A Perjury of Owls

by Michael Angel

  “Me? But why…I mean, what else did Raisah say?”

  “She knew no more, so she could say no more.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She serves some other purpose now.” The Albess motioned to the plate beside me. “I find that I am now in the mood for a meat pie. Would you please move the platter closer to me?”

  I picked up the plate, which was piled high with clamshell-shaped pastries that looked to me like oversized turnovers. A heavenly scent of buttery crust and savory meat curled up from them into my nose, making my mouth water.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I admitted, “But I want to try one of those.”

  “You are welcome to,” Thea offered. Her expression had taken on a strange inscrutability. “I must warn you. This dish may not be to a human’s liking.”

  Well, I wasn’t one to pass up a challenge. I picked up one of the pastries and took a cautious bite. The texture of the meat-and-vegetable filling was velvety and bursting with flavor. I restrained myself from a second bite with difficulty.

  “This is amazingly good,” I enthused. “Especially for mouse pie. I don’t mean to be rude, Albess, but mouse just isn’t at the top of most non-owl cuisines.”

  Thea made a series of short ‘hoo-hoo’ sounds that I recognized as an owl belly laugh. “It is not mouse, Dayna.”

  “Oh? What is it, then?”

  “Fowl.”

  A terrible suspicion blossomed in my mind. “What kind of fowl?”

  The Albess’ warm eyes took on the sheen of steel as she answered.

  “The kind that is best served cold.”

  The buttery taste curdled on my tongue. My stomach did a little sideways shimmy and I placed the rest of the meat pie down on the plate. Then I pushed the plate as far away from me as possible.

  “As I said,” Thea reminded me, “This dish may not be to a human’s liking.”

  I nodded and reached for the tea pot. Thea went on as I poured myself a steaming cup and then proceeded to sip it as quickly as possible to scour my tongue clean.

  “There are only a few details I wish you to know for now. Though many of the Noctua were slain in battle, yet more were stationed from the sepulcher to the southern sea. They have scattered with the wind, and shall not pose a threat for a while yet. The Fayleene princeling known as ‘Wyeth’ has also vanished, for the only Noctua who knew of his comings and goings are now dead.”

  I finally found my voice. “What else can you tell me about the Old War, Albess?”

  Thea’s beak shut with a snap. She hung her head as she spoke again.

  “I shall tell you what little I know in time. But not today. Leave an old hen her pride for now. For what I know is shameful, for both me and the Hoohan. I cannot face it, not yet, not after all I have been through.”

  I had to catch myself before I clenched my fists in frustration. This wasn’t Raisah, someone who I felt no problem pushing back against. I dearly wanted to count Thea as my friend, and didn’t want to lose her good feelings towards me. But I wanted desperately to know at least one or two other things, so I tried once more.

  “Albess, there is a reason I gambled everything on bringing you back,” I began humbly. “When I discussed the situation with my friends, I realized that you were responsible for so many events that have taken place. That you were what I thought of as the ‘Hand of Light’ moving in counter to the darkness. Was I wrong in that? Did you just do everything by chance? Was bringing me to your world just random chance?”

  “A ‘hand of light’, am I?” Thea asked, but her expression was pleased. She flexed a set of talons. “More of a ‘foot’ of light, I would say. But yes, I have been trying to put pieces into play for many years now. To serve or counter prophecy, as it may be. And that is where you came in, Dayna.”

  My mind was awhirl with the possibility, but I clamped down on the thought. “I don’t believe in fate, or prophecy, Albess. I’m a twenty-first century woman, at least where I come from. And it’s in my nature to fight anything that is ‘just not to be’, whether with a well-placed hunch or a forensics lab.”

  “And how has that worked out for you?”

  That deflated me. “Not well. I tried and failed to get ahead of Belladonna’s pronouncements. I suppose that you’ll tell me that I never stood a chance.”

