It wasn’t enough of any of the three to prove fatal from one round, though the 9 mm rounds would do a good chunk of damage on their own, but three or four of those in just about any inhuman would give them a very bad day.
Returning the bullet to the box, I pulled out the cloth package. It was a plain, dark gray undershirt. Running my fingers down it, however, I could feel lines of impact-resistance gel capsules, and turning it inside out, I saw someone had inlaid a series of what looked liked runes in a goldish metal that I suspected was the orichalcum Oberis had mentioned.
Apparently, the Queen preferred me alive and not shot to pieces. Who would have figured?
11
In the morning, however, it all seemed faintly ridiculous. I was not going to be the only courier in the city driving around carrying a firearm! I left the Jericho and its thoroughly lethal ammunition in the briefcase.
Of course, that didn’t stop me putting the armored vest on. If nothing else, it turned out to be very warm, and I wasn’t sneering at that in the weather Calgary had boasted since my arrival. That I was sure the Queen’s gift would stop anything short of tank rounds helped as well.
I made it into work exactly on time, to the usual hustle of Trysta and Bill sorting everyone out with their loads for the day.
“Hey, Jason,” Trysta greeted me. “You’re on the ten AM airport run, same as yesterday, but I’ve got a load for you to run out beforehand.”
“Works for me,” I agreed, and then groaned as one of the other drivers accidentally elbowed me.
“You okay, man?” he immediately asked.
“I broke up a fight on the weekend,” I explained quickly. “I’ll be fine. Just watch my chest, if you can.”
“Are you going to be good to drive?” Trysta asked when I turned back to her.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I repeated. “Just bruised.” She nodded and handed me the clipboard for my morning deliveries.
I was half-expecting the text that arrived as I was halfway through my trip, instructing me to meet Enforcer Michael at a different Starbucks location from last time, this one on my way back to the office from this trip.
“Is this going to be a regular thing?” I asked as I met him in the parking lot. This time, he had the mocha I’d ordered last time waiting for me. I took it gratefully, the cup warm in my hands amidst the frigid air.
“It is convenient for us to have an inhuman that can make official courier deliveries,” he said quietly, passing me a single box. “This is for air shipment,” he instructed. “Include it in your drop-off.”
“You could try booking through the company rather than all of this cloak-and-dagger,” I told him. “I can’t say I’m overly enthused with putting my employers at risk.”
“Measures have been taken so there will be no risk, fiscal or otherwise, to your employers,” he replied calmly. “We will see to it that they are compensated for any minor loss due to your service to us. We have the ability to have them added to the preferred courier list for several significantly sized companies in the city. I calculate that the gains from that addition would far outweigh the few minutes of your time we require.”
“Fine,” I grunted. “But if anything happens to harm them, I will take it to the Court and have my lord file a complaint under the Covenants. Are we clear?”
“Perfectly, Mr. Kilkenny,” he accepted calmly with a slight bow of his head.
I took the package. Unless I was willing to take my concerns to Oberis—and right now, I didn’t want to remind him that I existed—there was nothing else I could do.
The rest of the day passed smoothly, with the Enforcers’ package vanishing without a trace amidst the rest of the outbound shipment. Trysta was noticeably more businesslike with me than usual, without nearly as many of the bright smiles I’d grown used to receiving.
There was nothing I could do about that situation, however, so I accepted it with a sigh and continued on with my job. The workday ended with me walking home on my own through the freezing weather, thankful for the extra warmth of the Queen’s vest.
The weather fit my mood pretty thoroughly. On the one hand, the woman who I had been interested now likely believed me a liar who’d used her for information. Even if she didn’t, I was forbidden to deal with the Clan now.
On the other, one of my coworkers was apparently interested and somewhat upset that I didn’t return her interest, which might become uncomfortable in the future.
On yet a third hand, I’d followed the link through the airport as far as I could, and that trail had ended in a fiery mess when I accidentally burnt down Sigridsen’s house. While the shifters might get something from her computers, I would never know—I couldn’t contact them to find out.
As if to demonstrate how frustrating the situation was, it promptly started to snow. I quickened my pace as visibility began to decrease and the temperature slowly dropped around me. I was two blocks from home, and the snow got thicker fast.
After a few minutes, I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me, and even fae vision couldn’t keep me from risking getting very lost. I kept putting one foot in front of another, leaning into the wind and pulling my hood down lower to try and protect my face.
A dark figure materialized out of the white like a ship breaking through a wave. A heavy coat covered them from neck to toe, and a thick scarf and a pair of ski goggles protected them above the neck. None of their skin was bared to the snow—or to the sun that had been shining a few minutes before.
You hunt too well, a voice sounded in my head. We do not need to be enemies, child.
“Who are you?” I tried to say, but the wind stole my voice. The figure shook its head, suggesting that they could hear me.
Silly, silly child, the voice said. I would not reveal so much just yet. I am...connected to those you hunt so virulently. You know so little about the situation and are so weak. Why risk yourself?
“Because they’re feeders,” I said with feeling. I figured that it didn’t really matter if I could even hear myself—which was good, because I couldn’t. The wind was brutal, and the snow was now falling sideways almost as much as down.
