Whiskey Storm

by F. J. Blooding

  Paige rose. “I’ll go take care of this. Prepare for more refugees.”

  “At some point,” Suzanne said firmly, “we’re going to have to stop taking them in.”

  “I’ll let you tell me when we’re at the point where we need to let people just die rather than protect them.” Because Paige could only handle so many of those kinds of decisions.

  She left but Chuck followed. “I’ll gather the pack. We’ll be ready to go with you.”

  That would be helpful especially since she had no real idea what was even going on with her.

  Leslie joined her on the sidewalk. “Am I going or staying?”

  “Which would you rather?”

  “Go.”

  Paige nodded and held up her phone. “I’m calling Eldora for doors.”

  “Meet you where?”

  Paige pointed to the end of the street at the train museum. the parking lot was big enough to hold a crowd, and the park bordered the side.

  Leslie disappeared.

  Paige called Eldora. She made the arrangements with her to get some Blackman witches there.

  Eldora arrived with Leah. Mandy was with her this time because Tyler was still recovering. Mandy was great with fire. She looked terrified, but ready. Leah and Tyler were the fighters.

  Duglas came and stood beside Mandy and nudged her arm. “We’ll protect the door keepers together,” he said in his accent. Irish? Scottish? It wasn’t exactly either of those. It was somewhere kind of in between.

  Sure, in between. That sounded good.

  Paige still didn’t know what she could even do without her full powers.

  They were joined, of course, by Suzanne’s new cameraman—her son. It was her son. He had a full crew though, and they all looked like newbs ready for their first time in the field. Paige pulled in a breath and released it slow. “I don’t have time to save your asses. So you follow these two rules. Number one, stay out of the way. Number two, stay out of the way. Okey-dokey?”

  They promised to not be too stupid.

  Eldora, her witches and Leah began to open doors. Shifters rushed through, and it was time to get busy.

  Paige stepped through into a war zone.

  Fires burned everywhere. Ash fell from the sky. Several buildings on fire crumblied bits to the street. Car alarms raised an echoing cacophony.

  The best thing she could do was to get the word out.

  “Are you recording? Are we live?” Paige rubbed her nose at the acrid smoke.

  Suzanne’s son, Mark—yeah, there were two of those now—nodded.

  She looked into the camera as her people fanned out around the street, collecting survivors.

  Chuck’s pack gathered information.

  The Blackmans set up doors.

  Mandy circled a phoenix around the hot zone.

  “We’re in Lawrence, Kansas. The President is providing her image of her war. She’s lying to you. She has several communities like this one on broadcsast lockdown. They’re not even getting the news. No warnings. We don’t even know if they knew about the registration act in the first place, but this is the face of her actual war.”

  She walked down the street and found a body. She went to check on it, to see if the person was alive.

  The woman wasn’t.

  The kid under her was.

  Paige pulled him to his feet, tears making a muddy trail on his cheeks. “Are you a shifter?” she tried to put as much mom concern in her voice as possible.

  He nodded. “Mommy won’t wake up. I’m scared.”

  “Can you walk? Nod if you can.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, I want you to get to those people over there. I’ll do what I can here.”

  She let the cameras see that face, let them see the reality of their situation. “This is America, people. This is your President. Wake up. We’re under attack. Schools and churches being shot up is terrible and it happens too often. But this? Our government has gone above and beyond atrocity. Those men out there aren’t Homeland or the military. That is a foreign militia.”

  She gestured to the street and then turned back to the camera. “This is an entire town. It’s a little harder to hide from that.”

  She didn’t have time to do a full documentary, so she gave the boy instructions on how to get through the doors and what to do. And that he needed to leave Mommy there because she wasn’t getting up. She didn’t make him any promises. She couldn’t And she did do what she could.

  And that hurt.

  She got up and headed toward the sound of violence. “This is what happens when a government gets too powerful,” she said, recalling the words her conservative husband had repeated too often. She still didn’t think he was a hundred percent right. Society needed government. They needed guidance. Just not a helicopter mom for a government.

  “This is what happens when there are no check and balance systems in place, when the President doesn’t have to obey the same laws as everyone else. Because this?” She pointed to a man and an elder who had been gunned down on the street corner. “This is murder.”

  She found a group of DoDO agents. She pulled on her powers, reaching deep, pulling up the fire through the earth until the ground rocked with the force of it.

  They stopped shooting down the cratered street and turned to her.

  “You’re probably going to want to get out of here,” she told Mark, The Camera Guy.

  The others who had been terrorized by DoDO also got up and scrambled out of there with the help of Chuck’s pack.

  Super Douche came out of the crowd of agents and tipped his head to the side. “We’re really going to have to stop meeting like this.”

  “Well, you stop tearing cities down, and I won’t have to stop you. Problem solved.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her and grimaced. “I’m afraid I came a bit more prepared this time.”

  She was afraid she’d come underprepared this time. “Well, let’s see what you’ve got now.”

  He raised his gun with a look that said he regretted the need. “I really wish you’d have stayed away.”

