War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  If the scene in front of me wasn’t so dire, I might have laughed, but there was no humor in the carnage around me. I was impressed with Mychal and how much he had progressed in a few weeks. He was handling things much better than the first slaughter scene he and I had worked together.

  It was pretty obvious what had happened. When the bar closed, a couple of dozen young, drunken mages spilled out into the street, heading for their cars or walking home. It wasn’t a main street, but rather a mostly residential street paralleling the main north-south street through the Federal Hill area, connecting the Inner Harbor with the Patapsco River bridge. Shortly afterward, a group of demons attacked them. Those who survived, and witnesses from the houses along the street, agreed there were between twenty-five and thirty demons.

  For the most part, demons hunted alone or in pairs. They only staged such coordinated attacks at the direction of higher demons. With Ashvial dead, there were no demon lords in the area that we knew about, but the Arcane Division estimated there might be as many as a thousand major demons in the Metroplex. I could accuse Silthraxith of ordering the attack, but I had no proof. And for all I knew, there could be a dozen other major demons within a few blocks of where I stood.

  But why?

  It seemed too much of a coincidence that two bars owned by my Aunt Courtney’s husband, David Moncrieff, should be involved in major violent incidences within a few of weeks of each other. And then there were the other attacks to take into account.

  As I pondered that, my phone rang.

  “James.”

  “What’s going on down there?” my boss asked. “The Mayor is upset that you’re closing down all the businesses.”

  “Only the bars in the vicinity of the crime scene,” I answered. “And the Mayor is an idiot.”

  “I won’t dispute that,” Whittaker said.

  “Is there any way you and Olivia can talk my Uncle George into locking down Courtney Findlay-Moncrieff?”

  A long silence followed. Before he could respond, I asked, “How many bars does David Moncrieff own? And how many of them are run by demons? How many coincidences can dance on the head of a pin?”

  I heard a barked laugh on the other end of the phone.

  “I’m having a difficult time figuring out why this attack happened, or any of the other Rifter brawls we had last night,” I said. “Remember the Rifter riots downtown that ended with Ashvial’s death? Wouldn’t you agree that the amount of civil unrest we’re seeing lately is unusual? HLA. Rifter riots. Rifters attacking young mages. Akiyama’s, Johansson’s, and Moncrieff’s criminal activities. A demon army south of Annapolis. The bombings of two Palaces of Commerce. Either the world has suddenly gone crazier than usual, or some of this ties together.”

  Whittaker tapped his fingers on his desk so loudly that it was audible across the phone. “It’s not just here. Similar problems have occurred in the British Isles and Europe. Maybe we should discuss this with the Magi Council. I’ll get back to you.”

  That evening, I found myself in a circular room that I’d never seen before in Police Headquarters. It looked exactly like the Magi Council room in the bombed Palace of Commerce—a room that no longer existed in a building that was in the process of demolition.

  A semi-circular bench along one side was raised higher than the rest of the room. Sitting in high-backed chairs were the ten Family heads of the ten richest and most powerful mage Families in the world. Franklin Novak chaired the meeting, with my Granduncle George Findlay on his right. The others were Akiyama Benjiro, Hugh Kennedy, Zhow Dong Fun, Antonio Carvalho, Santiago Domingo, Jakob Gelner, Ivan Morozov, and Roman Antonov.

  None of the Family heads were really in the room with me, although Thomas Whittaker, Mychal Novak, Carmelita Domingo, Luis Capellino, Osiris Dillon, and a dozen other people involved with Arcane security in the Mid-Atlantic region were. The Council members were illusions, projected magikally, as were a couple of hundred other people in the audience from around the world.

  There were live representatives and a truthsayer from each Family of the Ten, and such people would be physically present in all the other rooms around the world where people gathered for the meeting. To say that the Magi weren’t very trusting would be an understatement. It was quite a production.

