Lady of Blades

by Saje Williams

  "Tease,” he growled affectionately, more to himself than to her.

  Amanda pulled her PCD from her purse and answered the call with a single tap on the touchscreen. “Amanda Dalmas."

  "Amanda—it's Athena."

  "Hi, Athena. What's up?” She knew it couldn't be good. Athena had always respected her family time. That she'd call her this late didn't bode well.

  "Raven's back. He's hurt. I hate to do this, but can you come in for a couple hours? I'd just as soon have Ben here too, but..."

  "Someone's got to stay with the kid. Okay. Give me ten minutes, will you?"

  "Will do."

  "Wait. How bad is Raven hurt?” If it were bad enough, they'd bundle little Aaron up and all of them would head in to HQ. She couldn't deny Ben the chance to say a final farewell to his best friend.

  "How should I know? He's a vampire. If he were mortal, he'd be dead. If he were an immortal, he'd be fine in a matter of hours."

  "Head wound?"

  "No. Pretty badly burned though."

  She felt a sudden rush of relief. If he wasn't dead yet ... “He'll be fine. See you in a few."

  She stopped in to the bathroom and filled Ben in. He stuck his head out of the curtain and wiped water from his eyes. “You'll let me know if it looks bad, right?"

  "Of course. That's a silly question."

  "Sorry. I guess I'll see you in a few hours, then."

  "Love you."

  "Love you, too. Now go. I won't be comfortable until you can send news back."

  "Pushy bastard."

  "Stubborn wench."

  They grinned at each other for a long moment before Amanda called up a transit tube and stepped through.

  * * * *

  Raven sat back with a groan as Loki leaned over the side of the chair to inspect his chest. “Nasty burn,” the trickster commented, “but I think you'll be okay. What the hell did they hit you with?"

  "Some sort of directed energy weapon—not a laser, but something much more powerful. I'm just glad it was a pulse weapon. A full beam from the damned thing would've cut me in half."

  "You know what you need to do, right?"

  They both glanced up as Amanda entered through the door, wincing at the sight of the angry read weal across the vampire's chest. “That looks painful."

  "What a coincidence,” Raven responded dryly, “since it is."

  "How goes the battle?” she asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

  "Well, we're all still alive ... but that's the best thing I can say about it. That place is a madhouse. That bitch Hecate is smart, powerful, and just plain evil. She was waiting for us, I think, and hit us with a seriously complex spell the minute we ‘gated in. It was like being caught in an explosion of transit tubes and it separated us before we even had a chance to get our bearings."

  "So you don't know how anyone else is?” Loki asked worriedly.

  Raven shook his head. “Actually, I do. Some of us managed to find one another, though it took a while—what, with all the damn droolies running around up there—"

  "Droolies?"

  "That's what Quickfingers calls the human/animal hybrids we ran into all over the place ... droolies. I thought it was just the Cen who used those things."

  "Apparently not,” Loki murmured. “Didn't Jaz say that Hecate was trying to breed her Neanderthals with the parahumans she'd been snatching? It sounds like she's playing other genetic games as well."

  "Loki—I can't begin to describe how strange that place is ... I don't know if it's Hecate or someone else, but there are more weird critters there than you can shake a stick at."

  "Shake a stick at?” Loki shook his head with a dry chuckle. “That expression has always puzzled me. Droolies, eh?. So I take it you ended up with the imp?"

  "Not so you'd notice. The little bugger was the only one of us who could find his way around. Couldn't transport anyone but himself, though. So we used him to stay in contact."

  "So is everyone else all right?"

  He met Amanda's gaze with a swift nod. “For now. If you don't mind, I've gotta run. I need to bury myself and heal up. I'll see you in a couple of days."

  "Fine by me,” Loki said. “You're going back, aren't you?"

  "When I rest up."

  Neither Loki nor Amanda looked particularly thrilled by this news, but nodded their understanding. “I'll shut the ‘gate down until you return,” Loki told him.

  "That'll work.” In a swirl of black fog, the vampire vanished.