Such emotion, mmm, the figure purred inside my head. I’m told your kind are sweet to the taste; did you know that? Human enough to feed on, fae enough to be a heady drink.
I tried to summon faerie fire to defend myself, but the wind and snow snuffed it out. A pealing laugh resounded in my head, and the figure pointed.
There is your home, little changeling, the voice told me. You are not food tonight. But watch your step, for you walk in shadows without understanding who casts the light. Leave well enough alone, little changeling, and you will live.
The shadowed figure stepped back into the snow and was gone. After a moment, I followed where it had pointed. Within ten steps, I found myself on the front porch of my apartment complex and leaned against the wall.
Someone had just gone out of their way to warn me off as impressively as they could. I may not think I was getting anywhere, but that someone obviously did!
At no point in the night did the snow slow, and by morning, the city was buried under more than a yard of snow. I woke up to Bill calling me to let me know he’d shut Direct down for the day—even if we managed to make it into dispatch, he wouldn’t feel comfortable letting us take the trucks out on the streets.
I went out to check the front door of the apartment complex, not quite believing Bill’s description of the city as buried. Apparently, the snow had drifted with the wind, because the front door of the complex was glass, with full-length windows on either side, and it was completely covered in snow.
After weeks of being at work disgustingly early, I was very awake at six in the morning. A quick search revealed a snow shovel in a closet off the main hallway, so I grabbed my winter coat and got to work.
An hour later, I’d managed to clear the building’s front patio and a pathway down to the road, which had not been plowed. My “pathway” resemble
d a canyon, but I’d packed in the sides so it would stay up. Hopefully, the still-blowing snow wouldn’t fill it in too badly before the plows came to dig us out.
Assuming the plows came to dig us out. After a week worrying about the orders of the Queen, vampires and conspiracies, the prosaic worry of merely being completely snowed in was somewhat of a relief.
I took a quick stock of my groceries and started making breakfast. Given the state of the streets, I was more than a little surprised when my door buzzer rang. It took me a minute to put aside pans and spatulas and get to it, and by then it had buzzed again.
“Yes?”
“It’s Eric,” the intercom told me. “Can you let me in? It’s bloody freezing out here.”
Bemused, I hit the button to allow the old gnome entrance and, a minute or so later, opened my door to a knock. The gnome stood in my hallway, dripping wet, a pair of snowshoes as tall as he was leaning against his shoulder. For a moment, all I could do was stare at the incongruous sight before I finally managed to stand aside and let him enter my apartment.
“I can’t say I was expecting company,” I told him as I gestured to my couch. I grabbed my computer chair—the only other place to sit in the apartment—and turned it to face him.
“Good,” he said gruffly. “If you weren’t expecting me, and with the weather outside, we can assume no one else figures I’m here or will ever know.” He pulled a small gold pyramid inscribed with runes in the goldish silver I was learning to recognize as orichalcum, and placed it beside him on the couch, studying the runes for a moment.
“What is that?” I asked.
“This is one of my most carefully guarded secrets,” he told me. “There are very few ways to block the Sight of a Wizard without him knowing that it has been blocked, and this is one of them.”
“The Sight?” I asked, realizing with a sigh that it would be another morning of questions.
The gnome shook his head. “How do you think that MacDonald knew you were here? That the Enforcers always seem to know what you’re up to? Wizards see like you and I, but they also See—they can perceive everything within the areas they have marked as their own. MacDonald has marked Calgary and the oil-sands projects as his territory; he Sees everything.”
“Then how did the cabal sneak in?” I asked in my slow drawl.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Eric told me quietly. “Some of the Enforcers have been given a portion of his Sight; it allows them to operate without pestering him with questions. Even if he somehow missed the feeders, they should have seen them. Somehow, this cabal not merely snuck into the city undetected but has evaded detection since.”
“With one of those?” I pointed at the pyramid.
“Something similar,” he admitted, “but not one of these—they are the mostly closely held secret of the gnomish smiths. I have only been permitted to make three. Oberis has one for when he absolutely needs it, I have this one for moments like this, and a third conceals my workshop, just in case.
“But what I miss, Jason, and what I fear is key here, is how they could conceal every vampire all of the time. You tracked Sigridsen by purely mortal means, really. The Enforcers should have known where she was the moment she was turned.”
“You think some of the Enforcers have been corrupted?” I asked. That was a nerve-wracking thought. Wizards were supposed to be all-knowing within their area—the Sight Eric mentioned. Deceiving one enough to betray him...well, I wouldn’t try it.
“It’s at least possible,” he said grimly. “I don’t know how to investigate that, but it’s something for you to consider, a link you need to watch for.”
“Honestly, I feel like I’m grasping at straws, and they keep setting themselves on fire,” I admitted. “I’ve lost my best sources through the Clan, and I’m not sure how to go forward.”
Eric nodded. “I have some more information for you,” he told me. “I’ve called in some favors, and one of my contacts has agreed to meet with you—he works for the Calgary Police, so he has access to databases we don’t.”