  Shit. Yeah. So did she.

  She didn’t have time to scramble, though she tried. She also knew that reaching for any shape wouldn’t work for her this time. She dove to the ground, only to watch in horror as a spray peppered the asphalt in a line toward her.

  The ground rose and fire shot skyward, hotter than any fire she’d ever felt in her life. It speared straight into the quickly darkening sky.

  Clouds rolled in unnaturally fast and a massive storm built overhead, the overcast dark and green.

  Super Douche’s eyes widened as he staredskyward.

  Paige could feel the flow of energy running through her wild and unchecked. This was her.

  She had a flicker of thought of watching Super Douche dance in lightning, and the sky lit electricity, the ground ripping with the impact.

  Super Douche pulled a rod from his vest and lightning deflected around him like a human Tesla coil.

  She had him, though. She didn’t know how. She just had him.

  She advanced, calling the lightning, feeling it resonate from the ground and meet in the air. It went over all over the intersection, catching several of the DoDO agents. One of them signaled a retreat. Doors flashed open and they disappeared.

  Paige wanted to get to Super Douche, but she also wanted to let him live to tell the tale. She could tell he understood what was going on with her. A part of her wanted to capture him and to get that information.

  A bolt of lightning launched from her hand and sizzled out to him.

  He caught it in his hand, his expression dark. The ball of lightning coiled around his arm like an adder. It hadn’t turned him to a shadow on the pavement.

  And then she knew why.

  He sent his own magick toward her. Mage energy, mage magick.

  And it was…

  It was like hearing the
Lady Mother, the Earth, speaking to her when she called fire.

  She let it fill her, reeling in the deeper connection to it. She’d always been afraid of it. Everyone had been. She’d never truly called fire like everyone else did. She’d always pulled the fire from the bowels of the earth. It had a different voice, a different feel. It was wilder and tamed at the same time. It was forceful and quiet.

  Super Douche’s eyes widened as he realized his mistake.

  A moment before he burst into flames. The agony roaring from the flames lasted only as long as it took the single breath to leave Super Douche’s lungs.

  Not enough, and too good a death for him.

  Damn.

  “Mom,” Leah said beside her. “Let’s go home.”

  Paige released her magick, wondering what in the hell had just happened there.

  And wondering if she was going to regret the fact that it had been captured on video—live video. Had she just given the President the ammunition she needed to take this war and make it public?

  Paige took her daughter’s hand and walked through the door and onto a full and bustling Mainstreet.

  She needed to figure out what was going on with her powers. Now. Before things got worse.

  And she got out of control.

  21

  The only problem with Paige learning to control her powers was that was that she had no idea where to even start. What was even going on, and who would know?

  Alma would. She seemed to know a lot more than she ever said. But she didn’t have access to Alma anymore.

  She decided to go to one of the Elders, Yad.

  Well, no. She called and asked if he’d come to her because Nick had a meeting with a client and Mark was working on a court case. Just because they were locked down in Troutdale didn’t mean they weren’t working. They couldn’t get paid, but they were still doing their jobs defending people. She’d ask them how, but her plate was filled with too much information already. They were doing well and didn’t need her help. At the end of the day, that was all that mattered.

  When she got home, though, she was greeted by a surprise.

  Bobby.

  He had grown nearly a foot since the last time she’d seen him. Like… since that morning. Yes, he’d been complaining about things hurting and stuff, which was kinda normal. Bones hurt when they grew. That was something she’d learned with Leah. She always knew when that kid was headed toward a growth spurt. She’d eat them out of house and home—or cookies. That was all she was after, really—and then she’d complain that her left leg hurt. And then she’d be an inch taller one day.

  Not like this though.

  He was running around naked because none of his clothes fit him anymore and he was “done” with diapers because he was a big kid now. He had dumped the trash on the floor to use the trashcan as a stool so he could pee on the floor while aiming at the toilet.

  He was such a big boy!

  No, really. She was quite proud of him, but she was going to have to help him with his aim. If she’d taught a little girl how to wipe her hoohah separate from her butt, she could teach a little boy how to aim his pee pee.

  On one hand, she was glad that while the world was falling down around her, she was dealing with pee pees and lost socks, but on the other hand…

  What the hell was wrong with her son?

  She called Roxxie, the local angel guardian, but she didn’t pop in like she normally did. Instead, there was the sound of a car door closing and Roxxie walked through the front door looking a little more fragile than normal.

  Paige really hadn’t talked to her since Roxxie had helped the angels kidnap her while she’d been pregnant with the twins. She’d felt as though Roxxie had broken her trust. Roxxie had eventually freed her from Heaven, but that trust had never quite been rebuilt. Roxxie’d worked with Dexx since then and she’d had a place in the battle against Sven, but…

  Paige hadn’t realized just how bad off Roxxie was now that the gate to Heaven was further away. Angels pulled power from heaven in much the same way that Superman pulled energy from the sun. If it was a cloudy day, he had a hard time healing from the Kryptonite.