  “Xandra told me of your efforts. I was actually going to congratulate you on how well you did. You were right, the owls were moving on silent wings, ready to strike, even as they imprisoned me.”

  Thea had a point, I realized. I had actually called that prediction correctly. Only Raisah’s perjury in front of Fitzwilliam’s royal court had thrown me off.

  “I will share one last thing with you today,” Thea said gently. “Your coming here was not by chance. You were selected because I saw through Galen’s summoning spellcraft that you are a Hero.”

  I clearly heard the capital ‘H’ in Thea’s voice.

  I shook my head. “You must be joking! I’m a crime scene investigator, not some hunky warrior type. I don’t see how–”

  “That is because how men describe a Hero is different from the way we Hoohan do,” Thea said, smoothly cutting off my objection. “I said that I have been putting pieces into play to serve prophecy.”

  “Or counter it.”

  “Even so. That is exactly where you come in.”

  “I don’t understand. I’m destined to counter some prophecy?”

  Another ‘hoo’ of amusement. “No, you are not. You hail from beyond this world, your roots are not here. You show up nowhere in any prophecy. That is what makes you a Hero. To the Hoohan, a Hero is one who can stand up to fate. Who can smash it to pieces, or jam it so that it progresses no further.”

  I finished sipping my tea as I thought about that. “Are you saying that I’m a kind of ‘wild card’ that allows you to reshuffle the deck?”

  “From what I understand of human card games, that is a fair analogy.” Thea pointed at me with her wing. “You have strength and intellect, that is true. But you bring unexpected qualities to bear. Your method of approaching problems is something no creature from this world can anticipate. And you have a sense of compassion, to assist others who cannot do so themselves. That trait is perhaps the rarest, as well as the most valuable.”

  I remembered Perrin’s first greeting to me. You must be the kindly monster that my parents keep talking about.

  By helping Thea, I had found friends that had helped me through my darkest hours. And by assisting others to heal, I had healed and grown myself.

  I considered it. Was that a good enough moral, one that could inspire a Hero?

  Maybe.

  It was certainly inspiring enough for me.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I sat on my back porch, looking up at the ridges of Griffith Park. The land sloped up steeply beyond my yard, turning into a tangle of trees and underbrush until the ridges culminated in the Art Deco dome of Griffith Observatory. It was a pretty view, and sheltered from most of L.A.’s incessant traffic noise. It gave me space to think.

  Albess Thea’s words from the other day still rang in my mind. I wasn’t at all sure that she was right. I sure as heck didn’t feel like a Hero. I wasn’t even sure that it was possible to fight fate. Perhaps it was all an illusion, to give us the feeling of control when we had none.

  My brain conjured up the image of a person jabbing at an elevator button, willing to car to arrive faster.

  Thea had said I was right about the owls moving on silent wings, ready to strike, even as they imprisoned her. I had thought I’d successfully thwarted prophecy by nipping Raisah’s coup in the bud. Now? I wasn’t so sure. It occurred to me that there was another way to read things.

  Belladonna’s words never said which owls were moving, ready to strike. Xandra had even said something to that effect when she’d marshalled the forces of the Roost to back my play. Which meant that I hadn’t thwarted prophecy. My actions had fulfilled it.
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br />   I let out a frustrated curse and put the idea aside. Too much thinking along these lines started making my head ache. And I knew what bothered me about the whole mess, when it came right down to it.

  It was just in my character. After all, I was a forensics examiner. If something didn’t add up on the slab, I worked at it until two and two darn well made four. Chemistry, physics and biology didn’t leave things to fate, chance, karma, or any other form of metaphysical weirdness.

  And something else had been bothering me. Something I needed to talk about face-to-face with a specific person.

  I went back into the house and checked the time. The minute hand had come around the hour mark again, so I knew Esteban would be home. Hopping in the car I headed out into traffic. I didn’t shut the engine off until I’d parked in front of his place.