  I had sat in tribunals in the old Council Chambers, usually as a witness to the proceedings, but sometimes to give testimony. For a tribunal, there were usually three Councilors present, sometimes five, and sometimes only one. The one I had attended with five Councilors was the trial of a sixteen-year-old boy who was subsequently sentenced to spend the rest of his life at the penal colony in Antarctica. Since the Councilors were all Family heads, they tended to take a dim view of patricide.

  My boss, Deputy Commissioner Thomas Whittaker, made a presentation detailing the chaos going on around the world, specifically focusing on demon attacks and incursions. He also provided an update on the investigation of the Palace of Commerce bombing in Baltimore.

  Then a man named Piotr Janik gave a report on the POC bombing in Prague, including a clamp down on the HLA throughout Europe. Luis Capellino reported on our investigation of the HLA in the Mid-Atlantic.

  Osiris followed by telling the Council about the discovery of a human trafficking conspiracy involving Akiyama, Moncrieff, Johansson, and Ashvial, and the raid on the Moncrieff estate on the Elk Neck Peninsula outside of Baltimore. He mentioned Ashvial’s death without naming the person who killed him.

  Whittaker concluded by outlining the results of my investigation into the deaths of the head of the Rosenblum Family at Lila’s betrothal ball, the attempts on my life, that of my grandmother, and of Liam Flanagan, and the new murders of Justus Benning, Joseph and Elaine Greer, and Aaron Carpenter.

  When Whittaker finished, Franklin Novak said, “This is all very disturbing. What is it that you think this Council can do?”

  Akiyama Benjiro spoke using a translation spell. “It doesn’t appear as though there is much for the Council to do. The Rifters, especially demons, have always been a problem. If Deputy Commissioner Whittaker and his counterparts in other places are not up to the job of keeping the demons in line, we should replace them with people who can. We are having no such problems in China.”

  “And what about the involvement of David Moncrieff and Akiyama Hiroku in human trafficking?” my Uncle George asked.

  “I have seen no proof,” Benjiro said, “only wild accusations and pointless speculation. Uncorroborated tales about my honorable uncle from the granddaughter of Hunter James. Everyone knows she has a grudge against my Family, even though there has never been any proof we were involved with the demons who killed her father. Her Family is the reason for these problems. They are disgraced, and she attempts to pull others down with her.”

  “Her Family is Findlay,” Uncle George said. “We do have proof of the trafficking allegations, which was provided to all members of the Council. What I’m concerned about is the coordination of all these various demon attacks. And do we really think a bunch of rag-tag hippies such as the HLA have the resources to blow up two of the most secure facilities in the world?”

  “I have listened to enough of this slander,” Benjiro said.

  “I see no case to concern this Council,” said Zhow Dong Fun, head of the Family headquartered in Canton, China. Although they weren’t formally allied with the Akiyama Family, they were close business partners, their domains overlapped, and they often saw their interests as being aligned against what they considered western attempts at dominating the Council.

  “I’m afraid I disagree,” Franklin Novak said. “I am ordering a tribunal to assess the human trafficking accusations against David Moncrieff, Martin and Joseph Johansson, Courtney Findlay-Moncrieff, Akiyama Hiroku…” He named a couple of dozen more people, including two Akiyama ship captains, several lower-level functionaries, and even Aunt Courtney’s butler.

  “This is outrageous!” Benjiro erupted. “Either you set my uncle free in the
next twenty-four hours, or I shall consider all orders of this Council as without authority. I see what is happening here. The Western Alliance is trying to take over the Council, subjugate the East, take our trade, and enslave our populace. You shall pay for such disrespect!”

  His image vanished, followed almost immediately by that of Zhow.

  “What the hell?” I asked Whittaker after the meeting ended.

  “I think that’s a declaration of war,” he said, “but I’m not sure. We haven’t had a war since we reached a truce with the Rifters.”