  "I really hate it when he does that,” Amanda muttered. She shook her head and sagged against a nearby wall. “Sounds like a madhouse."

  "Part of me wishes I was there,” Loki replied, running long fingers through his crimson thatch of hair. “But the wiser half is very glad I'm safe on Earth."

  Fourteen

  Something went screaming past her, a ball of spitting light that burst against the wall at the end of the corridor. Jaz ducked, a dagger leaping to hand. Her gaze sliced across the stretch of hallway before her as she scanned for the doorway through which the attack had originated. There were only about fifty doors on each side leading the two hundred or so feet to the other end of the corridor, so it wasn't quite an easy task as she would have liked. The plasma ball could have been thrown from any of the farther doors and she hadn't been able to pinpoint its origin.

  Unless she risked a sprint down the hall. She activated a powerful multi-thread warding spell and launched herself into a flat-out run. Another bolt of plasma roared her direction, but one of the warding threads snatched it away and shattered it into a thousand burning sparks against one of the doors.

  She spotted a door clicking shut and reached it in a few hurried strides, throwing her weight against it and feeling it budge not at all. All the doors were identical, seemingly made out of the same silvery-white material as the walls. She reared back and fired a powerful side kick to the center of the door, hoping to break the latch, but the door stood firm. “Shit!” She hammered it twice more and felt nothing give. “Damn."

  Quickfingers materialized next to her. She glanced down at him. “Can you get me through this door?"

  He nodded once, swiftly, and leaped up to her shoulder, wrapping his legs around the side of her neck. “Now!"

  They ‘ported, appearing inside what immediately looked to be a storage room. Several stacks of boxes surrounded them and the floor was strewn with an assortment of packages. Otherwise the small chamber looked empty. What the hell?

  "Nobody here, Boss."

  "I can see that,” she responded dryly. “This is a hell of a way to fight a war,” she growled irritably. “What news?"

  "Cecil and Orcus are holed up in a hall of mirrors with Rio,” he told her, referring to the were-otter and were-orca she'd recruited a couple weeks before the mission. They were still an unknown quantity, but so far they were holding their end of things up pretty well. Or so the imp had informed her. “Chaz and Bonedance are in a vast chamber with a pool filled with murderous intelligent crocodiles trying to cut them into bite-sized chunks. Chaz is pretty handy with that laser weapon he found and Bonedance is a big freakin’ tarantula. They're doing okay."

  "And Raven?"

  "Went back to Earth to heal. I don't know if he's going to be okay, but I think so."

  "Good. What about his girlfriend?"

  "She and Feral Dusk have found a market!"

  Jaz sighed and vanished her dagger. “I wish you could transport us farther than a few feet."

  "The walls really resist me, and the more walls I have to teleport through the harder it is. I'm scared to death I'm going to end up leaving a passenger inside a wall if I'm not careful."

  "I know. If we could just orient ourselves to one another...” That was the trick. Quickfingers could find the various members of the team, but he couldn't map the place. They had no idea where they were in relation to anyone else. Strihava was simply too damn big and they had no real points of reference.

  Hecate had been expecti
ng them and had warded the gate chamber with one of the most fiendishly clever traps Jaz had ever seen. Together they were a formidable force and could have held their own against damn near anything she could throw at them. But separated they were vulnerable, and facing the vast array of warriors spread throughout the immense structure in groups far smaller than Jaz had intended.

  Hecate was crafty indeed. She'd been working whatever plots she'd come up with for centuries, and had taken much more of Strihava than Jaz had originally assumed. She'd only seen the merest part of the massive construct when held prisoner, and even Quickfingers hadn't known but a fraction of its vastness.

  If she didn't find a way to get the team back together, sooner or later they'd all end up outmatched and overwhelmed. Jaz was just frustrated enough to want to kill something. She grabbed a strand and hurled it at the back wall, leaping through with her katana in hand.

  Swearing, the imp appeared at her side. “Either let me teleport you or tell me you're going to use a ‘tube,” he admonished her as he looked around.

