleeding and at the mercy of the werefolk. “We need her.” There was a ferocity in his eyes, and he spoke almost as if he were singing. “There are still two Aegises left to kill. And soon, we’ll break the lock on the final door. When the end comes, he will take his true form and lead us home!”
I took a step forward, my fist clenched. The aswang in Mac’s care lifted its head, scenting me.
“Steady, Aegis,” Mac said. “Slowly.”
“You can’t do anything with the djinn if you’re locked up,” I said. “So you might as well tell me where they are.”
He shook his head in a motion so vigorous his face shifted and left one cheek sagging. The area beneath his eye exposed muscle and bone. “No. I don’t think so.”
Lionel worked his jaw in a strange, awkward motion, working his tongue around in his mouth. He spit out a tooth, then smiled again to show me a tiny pill clutched between his front teeth.
I’d been joking before about the cult members having cyanide pills concealed in a tooth.
“Stop him!” I stumbled forward to keep him from crushing the pill, but my movements agitated the aswang and I stopped. Breezy reached for the pill, but he crushed it before she could get her hand there.
Within ten seconds, he was dead.
I stood with one hand over my mouth, unable to believe what had just happened. In a matter of five minutes we’d lost the last two Aegises not belonging to my family and the only link to where Kam had been taken. Tears filled my eyes.
“No. He’s faking it. Wake him up. Make him tell us where she is.”
Breezy’s nostrils flared as she sniffed the body. I didn’t care for the look of pity she gave me. “I’m sorry, Aegis. He’s gone to meet his god.”
I brushed away the tears from my cheeks. “I’m sorry. Just...just take him out of here, will you? We’ll deal with our people, but I don’t want to look at him.”
Mac cleared his throat. “We need to take this little lady home too.” He tipped his head toward the bloody aswang, dazed and held fast by Mac’s firm grip. “Again, apologies for being too late, Aegis.”
I didn’t answer. My misery and guilt was too deep for me to blame anyone else, but I didn’t have the will left to dig through my sadness to offer a gracious reply to ease their suffering. The best I could offer was a quick nod in their direction before turning to disappear into the invisible dome a few steps away.
Mom waited for me, tears streaming down her face. She held her arms open and I ran into them. This time I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel like I was five again.
I felt like we were saying goodbye.
I’d done everything I thought was right in trying to keep us all safe, and yet we’d lost half our number in five minutes.
Now there were two.
Whoever was doing this had people all over the world to track and kill Aegises. How many would come for us, now that there was only Mom and me? How soon would they show up at our door?
But that wasn’t what they had to do. All it would take was one more portal. One door that opened to let out a legion of starving undead intent on eating the brains of humans.
Or whatever it was the zombies would do. No one had really explained it to me yet, except to say it would be the end of all of us.
So, what was the point of the Covenant if the end of the world caused the last Aegises to die rather than the other way around? Either nobody had the truth of what the Covenant represented, or somebody was doing it wrong.
We stood in the grass as the sun finished rising, sobbing at first, then weeping softly, making each other’s shoulders wet with tears of grief and fear.
As our tears slowed, more arms encircled us. Maurice. Sara. Riley. Darius. Aggie.
My family.
They were my strength.
They were the difference.
Every other Aegis had been alone in the world, only receiving help when it was too late. Had Mom still been living the life she’d been living for the last twenty years, she’d be gone too. It was only in the heart of our family, putting our trust in them and only them, that she and I had any hope of surviving.
And by extension, keeping the world safe.
When the tears were all shed and the shaking had subsided, our cluster loosened. We squeezed each other’s hands and stepped apart.
Darius nodded at Riley, then turned to me. “We’ll take care of the fallen. Eat something, if you can. We have a long day ahead of us.”
My throat was scratchy. “Thank you.”
Maurice held out both his hands, and Mom
and I each took one. My feet felt heavy in the grass as he led us inside. Even with my family around me, I wasn’t confident about the future.
Mine or anyone else’s.
* * *
The rest of the day was every bit as long as Darius had predicted. Murphy O’Brian reported in to Gris with information about who bought the sanctified multi-djinn bottle. His help was appreciated, but too late.
He described a skinwalker with a badly fitting face. Awesome information a day or two ago, but totally useless now. Especially since the skinwalker in question was now a dead end. Literally.
Alma checked in with a report on the detectives’ preliminary findings—which was to say, the big fat nothing they’d uncovered.
It was a long shot, really, so I wasn’t surprised. We’d given them zero clues to go on and nowhere to start looking. It was good to know that Alma was willing to help, though. She had considerable resources in the human world, and she might come in handy sometime in the future.
Provided there would be a future.
Andrew made a lot more progress on his end. Madame Emilia had done a reading for him.
“She had a vision,” he told me over the phone. “She saw a pile of gems glowing in a darkened room.” He paused and I could feel his reluctance. “Zoey, things in visions aren’t always literal, okay? I need you to remember that.”
My stomach tightened. “Must be pretty bad if you’re afraid to tell me.”
“She saw a morgue filled with bodies. And she heard screaming.”
I swallowed. “But you don’t think that was literal.”
“No. Well, I hope not.”
I tried to shake off the image he’d put in my head. “What else have you got?”
“I took Kam’s headphones over to Christie.”
That sounded more hopeful. At least Christie only looked for lost stuff. She didn’t see anything other than maps and the crystal pendant she dangled over them. “Did she learn anything?”
“She narrowed it down to a town.”
I bet she did. “Let me guess,” I said. “Petaluma.”
“How did you know?” He almost sounded disappointed.