  Osiris heaved a deep sigh. “This isn’t about human trafficking. Our intelligence has been warning us that Benjiro is deeply immersed in a philosophy of Shinto Nationalism, which led to Japan’s imperialistic invasions that started the second world war. His father was far more reasonable, but Benjiro was born after the Rift War. He seems to think he can ally with the demons and not get his tail burned.”

  Chapter 20

  As I was getting ready to go to bed, I answered the phone and heard my mother speaking Elvish.

  “There’s been a coup at Findlay. Do you remember your favorite place to go fishing when you were twelve?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be there in the morning at seven. Make sure you’re not followed.”

  She hung up. I stood there, stunned and staring at the phone. The number she had called from wasn’t one I recognized.

  “What’s going on?” Kirsten asked.

  “That was Mom. She said there was a coup at Findlay.”

  The Ten had been stable during my lifetime. Changes in power—internecine struggles—happened on a regular basis in different Families, but not at the very top of the hierarchy. Granduncle George had been in power since my father was a boy. The only other incident I could remember shaking up the top levels at Findlay was when my father and Granduncle Richard were killed when I was thirteen.

  “Is your grandmother okay?”

  “I don’t know. Mom didn’t say. She wants me to go out to Harper’s Ferry. Seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “Well, we’d better get going then. I’ll get food and water, you get clothes and your weapons.”

  I let what Mom told me sink in. A coup. If the attack had come from outside the Family, she would have used a different word. That had to mean Aunt Courtney, who was the most powerful mage of her generation in the family. And that meant I was in danger, which meant Kirsten was in danger, too.

  “We should take your van,” I said.

  “Okay, but we need to go to my shop to get it. Move!”

  I grabbed as much weaponry and protective gear as I could carry on my motorcycle, along with clothing for the mountains in late fall. I had some stuff at Kirsten’s shop, and luckily all our camping gear was there.

  We sealed up the house—both mechanical and electronic locks, as well as magikal wards—and rode downtown to Enchantments.

  Once we got there, we loaded everything we might need in her van and repeated the procedures for sealing the shop and the property behind it. I attached a couple of magitek devices to the van in case of trouble, checked it for magikal and electronic tracking devices, then we took off. It was just after one o’clock in the morning, and the route I planned would take about three hours to drive. But I wanted to make sure no one followed us, and that we arrived early enough to scout out what we might be walking into.

  I headed southwest out of Baltimore toward Washington.

  “This isn’t the way to Harper’s Ferry,” Kirsten said.

  “It’s one of the ways,” I replied. “We’re going by way of White’s Ferry.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, settling into her seat and closing her eyes. We had gone that way to go camping a couple of times. In days long gone there had been a cable ferry that crossed the Potomac, but it had been replaced by a bridge before we were born.

  Somewhere between Gaithersburg and Poolsville, on a stretch of back road where I couldn’t see a single set of head or tail lights, I stopped and engaged Carl Beaver’s cloaking device that I had attached to the van. The device’s illusion wasn’t perfect, and Kirsten reported that the van’s lights were still visible, even though the van wasn’t. Deciding that might attract the wrong kind of attention, I turned the device off and we continued on our way.

  By that time, I was sure we weren’t being followed, not even by a drone. Still, I switched our route several times. As far as I was aware, only four people knew of the place we were going, but my mother’s message indicated we were in a life-or-death situation. Best to be overly paranoid and safe.

  Our destination was where the old states of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia met, just east of the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. My father had built a cabin in the area, far away from the city, and we used to go there on the weekends. I remembered when I was twelve, he and Mom and I spent the whole summer at the cabin, fishing, kayaking, swimming, and cooking on a charcoal grill every night.

  After Dad disappeared, Mom told me that I owned it. Kirsten and I tried to go out there every year to do any needed maintenance and to make sure everything was okay. Kirsten loved the place, but it always reminded me of my father and made me sad, so I didn’t go there very often. And other than the three of us, the only other person who knew of the cabin was my Grandmother Olivia. At least, I hoped so.