  They were now in a much larger chamber, this one filled with an assortment of what looked to be medical beds, each accompanied by some sort of unfamiliar machine. “Interesting,” she murmured. A fine layer of dust lay over everything, indicating that it had been a while since this room had been occupied. Or even visited.

  She threaded her way between the beds, frowning, gaze seeking another exit. Behind a partial wall tucked into a corner of the room, she found a single tall door marked with an eerily familiar-looking skull and crossbones decal. Don't like the looks of that, she thought, but she reached and grasped the knob anyway.

  The resulting jolt threw her fifteen feet into one of the beds, sending it crashing sideways into the floor and spilling the mute machine alongside it. She climbed to her feet, wincing at a twinge in her shoulder. “Well, that was fun,” she said, giving herself a shake. She snatched a passing thread and hurled one end at the door. At her will it formed into a thin, monomolecular whip. It sliced between the door and the jamb, neatly bisecting the hardware holding it closed. Another strand, one end cast at the door, allowed her to pull the door open from several feet away.

  It was another hallway. Well, that figures. She dashed through the doorway and felt a sudden tingle at her back. She whirled, falling into a deep crouch, and felt the wind from another pass over her head. Something metal rebounded off the wall above her head and she whirled, lashing out knee-level with the edge of her blade.

  She felt more than saw the huge form looming over her as her sword bit deep into the creature's leg. It threw back its saurian head and released a bellow of pain and rage as it lashed out again with its broad-bitted axe. She dove out of the way, somersaulting along the edge of the wall and scrambling to her feet as the reptilian creature hurled itself at her again, the mighty axe descending in a vicious arc.

  She launched herself upward, catching the axe haft against her blade at the very beginning of its arc. She twisted aside, allowing the axe to fall unhindered toward the floor, and smashed the pommel of her sword into the creature's gaping maw. She finished the whole affair with a horizontal slash of her katana that cut the massive reptile in half and then danced away from the tremendous gout of blood that erupted from its bisected form as both halves fell to the floor.

  "Ewww.” Quickfingers looked down at the corpse with a disgusted twist to his face. “That's just ugly."

  Unsure whether he was talking about the corpse or the reptilian creature in general, Jaz ignored him as she flicked gore off her blade and continued up the corridor. It looked pretty much the same as the last one. If that thing was the one throwing plasma bolts at us, I'll eat my boots, she thought grimly.

  And that would make a hefty meal indeed, considering they were knee-high black suede ‘bitch-boots,’ as Breed would've referred to them. Another fucking double row of doors. She snarled under her breath as she crept down the hall, blocking out the imp's nearly continuous chatter. She'd grown used to it, or at least accustomed enough it didn't break her concentration when she needed it.

  She'd tried one of the doors in the previous hallway and regretted it instantly. She'd tried to ease the door open and found herself confronted by a veritable jungle of carnivorous plants ... or a single plant grown to jungle size, a hydra of emerald death gnashing ivory teeth as it surged toward the door.

  She'd slammed it and stood outside for a moment, trying to come to terms with what she'd seen. No, no more doors. Not unless they included a window, which none of them had so far. So she tromped by each and every door, every sense on fire as she anticipated another plasma attack that had yet to materialize.

  It bugged her to no end that she hadn't been able to identify their attacker. She hadn't even got a glimpse of him, her, or it. Just the plasma bolts. Maybe he's invisible, she thought with a mental shrug. That would explain why I can't see him.

  It wasn't as though she weren't familiar with the concept. The tricky part was that she hadn't figured out how to see invisible things yet. She knew there had to be a way to accomplish it—after all, hadn't Bast spotted her easily enough?

  She had the unwelcome thought that maybe she needed to know the mechanics of how vision worked to be able to work that sort of magic. Both art and science, they say. Jaz had always been an artist, working as much from imagination and instinct as following any sort of logical pathway to the effects she wanted. It had served her well enough up until now, but it seemed there might be more to it in the long run than she'd ever suspected. Powerful, yes. Talented, of course.