“That’s more than I had,” I said gratefully.
“His name is Aheed Ibrahim,” Eric continued. “He’s not human, but he’s not a breed of inhuman you’ve met before. He’s a djinni.”
I blinked. “I thought they really were only a myth.”
“Very little is only a myth,” the gnome reminded me wryly. “However, the djinn are very rare—unlike most inhumans, they are only fertile with each other. They are also quite powerful—Aheed is easily the equal of a lesser noble of the Court. He, his wife and their two children, however, are a tenth of the djinn in North America.
“Aheed drives hard bargains, and djinn are tricksters by nature,” Eric added. “Like in the old stories of them granting wishes, anything he does or offers will have a price—make sure you know what it is before agreeing to it. He’s mostly a good guy, so it will rarely be huge, but be careful what you agree to.”
“When do I get to meet him?” I asked.
Eric shrugged and pulled a second set of snowshoes out of thin air.
“I was thinking after breakfast?”
Snowshoeing through the buried city with Eric was a humbling reminder of where my physical prowess ranked against one of the true fae. I picked up the tricks and knacks quickly but was still hard pressed to keep up with a man slightly over half my height.
The sad part was that I could tell he was holding back, as much to avoid notice from the handful of people digging their way out around us as to let me keep up. He had more practice with the ’shoes and was faster and stronger than I was. On his own, Eric could have made the several-mile trip to Aheed’s small inner-city bungalow in maybe fifteen minutes.
It took the two of us a little under an hour, which was still better time than we would have made driving in the mess of snow and slush the city had become. Snowplows were out, and people with heavy trucks were out driving repeatedly through the snow, packing it down for others who didn’t have four-wheel drive.
Between the city workers and the gusto with which many of the city’s people had thrown themselves into opening up roads and clearing pathways, I would be surprised if the city wasn’t mostly open by evening. I was impressed.
Aheed’s bungalow was one of the ones where the owner had clearly been out as early as I had. The driveway and front paths were cleared, but snow had drifted down over the course of the day to provide an inch or so of surface cover.
Eric strode confidently over the new snow and rang the doorbell. The door was swiftly answered by a woman who looked in her early twenties. She was dark-haired and dark-skinned, clearly of Middle Eastern extraction.
“Ah, Mr. Eric,” she greeted the gnome. “And this would be your friend you wanted to introduce to my husband? Come in; get out of the cold.”
“Jason Kilkenny, be known to Nageena Ibrahim,” Eric told me as he led me into the warm bungalow. It was easily twenty-five, thirty degrees Celsius in the bungalow. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that the djinn kept their house at a level most of the city’s other occupants would regard as eye-meltingly hot.
“Mr. Kilkenny, welcome.” Nageena inclined her head to me and then turned to Eric. “My husband is downstairs. You know the way. I will bring tea.”
Eric nodded to her and led the way for me through the bungalow. It was decorated with small Arabic-style hangings, all looking hand-woven.
“They’re all Nageena’s work,” Eric told me when he saw me eyeing them. “Remember that she is over seventy—she’s had a lot of time to make them, and a lot of time to get good at it.”
It was easy, dealing with inhumans, to forget how old we all were. I didn’t look any older than when I’d manifested at twenty-one, and I didn’t expect to noticeably age for another forty or so years—and I was half-human.
Nageena and her husband were well past “retirement age” for mortals but still looked like young parents—too young, in fact, to have the adult children I knew they had. T
o look as old as Eric did meant the gnome was probably well into his third century at least.
My ruminations on Eric’s age were interrupted by our entry into Aheed Ibrahim’s underground computer lab. There was no way to describe it. Five separate computer towers were hooked into a bewildering array of monitors and cables and speakers. Despite the best efforts of what looked like industrial cooling units standing by what I realized was a commercial-grade server rack, it was even warmer down there than upstairs.
“Master Eric, Mr. Kilkenny,” the dark-haired man sitting on a chair in the middle of all that technology greeted us. He turned to face us and rose to his feet, offering me his hand. “I am Detective Lieutenant Aheed Ibrahim,” he introduced himself with a clipped, vaguely British accent.
“Good to meet you, Detective.” I shook his hand and then took the seat he gestured me to. For all of the computers in the room, the two chairs other than Aheed’s own looked like recent additions. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“I owe Eric a multiplicity of favors earned in several manners over some years,” the djinni told me. “An opportunity to repay him is not something I will pass up lightly, and my position with the CPS provides me with access to information you would not otherwise be able to review. These computers”—he gestured around him—“are linked through secure connections to the CPS and Interpol servers.”
“So, what information does Eric’s favor get me?” I asked. “I am looking for—”
“Information on a group of vampires you believe entered the city some months ago,” he interrupted me. “Eric advised me of the situation and I have done some research.”
He turned back to the computers and fiddled for a moment, and a chart popped up on one of the monitors. “This is the missing-persons reports for Calgary, by month, for the last two years.”
There was a sudden, sharp increase and Aheed pointed to it. “This surge started nine months ago—approximately when your vampires are believed to have arrived, correct?”
Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1) Page 9