  Esteban lived in one-half of a California bungalow-style duplex that someone had painted the color of ripe Granny Smith apples. I spotted his Barracuda in the driveway, so I made my way to the door and rang the bell.

  Footsteps sounded inside, pausing as someone looked through the eyehole of the viewer. The rattle of a chain, and the door opened.

  “Dayna!” Esteban exclaimed. He had been off his uniform and was wearing a white T-shirt. “Is everything all right?”

  “Sort of,” I said, jamming my thumbs into the top of my jean’s pockets. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I can come back some other time if you’re busy.”

  “No, I just got off shift.” He opened the door and ushered me inside. “Of course, you knew that.”

  “Yeah, I did,” I admitted, while trying to figure out where I could possibly begin. The rum-and-tea based scent of his cologne mixed with his sweat had already started tap dancing on my senses, but I tamped that down for now. “I kind of wanted to follow up on what happened after our last date.”

  He gave me a puzzled look as he led the way into his living room and settled into his side of the sofa. I gladly followed suit. Unlike the furniture in my own living room, Esteban’s sofa hadn’t suffered the abuse of a full-sized griffin, so I could actually sit in it without getting a kinked spring jabbing into my butt.

  “You heard that Shelly’s coming back,” I said. Actually, I knew that he knew, I just didn’t know where else to start.

  “Yeah, I heard. At least, as soon as she’s done with her psych evaluation. I hope she passes.”

  “She will. That magical affliction of hers…it’s been healed.”

  He sat up. “What? When did this happen?”

  I began telling him about Albess Thea. The story popped a cork on everything else that had happened in Andeluvia over the past two weeks and I found myself fighting back tears as I explained to him about my becoming a Dame. I told him about the arrival of the Noctua. Xandra’s plea for help. My meeting with little Perrin. Breaking the Albess out of the Sepulcher of the Eight Talons. Having Shelly learn about Andeluvia. Finding out that Thea and Shelly had healed each other. The gory battle in Fitzwilliam’s throne room.

  Then, I told him about how I’d finished off Nox.

  “I did something terrible,” I said, and to my ears I sounded like a little girl who’d been caught getting into the cookie jar. “I’ve killed before. I’ve always felt that I didn’t really have a choice, not if I wanted to save my life, or a friend’s life. But this was different. It wasn’t in cold blood, I can tell you that. But it somehow…”

  Esteban put a hand on my shoulder, making sure I was looking at him. “There was a difference, Dayna. You executed him. And we’re not supposed to do that. We’ve all been taught that it’s wrong to play God. Or judge and jury.”

  “Maybe that’s part of it. The thing is, I don’t think I’m feeling what I’m supposed to.”

  He was quiet for a second. “What are you feeling, then?”

  “I’m not feeling regret. Not for killing that monster in owl form, I mean. That’s what you’re supposed to feel, right?”

  “Some people say that.”

  “The only thing I feel is…” My emotions swirled around as if in a giant mixing vat, until I finally settled on the dominant one. “I feel uneasy. Worried. Like I just shuffled my feet while crossing a white chalk line.”

  “The line would still be there, Dayna.”

  “Yes, but it would be blurred now. And I know that, if I cross it again, it’ll be easier. And the next time, and the next…”

  He sighed. “You worry about what you might become. What you might end up seeing when you look in the mirror one morning.”

  Esteban’s eyes were the ones shining now. I leaned into him, felt the hard solidity of his shoulder, the warmth of his body.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Back when I first became a patrolman, I worked the local streets around here. Kind of like how Vega started. The LAPD needed people who knew the language, knew the area.” His face took on a faraway look as he continued. “There was this dealer that worked San Pico Boulevard. He sold hielo, an amped-up version of methamphetamine. And to add the cherry on top of this mess, he sold to school kids as well as junkies.”

  I made a disgusted sound. Esteban nodded wearily.