  She'd learned a lot on the island, a lot that many of the other magi knew nothing about. But all that did was emphasize how much she still didn't know. What were her limitations, she wondered. Near as she could tell, there was no way to affect another individual's freedom of choice, or affect their minds in any way, though she'd caught hints of the possibility of crafting illusions. Unreal images woven out of mana.

  She'd first supposed that this was somehow related to the glamour power of the immortals, but her teachers had laughed at the notion. The immortals could change the way they looked by rearranging their bone structure and modifying musculature at will. They called it glamour, but, in reality, it had no relation to the talent legend had ascribed to the Fey.

  Could the Fey cast illusion? It would seem like they could, but she'd never really had the opportunity to ask Carth—last of the pureblood Fey—about what magic he might know. I guess I wasn't curious enough about it, she admitted in rueful silence. Now she was.

  She knew she was arrogant. It didn't bother her. She was good, and had no problem with acknowledging it. As far as she was concerned, false modesty was the purest bullshit. But she also knew it never paid to ignore when you screwed up. And she'd screwed up by not being curious enough. Too sure of herself by far.

  She had to laugh at the sudden doubts assailing the heretofore impregnable tower of her ego. Talk about a waste of time and energy, she snorted silently. She strode purposefully down the hall, ignoring the doors on both sides until she arrived at a set of brass-bound double doors marked with a strange sigil. She frowned and turned on her magesight. It glowed brightly in her vision, a double-knotted, twisty affair with at least a dozen strands woven together.

  A ward? Or something else? She stood there for a long moment, studying the rune and stroking her chin thoughtfully. She remembered something the mages had taught her on the island, something about un-weaving a spell already laid. Tricky, but possible. It just takes nerve.

  Nerve was one thing she didn't lack. She reached out and gently drew one of the threads away from the knotted sigil, wrapping it around one hand as she reached for the next with the other. She pulled this one away, weaving it between her fingers. She bound the two together, focusing all of her will on them, consciously forming the intent to forge them into something particularly nasty. A spell. A weapon.

  She reached out and pulled another strand, carefully tying it into the throbbing thing she
was building. It writhed in her grasp like a living creature anxious to escape. Fighting her. She took a another thread ... continued building her weapon. Strand upon strand, braided together, hewn by hand and will into the most powerful effect she could imagine. Liquid lightning, like the fury of Thor himself. Thirteen strands she extracted from that sigil, until it burned no more in her magesight. Then she reached out and found the door handle, throwing the doors open in front of her, the lightning spell burning with its own fire in the palm of her hand. C'mon you bastards, just try something.

  The sight that greeted her set her back on her heels. Spread out before her was a market, beneath what had to be an artificial sun, within a chamber so vast she couldn't even begin to grasp its size. Her nostrils were suddenly awash with scents both good and ill, so much, so overpowering, that she felt almost dizzy. The teeming crowds were a mixture of people—human and otherwise—and it was loud. She had to concentrate to dull the cacophony.

  It was difficult for her to remind herself that she was still inside. This place was truly immense, the scope of it almost beyond imagining. She released the spell into her web and strode through the doorway.

  She felt a sudden pressure, gone so quickly she wasn't sure she'd felt it at all. She took two steps and then stopped as two human figures appeared by her side. One, a bright-eyed youth in full cowboy gear, with two pearl-handled revolvers hanging in holsters low on his hips, a fringed leather vest, and a huge white hat, grinned over at her in a distinctly friendly manner. The other, in a long gray trench coat and what might have been a fedora, gave her an appraising look through ice-blue eyes while he chomped on the butt end of an unlit cigar. “How'd you get through the door?” he asked, without preamble.

  She shrugged, allowing herself a wry grin. “I got skills,” she said.

  The cowboy's grin grew wider. “And plenty more, if you don't mind me saying, ma'am.” His gaze was frankly evaluating as he scanned her from head to toe.

  "Take a picture,” she told him. “It'll last longer."