by Keri Arthur
“It depends entirely on the strength of the demon and the piety of the priest. Update Luc while I go scout. If we are dealing with a clutch, we’ll need Blackbird help.”
“Luc said he was going back to headquarters; if he did, then he’s in London and hours away.”
“There are twelve Blackbirds in all, remember. I’m sure there’ll be one or two close enough to render assistance.”
I crossed mental fingers that that was the case. “Be careful out there.”
Her smile flashed. “It’ll take a demon far wilier than a mere menik to get the better of me.”
As Ginny got out of the car, then popped the seat forward for Mo to exit, I dragged my phone out of my pocket.
Luc answered second ring. “What’s happening?”
“The halfling has led us back to what we think is a clutch.”
He sucked in a breath and then swore, softly but vehemently. “Where are you?”
“Outside Clifton Springs.” I quickly gave him the address. “Are you able to get someone here to help deal with this?”
“Yes, but it could take them some time to get there.”
“I’m pretty sure Mo has no intention of tackling this alone, but the sooner you get either your people or even the Preternatural squad here, the better it’ll be.”
“I’ll organize it now and see you soon.”
Meaning, no doubt, he was now on his way here. I studied the old chapel down the far end of the street. Unease stirred, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. “I’m heading down to help Mo. Do you want to reverse back into that dirt lane we passed and wait there?”
Ginny nodded. “Yell if you need help or a quick getaway.”
“Will do.”
Once she’d reversed into the lane, I shifted shape, grabbed Nex and Vita, and then flew over the trees toward the old chapel. It was a small redbrick building, with plain glass arched windows rather than stained, and a slate roof covered in moss. The grounds around it were well tended, which to me suggested someone came here regularly to look after them. I couldn’t imagine halflings bothering with such a mundane chore.
With a flick of her wings, Mo appeared. I followed her into the tree-lined field to the right of the chapel and shifted shape to land.
She didn’t look happy. “I can’t get close enough to see what we’re dealing with. There’s a tight weave of magic around the entire building.”
“Can you disconnect it?”
“Possibly, but it’ll take some time and I may need help.” She held out her hand. “Lend me your phone, and I’ll call Barney.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but how can he help us? His gift is personal magic—”
“And what do you think dark elf magic is? It’s not elemental—they don’t source it from the world around them, as most witch houses do. It comes from their inner darkness.”
“Yes, but dark magic is still very different—”
“But still ultimately involves spell strings, which means he should be able to at least guide me. Keep an eye on that chapel while I—”
A huge whoomp drowned out the rest of her sentence. As bits of brick, glass, and slate went flying skyward, a huge wave of heat and magic rolled toward us, setting the trees lining the field alight and blackening the grass.
“Gwen, fly—now!”
I immediately shifted shape, swooped around to grab my daggers, and then leapt skyward. The shimmering wave of invisible flames and magic rolled over the spot where we’d been standing, crisping the blackened grass and scorching the ground.
But it didn’t roll on across the rest of the field. It leapt up, chasing us into the sky.
I flew hard, desperately trying to get clear. Heat shimmered across my tail feathers and the stench of burning filled the air. I squawked and shot up vertically in an attempt to shake the deadly fingers. Faster, higher, I went, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it was about to tear out of my chest.
Finally, the fingers fell away and the wave collapsed. We were free. Relief hit so hard that for several minutes my entire body shook. It took every ounce of concentration just to keep flying.
Mo squawked, an imperative sound that basically meant “follow me.” I swung around and we flew back to the little chapel. The roof had been partially blown off, no glass remained in any of the windows, and a fire raged deep in its wooden heart.
A heart that held no whole bodies, only bits.
Mo swooped down, shifting shape as she neared what remained of the entry doors. As I landed beside her, she raised a fist; energy shot from her clenched fingers, punching up to skies that were thick with clouds. It hit, and the clouds began to stir, gently at first and then with increasing speed as the wind whipped up and chased them toward us. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled; a heartbeat later it began to rain. Not lightly, not gently, but so damn hard it was little more than a wall of water. The flames in the church were doused in an instant.
Mo unclenched her fist and her energy beam immediately dissipated. The wind fell silent and the clouds lightened and moved on at a gentler pace.
“Wow.” I reached out to steady Mo as she sucked in a deep breath. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Her smile flashed, though her cheeks were on the hollow side again. “Haven’t called to the skies like that in a while, and I forgot about the cost of doing so.”
The roaring of a car engine had me half spinning. Ginny. She slid the Audi to a halt and scrambled out. “Are you both okay? What the fuck happened?”
“The bad guys were erasing evidence,” Mo said. “Gwen, why don’t you go into the chapel and see if there’s anything useful left. I’ll park on that little bench under the tree and recuperate for a few minutes.”
I helped her across then strapped on my daggers and returned to the chapel. Ginny followed me over.
“You might want to stay outside.” My voice was grim. “It isn’t going to be pleasant in there.”