  “The hielo dealer, he wasn’t part of my case load. Too far up the food chain for a rookie cop like me, they said. Until kids started turning up dead, OD’ed on the high-yield meth. One of them was a little girl with pigtails and a smile that could warm you up on a cold day. Her name was Amalia, and she was my cousin.”

  “So you tracked him down.”

  “That would have gotten me fired in two seconds,” Esteban pointed out. “I didn’t track the dealer down. I just learned where he usually went, and then I put myself in the right spots to encounter him. When I’d put together enough evidence to meet probable cause, I decided to arrest him.”

  “I take it that he didn’t go quietly.”

  Esteban gave a bitter laugh. “He didn’t. I knew he wouldn’t, because he always had at least a kilo bag of crystal on him. That would put him away for ten years in Pelican Bay, easy. I chased him down a back alley, and he pulled a knife. He came at me, and I put three smoking holes in his chest. You know what the toughest part was?”

  I shook my head.

  “Knowing that I’d met him. That he’d once been an okay guy. He’d even brought a stack of tortas to one of my tía’s holiday parties. After he attacked me, after I killed him, I didn’t regret my actions. But I also found out something strange. That killing someone, no matter how evil they may be…can leave a hole inside of you.”

  We sat and looked at each other. I could hear songbirds trilling outside. The tingle of wind chimes on someone’s porch next door. I slipped my hand into his.

  “How do you deal with it?” I asked. “That hole. That feeling that’s been bothering me.”

  “A long time ago, I asked myself something. Something I think you should also ask yourself.” I nodded assent, so he continued. “Think back to when you shot Nox, how you felt, right at the instant you pulled the trigger.”

  I didn’t even need to close my eyes to evoke the memory.

  “I’ve got it,” I said tightly.

  “Do you feel hate for the person you killed?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Now for the real question,” Esteban said. He watched me closely as he added, “Was that all that you felt? Or was there the tiniest bit of something else in there?”

  I blinked. Astounded, I gazed back into his copper-hazel eyes. “I do feel something else.”

  “I thought there might be. When I killed the hielo dealer, I hated him, too. But I also felt love. I felt love for my cousin. Love for all the children who would grow up, strong and perfect and untainted, all because they would never meet this man I just erased from existence.”

  “And I loved…” I whispered.

  I barely knew Perrin, but I had loved him. I loved what he was. Bright, happy, smart, grateful to have met me. Innocent of evil.

  Andeluvia had been a hard teach
er. That world had shown me that life was so very fragile.

  And now the darkness was coming, like a rising tide.

  I pulled Esteban in towards me, ignoring the pain in my side. I kissed him passionately, felt the warmth in my lips light a fire inside of him.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” he breathed, once we’d come up for air. “But what was that for?”

  “Alanzo,” I said, as I ran my fingers along the lines of muscle in his chest. “I’ve never had so many things happen in my life that have been so wonderful. Or so terrible. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I don’t even know if I can fight fate. But I do know one thing.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, as he wove his strong hand into my hair, cupping the back of my head, the way I liked it.

  “I know that I can’t wait anymore. I want you in my life.”

  This time he brought me in for a kiss. The warmth turned to wetness, making my skin tingle. Only, his voice was full of concern when we came up for air again.

  “I’m still on Homicide, Dayna. I won’t know my schedule. I won’t know what kind of risks I’ll have to run. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I gave him a sly smile. “Maybe that’s what will make it work. I don’t know if you’ll come back home safe every day. And you know that I can’t guarantee my own safety in Andeluvia anymore.”

  “That’s true.”

  I ran my lips along his cheek before I murmured in his ear. “But if you’re willing to take a chance on me, I’m more than willing to take a chance on you.”

  He slipped his arms around me. “I’ll take that chance.”

  I grinned as he stood, sweeping me off my feet in a move right off the cover of a romance novel. I nibbled at his neck as he carried me off to his bedroom.

  What happened next was good.

  Actually, what happened next was a lot better than good.

  The End

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