  We turned off the main roads and made our way to the unmarked private road leading to the cabin. One hundred feet after the turnoff, I stopped, got out, and attached a magitek alarm onto a tree, aiming the beam across the road. If anyone drove past that point, I would receive an alert.

  A short time later, the road ran between two large rocks. I got out again and placed a device on either side of the road, then keyed them to a third box, which I dropped in my pocket. The devices were similar to the electrical anti-intrusion boxes I had on the front door of Kirsten’s shop, only stronger. No vehicle that relied on electricity would make it past those rocks.

  I drove another couple of miles, then pulled off to the side of the road.

  “Stay here and wait for me,” I told Kirsten. “If anyone comes along without me calling you, shoot first and ask questions afterward.”

  “Right.” She reached over and pulled a Raider like mine out of a clip under the dash. “Be careful.”

  Trying not to make too much noise, I slipped out of the van and started up the road in the dark. I took a pair of magitek night goggles from my pocket and put them on, then pulled up the hood of my jacket. In the mountains, the fall nights were definitely a lot colder than down by the coast.

  I left the road when I was about half a mile from the cabin. A game trail that deer followed to go down to the river was still where I remembered it, even after twenty-plus years. It ran around the side of a low hill within about fifty yards of the cabin. I left the trail and climbed up to the top.

  The cabin below me was completely dark. It didn’t look as though anyone had been there since Kirsten and I visited it four months before. The double garage and the workshop occupied a separate building.

  I watched for about five minutes, and then the front door opened. My mom stepped out onto the porch, turned, and looked up at me.

  “It’s all right,” she called. “It’s safe to come in.”

  I left my hiding place and walked down the hill toward her. When I reached her, we drew each other into a hug.

  “Is Kirsten with you?” she asked.

  “Yeah. She’s waiting with the van.”

  “Tell her to come in. My truck is on the left side.”

  I used my phone to call. “Bring the van in,” I said. “Park it in the right-hand bay of the garage.”

  Mom led me into the cabin. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not since dinner.”

  Lights were on inside. Mom had blacked out the windows with a combination of curtains and a spell. The ground floor had no internal walls, except those closing off the bathroom and the laundry room.

  Olivia was sitt
ing in a large chair near the fireplace in the sitting room section, and I felt a surge of relief when I saw her. I crossed the room in three big steps and leaned down to hug her.

  “When Mom said there was a coup, I was so worried about you.”

  She stood and gathered me in her arms. I hugged her tight, and when I looked down, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

  “I was worried about you, too,” she said. “George refused to admit that Courtney is an immoral traitorous bitch, and she killed him. She killed her own father.”

  I thought about a conversation I’d once had with Kirsten. I said the Families were like a medieval feudal aristocracy. Obviously complete with patricide.

  We stood there, hugging each other for another minute, then I let go of her and let her sit down.

  I realized someone else was there. Turning, I saw Osiris Dillon sitting on a couch in the far corner of the room.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He shrugged. “We’ve been covering each other’s backs for a long time.”

  Kirsten walked in and Mom shut the door. Kirsten came to sit by me, and Mom went into the kitchen.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “There have been a rash of deaths at the estate and at our offices all over the world the past three weeks,” Osiris said. “Top managers, two of my commanders, other security personnel. Accidents, health issues, a couple of obvious assassinations. It seems that your aunt subverted a number of upper and mid-level Findlay employees with payments and promises of promotions.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Last night, Courtney attacked her father, and her insurgents took charge of the security systems. An assault force, primarily Akiyama soldiers, but also some Moncrieff and Johansson guardians, along with a couple of hundred demons, attacked Findlay House. They took control of our facilities at the harbors in Baltimore and Wilmington. Lady Findlay-James and I, as well as some of our guardians, escaped before Courtney’s traitors came for us. I dispersed the people loyal to us and told them to lay low. It was your grandmother’s idea to go to Ms. Jorensdottir.”