by Faith Hunter
I leaned to the glass and studied the street, at first seeing nothing but a fine mist that hung like a slowly falling fog, a leisurely, Louisiana rain. But when my eyes felt the need to drift away from two different places, I understood. There were two human-shaped forms out there, both hidden beneath obfuscation spells, one standing at either end of the block, in shadows. Not vamps. Not were-creatures. Witches. To a human they would be no more than two blurs, a haze on the night, obscured by the mist, an illusion of shadows in the darkness between the streetlamps. The power of their magic kept me from seeing them well, but now that I knew they were there, the magic itself was something Beast could make out, at least partially.
The working came from both of the hidden forms, two separate pale lines of power that ran across the street to meet and merge just in front of the house into a stronger line of energies. One line was a smooth, weak, pale red, the magics controlled and even and concise. The other witch’s magic was a pale green, the energies jumping and spitting, slithering like snakes, full of power that seemed to want to sprint away and perform all on their own. The term wild magics came to me, power that was feral and uncontrolled and seeking destruction. The red magics were meticulous and skillful, if not so dominant; the green magics were more potent and by far the greater danger. A yard or so after the two lines of witchy power combined, they entered the house through my bedroom wall.
I looked back at my partner and pointed to my eyes and then to the backyard, asking him if anyone was back there. He gave me a down-turned thumb. No other witches were part of the attack. Just two witches, one extraordinarily powerful. And if they hadn’t known before, they now knew about the magical trinkets in my closet.
Eli went to his brother and looked over the Kid’s shoulder. Alex was a former hacker, a former felon, and currently studying for a double doctorate at Tulane, while spying on me for some supersecret information gathering part of the Department of Defense or Homeland Security or the CIA. Or all three. The government wanted to know what I was. Alex was feeding them incorrect info, and as long as I didn’t shift in public and stayed under the radar, things would be okay. I hoped.
The Kid was too smart for his own good sometimes, but he was exactly what we needed as intel backup. He had the outside cameras up and running, taking digital and tape recordings. We had discovered that digital media worked when photographing vamps but was interrupted by many other kinds of magic. Old-school stuff was sometimes better at capturing images that would otherwise be hidden beneath the pixelated energies.
Tapping his tablets and putting camera views up on the big screen, Alex whispered, “You want me to call the police?”
“And tell them what?” I murmured in reply. “Two people are standing out front and shooting invisible X-ray vision at the house? That would go over well. Not.” I frowned hard. “They aren’t actually doing anything illegal according to human law. Witch law, maybe, but not if the NOLA coven sent them.”
“You think?” Eli muttered, concern lacing his voice.
“No. But I also don’t think the local witches would be interested in helping me against two of their own.” Witches were notoriously insular. I had made some witch friends back in Asheville, and while I had met some of the locals, I wouldn’t call them gal-pals.
Still softly, Eli asked, “Where is it?” meaning the scanning energies.
I walked silently through the house to the foyer and looked up the wide stairway. The pale green glow was entering the bedroom where Angie Baby stayed when she was here, and that didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t like anyone or anything that might affect my godchild, and I had no idea what the spell was really doing. It might be simply a scan, as I thought, or it might be putting down the witch equivalent of napalm, or a trigger for some future spell to incinerate us all. Or worse, it might be setting up a way to get to us when the Everhart-Trueblood witch family arrived in just a few days for the Witch Conclave. These witches might be working against the assembly; there were always people who wanted the status quo instead of peace, and the Witch Conclave was gearing up to be the event when the witches and the vamps of the Southeastern U.S. signed a peace treaty of sorts (though they called it something else) for the first time ever. I didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision about the purpose of the scan. As usual, I was flying by the seat of my pants, which didn’t bother me when I was the only one who would pay the consequences, but it did bother me when my lack of knowledge meant the boys or the Everhart-Trueblood clan would pay as well.
The stink of iron, salt, and burned hair had grown stronger again. What did burned hair mean? I had to assume it meant danger for the Youngers and me in the present. Or danger for my godchildren and their parents, later. Inside me, Beast growled and thought, Kits in danger. Kill witches.
Beast had a much simpler view of things than I did. Kill and ask questions later. No can do, I thought back at her. Deep inside, she extended her claws and milked my brain. It hurt. A lot. But it meant she was close if I needed to draw on her, so I wasn’t going to gripe.
Walking back into the shadows of the kitchen, I muttered, “The scan—if that’s what it is—is nearly done upstairs. That leaves this half of the downstairs. Oh.” Apprehension sped through me. “And the weapons storage and the utility area.” Parts of the house I seldom went into and rarely even thought about.
Eli waited, watching me. He wanted a plan of action, but I didn’t have one to give him. As a rogue-vamp hunter, I had a legal leg to stand on when killing vamps—and their human blood-servants—who presented a clear and present danger to the human populace. The blood-servant ruling was a new one, recently issued by the Louisiana Supreme Court, over a kill made back in the nineties by another vamp hunter, who was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned when he killed three of a vamp’s walking blood-meals while saving a family of four humans. The vamp hunter was free now, though no one could give him back his lost years. The state supreme court decision gave me certain powers, within state law, against rogue vamps and their willing dinner partners. Against sane vamps, law-abiding humans, law-abiding were-creatures, or witches, I had no more power than anyone else.