  Paige had known that, but seeing the results and knowing were two different things.

  “Hey,” she said, letting her newly awakened realization hit her tone. Well, she hoped so anyway. She needed to work on building more bridges. Not destroying them all.

  Roxxie acknowledged it with a half smile and a sigh as she closed the door behind her. “What’s wrong with Bobby?”

  Paige vaguely remembered when they’d had a slightly different relationship. Roxxie had always been a helper, but Paige was realizing now that she used Roxxie. That made her feel like a great human being.

  Not.

  No help for it. “Tea? Coffee?”

  “Coffee.” Roxxie frowned as she followed Paige to the back. “Is there something wrong with Bobby?”

  “Maybe? But I’ve been taking you for granted and I don’t know how to fix that. So, let me get you coffee and then I’ll hit you with what’s potentially wrong with my son.”

  Paige revved up the Keurig and flashed a K cup at Roxxie.

  “That would be excellent, thanks.” She leaned against the counter as the cup started dribbling coffee.

  “What are you up to these days?”

  “I have an apartment down by the good grocery store.” She smiled at Paige with good humor. “I have a job, too. I don’t know if I’ll keep that, though. Fuel may be an issue soon.”

  Oh, crap. Right. Gas. She hoped Suzanne was on top of that because she had no idea what to do if the gas wasn’t flowing.

  How many horses did they have in Troutdale? They might be going back to the horse and buggy. Maybe Eldora had been on to something there.

  Paige also discovered that Roxxie liked a little coffee with her milk and sugar. A lot like Dexx.

  But then they were done with the small talk.

  “As much as I appreciate this,” Roxxie said, putting her empty cup on the counter, “what’s the problem?”

  Paige made a mental note to be less of an asshole later and called for Bobby.

  He came screaming down the stairs and hurled himself into Roxxie’s arms.

  She caught him and staggered backward in surprise. She looked over at Paige in shock, and then back at Bobby.

  It was more than just the fact that he was taller. His speech was better, too. He was talking in full and complete—okay, mostly complete sentences. He was still a full-blooded American taught by a large group of people who spoke in broken sentences. So, his grammar wasn’t that good. But it was better than it should be for his age.

  “Should I be concerned?”

  Roxxie just studied him with color-shifting wide eyes.

  “Is this related to the gate?”

  The angel blinked finally and turned her gaze at Paige setting the mostly naked—she’d found underwear for him and pinned them in place—boy on the floor. “Perhaps, but he seems fine.”

  “Okay. Well.” Good. “That was the main concern.” Because she needed one more thing to be worried about.

  “I can…” Roxxie cut herself off and shook her head.

  Paige bit her lips, realizing that Roxxie had been about to offer her help. That was just what Roxxie did. It was who she was and it was high time Paige remembered that. “Only if you want to. ‘Kay?”

  Roxxie nodded. “Does this mean you forgive me?”

  “It means I’m finally pulling my head out of my ass.” Because life was forcing her to, and she no longer had the leisure to be mad at allies. “You were doing what you thought was right. You didn’t think I’d be in any real danger. And I need to stop being mad at you for being you. Just you being you is what saved my ass more than a few times.”

  Roxxie raised her chin and blinked quickly, diverting her gaze. Finally, she licked her lips and moved to follow Bobby. “I’ll find him some clothes
? What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out what’s wrong with my magick?”

  “What do you mean?” Roxxie stopped and frowned at her.

  Paige took in a deep breath and shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I’ve got access to more power, power that’s… it’s really big.”

  “More than you already have?” Roxxie asked incredulously.

  Kinda what Paige had been thinking. “It’s like it’s always been there, but… I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m afraid I’m becoming exactly what the President is fighting so hard to protect people from.”

  Roxxie turned away from her, but then turned back, studying her with the angel eyes which was the only way Paige could even describe it. “You don’t seem wrong.”

  “That’s something, right?” She hoped so. “But then I have to meet with a bunch of people to see how bad I fucked up this situation with the President. To see how people are responding to how I handled Lawrence.”

  “Huh?”

  Paige filled Roxxie in as quickly as she could.

  “Oh. Well.” Roxxie rinsed out her cup and stashed it in the dishwasher. “I’ll see what I can find out about Bobby.”

  “Thank you,” Paige said with real relief.

  The front door opened and Elder Yad walked through, Merry Eastwood hot on his heels.

  Paige had to go through the entire story again,from the elven city and again in Lawrence, Kansas, and her concerns that she was getting too powerful. She also wanted to know what the blowback was from the video that had been taken in Lawrence.

  “Well, that,” Merry said with a snarl, “is actually taken care of thanks to the President, I believe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means that all of our communication has been stopped.”

  “What?” No. That was bad. That was really, really bad.

  Merry nodded. “None of us have access to social media or the internet or the news. Our phones are now dead.”

  Paige pulled out her phone. It said she had no signal.

  Merry closed her lips, clasping her hands in her lap. “Electricity will go next. Water will follow. The blockade was nice while it lasted, but the President is quite serious.”