“It can’t be worse than some of the things I’ve seen as a cop.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“I’ll guess we’ll soon find out.” She motioned me forward.
I didn’t bother arguing any further. Truth was, I was happy to have company even if it wouldn’t make the gore any easier to cope with.
I stepped through the remains of the doorway and stopped inside the porch. Despite the cleansing downpour, the stink of ash and death was strong. Light streamed through the gaps in the roof, highlighting the utter destruction caused by both the heat wave and Mo’s storm. There were large chunks of what had once been halflings scattered in-between jagged bits of furniture and the colorful remnants of clothes. From what I could see, there’d been at least five other meniks here. That they’d been killed so swiftly spoke of their master’s determination to keep us in the dark. About what was now the question we needed to answer.
That, and how they’d even known we’d found the nest.
There couldn’t have been more than ten minutes between our arrival and the chapel’s destruction. Even if we’d been immediately spotted by the meniks, it would have taken time for them to report back and a decision to be made. Unless, of course, there’d been some sort of automatic self-destruct button installed within the magic protecting the place. Maybe Mo’s effort to get close was what had triggered the explosion. The dark elves were notoriously efficient when it came to destroying things, if what the old literature said about them could be believed.
“You were right,” Ginny said, her expression one of horror. “This is worse than anything I’ve seen before.”
“Yeah.”
I stepped into the main building. The chapel was a simple cross shape, with the apse and chancel down the far end. Two small wings sat on either side of the nave halfway down, and that’s obviously where the ignition point of the fiery explosion had been. The walls were charred, and the one body I could see there was little more than half a skull and, rather weirdly, finger fragments.
Ginny motioned toward
them. “They might be intact enough to get a print from. I know these things were part demon, but they were living in this world, and the one we followed probably had a license. At the very least, we might be able to use her information to help track down others like her.”
I glanced at her, amusement tugging at my lips. “We?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seriously think I’m going to step away now, do you? Not after seeing this and knowing there are goddamn half-demons roaming about the world.”
“Ginny, I’m not sure that’s a good—”
“Um, don’t finish that.” She waved a finger up and down her body. “Grown-up person here. I’ll decide what is and isn’t a good idea.”
I raised a hand. “Fair enough.”
Her gaze narrowed. “I don’t trust you when you use that tone.”
And she was probably wise not to, given I had no intention of placing her in the line of danger if I could at all help it. “Let’s discuss this later.”
“I’ll make damn sure that we do.” She looked around. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s helpful.”
The smile tugged at my lips again. “They blew this place up to stop us finding something—”
“Something other than a slew of half-demons, you mean?”
I nodded. “We already knew about them, so they either did this to stop us interrogating them, or there was something else here.”
She grunted. “Well, if there’s anything left to find, then it’s going to be found up in the apse area. That’s the one place that hasn’t suffered much damage.
My gaze returned to the apse. Though all the windows had blown out, the area seemed relatively intact compared to the rest of the chapel. It looked as if the meniks—or whoever controlled them—were using it as an office area, because there were several blackened desks and upturned chairs in the chancel area, and a larger, relatively untouched desk where the altar would have been.
“Let’s check it out.”
We carefully made our way down the center aisle. I did my best to ignore the stench of burned flesh, and tried to avoid the multiple body remnants and bloody pools of water. But it was damned hard.
We checked the chancel desks on the way through; while the heat had warped some of the drawers, the ones that did open were empty. There wasn’t even the usual assortment of dead pens and paper clips that often collected in desks.
We moved on. A gentle breeze stirred through the broken windows and paper fragments drifted out from behind the larger desk. Ginny reached down and, using a tissue, carefully picked up one of the bigger pieces. “It’s something of a miracle that any paper survived the blast.”
“Yeah.” I moved around the desk and checked the drawers. They were as empty as the ones in the chancel, so the papers had obviously been sitting on top.
“There’s writing on it,” Ginny said. “But I have no idea what language it is.”
I picked a couple of pieces and my gut clenched. The writing on the scraps very much resembled the writing I’d seen on the dark gate Luc and I had found. “I think it’s elvish.”
“No surprise, I guess, if we’re dealing with half-breeds.”
“No.”
We collected the remaining useable fragments and put them all on the table. Jigsaws weren’t my thing, but Ginny was pretty good at them. I left her to it and moved back to the side wing that had sustained the most damage. Though light streamed in through the roof not very far away, this area lay in semidarkness. Whether this was a result of there being no windows, or something more arcane, I couldn’t immediately say. But it was definitely where the ignition point had been. Aside from the fact that there was very little left of the menik who’d been standing here, string fragments still floated in the air and a hole had been blasted through the wall at the far end. Though I didn’t understand the intent behind most of the strings, newer layers had been interwoven through the old, and suggested the protections here had very recently been adjusted.
The soft sound of a footstep had me reaching for Nex and spinning around. Mo stepped into the nave and, after a quick look around, strode toward me.