I didn’t know what to do. My Beast-inspired headache was growing. One thing I knew for certain. The house was old, constructed of wood and old brick, with an antiquated electrical system. If the magics wanted to cause me trouble, burning down the house would be easy. I sniffed again, but the stink of magic-induced smoke was gone. For now.
Alex waved us over and said softly, “I took digital photos of them, but the photos don’t work worth jack through the obfuscation spells.” We stood behind his chair and his boy-man-garlic stink wafted up. Eli swatted him on the back of the head.
“What’s that for?” Alex complained, sotto voce, rubbing his head and straining back to grimace at us.
“For being Stinky,” I said. “So the digitals didn’t work. Why am I here smelling you?”
He scowled at us through his straggly curls and bent back over his screen. “Because the tape is working fine. Both witches are female, natch, and though the light sucks, they might be African-American or mixed race.”
We all studied the camera footage. One witch appeared to be about five-five, two hundred fifty pounds, give or take. She held herself stiffly and something about her stance suggested that she was middle-aged, dressed in a long, full skirt and turban. The other one moved like someone younger, maybe even late teens. She was dressed in jeans and T-shirt, a skinny girl with lots of hair. Alex initiated some kind of electronic conversion, taking the tape to digital where he did something with the brightness and contrast and created stills from the footage.
I pointed at the younger one and asked, “Lots of long curly hair. A wig?”
“Could be,” Alex said. “Or extensions. That is all the still shots can make out.”
“Decisions,” Eli demanded. “Stay here or leave? Call the cops? Call someone else
?”
I frowned and walked to the bottom of the stairs again, to see the light of the working moving to the front of the house and the two narrow doors/windows that opened to the small second-floor gallery at the front. We never used the front gallery. I didn’t even know if the doors would open anymore, what with the damp and heat, and the swelling and shrinking of old wood in older frames.
I needed to get close to the witches.
“No,” Eli said.
I chuckled under my breath. My partner had a way of reading my mind. “I can access the Gray Between and bubble time, without much pain, if I don’t try to actually do anything but watch while I’m there.” And maybe Eli wouldn’t realize that this situation might to call for more than that. The witches might have the ability to set the house on fire, so I needed to be able to disable them. And to do that, I would have to move in the Gray Between of bubbled time. The ability to move outside time was part of my skinwalker energies, though whether it was something that all skinwalkers had been able to do, or if I was the only one—because an angel had given me the ability—I didn’t know. I had met only one other skinwalker. And I had killed him. And the angel wasn’t talking.
Bubbling time made me deathly sick, and it wasn’t something that my skinwalker energies healed well. Moving in bubbled time had nearly killed me, leaving me afraid to use the gift. Fear was a new emotion for me and I hated it. But I had to be honest and admit that the fear was one reason I hadn’t made a decision yet. Fear paralyzed.
The pale green swath of light was coming down the stairs. “Well, crap,” I muttered. I was out of time. Ha-ha. I blew out a breath. “Call the cops,” I ordered Alex, “but not nine-one-one. Try the woo-woo room. If someone we know is on, tell them what’s happening. Then do what they say. If no one is in the department, then call nine-one-one.”
Giving up on being discreet, I stepped into the middle of the living room and pointed again, drawing an imaginary line from one part of the house to the other. “The scanning beam is here.” It was about eight feet from Alex, who reacted by grabbing up his precious electronic equipment while dialing the woo-woo department of NOPD, direct. He got through on one of his backup systems to someone in the woo-woo room, the department that handled paranormal cases.
“Talk fast,” I advised him. “I suggest we withdraw to the backyard.” Which might actually work, if the witches didn’t think about scanning the grounds too. For now, they halted again, scanning the weapons room under the stairs. That gave us a few precious seconds.
Alex explained our situation succinctly to someone at cop central while rushing onto the back porch with an armful of his toys. He made three trips, the last one with an umbrella he found in the butler’s pantry/coffee bar/tea nook. Eli and I backed slowly away and out onto the side porch and the night mist.
Even with the noise of voices and the vibration of feet, the scan didn’t change in any way. There was no speeding up or slowing down, no brightening or dimming or color change, no more smell of hair burning, just iron and salt on the air, which were unusual enough as witchy scents went. All that stealth had been unnecessary.
And it told me something about the witches. Either they didn’t care that I knew they were scanning my house or they didn’t know that I could tell they were. I was betting on the latter. Which would then mean that they didn’t know I was a skinwalker. Which meant they had been surprised at the magical feel of my body, hence the pain they might not have expected me to feel, and the magical ward in my closet. Which was way too much guesswork. But the weapons room didn’t hold their interest for long. The line of light started progressing after a little over a minute.
I was still barefoot, but in the retreat, Eli found a pair of my flops. They were purple with pink plastic flowers on them and were studded with sparkles and glitter. The thongs were a gift from Deon, Katie’s three-star chef and up-and-coming IT guy, as a way of thanking me for suggesting him for the job. One did not throw away a gift. Even something as ugly as the thongs with bling. I have tiny feet for a six-foot-tall woman, and the flops were way too small for Eli, his heels sticking out behind. The flowers hanging over this toes bounced with each step. I couldn’t help it. A soft titter started in the back of my throat.