I released the half-drawn knife. “I thought you were resting?”
“Curiosity got the better of me.”
“You know what curiosity did to the cat.”
“And the rest of that proverb is ‘but satisfaction bought her back’. Which, of course, is appropriate given it refers to a cat’s nine lives. Bit of a mess, isn’t it?”
“Understatement of the year.”
“Not really. It could have been a whole lot worse if we hadn’t stepped in.”
“If you hadn’t stepped in,” I corrected dryly. “And by the way, I intend to sit you down once this is all over and question the hell out of you about your life and these powers you’ve concealed all these years.”
“Powers?” Ginny said, her gaze still on the bits of paper in front of her. “What powers?”
“That’s a question that can be saved for later.” She stopped beside me. “And I haven’t concealed them, Gwen. There was simply no need to use the majority of them before now. What have you found?”
I waved a hand toward the strings. “Are there enough remnants to track the spell back to its creator?”
Mo pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Worth a try. Step back.”
I did so. She raised a hand; light leapt across her fingertips, a golden glow that had the shadows shifting uneasily. As the pulse of her energy grew stronger, Mo formed the light into a half-sphere, and then stepped deeper into the nave. The strings immediately drifted away from either the movement or the light itself. Mo stopped and raised the glowing half-sphere, softly blowing on it. As it rolled from her fingers and spun lightly on the spot, Mo stepped to one side and cast a rope spell. The invisible line of power ran around the outside of the dark strings and looped back to Mo. As she drew it back in, the strings were caught and bunched up. Once she had a thick knot, she ran the half-sphere through the mass, and then capped it to form a complete sphere. It rather resembled a mass of twisting black vipers caught in a cage of gold.
She studied it critically for a few seconds and then nodded, satisfaction evident in her expression. “The cage will keep them viable for a few hours longer. What’s Ginny studying so intently up there?”
“It’s some sort of list, by the look of it.” Ginny stepped to one side. “Gwen suspects it’s elvish.”
Mo stopped beside her and studied the scraps. “Gwen would be right. Unfortunately, it’s not a language I know.”
Ginny smiled. “I think it’s fair to say there’re very few who do—other than the elvish or their halflings.”
From beyond the walls came the wail of approaching sirens. Either someone had called the cops or the Preternatural boys were now screaming toward us.
“If we can find the bitch Tris met with, or even the meniks’ controller, it’s possible they could translate for us.” I waved a hand at the scraps. “Do you think they erased the nest as a precautionary measure, or do you think this list is what they were trying to destroy?”
“Possibly both, though how they knew we were following their menik is worrying. It’s not like we told anyone.”
“Could they have placed some sort of listening spell or device in your home?” Ginny asked.
Something within me went cold, and I swore. Loudly.
Mo raised an eyebrow. “You’ve had a thought?”
“Yeah.” I scrubbed a hand across my eyes. “I doubt we’re dealing with a listening spell, because you would have sensed any tampering with the magic that surrounds—”
“Not necessarily,” she cut in. “Not if it was done by a witch of this world who was familiar with my magic—and that’s already been proven the case a number of times.”
“Breaking magic is one thing,” I said. “Weaving a spell through it without you knowing is entirely another.”
“Wh
ich does not mean it’s impossible.” She made a “continue” motion with her hand.
“If it’s not a spell, it leaves us with the bug option, and Tris. I think the night he snuck in he’d actually been in the shop for a while, because it was the sound of him moving around that woke me. I presumed he’d been looking for something, but what if he wasn’t? What if he’d been placing something? Something like a bug.”
“They’re easy enough to get these days,” Ginny said, “and they’re quite sophisticated.”
“And we were talking about following the menik as we were coming down the stairs this morning.” The wail of sirens was now so loud I had to raise my voice to be heard. “If the devices are being monitored full-time—and they’d logically have to be—then they would have had time to organize the destruction here.”
“What sort of range do the things have?” Mo asked.
“Depends on their size, and what sort of receiver they’re using.” Ginny shrugged. “Some can have a very long range, but generally it’s somewhere between a hundred and fifty to five hundred meters.”
“A range that gives them plenty of places to hide,” I said.
Ginny shook her head. “With the density of buildings within old Ainslyn, they’d probably want to be close.”
Mo pursed her lips. “You know, Saskia next door closed her shop for a few weeks to visit her Parisian relatives. It would be a perfect hideout for anyone intent on keeping an eye on our comings and goings.”
The sharp sound of the siren abruptly cut off, leaving a briefly eerie silence. Then doors slammed and footsteps came running toward the building.
“Then the first thing we’d better do when we get home is check the place out.”
“I can borrow a scanner from work,” Ginny said. “It will be pointless clearing out your listeners if you don’t also clear out their devices.”
“That would be awesome—thanks.” I glanced around as a familiar figure stepped into the room. “Jason? What are you doing here? I thought you were in London?”
“No, I left to ask Henry a few more questions.”
“How is he?” Mo asked.