“Don’t,” Eli warned.
My laughter spluttered out in a single syllable that was half snort, half interrogative laugh. I caught it before it was more and turned both lips in, biting them to stop the giggles. I took a breath to maintain some form of dignity and managed, “Very stylish. They go so well with the vamp-killer and the nine-mil. You’re so . . . pretty,” I sang out. And then I dissolved in giggles, the song from West Side Story banging around in my head, though I knew well enough not to sing more. “Sorry,” I squeaked. Catching my breath, I said, “I’ll go around back and take the witch over there.” I pointed downtown. “You get the one that way.” I pointed uptown.
“This is not over.”
“Oh. God. I hope not. I want pictures,” I said. I turned on one bare foot and raced around the house. In the distance, I heard two sirens; NOPD’s finest were heading toward us from the general direction of the Eighth District Precinct House.
Knowing that my hilarity had something to do with an unsupported sense of relief that nothing had exploded or caught on fire—yet—I raced to the brick wall on the far side of the yard and leaped. Beast’s power flooded my limbs and she pushed off with me, adding two feet to my jump. I was glad I was no longer hiding my skinwalker abilities, because this would have been hard for a human, even one as fit and pretty as Eli, in his purple flops. The wall had small outthrust brick ends in irregular spots, making it easier to climb than a sheer face, but the brick was wet from the mist. The rain seemed to be growing stronger. In midair, I crashed into the wall and caught a brick with my fingertips, one toe on a tiny toehold. I slipped, the brick rough on my skin. Using the waning momentum, I shoved off again, catching the top of the fence. I levered myself over and dropped down to the other side.
It was what passed for fall in New Orleans, but the air was still warm and muggy, the ground damp and squishy. Only my nose kept me from stepping into dog poo. Fortunately the neighbor’s ugly, hairy yapper dog wasn’t out this time of night. It didn’t like the way I smelled, and kicking a lapdog was bad form and downright mean, no matter how much Beast wanted to play bowling ball with it.
I hadn’t been through the neighbor’s yard in ages, and I slunk around under the dripping banana tree leaves until I was at the front of their house and could see the witches. The rain increased to misty drizzle and ran down my neck and under my T-shirt, and it further obscured the witches. The larger woman with her red magics was only the width of the street away, standing in a tiny patch of grass and dead flowers, less than twenty feet from me. I peeked around the wall and saw the pale green lights of the magical working flicker in the front windows of my house. The squad cars turned onto my street and moved in, blue lights flashing, sirens wailing.
Both witches looked up. I had to move.
The green and red energies of their working snapped and brightened in a blast of force. The flash of witch energies left my eyes burned and blinking as the working snapped to a close. The woman nearest bent as if to pick up something at her feet and the smaller girl slammed into her, moving fast. The rain pelted down; the girl slid. They both almost went down, stumbling from the patch of grass into the road. The rain bent around the obfuscation spells they were hiding under, making them visible as human-shaped shadows for a moment, but the splattering rain kept me from getting a clear look.
The girl screamed, “Go, go, go, go, go, go!”
The larger woman caught her balance and followed the girl, both of them running. The drivers of the NOPD units could see the shadows of them inside the rain-drenched spells, and seemed to assume that a running person was a guilty person. The cars sped after them, toward an alley between two houses, down the street from me, siren
s wailing. Lights were coming on in the houses up and down the street. I could see heads peeking through windows.
Inside me, a voice repeated, FUBAR, FUBAR, FUBAR, and it wasn’t Beast. It was me, starting to panic. Humans in danger, everywhere, all around me, if the witches intended to release some form of magical working. And to stop the witches, I might have to kill them.
As the cars raced down the street, a speaker blared, “Stop! Police. Stop, and put your hands in the air.”
But the witches turned as one and the girl reached into her shirt pocket. Time slowed for me, that battle-time change that made it seem as if I could see everything and everyone, almost—but not quite—standing outside of time. Me, moving through it, faster than normal. As if I had all the time in the world, but that was a lie. I raised my gun but forced my muscles to wait. To fire at a witch was a cop call, not mine.
The NOPD units both rocked to a halt, tires screeching. One cop opened his car door, weapon leading through the crack of the unit’s A pillar and the door itself. “Stop!” he shouted. “Put down your weapons. Show me your hands!” He was young, and his voice went high and breathless. Over the noise, I heard the other officer calling for backup. I was right. We were about to get FUBARed.
Still in a stutter-slow motion, the girl pulled something out of her shirt. She screamed a wyrd. Or part of it. The older woman grabbed her and shook her, the girl’s head snapping back and forth, the wyrd only half spoken—the powerful spell, contained in a single word, ended before it began. The turbaned older woman snapped her fingers and red sparks of power flashed out, visible to the human eye. The cops ducked.
The girl screamed, “No!”
The older woman wrapped her arms around the skinny one in a mighty hug. Threw out the fingers of one hand.
